Scriptings

Haven't really added that much to the script since last time, but this is the finished script. Not entirely sure of the length of this, but that can be changed in post-production with how I wanted to do this. I'll go over this again soon to see how my perception has changed and whether the script will need to change because the that change.

INT. Interrogation Room - EVENING

Artificial lighting shines down to the centre of the room. A man, JASON WARD is sitting covered by the pale light. On the other side of the DESK a detective, JONATHAN SPENCER, is sitting cross legged, with his pen held in his hand. A COFFEE sits steaming on the desk just in front of SPENCER.

JASON has half of his face spattered with blood and his entire chest and leg also spattered with blood. This is never suddenly revealed until the ending of this sequence.

JASON (V.O.)

(Stuttering)

It was around a, month ago. I met this man. In a bar. We, got talking on about his life. Mostly his, bad times. It was pretty obvious he had had a really bad day. He had been drinking for most of the two hours. Constantly. He ordered a new drink, every time he finished one. He finally said after the, two hours that he should probably go home. He left with a bit of a stumble, didn't really annoy anyone else. Most people had left. He got in his car. A 96' fiesta. Navy blue. He turned the key. I watched him as he went on his way. The next day I took the day off work. I went to his neighborhood, he said the night before, he said he lived on Greenway, went to the exit and saw him drive out in his car. I drove behind him until he got to his work. Found out from the receptionist he finished at, quarter to two. I was back at his house. He pulled into his, drive at quarter past two. stopped and waited for something. I don't know what, made me so angry. It was just him.

Jason is a character who should scare the audience, even from the outset his appearance should provoke fear or unease into the audience. Jason is covered in blood - the questions provoked in the audience are; why? how? It also makes the audience think that he has been involved with death, along with him being handcuffed makes him a murderer most likely. 

The camera shots of Jason are also going to increase the suspicion of what Jason has done to be in the jail cell. Slowly revealing characteristics of him to give the audience one new thing to focus on in each shot.

Jason; Mark II

I've been talking to my sister, who is studying Psychology in her final year at the moment. She's been specializing in multi-personality disorders, but also in schizophrenia. I asked her if Jason's disorder was feasible and turns out it more into the schizophrenia side of things; when some one 'hears voices', as my sister put it. She said that it is very common for a serial killer to have schizophrenia, when someone with the disorder does kill someone, it is very hard to charge them under the same charges as someone without the disorder. Most of the time the killer will end up having to go to an asylum.


Other films that involve a serial killer with schizophrenia include the recent Australian true story film; Snowtown. The character of James Vlassakis, who is currently serving a life sentence for being involved in four murders between '97 and '99. In the film, James finds out from his doctor that he has mild schizophrenia, although the real James Vlassakis isn't publicly known to have the disorder. In Snowtown the James is perceived as someone that could have something wrong with him. 

James Vlassakis in Snowtown [2011]. Played by Lucas Pittaway

The character of James is someone who just seems to go along with whatever really happens to him, he never makes his own decisions, he is told what to do and does it, and when someone wants something from him, James doesn't hold any will to stop them. James' schizophrenia may have been caused by many different things; growing up the rough suburbs of Adelaide, in his early life his father had left, leaving his mother to find another man who can supply money for the family and also care for her three children when she isn't around. Within the first 20 minutes of the film, the first man she puts her trust in, turns out to be a pedophile who abuses James and his brothers. Throughout the rest of the film, James is surrounded by things people of his age shouldn't be, his mother introduces a gay man into the friendship of the family, a new man (John Bunting) marries James' mother, John's son (Troy) from another woman starts to live with the family, Troy rapes James, eventually James gets involved with a series of murders that Troy and one of his close friends plan.


These events that have occurred throughout James' early life have tortured his mind into having schizophrenia. From this film it is easy to understand that the perception of schizophrenia is normally always associated with murder, and in it's worst cases serial killings. Schizophrenia always perceived as part of a villain in most films, with films like Silence Of The Lambs and Donnie Darko viewing it as a downside, but still the characters are the interest of the film.


I want Jason to be somewhat of a character like James from Snowtown, Hannibal Lecter from The Silence Of The Lambs and Donnie Darko from, er, Donnie Darko. These characters have always been the focus of the film, never has anyone said to me that they remember The Silence Of The Lambs for anything other than Hannibal Lecter or Buffalo Bill. Jason should be a character who has a control over the rest of the characters, where he knows the entire story of what the detective is trying to discover, whether or not he knows the man Detective Spencer is trying to find. Hannibal Lecter is a character who is scary because not much is known about him, other than he knows who Buffalo Bill is (possibly) and he also has leverage over the protagonist, yet he is in a jail cell. He is generally a scary character for how he is capable of so much, not much known about him and how he has such a reputation of a mass murder and a cannibal but seems like a relatively normal person.

Character Bio: Jason Ward

Kinda stuck on the rest of the script, so I thought that coming up with a better character bio of Jason would help come up with the rest of the opening speech. It's given me a bit more to think about on why Jason would want to kill his victims. I've thought that maybe there's something that Jason sees in every victim that he doesn't like, or that part of him sees something that reminds him of his rough(ish) upbringing and therefore tries to get rid of it i.e. the person. I think that quite a complex motive would make the story more interesting for people as they would want to see the film again to understand Jason's motives and what is wrong with him.

