Our anticipation for finally starting the final project quickly led to a few ideas that we could use for our film opening!
Spoiler alert: we did not end up using either of them.
the first idea we did not use
The Office-esque comedy paired with a protagonist resembling Brooklyn Nine Nine’s Jake Peralta. The opening scene of B99’s very first episode follows Jack Peralta as he narrates Donny Brasco’s famous speech, the serious tone quickly shifting to humour as the detective’s Type A investigation partner snaps him out of his dramatic monologue.
In less than two minutes, the scene develops the two characters’ dynamic and establishes the protagonist as immature but talented as he manages to solve the case instantly despite his seemingly careless attitude. Our idea aimed to mimic a similar narrative: a carefree man who everyone perceives as being immature or useless turns out to be a prominent hitman in the underworld.
the second idea we did not use
Simultaneously, we came up with another potential idea revolving around a woman portrayed through two timelines as the mundane and cheerful space of her house becomes the dark setting for a gruesome murder commited by her. The idea relied heavily on visual contrast to establish the magnitude of what the woman had done, highligthing the transformative nature of the murder commited without remorse and making the audience question how her seemingly normal life would change from here.
For the first story, however, we struggled to flesh the idea out in a way that fulfilled, among other things, the representation aspect of our film opening which we really wanted to play an important role in the project. Moreover, not being able to create a satisfying-enough cold open would not have been, well, satisfying either.
For the second one, we highly doubted that showing a murder or even just the scene after it would easy to execute in a way that wouldn’t turn unintentionally funny or bathetic, particularly with our non-existent budget—there’s only so much realism you can wring from very cheap, very fake blood (the blood was perhaps the least of our problems but the point still stands). Much like with the hitman story, our brain cells refused to cooperate to flesh out the technicalities of this one too after the initial excitement of going after a shiny new idea.
Following the unwelcome realisation that most of our ideas were half-baked and needed more of a sense of direction, we resorted to coming up with a few themes we would like to incorporate into our film opening and decided that we would use those to base our idea on.
I also came to the conclusion that after studying primarily Western conventions of film narratives, we were struggling to come up with a story that would satisfy Western film conventions while being easy to execute realistically in our context too; which is to say it seemed like we needed to move more in the direction of a narrative based on things we knew closely and not something that would be a meagre imitation of narratives so far removed from our own e.g. brown boys doing white people things in white people settings. Therefore, with the reputed hitman and cold-blooded femme fatale laid to rest, we thought it might be best to stick to themes and ideas more close to what we are familiar with.
After much discussion and more zoom meetings than my anxious self could handle, all the group members and I agreed that a subtle identity crisis and queer representation could be ideas we can explore in a Pakistani context.
which brings us to the (hopefully) final idea
A struggling journalist chronicles the rise and fall of an iconic 1990s rock band, with the film opening focusing on the multi-faceted nature of the band and how the journalist cannot seem to figure out how to really define its break up.
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