Main Task - Plot & Title REVEALED!

Introduction
Our Main Task, we have decided, will be completely unrelated to our preliminary in terms of plot because we feel that trying to extend the narrative of the preliminary would be difficult, time-consuming and too complex under the time-constraints we’ve been given. Instead we as a group have elected to branch into a completely different narrative arch; one that will be explained and expanded on below.

Title
The Title of our full movie is:
“One Man’s Terrorist…”
We chose this phrase from the maxim “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” because we thought it embodied and emphasized the main aspects of the narrative in that it expresses the difficulty in defining a terrorist; the ambiguity of the idea and the subjectiveness of its accusation.

We, as a group also feel that it is an ambiguous title in itself and one that will immediately get the audience thinking and draw them in. It has somewhat of a hidden or fuller meaning other than its obvious denotation which again increases its effectiveness and intelligence.

Synopsis
Secrets, lies and government deception are something that is all too often revealed in the media these days. But when an MI5 operative discovers a secret so great that it threatens the stability of the country and the lives of the many including his own family; he is forced to go on the run in an attempt to stop the hideous plot he so unwittingly discovered.

He, of course, does not go unnoticed by those who he has exposed; a mysterious group of Christian Extremists within MI5 and realizing the gravity of this discovery hatch a plan to neutralize him using his young daughter as bait.

“One Man’s Terrorist…” combines intense action, drama and suspense into one neat 2 hour package that ultimately never lets you off the edge of your seat.

Plot Explanation – Detail of Opening Sequence (To Be Filmed)
The Film’s opening sequence is one that is, interesting, fast-paced and sobering. We decided that chronologically the film’s opening would be near the end of the narrative as will feel this would allow us to open the film with fast-paced action without the risk of cliché as well as leave the audience wanting explanation of the action right from the beginning. It would allow us to capture the audience’s imagination and attention almost immediately.

The Film opens with a smartly dressed, but now disheveled, man running through fields as fast as possible. He seems to being running from someone/something; but this is not made immediately obvious to the audience. Camera Shots are pacy with fast cuts and peculiar shots and framing. The Camera is often jerky which replicates a sense of confusion and disorientation, which conveys to the audience the character’s onscreen emotions. As the camera follows the action, it continues this pattern and it revealed that in reality there is no one chasing him which simultaneously smashes the audience’s perception of regularity and the expected as well as tell the audience that this film isn’t what should be expected.

The Opening Sequence progresses as we see the “chase scene” progress through an unknown town (at this point in the narrative) and whilst running and bumping into various strangers the titles roll, interspersed with various action shots. All the while complimented with non-diegetic fast-paced music and drum beats that increase the tension. It is not for several minutes from the beginning of the opening that audience is shown the destination of his journey. It is, however, finally revealed. We see him run up a path at first to a destination hidden but then revealed to be a place of worship, a church.

At this point in the film, the audience is completely unaware as to why he is running toward a church or the how the gravity of what is about to be revealed is connected to him.

As he passes into the church we quickly cut to a long shot down the aisle with pews neatly framed, and see what appears to be a dead child in the foreground of the shot. At first the shot is out of focus but the music by this point as abruptly come to an end and diegetic footsteps are all that is heard as the body slowly comes into focus concurrent with the man slowly stepping gently towards it. As he kneels down, the door, not out of shot slams shut with some drama and tension; its sound is ominous, loud and significant to the end of the filmed extract.

Plot Extended
Narratively this fits somewhere in toward the end of the film, but as explained previously, we have chosen to have this as our opening because it contains both action and intrigue.

If we were to continue our filming, we would then cut to credits before opening on the narrative beginning of the film. We feel this approach both disorientates the audience and we have chosen to purposely break the narrative rules laid down by theorists like Propp, but we also deliberately decided not to venture down the path of including anything that could be viewed as supernatural of “the fantastic” (in reference to the literary theories of Todorov) because we felt that for the film to be taken seriously it would have to remain firmly grounded to reality.

In Conclusion…
Over the next few days the other members of the group will be adding their additions of the pitch to the blog, responsibilities detailed in a previous post and we will post an update on how we felt our presentation went within a week.

- Rory