PLANNING : TREATMENT

Title 

Silent Voices 

Logline 
This short film is a bout a teenage girl who experiences supernatural events whilst suffering from the losses of her family members. Every day the girl, called Alice wakes up and finds a family member missing form her family photo in which she keeps on her wall. 

Synopsis

The first scene shows the family getting together to take their annual family photo and this presented through a wide shot which introduces the happy, well rounded family. This then fades out and cuts to Alice putting the photo up on her wall, this is an over the shoulder shot. She is portrayed as happy and innocent. After this she carries out her daily life, heaving whispers behind her creating an ominous atmosphere, and due to this she becomes paranoid and anxious. An extreme close up shows her taking a deep breath in and out, this is then followed by a hard cut and a black screen. 

Suddenly Alice wakes up and immediately looks at her alarm clock to the right of her. Showing a new day, the family photo catches her eye and is confused about what is wrong with the photo. This is then followed by a reaction shot of her realising her mum is missing from the photograph. Startled, she runs down with a panicked look on her face. She sees her dad cooking and confronts him about where mum is in the photograph. He snaps back and shouts "You know not to bring her up, we don't talk about her in this household". Alice then runs up the stairs, past mums room and suddenly stops, she slowly walks back and hears something whispering, slowing she opens the door of her mums room and sees a body shape on the sheet cover, presenting that someone was then recently. She also notices that there is a freshly cup of tea steaming like someone has been there recently. Next shot is Alice running out of the room, whilst slamming the door shut and leaning back on the door panting heavily. 

A hard cut is then used, followed by a close up shot of her again when she wakes up and looks at the alarm clock showing the next day. She also immediately looks at the photo on the wall, seeing that her sister is missing. She's clearly confused and frantically looks at all her other photos where her sisters meant to be, missing from all of them. She looking at it and her dad comes behind her shoulder and says "its a nice photo isn't it". She panics and shouts "wheres my sister, wheres Emily!". He then replies "You've never had a sister, who's Emily?", Alice screams "Shut up dad! I'm not loosing my mind". She then slams her door, turns her light of, jumping into bed crying, frustrated and confused. She then isolates herself by hiding under her covers. Suddenly she can hear shuffling under her bed. We then use a birds eye shot presenting the next scene showing a creepy silhouette of her sister coming from underneath her bed and then gets dragged back in as soon as Alice jolts up. Alice then looks under the bed, and sees nothings there. Finished by a hard cut. Middle of the night, the camera pans downstairs and you see a mug smashing on the floor with the TV and him screaming, showing the dad disappearing.

The alarm goes off and then pans to her face showing a distressed look on her face. She peaks out from under her covers to take one last look at her photo. Showing how its just her left in the photograph. She goes to pick up the photo and sits on her bed looking at it, crying. Talking to herself repeating saying "no,no,no,no". She screams one last time, followed by a floating image of just the background with no one in it. This is then faded out, with the title "Silent Voices" with the sound of someone whispering "Shhhhh" in the background. Fading to black.

Characters
Alice - Protagonist
Emily - Sister
Mum
Dad 

PLANNING : TOP LINE AND BIG QUESTION

Frank Ash is a creative consultant at the BBC Academy. He has taught storytelling and creativity techniques to teams across the BBC and other media companies.

 In the video I have learnt how you might think about appealing to your audience in practical terms. I can do this by telling the audience what the story is, what kind of story it is and who the story is for. He has told us that we need to tell the audience as quickly as possible what the story is and what it is about.

 The Top Line needs to emotionally involve the audiences. Frank ash tells us that a good storyteller should be able to gain the audiences attention with just one line, this is what Frank Ash calls the Top Line. This helps us as we have tried to sum up our narrative in one sentence. Then Frank Ash added in order to hook the audience the writer needs to develop the Big Question. Frank Ash also added that we need to let the audience know what the big picture is.

Top Line - A short film delving into the world around a teenagers life as her family members start to disappear. One by one fades out of the photo until she is all alone.

Big Question - Why am i now alone...