Out of all the parts of my FMP script so far, the opening scene has changed the most, being considerably different in every new revision. In this blog post I’m going to briefly analyse all of my different opening scenes and talk you through my thought processes.
Before we can do that though, make sure you have read the two previous blog posts on my FMP so that you have all the context needed to understand what I’m talking about.
This first draft of the film’s opening shows how much the story has developed over time as very few of the features I outlined in past blog posts come up in this opening.
In this first draft, the difference between Ben and Anna’s new friends was the key focus which is why I started by introducing two of the side characters and how they interacted with each other. I hoped, by contrasting this with how Ben interacts with the rest of the group it would quickly highlight how everyone thought he was a bit of an outcast and a weirdo.
I also used this draft as a way of practicing my writing, seeing how well I could write a natural conversation. This is why the initial conversation is so long; I was never intending on keeping it that long in the film I just wanted to practice writing conversations. To help keep it natural, the story in the script is actually a true story from my life and the conversation is based upon conversations I have had with my friends when telling that story, in future drafts of this campfire scene, all of the conversations between the teenagers is modelled around real conversations because I figured that was the best way to make it feel real, if it actually is.
Memento (2000)
Me and Ryan made the decision to have Ben narrate the conversation through a voice over. We realized that a number of films and tv shows depicting mentally ill people such as American Psycho, Memento and You, utilize this narrative devise and thought it would work really well for our film, allowing us to explore Ben’s character on a much deeper level.
Changes needed
I quickly realized this would not work as an intro because I couldn’t afford to give so much screen time to characters who play no part in the central narrative. I also realized that introducing the characters this way round made Ben very unlikable because I was directly comparing him to inherently likable characters.
And that was another problem, the story is meant to be told from Ben’s point of view and Ben doesn’t like Anna’s friends. So by allowing the audience to form a positive opinion of Anna’s friends it completely shatters their trust in the narrator which would negatively affect the entire film.
I also decided that I wanted to start slightly before the campfire scene so that I could introduce Ben and Anna separately from the larger group as they are the two central characters and I needed the audience to care about their relationship.
I actually really like this intro from a structural point of view. After finishing draft one I spent some time further developing my idea and decided I needed to put a lot more emphasis on the murder (or lack there of) as it is the dramatic climax of the film.
I decided I wanted to show Ben having visions of the murder throughout the film as I loved the way The End of the F***ing World used a similar devise. But when I first came up with the idea I only planned on those visions starting after Ben met Henry.
The great Alfred Hitchcock played a big part in me deciding to open with one of Ben’s visions as my intro was written as a direct response to watching his interview on creating tension.
So I guess in draft 2, Ben becomes Hitchcock’s bomb. By making the audience think that Ben is going to kill someone it creates a sense of anticipation which steadily grows as Ben gets closer and closer to the scene shown in the beginning. I was absolutely buzzing when Hitchcock ended his lesson by saying ‘The bomb must never go off’ because I had already made the decision very early on that Ben would never actually carry out the murder so it was nice to hear that my instinct is in the keeping with Mr Hitchcock’s.
I also really liked the opening line, I never thought of myself as a murderer because it, again, feeds into that sense of anticipation. It’s actually a bit of a red herring; by putting that line over the top of the image of Ben with a knife is comes across as if he we are hearing him after he has carried out the murder but in actual fact we are hearing him on the last day of school, commenting on the decline of his mental health.
In terms of introducing Ben’s character its instantly better because I actually introduce him first, making it clear he is the protagonist and making it clear that we will be hearing his inner dialogue throughout the film. The image of his walking through the crowd of schoolkids is just a visual metaphor for how he feels invisible and isn’t very popular, which I quite like.
You can probably tell there is a thing about mirrors in this second draft; we open with a shot of Ben looking at himself in the mirror and we see Ben looking at himself in the mirror as a young boy. This is because there is a strong theme of reflection in the film; Ben begins the film with a very skewed view of himself and he can only accomplish his need by properly reflecting on his past. I think this visual metaphor is especially effective in the opening shot.