Jason is a serial killer who is only roughly 20 years old. He has a job as a an financier at a local communications company. He doesn't have much of a social life, but tries to get out to pubs or restaurants to meet people. His hobby's include painting, photography and hiking. Not much is known about him by anyone else, as he tends to keep to himself except when he is interested in someone else and they ask about his life. He hasn't spoken to his mother in a few years, and his father died when Jason was just four years old. Jason was clever from quite a young age, but never seemed to do anything besides work, he gets his relaxation and peace from doing mental exercises or working on something a little less complicated than his normal work. Jason has never been close to anyone in a relationship sense, mostly because he would never be sociable with anyone outside of his work, and was never interested in girls as a young boy. At university no-one ever mentioned him in conversation as he always stayed in his flat, and never left other than to go to classes or to get food. He's always had a job since he got out of high-school. After he left high-school, he took a gap year, then applied for a economics course at Oxford university, Southampton and Manchester. He was turned down at Oxford, but the other two accepted him, he ended up going to Southampton and doing a Post-Graduate course at Manchester university. After this he went back to where he was working before University.

Jason has a type of Multi Personality Disorder where one personality is thinking that the person should be killed because they have something that has reminded him on his younger life. This side of his mind cannot take full control of Jason's actions, so he is left with emotion that he doesn't know why he has it. He ends up killing people, mainly without knowing, yet still accepts that he has done it.

Four Walls II

I've finally got a pretty much finished logo of the movie;

It's only a first draft, but pretty much close to the final logo that I'd like to have, it needs a little more tinkering to get rid of the mechanical movements, but besides that I really like the blur effects I've added in, which was made by having three separate video layers and applying a fast blur on all of them in After Effects. One layer with a horizontal and another with a vertical to get the box blurring together, then another layer with an overall blur to get a fading in blur on it.


The font was blurred in and set to come together as it gets closer to the centre, the movement is still a little jerky, which I'll change to become more smooth.


Really happy with this draft, got everything how I wanted it, now moving onto the actual film...


I've started to write a bit of the script for it, not really in detail but I'm getting a set piece for the dialogue in the opening. Here it is so far...

INT. Interrogation Room - EVENING

Artificial lighting shines down to the centre of the room. A man, JASON WARD is sitting covered by the pale light. On the other side of the DESK a detective, JONATHAN SPENCER, is sitting cross legged, with his pen held in his hand. A COFFEE sits steaming on the desk just in front of SPENCER.

JASON has half of his face spattered with blood and his entire chest and leg also spattered with blood. This is never suddenly revealed until the ending of this sequence.

JASON (V.O.)

(Stuttering)

It was around a, month ago. I met this man. In a bar. We, got talking on about his life. Mostly his, bad times. It was pretty obvious he had had a really bad day. He had been drinking for most of the two hours. Constantly. He ordered a new drink, every time he finished one. He finally said after these, two hours that he should probably go home. He left with a bit of a stumble, didn't really annoy anyone else. Most people had left. He got in his car. A 96' fiesta. Navy blue. He turned the key.

JASON moves his jaw to make a liquid clicking sound.

This is just a little bit that I've put together, not much but it's early days...

It's a start...

I wanted to get a feel of what my movie might look like, of course this is only a rough animation of the first minute or so, but it gave me a helping hand for the order of the titles and how long the credits would take. I made this on Vegas Pro 9 so it isn't the best quality of animation and such that I would like, but that's why it's a draft.

I've included my false production company logo, the rough movie titling and the director's credit, but I've still got to think of what will go into the rest of the intro.

The shots I wanted the film to start with are;

• A close up of Jason's eye; to show that the person narrating or just talking over the shots is most likely this man. The following shots gradually reveal more about the situation and personality, which have an immediate impact on the audience as to what he is compared to everyone else in society and why the film focuses on this man.
• A close up of the handcuffs on Jason's wrist to show that he is a criminal or some sort of suspect in a case, but nothing else is known about him or what crimes he has committed.
• A pan downwards on his torso to show the blood from Jason's crime to let the audience know that he has been close to someone being hurt badly or killed. But because he is in handcuffs the audience immediately assumes that he has killed someone. Along with his calm demeanor it could suggest that something is mentally wrong with him
• A low angle shot of Jason's entire face to suggest he has power, but also revealing that he has blood over his face as well, which he hasn't bothered to clean off.
• The final panning away shot of Jason sitting in the middle of the room with the detective towards the left of the frame to reveal the entire situation and setting; an interrogation room in which Jason is the suspect and the detective is interrogating.

I also want to include a flashback to the killing of Jason's last victim, but only showing the chase between Jason and his victim to imply that Jason has killed this person. These shots will be interlinked with the other shots and used in a way to shock the audience and imply that he has killed this person.

Four Walls

This is a draft for the logo of my movie intro. I decided on a title for the film and a basic idea of the logo, pretty basic, the logo inside a box to suggest being boxed in and seeing as the title is a different way of describing a room it kind of makes metaphorical sense. Even though this a rough draft only made in 5 minutes on Photoshop I really like how it turned out, I'll leave my brain to come up with something awesome in the subconscious for a day or two, but I'll have another go at making something good.


The main thing I wanted to do with the film is for the majority of it to be set in an interrogation room, the story unfolding in spoken form from the characters, no flashbacks just everything described by the characters. The story's main protagonist is a detective called Jonathan Spencer, a detective in his late 30s currently working on a case about a serial killer who they have little idea about. Spencer is asked to interrogate another serial killer, Jason Ward, who has just been arrested after being caught in the act of killing his latest victim. Even though Ward has killed around 5 victims and suspected of at least 6 more, he is only in his early twenties. There is very little else known about Ward by the police and has been brought in to be interrogated to help find out more about him. Spencer has been asked by one of his colleagues to interrogate Ward about his murders.


Spencer finds out through interviewing Ward that Ward thinks he has killed at least 15 people. Spencer also finds out that Ward marks each victim by cutting the right index finger ligament on the right hand just in the fold of the wrist, Ward says that when the bodies are found, they will easy to identify as who killed them.


I haven't worked out the rest of the film, but I'll get there eventually.