Plot Ideas

The one problem I have found with the coursework this year is the level of freedom we are getting, because this has been both a great opportunity and a nightmare trying to limit my ideas to one plot. As of yet, I have no singular plot which leaps out for me, but I have to bear in mind the limits on cast, locations and budget when planning my narratives. 

So far, these are the potential plot lines I am considering for my short film. 

• Hitman A hitman is standing in an isolated, abandoned car park, awaiting his business partners. When their car pulls up a tense standoff occurs as they exchange the money, but then the hitman is double crossed and stabbed, narrowly escaping. As he bleeds out while driving away, we see him drop off the money on a doorstep and park on the seafront, dying, watching the sunset and holding a picture of a young girl, presumably his daughter. 

• MistrustTwo separate cars pull up in a forest clearing. In one of them, a man is bleeding out in the back seat, and the driver is covered in his blood, they are best friends. In the other, one man drives alone. They are all bank robbers. Their accomplices are dead, and they realise they have been snitched on. The drivers of the cars  are apprehensive about trusting one another. Then in an act of greed, one of the bank robbers kills the other so that they can take the rest of the money, and before he leaves, he checks his coat. This is not the snitch. He looks into the coat of his friend, who is too wounded to resist, and realises that it was his friend who had snitched on them. 

• Moral CrimeSimilar to the bank robbery aftermath above, this plot would follow one bank robber into a clearing, who is already bleeding out from a bullet hole. He has got the money slung over his shoulder, and is about to limp into the woods to escape, but a detective pulls up in his car and demands that the robber surrender himself. The robber explains that he needs the money for treatment for his dying daughter, and the detective is forced to make a decision on whether to let the robber go or not. The film would end with a black screen followed by a gunshot, implying that one of them is killed. 

• BlameThe film opens with a young man in a car, staring emotionally in a trance. Through a flashback we see a detective telling the young man that his brother has been killed in a car crash. We learn that the brothers were street thugs, but the car crash was completely accidental and unrelated to any of their criminal enterprises. The young man has a violent past, and is hellbent on revenge. We jump back to him in the car, and see him staring at the man who killed his brother, walking along the road. The younger man gets out of the car, a gun in his trousers, and starts to follow his brother's murderer. The man is out on a walk to meet his son, and the young man freezes, seeing that this is a good person and a caring father. Perhaps the best course of action would be to spare him, and the film ends with the younger man having a profound change of heart and choosing to forgive for the first time in his life. 

• Good Cop Bad CopA detective sits in a dark living room, a half-empty bottle of whisky on the coffee table, along with a gun and his detective badge. He looks emotionally unstable. He walks out into his kitchen, where a man is tied up, beaten and bloody. Then the detective starts to speak with both sides of his conscience, the good cop and the bad cop. The good cop encourages him to arrest the man and do right by the badge and by the law, while the bad cop encourages him to shoot the man and avenge his dead partner. The detective gives in to his darker side and shoots. 

All of the above have practical potential. I know locations which would be suitable to stage the scenes and all of the short films would not need a huge cast. The difficult job is narrowing down my choice to one.