Another visual metaphor is Ben’s shirt. I put emphasis on Ben’s shirt being yellow as that colour represents mental illness and when Ben is preparing to kill Henry he is a victim of mental illness. By covering the shirt with a jumper in the beginning, it shows how Ben puts on a protective layer to try to hide this illness from the rest of the world. That protective layer is to remove himself from the world and become very cold to the people around him, hence the dark blue jumper. It’s a bit pretentious but you can see what I was going for.
Psychological properties of colour
The other main aspect of this new draft is Anna and Ben’s relationship. My aim was to make their dialogue seem very real to how old friends would talk for the first time in a while.
Changes needed
The biggest problem I had with this draft is that the opening monologue is way too on the nose, I continued to have this issue into future drafts but the problem really started here.
The flashback to Ben as a child was completely unnecessary for two main reasons: I could introduce the fact Ben’s father is abusive in a more subtle manner and also that brief scene is so impracticable as myself and Ryan would have to get two more actors just for one ten second flashback.
Simply from a narrative point of view, this is my favorite draft in terms of its opening. I kept in all the stuff with the vision at the start which I really like but chose to add a scene with Ben’s therapist. Which is loosely inspired by Good Will Hunting and I Am Not Okay With This.
I Am Not Okay With This (2020)
The purpose of the therapy scene is to find a new way of showing Ben to be mentally unwell to avoid the long monologue from draft two.
Pretty much every line in this scene is exposition: Ben is mentally unwell, something bad is going to happen at the end of the film, Ben has lost a loved one, it is the anniversary of their death, it is the last day of school, Ben has no real support system in his personal life, etc. It is a lot of exposition for such a short scene but by hiding it in a conversation I feel it is a bit more engaging.
It was in this draft that I decided the death of Ben’s mother needed to take a central part in this story compared to just another part of Ben’s character. To bring it fully into the story I made the decision to have the day of the film is set be the anniversary of her death, I feel this was a good decision as it adds a lot more emotion to the story and offers a good explanation for Ben being particularly unstable.
Of course, adding this extra weight to the Mother narrative meant I had to rewrite Ben and Anna’s first conversation and I was actually pretty happy with how it came out and I’d say I utilized sub-text quite well.
Changes needed
I clearly have a subconscious longing for unnecessary monologues because the first half of page three is completely unneeded and replaces the dialogue in draft two I was trying to get rid of.
But the biggest problem with this draft is that it is just too long. If I were writing a longer film I’d probably keep the core of this first scene in tact but as I am constantly against the clock I just can’t afford to spend this much time setting the story up.
Pretty much the entire objective of this draft was to economise, take what I had done in previous drafts and shrink it down to just the most necessary stuff. This meant getting rid of the therapist scene. What I did was actually take the end of the therapist scene and reword it into a monologue (I seemingly am unable to not write an inner monologue at the beginning) and, all things considered, I don’t hate it.
I also moved Ben’s vision slightly, I’m still toying with where to put it but I’m pretty sure it has the desired effect wherever it is placed in the opening scene.
I also changed it so that you would only find out Ben’s mother died right before Ben’s freak-out at the fire. I think this is a much better place to put it as the story can ride the impact of that reveal into a high intensity section, giving the whole scene a more natural pacing.
I again had to rework Ben and Anna’s conversation but for the most part it has stayed the same.
Changes needed
From a structural and efficiency point of view, I’d say this is the strongest draft and the only thing I really need to iron out is the clunky dialogue in the opening.
Since I wrote this draft I made the decision to make Ben an active protagonist so I’ll need to show that he is actively trying to fix his relationship with Anna and that, of course, needs to start in the opening scene so, in my next draft, I’ll have to completely redo their conversation.
Overall, I’m really happy with how the script is evolving and I’m looking forward to seeing what ends up being the final draft of this scene.
In this blog post I’m going to quickly outline the basic plot of my year 1 FMP as it currently stands. I will be referencing this post in my other work just so I don’t have to continuously repeat myself. The purpose of this isn’t to analyse the plot it is just here as reference material.
I will mention that I used Dan Harmon’s story circle as a way of structuring my film as I found it worked really well for short films compared to the classic ‘hero’s journey’. So I will be explaining my plot in reference to that, so here’s a picture to help (there’s also a video which I watched to help me understand it better but the photo summarizes it well)
I don’t have a lot of experience using this method of story structure so my plot slightly strays off course around the middle but for the most part I tried to follow this pattern.
