Ryan Reynolds In A Box

Watched Buried the other day, and it got me thinking even more about what I would want Four Walls to end up like. Somehow I got from thinking about Buried and how it relates to Four Walls for me, by Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) having different objectives and calling people, and I thought that this is what I want Jason to seem like; he has objectives. But unlike Paul Conroy, Jason has control over how the conversation plays out with him and Detective Spencer.

Buried is a 90 minute film that takes place entirely in a box. This may seem like a really boring concept, but it's one of the only films that I've had a real sense of the character. I think that keeping the story within a confined space without flashbacks or other techniques that take the audience out of the box make it difficult to not notice the character's traits. I think that putting two characters in a room will lower the audience's attention to what the character's motives are and focus more on the conversation between the two characters.

But because Jason is going to be in control for the the first two acts, it may be that the script is more of a monologue with some arguments placed to bring tension between the characters and to bring the build-up to the climax.

Because Jason has schizophrenia I want it to make it hard for the audience to know what his motives are for his actions. Also that his motives and emotion change quite drastically throughout, not so much as that he goes from crying to ecstasy within a minute. But so much that he goes from being quite aggressive, to very introverted. Or cooperative to ignorant. Changes like these will add to the fear in Jason and also make it very unpredictable as to what will happen next. I should be careful not to make his emotions repeat throughout the script though, cos no-one likes a boring movie.

12 Angry Dudes

So I thought to myself, 'what if Four Walls was made into a film?' How would the story fold out, and how well would it work with it just being about 2 people in a room. So I started to go into more detail in watching 12 Angry Men. I started to pick out things that make it a story that works so well with it only being about 12 men in a room.

Throughout most action films, there are three main actions scenes, becoming more and more 'intense' as the film plays out. In 12 Angry Men, there are three main scenes that, throughout the film, become more and more intense as the amount of Jurors turn towards making the defendant 'not guilty'. I think that that is the best way to go through Four Walls, with the points on what Jason has done and revealing more about his character throughout the film.

The three points I've decided would be;

• Revealing how and why he killed Geoffrey
• That Jason knows about another killer that the police are still looking for
• Jason escapes from the room and the detective is left alone to chase Jason back to the forest in which Jason killed Geoffrey.

I think that these points would give a gripping story that would keep the audience interested as it has a very simple plot but the characters seem very contrasting. This story is similar to 12 Angry Men as the storyline goes from one extreme to the other. Jason being captured to being free and it is left to the audience's imagination on what he is going to do to the detective and how the detective deals with the situation.

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...