Storyboard

Film Treatment

                 

LiveDEAD

A man who is working on a case meets a girl who wakes with no memories. Will she be the key to his case?

Story by Camille Chen

cchen@sthildas.qld.edu.au

KEY CHARACTERS

Melissa is quite a mature character but can be quite childish too. She is quite shy when she is around an unfamiliar environment and where there are lots of people she doesn’t know. She is very defensive and protective of the people she loves. She tends to think a lot and would keep a lot of things to herself. She has an average height and has redish-orange hair (a red head). She loses her memory at the beginning and she is in actual fact (read on by highlighting over the words, read only if you have read the film synopsis) suppose to be dead. She has returned from the dead for the truth to be exposed but her memory was erased because despite being unable to rest, she couldn’t accept the truth.

Chris is an investigator who is on a serial murder case of redheads. He is very caring, quite handsome and tall. He is serious about his job and is cautious at all times. He finds Melissa who has lost her memories and they end up falling in love.

Mrs Parkinson is Melissa mother, she has a very weak and warm appearance but is a character that has gone insane due to love and is the murderer. She doesn’t speak her troubles but tries to solve everything and tries to do everything and anything herself to just keep a family together. She takes things upon herself to do. A character that became too jealous and gone mad in the end.

Mr Parkinson is unfaithful and is very fond of redheads. He is cheating on Mrs Parkinson with a couple women and was seen by Mrs Parkinson. He has no idea of what is happening but due to his actions lives were lost and his family ruined.

KEY LOCATIONS

Streets Setting: Next to a road and many buildings/apartments by the sides but the streets are usually empty. There is a park to the side of one of the buildings. A car is parked by the side of the road.

Kitchen Setting: Crime scene. Normal home kitchen with only one entrance and exit. Everything is tidy, you can’t really tell why the victim was in the kitchen. The victim tape outline is on the floor.

Bathroom Setting: Bathroom of one of the crime scenes. A clean bathroom, quite small.

Lounge Room Setting: Chris’s house. There is a Television opposite the couch and a bathroom close. Everything is neat and clean. There isn’t much in Chris’s house, mostly just documents and files everywhere.

Outside Melissa’s house Setting: The house is slightly uphill, not on the same level as the road.

In the Car Setting: Only the front seats are shot.

Garage Setting: Dark, cold and dirty.

Funeral Setting: Up the top of a hill, lots of greenery.

FILM SYNOPSIS

The title appears on screen and fades. The first scene fades in and Chris can be seen from afar walking with files in hand. The natural sounds can be heard and no background music is played. Chris gets his car keys out from his pocket as he nears his car but then sees Melissa unconscious nearby. He looks around and runs over to see if she is alright. Chris’s continuous questioning for Melissa’s safety can be heard in the background but only total darkness can be seen, then there is a blurred close up image of Chris. After the image of Chris’s face is focused, Chris’s voice is clearer. There is silence while the screen moves quickly around the surrounding and stopping at certain points 4 times and then back to Chris’s face and we hear his voice again. Melissa suddenly moves back away from Chris's grasp and the files under Chris’s arms fall to the ground. Photos of victims can be seen. Melissa shakes her head as her head hurts and an unclear image in black and white flashes through her mind. Chris observes this happening and concludes that she may be helpful on the case. Chris lifts Melissa who is in pain up and the screen zooms out.

The screen cuts to Chris lying on the couch and Melissa walks over and accidently knocks the table and Chris wakes and quickly sits up to see Melissa. We see shots of Melissa’s wet hair, large T-shirt and the overall look of her after taking a shower. Chris’s eyes looks away as he blushes, he asks whether if she is feeling better and for her details as to her name, age and where she lives. Melissa only shakes her head and replies that she cannot remember anything, not even how or why she was on the ground by the side of the road but at the sight of the photos her head began to hurt. Chris tells her that it may have jogged her memories, maybe she knows something about the case he is working on while Melissa moves to sit down on the couch. The screen shows the table where there was a laptop surrounded by documents and files and back to Melissa again. She says that she doesn’t know but if it’d help she’ll try her best and then Chris suggests that they go to the crime scenes as it may help but for now they should rest. Melissa nods her head and the screen fades.

The screen fades in and a kitchen can be seen with a taping of a body shape on the floor near the centre. Melissa walks around the kitchen and touches the bench and kneels down to the taping and then hangs her head. Chris asks if she remembered anything but Melissa shook her head. She couldn’t remember, nothing, there was nothing. Chris sighs and walks away to sit down somewhere, he says that they have been through all the victims and this was the last one. He questions again if she really can’t remember anything at all. Melissa shuts her eyes and covers them with her hands, she’s already trying really hard she thinks to herself but she just can’t remember anything. She apologises while holding back her tears, she then talks about how useless she is. Chris turns his head towards Melissa and a close up on his eyes as they widen. Melissa looks at him still holding back her tears; she apologises and says how she is trying, how she wants to remember too and how she hates herself for being so useless. She wants to know too, whom she is, where she was from and how to get back home but she just can’t remember anything.