Like in most films, stages 4, 5 and 6 repeat slightly. For ease of reading I will write up the story in narrative order and where structural stages repeat I’ll just label them 4.2, 5.2, etc.
1 – Comfort Zone/establish the protagonist
The End of the F***ing World (2017-19)
In the beginning we meet Ben. If you want to read a detailed analysis of his character you can read it here: https://taranfieldyr1fmp.movie.blog/2020/05/20/fmp-characters/ but all you need to know is he’s a 17 year old boy who’s coming to the end of his time at secondary school, in fact, the film takes place on the last day of school. Ben has been labelled a loner and a weirdo his whole life and has now convinced himself that he is a psychopath. It must also be mentioned that Ben is still struggling with the his mother’s death which happened when he was a child, 10 years prior to the events of the film.
2 – Need or desire
Ben’s desire is to rebuild a friendship with his childhood best friend, Anna. The two stopped being friends as a result of the death of Ben’s mother where Ben became very cold, after all the years, he now wishes to reconnect with her (disclaimer! In all previous drafts it is actually Anna who is trying to rebuild the friendship, I only recently decided I want to switch this because Ben felt like a passive protagonist).
However, Ben’s need is to come to terms with the death of his mother.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
3 – Unfamiliar Situation/Crossing the Threshold
Ben finds Anna outside of school where they have a quick conversation which leads to Anna inviting Ben to hang out with her friends in a nearby woods. This is extremely outside of Ben’s comfort zone, but as it gets him closer to his desire, he accepts.
4 – Adaptation
Ben meets Anna’s new friends and we are introduced to Anna’s boyfriend Henry, who Ben is very envious of. Ben quickly realizes that he stands out like a sore thumb. In an attempt to fit in, he joins the group in smoking a joint, something he has never done before and something which goes against what his mother taught him.
5 – Get what they wanted
Ben does succeed in spending time with Anna.
6 – Paying the price
Ben embarrasses himself by being unable to properly smoke the joint which prompts a nervous breakdown. In this breakdown he sees visions of himself killing Henry.
I Am Not Okay With This (2020)
4.2 – Adaption (maintaining the act)
Most of the group go home after Ben’s breakdown leaving just himself, Anna and Henry. Anna suggests they go to her grandparents holiday cottage which is nearby and empty. Ben, still processing what he saw in his vision, wants to stay away from Henry. But his desire to rekindle his friendship with Anna is stronger and he agrees to join them.
Henry is quite spaced out at this point leading him to act quite passive – aggressive towards Ben prompting another vision of Ben’s murderous visions. But Ben is forced to suppress his emotions.
5.2 – Get What They Wanted
Anna and Ben move into the kitchen away from Henry, getting Ben super close to his desire.
6.2 – Paying the price
Ben is now very emotional as a result of the nervous breakdown and visions he’s been having and what starts out as a friendly conversation breaks out into quite a nasty, emotional argument. The argument is mainly driven around Ben blaming Anna for betraying him and getting new friends.
Marriage Story (2019)
Hearing the argument, Henry bursts into the kitchen and assaults Ben. Ben escapes and locks himself in an upstairs bathroom where he is completely overcome by his emotions, emotions he has left under wraps for years. His emotional state turns violent and the visions return just as the audience discovers Ben took a knife from the kitchen before he left.
Downstairs Anna is extremely worried about Ben despite Henry’s best efforts to calm her down. She pushes him aside and runs upstairs to the bathroom Ben is locked in.
Suddenly Ben seems to wrestle back control of himself, he examines the knife – he has made his decision. He goes to head to the kitchen but as he opens the door he runs straight into Anna.
Snapped out of his almost trance like state, Ben’s emotions return and another argument breaks out, but this time the topic has changed – they are talking about the death of his mother.
7 – Return to Comfort
All this time, Ben has believed that Anna abandoned him after his mother died but, for the first time, he is forced to listen to Anna’s side of the story. Despite its aggressive nature, they are having the conversation they should have had years ago and are finally communicating properly.
