Story Outline

As soon as I decided that I wanted to capture the feeling that the Safdies and other stress-inducing thrillers create, I had an idea in my head. I want it to focus on a small cast, only two main characters. I knew I wanted a crazy situation that would cause anxiousness, so I began centering on a robbery since it seemed most reasonable compared to something like First Man. At first, I wanted to do a bank robbery gone wrong, but it would have been too ambitious and a bit too similar to Good Time for my liking. So I began thinking about a home robbery since it would be a lot more practical and doable for me in terms of location scouting. I thought the idea of a person coming home in the middle of their home being robbed was interesting and could accomplish what I'm going for. 

So now that I'm thinking of a home robbery. It's not exactly hard to find the location since it's a...house...which are everywhere.  I want it to focus on the two male robbers inside the home and they need to be freaking out. Condensing my characters down to two reduces a lot of issues with scheduling and people not being available. Anyway, so how do have them freak out? The owner should come home and walk in on the robbers in the middle of it. My first instinct now is to have the robbers kill the owner and get rid of the body while squabbling and bickering the whole time. But when considering I only have two minutes, I think I should cut out them getting rid of the body and just have them freaking out over killing someone. However, I do think a good ending would be to have the criminals watch the news channel talking about themselves, leading into the "rest of the film". I am just not too sure how to get there.

A dilemma with this would be how are their photos on the news if they are CURRENTLY robbing the place. Them on the news would imply that it already happened. I could get past this by having the criminals go on a robbing spree, so the photos are from a previous crime. To turn the TV on, I might have them carry out the body and then accidentally drop it on the remote controller, directing their attention to the news broadcast about themselves. To get the photos themselves, I would have to schedule a small photoshoot with my actors in different clothes. Below is a picture pretty much showing what I am going for. For something like this, I may need another actor as a anchor for the news station, or at the very least someone doing VO. 

 

Billingsley, Jacob. “Anchor, Doppelgänger’s Mugshot Appear on Screen - at the Same Time.” NewscastStudio, 10 Feb. 2016, www.newscaststudio.com/2016/02/10/anchor-doppelgangers-mugshot-appear-on-screen-at-the-same-time/.

Going in this direction means that the big chunk of the two minutes will just be dialogue and the characters arguing, and I'm afraid that it may get old quick. I would have to write the characters in a way that is engaging and try to avoid repeating information and keep the conversation flowing naturally. It should begin with robber #1 being flabbergasted that robber #2 had a gun this whole time, as their intention in these home robberies was to just get in and out without any interference. They can fight about this for a while before discussing and arguing over what they should do with the body. They can discuss leaving the body, burying it, putting it in a freezer, dressing it up as a homeless man and leaving it on the sidewalk, etc. They eventually settle on dropping it in the ocean. I think this can fill up the time I need with dialogue effectively. After deciding what to do with the body, they should pick it up and start moving it before they drop it on accident, falling on the TV remote, shifting their attention to the news report about them. The news would show blurry ring doorbell footage of the two breaking into another house, conveying that these two are on a home-robbing spree. Something like the footage below would be what I'm going for.

H, Bill. “Blurry Images of Moving Objects in Lower Light Conditions.” Ring Community, 4 Jan. 2020, community.ring.com/t/blurry-images-of-moving-objects-in-lower-light-conditions/2693.

This would be the rough outline of the story, so my next goal would be to write out my script for the opening.