film story ideas

Directing  

Melodrama  

  • A young man bumps into a girl who is running through a forest, she is knocked over and the man asks if she is okay, she says that she is being perused and she continues to run into the forest. 
  • A few seconds after the Girl runs away a man appears and he says that the girl is a Princess and that she ran away in order to escape an arranged marriage, the man asks if he has seen her and the man lies, he says that she went in the opposite direction and the man runs of after her.  a few hours later, the man, who is the Princesses’ betrothed is seen dragging her through the forest and the young man comes up behind him and smothers him. 
  • The young man walks up to the Princess and apologizes for scaring her and he tells her that he hates it when people’s free will is forcibly taken from them and he tells the princess that he will take her to safety. 
  • An epilogue shows that a few years later, the Princess and the young man get married and live happily ever after.  

Influences  

  • The Cabinet of Dr Caligari  
  • Victorian melodrama e.g. Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red barn 
  • Silent films. 

Extra information 

  • I intend to make the film silent and replace dialogue with cards, like the Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari and it will be filmed in black and white. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slapstick comedy  

  • Two women are sitting at a coffee table gossiping when a third woman turns up and shows them a gold ring that she found. The other women fawn over it and ask questions about it. 
  • A fourth woman turns up and claims that the third woman stole the ring and the second woman denies this and this makes the fourth woman angry so she slaps the second woman and the second woman slaps her in return, the second woman proceeds to pick up a cup of cold tea and throw it in the newcomers face and the fourth woman does the same to her and they continue to throw objects at each other until a man who is a jewel thief turns up and reveals that he was the jewel thief. 

Influences  

  • Old comedy films e.g. the work of Charle Chaplin  
  • Monty Python  

Extra information 

  • It will be filmed in oversaturated color  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Editor 

romance  

  • A young boy and girl meet in a diner and they start to flirt with each other, their parents hate each other so they are forced to keep their relationship a secret.  
  • The boy asks the girl to meet him at the beach and he is devastated to discover that the girl’s parents have arranged for her to marry another man, he asks her to meet him again, later that night  and when she gets home , the girl writes a note and she goes to the beach and the lovers   it is implied that they ran away together.  
  • The girl’s mother discovers the letter and she screams.  

Influences 

  • Rome + Juliet (1996 Baz Lhurman)  
  • Breathless (1960, Jean Luc Godard)  – the film had a sad ending  
  • French New Wave  

 

 

 

 

Horror comedy 

  • In the 19th century, Rose Blythe was always kind to everyone, and she was one of the wealthiest women in the town, but she died in an accident when she fell down the stairs and hit her neck. 
  • Rose is buried but the people of the town don’t forget her – they continue to pass down memories of her and, even in death, she encourages people to be good. 
  • About a century after Rose’s death, her corpse is brought back to life by a mysterious force   that tells her that she is still needed and she continues to walk the earth, helping people everywhere.  

Influences  

  • Warm Bodies (2013) 
  • Shaun of the dead (2004)  
  • Zombie comedy  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing  

  • Catharine Johnson is the granddaughter of a wealthy man called Lenard Johnson and she is going to visit him, but when she arrives, she finds that he has died under suspicious circumstances. 
  • The police are called, and Catharine is named as a suspect, even though she had arrived after the death of her grandfather, since she was left a lot of money in her grandfather’s will. Catharine loved her grandfather and recalls fond memories from her childhood when he took her in after her parents died. He has left her a plain wooden box in his will, and he left her a letter which says that the contents are “very important” and that she must only open it in the most “dire of circumstances” 
  • The police suspect Catherine of murdering her grandfather and Henry Hornby, the police chief is particularly quick to accuse her, and this seems suspicious to Catherine, so she looks in the box that her grandfather gave her, and she discovers that Hornby used to be Lenard Johnson’s business partner but he tried to swindle her grandfather out of his earnings and her grandfather cut him out of the business. This revelation causes Catharine to realize that it was Hornby that murdered her grandfather. Hornby enters and tells her that her assumptions are correct and that he killed her parents as well, he attempts to kill her to cover up his crimes, but she escapes, and Hornby is arrested. 

 

 

Influences  

 

  • Film noir  
  • Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles) 
  • Femme fatale  
  • Trope subversion – the femme fatal is not evil , she is a victim of circumstances  

Extra information 

 

  • Black and white  

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