Idea 1 - Soulmate?
Genre: Slice-of-life / Romance
Plot: A high school student has a special relationship with a friend who has been together for as long as they can remember. The relationship between them has always been good and she felt the most happy being beside her friend. Everything had been going well until one day when she started losing interest, feeling stuck and frustrated with the relationship, and wanting to end it. The film will show contrasts between the old town where the student grew up with memories between her and her friend, and a modern city where her friend is no longer present in her life. The whole film will be filmed from the friend's point of view.
Setting: Modern city (skyscrapers, school, house) - Town (old buildings)
Character:
- Protagonist: A high school student who is feeling deadlock in life
- Other characters: friends, teachers, parents
Inspirations: 20th Century Girl (2022); Our Beloved Summer (2021); Twenty-five Twenty-one (2022); Soulmate (2023)
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Idea 2 - Who Are You? (chosen)
Genre: Thriller
Plot: An amateur investigator is suffering from an identity disorder due to being constantly abused and bullied for a long time when she was in school. Recently, weird letters with threatening content from an unknown were sent daily to her, making her feel frightened. Then, she started to develop symptoms like random headaches, short-term memory loss and generally feeling sick all the time. Slowly, the devil side of her begins to appear, controlling her body and taking revenge on the bullies. The film captures the journey of the characters solving mysteries surrounding her and finding out her real self, fighting against the dark side of herself.
Setting: School and office
Character:
- Protagonist: An amateur investigator who suffers from identity disorder
- Other character: victims, dark inner self
Inspirations: Split (2016); Identity (2003); Kill Me, Heal Me (2015); Revenant (2023); Black Swan (2010)
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Idea 3 - School of Robots
Genre: Drama
Plot: The film takes place in a school that is well known for the quality of students after graduation. Due to their reputation, a family decided to enroll their daughter in the school with the hope of providing their child with the best learning conditions, not aware of what was to come. Despite their good image, all students in the school were treated like robots, despite being very smart, they were unable to speak up about their thoughts and feelings, had to repeat a routine every day, and were generally not human-like. After attending school, the new student was shocked and started finding ways to report the situation to her parents, finding ways to expose the school system to the world.
Setting: At school (canteen, classroom, school ground, rooftop) and at home
Character:
- Protagonists: A new student who is eager to expose the truth about her new school.
- Other character: Students and parents
Inspirations: Severance (2022)
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Idea 4 - Secrets of the Night
Genre: Horror
Plot: Legends told that all humans should be asleep at night and no one should step out of the house because there is a dark secret in the night that humans are not allowed to know about. For centuries, the people in the city have always reminded themselves to not let their curiosity get out of hand and discover the night. Like always, there is a character who decides to go against the advice and starts planning for her journey of discovering the secrets of the night.
Setting: At night (home, around the residential areas, school, ...)
Character:
- Protagonists: A curious girl who wants to know why people need to sleep at night
- Other characters: Adults (city citizens), friends
Inspirations: A Quite Place (2018); It (2017); Stranger Things (2016)
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Idea 5 - A dream came true
Genre: Fantasy
Plot: A talented artist discovers that her dreams are slowly becoming reality. Since birth, the artist was born with the ability to remember all her dreams and as she grew up, she decided to capture them using art. Slowly, her artworks started disappearing and the world began to change, until she finally realized that it was changing according to all the dreams that she painted.
Setting: Home (bedroom) and workplace (art studio)
Character:
- Protagonist: A talented artist who accidentally changes the world
- Other characters: friends
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Idea 6 - Game of Life
Genre: Action / Adventure
Plot: What if your life was just a game? Well, that's exactly what happens in the film, it is just like a game. Each day, people will be able to receive a set of tasks to complete during the day and there are many different levels that they need to get through to upgrade their lives and become better. There are also a variety of 'life' that parents will have to choose for their newborn baby at the beginning of life to continue the journey forward. A girl who was born shy and introverted has her life chosen to be an adventurous one, where her tasks were significantly more challenging than others. Due to that, she was determined to find out the system's inventor and destroy it forever.
Setting: Rural, slump areas of the city and at home (bedroom)
Character:
- Protagonist: A shy girl with the aim to destroy the system
- Other characters: friends and parents
Inspirations: Ready Player One (2018); Dune (2021); Escape Room (2018)
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Why did I choose idea 2 - Who Are You?
Potential settings
- Vinschool Central Park
- Canteen
- Office
- Classroom
- School ground (trees/chairs)
- Stairs/hallway
- Rooftop (basketball/football court)
- Vinhomes Central Park (residential area)
- Towers
- Lockers
- Roads (cars/motorbike)
- Park
- Parking lot
- At home
- Bedroom
- Living room
Personally, I think that the setting is the most important part of the opening film and it needs to be practical to film to be able to create the best final outcome. After listing all the potential settings that could be used, the most practical idea to make is idea 2. Despite most of my ideas having the setting at school and at home, idea 1 would require a few scenes shot in an old town, idea 5 would need to be filmed in an art studio and idea 6 would be filmed mostly in a slump area which is significantly hard to find in Ho Chi Minh City. Even if I'm able to find one, it might be unsafe to film there due to the high criminal rates in that specific area. Idea 4 might be a suitable one to choose but the main setting was supposed to be in a city at night with no one on the roads as if they are all asleep. Ho Chi Minh City where I lived is known to be a city with no sleep and people here are very active at night so it will be very hard to be able to film idea 4.
Besides the consideration of the setting, I also think about the actors needed for the film opening. Out of all the ideas, idea 2 seems to have the least character needed as it only needs a main character who will be playing 2 roles and a few background characters who don't need to show their faces. Idea 3 was one of my favorite ideas, however, to create the 'school of robots', a lot of actors will be needed and it is difficult to organize and gather them all up for the filming process even if they don't have much script and just need to act as background characters.
I have different genres for all of my 6 initial ideas and out of all, thriller seems to be the most popular genre and has been growing in popularity rapidly these years. A data creator, Bo McCready has created a chart of popular film genres from 1910 to 2021 based on data collected from IMDB to show how tastes have changed over the years. Based on the chart, it is clear that the thriller genre has been one of the favorites over the years, and due to that reason, I think that choosing a thriller opening film might be the best idea. Moreover, idea 2 is my favorite idea out of all and the one where I have put the most effort into developing it further, and due to that reason, idea 2 - WHO ARE YOU is my chosen idea.
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