For several, months, I have been writing down ideas for possible short stories or film plots. A couple of days ago, I read them over and…..well I don’t really love any of them. I had written them all very late at night and what I wrote did not make much sense, and contain a lot of “maybes.” I had probably just watched a movie or read a book of the genre which gave me the inspiration to write them. But anyways, two of them would be of the thriller genre.
Here was the first one, word for word:
“thriller/sci-fi/psychological
Someone or something is impersonating Jimmy’s mom (names indefinite, random for now). Jimmy has no memory?
Carter (me in idea) tries to warn Jimmy by leaving him a self tape saying something like “hi, jimmy I’m carter. You don’t know me but you’re someone very important to me. And i to you. But what you need to know is…your mom is gone Jimmy. She’s gone.”
As video is playing, B-roll inserts of jimmy’s mom starts playing, and fake nice mom too
Maybe Jimmy’s real mom was actually cruel or abusive? Maybe the new mom eraser all his memories of her for this fake utopia, Coraline type thing
Could be from Jimmy’s perspective, find video or something like that, watched it, and the fake mom walks in “what’re you doing jimmy? Whats that?” And he is acting strange and suspicious, somehow able yo destroy, delete, or hide the video. And fake mom flips out because this is a threat to her reality, to her world, or to the reality she created.
Maybe all of this is really just a work”
OKAY yeah I have no idea what that is supposed to mean either. I love Henry Selick’s 2009 film Coraline so I probably wrote that after watching it. But I don’t think this is a good plot, I honestly just do not have any want to produce this, so I am immediately scrapping it.
Onto number two:
A persons mom dies. Mom used to always leave notes and encouraging messages for the kid, and the kid keeps finding them after she dies. Eventually they realize, these aren’t old notes, or encouraging messages. They are new, and they keep coming
Possible ways to go with this:
Fantasy: the mom is trapped in a book or story (somehow) and is sending the kid notes with quotes from the books shes in for them to find her, kinda like InkHeart
Murder mystery/ghost: mom was murdered and is sending notes from the beyond to guide kid to find murderer, can still be book quotes, bc maybe the only part of her soul that stayed can only communicate like that bc she loved reading
Murder mystery: mom was murdered and someone else, who helped the murderer feels guilty and is sending the notes to the kid to helo find the murderer, kid thinks its the mom’s ghost
I actually kind of like this one, I think I would be able to find creative ways to demonstrate how the main character discovers the notes and how thye find out that the letters aren’t old. I also just feel this idea of “then who is writing these new notes?” can be interesting to play around with.
Okay and here is the last, and most confusing one of all:
Mental health: grumpyxsunshine trope
The depressed grumpy character with a bad family. Childhood was good until age 9, when they got a new parent who was verbally abusive, and they lost their light
Meets the sunshine character who has a bright personality, but trauma that was buried deep. The trauma affects their actions subconsciously but they don’t remember that any of that
The grumpy begins to have light again, the more they confide in and share their experiences with sunshine, feeling that sunshine gives them hope and strength
Meanwhile being exposed the grumpy’s family/conditions, their anxiety and ptsd resurface, bringing back old unorganized memories, leaving them a mess
The two characters are parallels, but with shifted points. Ones early days were dark, the others was light. Ones adolescence was light, the others was dark. And as they get to know eachother, they trade once again
Allowing yourself to be the person everyone confides in can be detrimental to yourself, especially when they don’t consider the impact it has on you or care about your own circumstances, even if it isnt intentional
Could have a scene where theyre hiding from grumpy’s parents and sunshine is bordering on a panic attack, and grumpy says “well i bet your family’s not as fucked up as mine is” in a joking manner. Grumpy meant no harm, just said it as a way to cope with their own life, but saying that makes sunshine feel guilty for feeling horrible in that moment, confused as to why they have these flashbacks because the parents they live with now are kind. So they play their role of the kind sunshine again, shoving the hurt down.
Maybe grump at the end (now sunshine) thanks sunshine (now grump) for everything and helping them get through their family and stuff, and sunshine says your welcome, whispering “you dont know what it cost me” under their breathe
In the end, the roles still exist, but they’ve reversed
Basically what I wanted to do was play on the type of relationship people have, where depending on one person for all your person can be good for you, but be emotionally exhausting for the other. So the once bright and happy character has declined. I actually really like this trope and it has been done many times before, however I don’t think this can be shown in a short time span.
In the end, I ended up consulting some of my friends in AICE Media, and outside of the class and they all agreed that the second one was pretty good. Unless I come up with another idea I really like and am inspired by, we’re going with that!
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