Suddenly, Chris hugs her and stops her from saying anymore, he tells her that it’s okay and that he’ll look after her til she remembers and that she can take is slowly. Melissa finally cries out in Chris’s arms. Melissa slowly lifts her head to look at Chris and their faces slowly move closer and they kiss. In realisation of their actions, the two quickly separate to stare at each other with their faces quickly flushing red. Chris turns his head around in attempt to hide his blushing face. Melissa suddenly stands and Chris’s face turns back to normal and turns to see Melissa quickly walking away and saying that she’ll go wash her face.

There was a cut to Melissa over the bathroom sink washing her face, then an over the shoulder shot of her looking at herself in the mirror with water dripping from her face. Her attention then shifts to a ring next her hand. It looked familiar, she takes it in her hand and was very fascinated by it, she puts it on her finger and looks at her hand. Then there was flash of an image over her hand, the ring was on a different hand. On a hand that seemed much older and then more images rushed into her mind and then she faints.

A cut to Chris who stayed in the position he was when Melissa walked off, was deep in thought. In hearing the thud from the bathroom he runs to over to see Melissa fainted on the floor.

There was another cut to a black and white scene. There were several short scenes of a house, a family, the hand with ring holding hers and several family photos then a bloody knife wrapped in Melissa’s mum’s clothes which were also covered in blood. Mrs Parkinson who sees Melissa, turns mad in panic, grabs the knife and Melissa wakes up breathing hard, with her hand over her chest. She looks straight at Chris and says that she remembers, she knows who she is and who the murder is while tears once again filled her eyes. The screen fades.

The screen fades in to the outside of a house, the screen cuts to inside a car and Chris asks if Melissa wants to come along to the arrest. Melissa shakes her head and smiles weakly, she then says that she doesn’t wish to see her mother arrested with her own eyes. Chris tells her to wait in the car just before he shuts the door and Melissa apologises in reply. Chris, along with many other men who are probably the police and forensics walks up to the door and rings the doorbell. Melissa’s mum opens the door and froze for a moment at the sight before asking what the men wanted. Chris reaches his hands out and reveals the ring in his palm and tells her that it was found in the bathroom at a crime scene. Mrs Parkinson continuously denies that it is hers. Chris tells her that her daughter has verified that it was hers, confusion, fear and shock falls over her face. She then says that it can’t be true, that Melissa was in the garage wrapped away, she can’t have verified it, it was not possible. Shocked and confused as well, he contends her words saying that she was in the car and that she told him that it was her who murdered all those red haired females. Mrs Parkinson falls to the ground and stares at him wondering how he knows that it was her, the only one who should know would be Melissa but she’s in the garage there was no way for her to tell anyone. She was cuffed and some man ran in to secure any evidence and opened the garage, Chris ran in after them.

A cut to the garage, they found a large garbage bag and it revealed Melissa’s body. Chris just stood staring at the body at his foot when to his side stood Melissa in a spiritual form. She apologized and a flash of her apology when he closed the car door before went through his head. He says that she knew and she nods slowly and apologises again with tears streaming down her face before slowly fading. Chris thought to himself for her to not go, to stay with him, he loved her. He yells for her to not go and reaches out for her but could only reach out to a few sparks of light which then disappeared to nothing. He fell to the ground and cried next to her body. The screen fades.

The screen fades in to a funeral, a narrator tells of how the mother confessed. She found out the father was cheating and took it upon herself to kill the female who was a redhead. Unable to forget killing someone and the anger and jealousy that would not disappear caused her to continuously kill red heads. When she saw Melissa find out what she had done, she panicked. She wasn’t thinking when she took the knife in her hands and stabbed her own daughter like all the other victims as her mind thought of Melissa who also a redhead as those women. Chris was holding a funeral for Melissa to finally rest. When the burial was finished, Chris kneeled before the tomb a little longer and then he felt a light kiss and heard Melissa’s voice saying thank you as a soft wind blew by. Chris looks up to the sky and tears streamed down the side of his eyes. The screen looks up into the sky and fades into credits.

Storyboarding Practice

Film - Recipe ( Groups )

Ingredients
- A Girl looking for her boyfriend
-Parents trying to protect their daughter
-Dead Boyfriend
-A female friend
-A male friend
- Cliff

Recipe

 Take one girl and make her look for her dead boyfriend. Throw in some friends who were with the dead boyfriend.  Add a flashback of a parent hitting the girl unconscious. Have the girl remember the incident at the cliff with dead boyfriend. The story ends.

Protagonist + Antagonist

Protagonist drives the plot forward.

Antagonist tries to stop him.

In the Story Mind, the Protagonist is the Prime Mover of the effort to achieve the Story's Goal. The Antagonist is the Chief Obstacle to that effort. In a sense, Protagonist is the irresistible force and Antagonist is the immovable object.

 The Protagonist represents our Initiative, the motivation to change the status quo. The Antagonist embodies our Reticence to change the status quo. These are perhaps our two most obvious human traits - the drive to alter our environment and the drive to keep things the way they are. That is likely why the Archetypes that represent them are usually the two most visible in a story.

Phillips, M.A,http://storymind.com/content/68.htm, (07.05.12)