Daniel Ellis

INITIAL FILM IDEA: CHANGED

 

We begin by seeing a man wake up in bed (from the position he is in and his appearance the audience are made to presume that he has had a heavy night the night before) and feel the bed beside him which is empty, however, obviously missing someone. There is a close up of the mans face which shows him in deep thought and painful realisation ( the audience should be made to think that possibly someone he spent the night with has left). 

We follow him as he gets washed and dressed then sits by his phone int the living room and calmly dials a number, asks for the police and in the same calm tone and with a shocked but plain expression upon his face confess to the murder of his family. The camera then zooms out from mid shot of the man to show his environment, two bloody dead bodies on the floor before him. 

 

A court case ensues to determine whether the man is guilty of the crime to which he has confessed and through cross cutting between the court room and motivated flash backs we learnt that...

 

-he was a long term member of a gang

- the gang more recently instructed him and his friend (who was also a member of the same gang) to traffic drugs for them, which is what they begin to do

- due to the fact that he once was a drug addict but when his wife became pregnant he made a dedicated effort to stop, when asked to traffic drugs he soon relapses and  becomes addicted to these drugs despite his effort to refrain and his friend attempting to help him not to.

-because of this the drugs never make it to their destination

- the gang demand to be payed for the drugs he has stolen and used or else they will kill his daughter

-his friend is the gang member assigned to assassinate his daughter if he continues to steal drugs or doesn't repay the gang 

- he can not afford this and so aided by the effect  of the drugs he becomes a paranoid schizophrenic and finds a gun in order to protect his daughter

- one day whilst his friend is over for dinner his family find his drugs and confront him about them, he in a state draws his gun on his family, his friend pulls him back and puts him to sleep with an injection, he then puts him into the bed in the position of the opening shot of the film

- the next shot we see is the shot that the film began with where we now realise his realisation close up at the beginning was in fact him thinking that he had killed his family and realising what he had done. 

 

The jury find him to have acted in an act of passion in a moment of insanity/ under influence and so he is admitted to rehab. He feels that he should have been punished more greatly for this murder which he feels overwhelmed with guilt about and so instead kills him self as he felt his lack of punishment to be am injustice. 

 

After his death at the funeral there is a close up of the friends face who is extremely upset, after a micro close up of his eye we flash back to see him putting the man in bed and killing his family as he was instructed to by the gang ( with a clear resentment for his job) before leaving him to think that he killed them.