Pre-Production Unit: Research - First Ideas Part 2: A New Idea

After I had a few ideas of where Grit could go I ended up conceiving a second idea for a possible final project: this time going down a far more personal and psychological path. This idea followed an early 20’s male living in a house with two friends. The male eventually grows feelings for one of the girls he is living with. The problem he has is that he can’t express these feelings in fear of losing their friendship and make living in the house awkward for the both of them. The anger he feels in not wanting to express his feelings makes him sensitive to everything that happens in the house. He gets agitated over little things and angry, even becoming paranoid that his friends don’t like him. The whole film is presented through voice overs, and text appearing in the diegesis. What inspired this idea was from a slightly similar experience I had once: a good friend of mine grew feelings for a particular person and ended up getting so worked up by it that he would get annoyed by silly things. I remember that it went by pretty quickly but it wasn’t a pleasant period for him. So I took these emotions that I was witnessing and placed them in my current living situation, as it was the easiest to relate to: during the second year of uni I shared a house with 3 girls on my course. A partially personal experience combined with a current setting allowed me to understand what it would be like to be my friend and put myself in his and the character’s position. With this idea I wanted to really focus on the psychological issues this scenario can provoke. I wanted the protagonist’s emotions to be stretched and exposed with the use of real-time daydreams. With this I mean the protagonist daydreams their response to an event or action and then gives an alternative one. Here’s an example:

An example of the protagonist talking to himself.

More examples of the character talking to himself.

These daydreams would act as hints and signs of his anger and frustration coming through; along with the odd bought of paranoia as he struggles to keep his composure. On the subject of composure there is a second character that only the protagonist sees. He represents his subconscious and the sensible side of him who analyses the facts and remains open to all options, attempting to calm the protagonist when he stirs up. Already you can see that elements of these previous two ideas would make their way through the development stage to the final idea that I now have.

A Note I made proposing this second idea.