The Brief, 19th September 2016

Today we were all given our brief for over the next several weeks.
Our brief informed us that we are to create an original ten page script/screenplay for a ten minute shot film with the stimulus title. 'The Meeting'.

Immediately ideas started to form in my head. I decided that my film should take the form of the thriller genre as it may prove interesting for me to experiment with audience expectations. My first idea included a scenario where a spy would come back to a small apartment and find that several of his small traps have been tampered with, indicating that an intruder has or is still in the room. inspiration for this obviously comes fro spy thrillers such as the 007 films and The 39 Steps.

However, another idea formed from a previous experimentation of mine, also inspired by spy thrillers. This idea includes two high ranking officers on opposing sides of a war covertly meeting to discuss terms of ending the war. As the short film goes on, negotiations start to become more tense as several underlying threats are made, finally leading to a tense conclusion.

This idea will allow me to prove my understanding of the thriller genre and also allow me to use spy film-related tropes such as code-words. Also, the scene would be much easier to film as the two characters will be sat at a bench in a quiet corner.
However, I realise that to be able to engage the audience, my writing of the dialogue must be of high quality and cinematography must be used in an interesting way to keep the pace of the scene at  high enough speed. My characters must be interesting as well because otherwise audiences will simply have no connection with the characters and would not care who will come out on top.

I will conduct research on various espionage/ secret meetings from past wars and act upon these as inspiration on how to tackle this script/screenplay.