This sudden new information hits Ben and his anger is replaced by an overwhelming sense of sadness. But also relief; Anna never abandoned him, they could become friends, and maybe, just maybe, he isn’t a psychopath after all.
The End of The F***ing World (2017-19)
8 – Having Changed
Although the film ends here, it is clear Ben will be able to turn his life around and achieve his desire of getting his lost friendship back.
It is also clear that with this new perspective on the situation and the support of Anna, Ben will be able to come to terms with the death of his mother, fulfilling his need.
You may be asking yourself, ‘how on earth is all that meant to fit into a short film?’. Well here’s my most up to date draft so you can read for yourself.
Quick Disclaimer: In this blog post I will be referencing my FMP script as it was in draft three. As I am still in the development process, some of the things I write in this blog post may go against what is written in that script. Everything I say in this blog post is where I currently stand in the development process and will get written up in future drafts
Characters are undoubtedly the most important part of any story. No matter how brilliant everything else is, if your audience cannot engage with your characters than your film will most likely fail.
Writing my FMP, I knew I needed to spend a lot of time developing my characters and wanted to write a story that was more focused on those characters than the story itself. The majority of my favorite films such as, Good Will Hunting, The Shawshank Redemption and 12 Angry Men are, at their core, films about people and I really wanted to try to do something similar with my FMP, I wanted to more of a character study than a narrative driven film.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Normally I’d have started writing by first developing some characters and letting a story grow out of their specific flaws and needs. But, if you’ve read my previous blog post on my FMP you’ll know it didn’t go that way.
To summarize what I said in my other blog post, Ryan, my DP and co-director for the FMP came to me with a story outline he’d come up very early on in the process. Although his idea had quite a few flaws and was predominantly plot driven, I was hooked by his passion and he had some brilliant ideas for how he would shoot it. Gripped by his enthusiasm, I decided to use his idea as a starting point and see what I could do with it.
I was relieved to hear that Ryan hadn’t spent a lot of time developing his characters because it meant I had basically free reign in that department and, if you can’t tell already, I love developing characters.
In Ryan’s story he had three central characters, two boys and a girl. The three characters were all 16-17 and were coming to the end of their time at secondary school. The first boy was a popular kid who was in a relationship with the girl, the second boy was regarded as a bit of a psycho and a loner and was in love with the girl. This was pretty much where Ryan got to and was therefore where my development of these characters started.
I knew the first decision I had to make was to decide who the main protagonist was going to be out of these three. I am an absolute sucker for an anti-hero, be it Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs, Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange or, more recently, Arthur Fleck from Joker I always find myself far more interested in those protagonists who are considered to be the bad guys and therefore choosing my protagonist was quite a simple decision, our film would follow the ‘psycho kid’.
The Silence of The Lambs (1991)
Ryan hadn’t yet given his characters names I quickly picked some off the top of my head, The ‘psycho’ kid would be known as Ben, The girl would be known as Anna and the popular boy would be referred to as Henry.
Ben
psychopath
/ˈsʌɪkəpaθ/
noun
a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior.
I didn’t want to write a film about a psychopath. I had a number of reasons for this.
Writing about mental illness requires a lot of knowledge on the subject, which I didn’t feel I have.
If done poorly, a film about mental illness can come across disrespectful and tone death, a risk I didn’t want to take. But most importantly…
I wanted Ben to have a satisfying character arc, I wanted him to undergo change throughout the course of the film. Mental disorders are extremely deep rooted and require a rewiring of the brain to overcome. This, of course, takes a long time, more time than I have in a short film.
So I came to a compromise. Ben believes he is a psychopath. From the constant bullying, unhappy family life and scars from past loss, he believes his is beyond saving and on a one way street to insanity, something he has strangely come to terms with. This is how we meet Ben, in this mindset. But in reality, he is not lost. He is definitely in danger of losing it if life continues to go against him but if he gets the right support he has the potential to live a very happy life. The only thing standing in his way is himself and the decisions he chooses to make.
James from The End of the F***ing World (2017-19) was a massive inspiration for Ben’s character.
