This week in the final part of preparation for my individual presentation I continued to edit my plot points and continued to come up with short sequences which would feature within the film despite them not being needed for my outline. I decided to end the film by punishing the protagonists for their murders and having them locked up in prison, as I feel like their actions dictate such a resolution.

This worked to my advantage too as I found that prison life would give closure to Michael’s character arc, within confinement he doesn’t have to worry about his job or Jacob much anymore and it could lead him to finally becoming happy after unloading the truth to his best friend at the end of the film’s second act.

 

The film’s second act, where Michael and Jacob are slowly going insane in isolation within their boarded up home offered a chance to play fully with the comedic aspects of the film. To help me find a suitable slapstick tone to wash a dark sensibility over I rewatched Death at a Funeral (Oz, 2007), a dark british comedy set during a funeral where increasingly ridiculous acts of absurdity and slapstick happen to the mourning family and their guests. The combination of the absurd tone and the bleak subject matter is one I’d wish the second act to play with to great effect, and lead to me treating the scenario almost the same way in which a bleak sitcom might do. Essentially Jacob and Michael’s story within the second act is a sitcom, or even could be used as a more comedy-based episode of Inside No.9 (BBC, 2014-) due to its one location setting. Though this is something again I can expand upon in another post, I began to create more tertiary character simply to be used as jokes within this segment, such as family members for both Jacob and Michael, characters that suited one purpose and one purpose only – to provide more platforms for comedy within my film.

 

Bibliography:

Oz, F. (dir.) Death at a Funeral. [DVD]. Verve Pictures.

Inside No. 9 (2014-) [DVD]. BBC Two.