Idea Update

We have decided on the final idea being as was stated before but we have changed a few thing about it. First of all, we initially were unsure of what to call the short film because although we knew we wanted the title to be the same as the title of the story the writer is writing and the headline on the newspaper, we couldn't come up with any ideas that would fit all three of those things. Then we came up the the title, 'Midnight Murder'. We liked this because it not only had a ring to it but also fit the criteria of sounding like the title of a book and the headline of a newspaper. However, it meant the audience would know that a murder had occurred before the writer had picked up the newspaper revealing it to her. This was a problem because we wanted to build up tension by not revealing what happened to the girl in the story until the newspaper is seen. In order to solve this problem we came up with the name 'Meeting at Midnight'. This also fit the criteria and didn't give away the plot. It also fits the story because the murder occurs at midnight and the woman is 'meeting' her stalker and also, as the saying goes, 'meeting her fate'. We thought this double meaning gave the title a mystery around it which will draw the audience in and want to find out more about the film.

We were also unsure of how the woman would notice her stalker. Initially we thought we would have her stalker begin to chase her so she would notice and begin to run away. However, we thought this would be out of character as the man had been stalking her for most of her walk home then suddenly decided to chase her. We then decided the woman would have to spot her stalker somehow and came up with the idea of her seeing him in a wing mirror of a car. This is perfect because it means she would spot the man following her without either of them doing anything out of character. This did however, bring up another problem. We discussed whether is we saw someone following us down the road, we would instantly begin to run. We decided that although we may be unnerved we would try to brush it off as it could have an innocent explanation. We therefore decided we would make the woman walk for a while until she kept seeing him following her no matter where she went and then she will begin to run and when she cannot run away anymore she will hide. It is then that the stalker will find her and the screen will cut to black so the audience won't know what happened to her.

Finally, we have decided to never fully reveal the reason of the murder. We will reveal to the audience that the woman was killed on the newspaper, when the writer finds out her story really happened. However, we don't want the audience to know why the stalker followed and killed the, seemingly innocent woman as the cliffhanger will leave them intrigued and wanting more. For the names of the characters we came up with Annie for the woman and Samantha for the writer.

These changes to our plot really helped us to be able to build tension as the audience will not know what is going to happen. It will also make it easier for the audience to figure out what is going on because the girl will not just be running away with no context. It will instead show the build up of her walking and then beginning to run and that will make it easier to understand.