This change instantly makes Ben more relatable as I’m pretty sure most people have worried they are going insane at some point in their life. It also allows Ben to undergo a character arc far more authentically – he is at a point in his life where he is at a metaphorical cross-roads where every decision he makes will shape who he is. I visualize it in my head as Ben being on a knife’s edge: If he makes a bad decision he really could break and become that psychopath he was in Ryan’s first draft but, if he makes a different decision, he could overcome his demons.
In Ryan’s story Ben murders Henry because Ben is in love with Anna. This was the inciting incident in Ryan’s idea but I decided this event had to be the climax of the film. Everything had to build up to that moment, not the murder itself but the prospect of the murder, whether Ben would or would not kill Henry, that would be the decision that would shape him as a person and that had to be the focus of the film. This is why Ben has continuous violent visions throughout the film, I wanted to build anticipation for the event because it is the most important event in Ben’s life. I wanted the audience to constantly be asking themselves, will he do it?
Stakes
Avengers: Infinity War (2018), a film which utilizes this idea of stakes to near perfection.
To create tension I knew I needed to make it clear what the stakes were, what would happen if Ben kills Henry. Without making it clear to the audience what those stakes are, the event is less significant to them. As I’ve said already, if Ben kills Henry he will lose his mind. The problem is this is quite abstract and hard to convey to an audience, so I knew I needed something more concrete and easily recognizable.
Motivation
In Ryan’s initial idea, Ben was driven by love, he wanted to be with Anna. Love is normally a great motivation in film but in this instance, because there was no prior relationship established between the two characters, it came off as a very shallow sort of love, more of a playground crush, which was hard to be invested in. Another problem was I found myself not wanting Ben to succeed, Anna was in a happy relationship with Henry and Ben, who had been established as a psychopath, was trying to kill her boyfriend, not something I could really get behind. After fixing the problem of Ben’s mental state I knew I had to next fix Ben and Anna’s relationship so that the audience could be invested in it.
The first thing I decided was that they had to have some sort of prior relationship, there had to be a strong reason why Ben was so obsessed with Anna and it had to more than just physical attraction. I always wanted to have Anna reciprocate the love so I wasn’t just writing a story about a strange kid breaking up a perfectly happy relationship. My first thought was childhood sweethearts, seemed to tick all the boxes. But for some reason it just wasn’t clicking with me, I don’t know if it’s because it’s too cliche or overdone but I just wasn’t feeling it. Luckily I didn’t have to worry for too long because it suddenly hit me – childhood friends, childhood best friends.
I drew some inspiration from Harry and Hermione’s relationship throughout the Harry Potter series when developing Ben and Anna’s friendship
Throughout my life I have always gotten along with girls just as well as I have with guys, sometimes even more, so I felt I was pretty able to write an authentic childhood friend narrative, more so than I could have done with childhood sweethearts.
But the thing that really sold me on this idea was the fact that Ben and Anna had fallen out of friendship. I am very fortunate to still have the majority of my childhood friendships in tact but I have recently moved far away from all those people I have grown up with and have had to experience the emotions of being separated from your friends. I knew I could really write from the heart when it came to this topic and decided I would make this the driving force of the story. This was no longer the story of a murder, it suddenly became a story of friendship, something I truly believe is the strongest form of love at my age, which happens to be a very similar age to my characters.
Almost the entirety of Ben and Anna’s relationship is based upon my own friendships with a little bit of drama on the side.
So Ben is driven by love, but its not romantic, its something far deeper, he loves Anna because she is the only friend he ever really had and he will do anything to get her back. And that is Ben’s goal in the story, win back Anna (this is now me doing on the fly story development because in my past drafts I didn’t make it very clear that this is his goal. In fact, in previous iterations of the script Ben hasn’t really had any goal at all, so that can be added to the list of things I need to add into my next draft(s)).
And now he also has a more concrete and recognizable stake – if Ben kills Henry he will lose Anna (because I can’t imagine she would be very amused about her boyfriend being murdered) and will therefore fail to achieve his goal.
Backstory
As I mentioned, my method of creating these characters was very weird. Once I had cleared up these initial problems with Ben’s character I could actually start figuring out who he was, or more appropriately, how he came to be the way he is.
