Sally Wenton (19) is studying classical Music at the
University of Surrey. As a child, Sally was home-schooled by her father George
(62), a retired history lecturer from Bristol, and her mother Velma (54), a
semi-retired flautist from Italy. Sally spent her much of her childhood in
adult company, with very little access to friends or popular culture. At this
time, Britain is in economic decline causing a widespread feeling of distrust
in the government. A new, charming Prime
Minister, Geoffrey Soillen, has just been elected.
During the summer holidays, Sally returns home to a
remote hamlet in Cornwall to attend a piano recital. Sally notices that her parents are absent from
the recital, and after waiting for a lift from her father, who doesn’t arrive –
she is forced to take a bus home. When she arrives home she find her parents,
deeply Catholic, hanging from the rafters of their cottage. In frenzy, Sally receives a strange thumping
tone from her landline and runs to the police station, screaming for help on
the way, and is ignored by bystanders with iPods. The police station is entirely manned by
young staff, acting in the same manner. Sally questions whether something is
affecting the young people. She stumbles upon a meeting in the woods where
hundreds of young people listen, transfixed, to Pop songs and speeches made by
cloaked individuals. Sally witnesses a young woman being dragged to the stage
and is noticed by the group who chase her through the woods. Sally hides behind
a tree before being drugged and snatched by an unknown figure.
Sally finds herself in an abandoned building where
she meets Tara (38) and Blaine (21). Initially uncharacteristically angry, she is
eventually ‘talked down’ by the two individuals who have also lost their
families and are seeking answers. We
learn a little about their past as they explain that Pop music contains
subliminal messaging, rendering the younger generation into a state of
subservient trance, and causing the older generation to commit suicide. They watch the emergency broadcast of the
Prime Minister and Sally is shown the decoded ‘subliminal message’, unsure of
why they remain unaffected. They kidnap
one of the young people, Brandon (14), a boy from Sally’s village. Convincing themselves that the headphones and
technology manufacturer ‘PEAR’ are behind the attacks, Blaine kills the boy
when he discovers Brandon was behind his parents murder and begins to show
signs that he is ‘infected’ (unnoticed by Sally and Tara).
Arriving at the heavily guarded PEAR HQ, they
find a way into the building, only to find it entirely empty. Feelings between
Blaine and Sally begin to appear.
Confused, they return to find their hideout surrounded by a violent mob
of ‘youths’. At this stage we see the
uniformity start to appear with all ‘youths’ dressed identically. The three
manage to escape and as they look for somewhere else to hide, the sense of
widespread destruction dawns on the characters as they see bodies littering the
streets, fires burning and hear Pop music pumping from every window. Each
character begins to shows slightly uncharacteristic traits. In an abandoned library they find a safe
shelter and Sally begins obsessively researching PEAR. Sally continues to question why she remains
unaffected, who is controlling this change, and what for? Sally and Blaine are left researching and
spend the night together in the library.
The next morning Tara disappears, leading Sally to the realisation that
Blaine has ‘turned’. A violent fight breaks out between Blaine and Sally, who
shows a darker and more ferocious side, seemingly desperate to ‘restore’ the
country. Sally kills Blaine and returns
to her research, seemingly unaffected by the trauma.
Sally finds an old film and makes a link between the
current Prime Minister and PEAR, uncovering the story that the PM was
previously an unstable genetic scientist called Peter Ellison. His theories of Audio Re-Animation, aimed at
creating a uniform dictatorship and controlling the world population crisis,
had been discounted by Geneva as ‘against human rights’, causing him to create
a new identify in order to complete his work.
Outside No.10, as the PM delivers a speech to a group
of people, Sally is armed and prepared to kill him. She notices Tara amongst the crowd who smiles
knowingly at her as she listens to the PM.
As Sally listens to a little of the speech, we move to the moment of
realisation, in a sequence of projected montage events, when it dawns on Sally
that all along, she has been ‘infected’, and her research and change in
character traits are symptomatic of the infection. As tears stream down her face, she sings the
words of a Pop song, puts the gun in her mouth and pulls the trigger.
Whilst
thoroughly enjoying the content of this course, I did find quite a number of
the tasks in this section quite challenging and took me quite a while to fully
understand and absorb the information. The
course material's introduction into narrative, story and plot seemed quite
confusing and I spent a lot of time researching different texts, including E.M.
Forster (1927) and Scott-Bell (2004) and online articles such as Zucker-Schraff
(2011). These various texts really helped
me to gain a firm understanding of the difference between these three terms and
need for each.
The
subsequent exercises, based around writing a simple story, gave me a good
insight into how to successfully structure of a piece, and lead me to the works
of Aristotle Poetics (335BC) and
Freytag’s triangle. The ideas of both of
these men gave me both great inspiration and a tangible way to compare my own
story to a proven, successful structure pattern as set out by Aristotle and
further developed by Freytag.
I
found the section on ‘obstacles’ particularly interesting and useful and used a
childhood favourite film, Labyrinth
(1986), as a vehicle to study the different forms of obstacles present
throughout the story. My findings were very
interesting and I discovered that there was a range of barriers present including
personal, physical, psychological and social.
I believe that it is this varied use of obstacles that helps to keep the
film interesting whilst also giving the audience a deeper insight into the
characters.
As
I began plotting my own outline, I spend some time looking at McKee’s (1997:215) chapter on
complexity. I found large portions of
this book extremely helpful in terms of story structure, but McKee’s thoughts
of conflict were particularly interesting, describing the use of the ‘inner
conflict’, ‘personal conflict’ and ‘extra-personal conflict’. As my story contains largely references to
the emotional and psychological state of Sally, I aimed to ensure that these
ideas of conflict were used to ensure a believable and relatable
character.
In
my story outline, I wanted to explore the growing uniformity of youth through
Pop Culture and secondly, following the death of Margaret Thatcher, I wanted to
incorporate the themes of patriotism, possibly taking it a step further into
the realms of xenophobia. In addition to
this, I want this piece to reflect the potential threat of the world’s growing
population and the possible future threat of the effects of
over-population.
Whilst
working on my outline I referred to a wide range of texts, which can be seen on
my blog, in order to give me some tips and insight into creating a good set-up,
inciting incident, progressive developments and the ending. As advised by my tutor, I wrote a brief ‘CV’
for each of my main characters. Although
I was initially unsure of the outcome of this exercise, once I began writing I
soon found that new facts and traits were being ‘unveiled’ from each character,
which greatly influenced the composition of the final outline. In addition, these brief ‘CV’s’ have given me
countless ideas when working with my treatment.
As
I was still somewhat unsure of how to compose a successful plot, when I
finished writing my plot, I compared the story against Freytag’s triangle (seen
below) and used the guidance of Aristotle and Polti’s (1921) thirty-six
dramatic situations to ensure that my story is relatable and interesting to the
audience.
Overall
I feel as though my work throughout this section has really helped me to gain a
greater understanding of a number of elements, including structure and
outline. There appears to be a wide
range of conflicting information available based around the subject of a ‘good
outline’. However, I found the writings of wide range of writers helped me to
really understand the need for each element of a good story. I must admit, I am still unsure of the
content of my outline, but I am looking forward to receiving feedback from
tutor on this.
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