Vortex Productionspresents

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Assembly

A mother with a vendetta against society and her upbringing, gets her own back the

only way she knows how.

Synopsis

A women who was bullied at school and had a poor upbringing, sets up a plan to blow up her old school but

uses her own son as collateral damage. We see the elaborate plan unfold through a series of flashbacks.

1st Draft Outline

A young boy, about 10 years old is running down a garden patio heading towards a small shed wearing his school uniform. He is carrying a distinctive red lunchbox. We hear a radio in the background, and a door slam.

The young boy turns on the light and places the lunchbox on a work desk. He then rushes to the corner of the room and pulls out a dusty bag, he places it on the table next to the lunchbox. The boy begins to take stuff from the dusty bag and place it into the lunchbox. The boy then begins to look puzzled and takes out a folded piece of paper from his back pocket, stares at it and puts it down on the table.

In the background we hear a women- ‐shouting Aaron. This is where we learn the boy’s name. Aaron then starts to rush, and the piece of paper drops on the floor. A woman comes to the door and asks Aaron what he’s doing, he replies with nothing. She tells him it’s time for school and Aaron locks up the lunchbox and walks towards the door, he turns round and looks at the room and says, today is the day. He walks out and we can see the piece of paper on the floor, which reads, ‘How to make a bomb’.

2nd Draft OutlineScene 1. Street - A mother, about 35 years old and her son, about 10 years old are walking to school on a frosty morning. They are casually talking about the day ahead. We learn that the boys name is Aaron. The mother is very despondent when the child is talking; we then see the women’s face. She looks worried.

Flashback 1 - A light shines upon a calendar with loads of writing upon it. We see the same woman taking a red pen and circling the date of December 10th. The writing inside says “Payback”. We see newspaper clippings, artifacts and post it notes all with string linking pieces together. The woman pulls a piece of string from the calendar date to a blueprint of a school with the words “Aaron’s class”.

Scene 2. Outside of school gates - We come back to the mother and son entering the school gates. The son asks his mother what today’s date is, when she replies December 10th, the child gets excited, the mother tells him to calm down.

Flashback 2 - Back inside the room with the calendar, there is a small table with a red lunchbox on top. The woman proceeds to align stuff inside the box. We see over her shoulder that she is assembling some kind of bomb inside the lunchbox. It is full with explosives.

Scene 3. School entrance - The woman kneels down to Aaron’s height. She tells him that she has made his favorite peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and that he shouldn’t touch them till lunchtime. She then hands him the same red lunchbox we saw. She tells him to hurry inside because he is late, Aaron runs off through the doors and his mum shouts “I love you”, Aaron turns round, looks at her then continues inside. We see the women’s face, she is close to tears.

Scene 4. School Cloakroom - Aaron runs into the cloakroom area, takes off his jacket, throws it on the floor and places the lunchbox next to his classmates.

Scene 5. Street - The women is staring at her old battered phone, she can hardly see through the tears, she presses the call button and we can hear a small beeping noise.

Locations

Gosford Park Primary All Saints Primary

Locations

Characters 35 years old and British.

Brunnette, 5ft 7 and quite thin.

Was a foster child and was bullied in school.

Profession: Police officer

Aaron, 10 years old

Small and thin

Doesn’t know his father

Loves football and art

Storyboard

Feb 1st – 12th - Location/Casting - Contacting schools about filming, speaking to agencies,

Feb 13th -19th - Equipment/Props – buying all props

Feb 20th – 23rd – Completing shooting schedule

Feb 24th – March 4th – Test shoot, finalize script and actors

March 6th/7th – Filming

March 9th onwards - Post Production

Production Schedule

Research

To begin, we looked at a book called ‘Psychology behind Terrorism’ by Randy Borum. We felt it was an important step for the main character to have a motif for the crime she is about the commit. We found that mental illness does play a vital role, but the main problems arise from childhood abuse, trauma and humiliation. Surprisingly, culture does not play a major part in terrorists movements.

They will sacrifice someone, or something for the greater good. This is the angle that we will use for the film, the mother will sacrifice her child for her own good.

We need to make sure we do the ‘flashback’ scenes justice. We have looked into films and TV series that have had flashback’s such as Band Of Brothers. We could also use elements from a ‘flash-forward’ scene used in films such as Minority Report.

Research We have decided to research a few short films so

we can compare and contrast themes and ideas to see what our film should and shouldn’t contain.

The first short film we researched was called ‘Encounter’. The film is very violent which is a route we don’t want to go down. It’s also somewhat humorous, which we don’t want to include in ours.

The second short film we researched was called ‘Terrorist Attack’ This film was about a minute and the story was about of a member of the military nearly getting killed by a bomb that was planted in the car. The film was quite serious with music and lighting but the actual acting was ‘over acted’ and looked childish

The last film we looked at was Four Lions. It is a full feature film, however it’s story was relevant hence the reason we chose to research it. But in terms of there actions in choosing to blow things up seemed unnatural which we didn't’t agree with. Again, the film is really comedic, ours wont be much like this either.

Problems/Reflections

From our research we have a lot of work to do, the themes of our story follows those that we researched, but instead of using comedy, we want to have a shock effect. We believe that we can achieve this if we plan correctly and be creative.

Child actors – After getting in touch with 2 talent agencies, they were more then happy to take part in a student film, but after discussing the film and concept, they felt that although the idea was good, they didn’t want their clients used in a terrorist plotline.

Schools/Children – As we want a natural school morning environment, we need lots of school children to be in the background when we are filming. Parents may be reluctant to let their children take part.

As a group we feel we are taking on a very controversial subject. We have undertaken a lot of work on the logistics and feasibility of this project, which may be too high of a hurdle to overcome, especially in such a short space of time.