I knew I couldn’t make Ben’s backstory super complex as I couldn’t spend a lot of time explaining it to the audience, but I did need it to serve a few narrative purposes: I wanted Ben’s life to be intertwined with loss (as loss is a key theme of the film) and I wanted to show how Ben has been surrounded by darkness and pain his entire life which is an explanation for why he believes he is broken, it is all he knows.
I knew there was a very easy way to achieve this without having to use an abundant amount of exposition and that was by borrowing a very well known cinema trope – the loss of a loved one.
Ben’s backstory is heavily inspired by James’ from The End of The F***ing World.
Considering the theme of loss in my film it made a lot of sense to me that Ben will have had prior experience with the topic, having watched his mother die of leukemia when he was a child. This experience left him very broken and gave him a very somber outlook on life leading him to become very distant from the people around him in, including his best friend at the time, Anna. This detachment from his peers earned him the label of “psycho” and “weirdo” at school, terms he gradually came to believe himself.
The death of his mother also had a very negative effect on Ben’s father who became depressed and turned to alcohol, leaving Ben with no real role model, causing him to feel even more alone. If I had more time I would have loved to have included a sub-plot about Ben and his Father’s relationship slowly improving after the events of the film take place, but it just wouldn’t work in a short film.
Warrior (2011)
If you are an avid reader of my blog you may have noticed that Ben’s backstory is similar to Will’s origin story in my Superhero homework. That’s because I used that task as a way of developing Ben’s backstory for my FMP. So, as with that character, Ben’s relationship with his father takes inspiration from Tommy Conlon’s relationship with his father in Warrior.
That is pretty much as far as Ben’s backstory goes in terms of his family the only other thing the audience has to know is that the loss of Ben’s mother is what forced Ben and Anna’s friendship apart. Caught up in his grief, Ben perceived this as Anna abandoning him, something he still carries at the start of the film.
Likable?
My biggest concern at this point was that Ben wasn’t really likable enough, I was concerned I had made him overly demoralizing. I was confident my audience would empathize with him but I wanted them to actually enjoy being with him as the film is told from Ben’s perspective. To help me fix this problem I turned to another film about quite a miserable protagonist dealing with loss, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. In this film, the writer made Charlie likable by giving him an emotional backstory, giving him innocent, well mannered dialogue and, most importantly, showing that other characters liked him.
Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
I hadn’t truly appreciated how much an audience is influenced by the opinion of other characters until I properly analysed this film but once I did I knew exactly what I had to do. A big part of Ben’s character is that he isn’t very popular so I couldn’t have every character in the film be in love with him but I knew if I really showed off how much Anna cares about Ben then hopefully that would help improve the audience’s opinion of him. I also made sure his first encounters with Anna are light-hearted so that the audience can see his soft side early on. I am aware that the audience is only influenced by characters they like, luckily for me I planned on making Anna very likable.
I also tried hard to make Ben feel very human and real in the script as I’ve found that audience’s tend to like characters that behave very authentically to real life. Just take Walter White from Breaking Bad, he is a horrible person but because he feels so real we cannot help but connect with him as an audience.
Breaking Bad (2008-2013)
Of course, writing believable characters is very challenging so if you have read my script and have any tips, feel free to let me know.
Flaw
Every great hero must have some sort of flaw they must overcome to achieve their goal. That is not a word for word quote but it is something everyone seems to agree with and something that is proven time and time again.
Good Will Hunting (1997), a great example of a flawed protagonist
When it came to creating Ben’s key flaw I knew I had a lot to play with as Anti-heroes are inherently very flawed people. So I first decided to focus on his goal – rekindle his friendship with Anna.
So what initially broke up their friendship? The death of Ben’s mother. And why did that end their friendship? Because Ben disappeared into himself as a coping mechanism. And why have they not yet recovered their friendship? Because Ben believes that Anna abandoned him. And why does Ben believe that? Because he has never heard Anna’s side of the story. And why has he never heard her side of the story? Because they haven’t spoken in years. And why hasn’t Ben spoken to Anna for years? Because he still hasn’t come to terms with his mother’s death.
I quickly discovered that you have to ask yourself a lot of questions when developing a story.
Out of this type of conversation with myself I discovered Ben’s key flaw – that he hasn’t come to terms with his mother’s death and is therefore still convinced that Anna abandoned him. This flaw is therefore stopping him from achieving his goal of rekindling his friendship with Anna and he must overcome this flaw to achieve his goal.
Now, you’re probably asking yourself, Why on earth does Ben want to rekindle a friendship with the person who he believes abandoned him? It’s as simple as, he still cares about her and really misses her. Of course, in his mind he expects an apology from her before they can begin to rebuild their friendship and is completely unaware of the change he will be forced to undergo. But yeah, its really just as simple as he misses his best friend, as much as he hates to admit it.
This is pretty much as far as I have gotten with Ben’s character so far but to be honest, I cannot see him changing particularly drastically from this point on.
Anna
Anna’s character takes a fair bit of inspiration from Hermione Granger
Although the story is not told from Anna’s perspective, she is just as important to the story as Ben is. She is easy going and likable, the opposite of how Ben begins the story. I really liked this idea of an unlikely friendship because it rings of forbidden love style stories. It also makes it very believable that their friendship is really on the ropes because they are not an obvious pairing from an outside perspective. I felt if they were overly well matched it would seem unbelievable that they could go years without talking. Instead, I chose to make it feel like they came from completely different worlds, kind of like…
Backstory
In fact they do come from different worlds in a way. Anna is from quite a well off family which employed Ben’s mother as a cleaner before she died (I don’t think this will ever be mentioned in the film but I recently saw BBC’s normal people which employs this exact same narrative which I think worked brilliantly) and this is how Ben and Anna’s friendship began.
Normal People
Due to this connection to Ben’s mother, Anna had a very emotional reaction to her death. But unlike Ben, Anna heavily relied on the support of those around her to deal with her grief. This, unfortunately, only sped up the crack in their friendship because Anna really struggled to cope with Ben’s sudden coldness and turned to her other friends for support which is what prompted Ben to believe that she abandoned him.
Anna’s backstory is not massively important to the story so for the meantime that is as much as I have developed. The only other thing that should be known is that her rich grandparents own a summer cottage with quite a bit of land attached. This became a key location in Ben and Anna’s friendship as they would often spend a lot of time there as children when Anna’s grandparents were away. The reason for this is a lot of Ryan’s really great ideas for cinematography take place in a forest and a big house so I really wanted to incorporate those locations into the script so that he could get those shots. And I’m now really fond of the idea that the film takes place in the defining location of Ben and Anna’s friendship, it allows the location to really play a part in the film.
The idea for the house being a key part of their friendship was loosely based off Bridge to Terabithia (2007) in the way the two kids create a fantasy world within a specific location.
Goal
In all honesty, I never really gave Anna a concrete goal when I began writing. But as I wrote, some clear goals started to pop up. In my opinion, Anna’s goal seems to be to help Ben get over the grief of his mother’s death. Essentially Anna’s goal is to help Ben achieve his goal. But that would make Anna a sidekick character, and I really don’t see Anna as a sidekick. So instead, I think her goal is simply to understand Ben’s grief. Over the year’s Anna has grown so apart from Ben that she barely recognizes the boy she once knew and has lost all understanding of what is going on in his head and all she really wants is to get that understanding back. So I think within the time frame of the film, Anna’s goal is simply to have a proper conversation with Ben.
This idea of character’s gradually losing an understanding of one another is well portrayed in Marriage Story (2019)
Flaw
Anna’s central flaw is that she is afraid of conflict. Her sheltered life has led her to shy away from uncomfortable situations and conversations and she always wants to please everyone. But to achieve her goal she must have a very uncomfortable conversation with Ben and therefore has to overcome her flaw to achieve her goal. Anna’s flaw will get very little attention in the film compared to Ben’s but I feel it is important that all central characters in any story should have their own personal goals and flaws to make them feel more human, even if they never get mentioned in the main narrative.
This flaw takes inspiration from a black mirror episode called Nosedive where the protagonist has to always appear bubbly and friendly in order to achieve good ratings from her piers. Although Black Mirror explores that concept in a literal sense I really related to that core theme of feeling like you have to always act happy in front of your piers and have always wanted to insert that into a character since I watched that episode.
Black Mirror (2011-2020)
Henry
The final character outlined in Ryan’s initial idea, Henry is very much a side character to Ben and Anna but still plays a big role in the story. Being Anna’s new boyfriend, Ben sees Henry as his replacement in Anna’s life and therefore despises him.
Henry is very popular and well thought of in school, like Anna, the complete opposite of Ben. I use this as a bit of a metaphor for the gap between them because Anna is dating someone who is worlds apart from Ben.
Antagonist?
In basic story terms, Henry is the antagonist of the story, standing in the way of Ben and his goal. Henry doesn’t like Ben because he is aware of how much Anna worries about him and therefore wants to keep them apart. But I didn’t want to write Henry as an inherently bad guy and I wanted it to be very apparent that if the story was told from his perspective he would make a very convincing protagonist.
In real life, no one tries to be a bad guy, everyone just acts on what they believe to be right. The conflict emerges when those beliefs/viewpoints clash. The perfect example of this in recently film terms is Thanos from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (I know what you’re thinking, just bare with me). Thanos is evil; he wants to wipe out half of all life in the universe, sure sounds evil to me. But if you properly explore his character and look at the world from his point of view, through the context of his suffering and his experiences, you can kind of understand why he thinks it is a good idea and I know a lot of people who even emphasize with him as a character. (to clarify, I am only talking about Thanos in Infinity War, in endgame he is just straight up evil).
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Of course Thanos is quite an extreme example but it explains my point. Henry is acting completely normally when you look at the world from his point of view and he is only seen as the bad guy because his beliefs clash with Ben’s.
Goal
Another thing that makes a great antagonist is if his goal is the same as the protagonists. The perfect example of this is in Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece, The Dark Knight. Batman’s goal is to prove that all men in Gotham are inherently good and the Joker’s goal is to prove that all men in Gotham are inherently evil. Essentially they are both after the heart of Gotham.
The Dark Knight (2008)
In my film, the protagonist’s goal is to win back his best friend. So Henry’s goal is to carry on his relationship with Anna. But due to their hate of each other they cannot both achieve their goal. In The Dark Knight Batman and The Joker are fighting for Gotham’s heart and in this story Ben and Henry are fighting for Anna’s heart.
Motivation
So why does Henry not want Anna to be friends with Ben? Essentially because Henry lacks understanding of their relationship. As a newcomer in Anna’s life he has no concept of their past relationship and only sees the local weirdo trying to be friends with his girlfriend. But more importantly, he sees how worried Anna gets about Ben and assumes Ben is not good for her. In short, Henry’s motivation is how much he cares about Anna but his lack of knowledge of the situation means he makes the wrong assumptions about what she needs. In his world, he’s just looking out for her.
Flaw
Henry’s central flaw is that he is quite controlling of Anna. His whole life he has been the top dog and is only comfortable when he is in control. So when he is put in this situation, with little control over, he panics and becomes very overbearing. Unfortunately for Henry, he is not one of the protagonist’s so we never see him overcome his flaw. But I have no doubt he will learn from the events of this film and go on to become a very well rounded person.
Redemption
The breakfast club (1985) The character I am trying to avoid Henry becoming.
In my current drafts, Henry comes across as a bit of an asshole – stuck up and obnoxious. This wasn’t great because as I said, I didn’t want him to come across as a bad guy. To fix this I will simply take the same approach as I did with Ben. Due to time constraints I cannot give Henry an emotional backstory so I will instead rely on comedy and influence. When we first meet Henry, at the campfire, I will write more comedy into his lines so that he comes across nice and likable, I’ll also make it clear how much the other characters, aside from Ben, like him. As I said I haven’t yet written this into a new draft so I cannot say if it will work but that’s my plan for the time being.
Overall I don’t really want Henry to feel like an antagonist, I’d describe him more as obstacle Ben must overcome to achieve his goal.
Research
Because I am a visual learner, I watched quite a few videos on developing characters during this process and here are a few of them.
Taran Field Yr1 FMP 