Writing and story Development
Although I want to make a film about a young Asian female who diverts to prostitution because to make ends meet, due to her family abandoning her, it was in serious reconsideration how we would initially tell the story after we had got feedback from a lecturer and class peers who said the storyline was too cliché. Additionally, realistically, the initial story we were planning on creating would potentially have been more than 20 minutes
The link below show the treatment of the first story we were initially going to do.
https://kennedynkemdirimyr3.wordpress.com/2017/01/20/treatment-holding-out/
Screenwriter and film critic Jean-Luc Godard believed that a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order.” (IMDb, 2017)
While changing the story, me and co-producer Gurleen Gill felt the best way to tell the story was in fact not from the start but from the middle. This way it would allow the film to have a sense of rush and mystery giving us the edgy start we wanted.
Old Story : We were going to start to short film off with Layla being murdered and just before she dies she has flash backs which tells how her life ended up like this.
New story: We are going to start it with Layla in the midst of her new prostitution job. She is soon paid a visit by a family member.
Treatment 2
It starts off in a dingy apartment where we hear muffled sounds coming from a room. Inside is our protagonist, Layla, who is with a client having sex. We see them having sex and they come to a climax. It cuts to the client paying/ tipping her where Layla refuses at first then takes the money. He then leaves and closes the door behind him. Layla goes into the kitchen and makes herself some coffee, whilst making it she goes to the bathroom and looks at herself, wondering how her life has come to this. This kettle boils and she leaves the bathroom to make her coffee. She goes back to the kitchen and then hears a loud knock on her front door. She goes to open it after looking at her clock, slightly confused. As she approaches the door the knocking gets aggressively louder, she hesitates to open it. She looks through the peephole and sighs heavily, rolling her eyes. She opens the door with a big smile on her face and says “Well look who decided to turn up”. Her brother, Jai, storms in with an angry look on his face. He looks at Layla who is wearing a robe, and he turns to disgust. “The fuck is this? Is this your game now?” Layla smirks at Jai and walks off towards the kitchen. She goes back to making her coffee and asks Jai if he wants any, he responds saying how he’s not here to “piss about” and that he’s here to talk about everything that happened. Layla sighs and goes into the living room and sits down stirring her coffee. Jai is showing more anger and starts getting louder and louder when asking why Layla did what she did and how she couldn’t have any care towards her family. Layla then shows expressions of anger and asks Jai to leave because he’s no longer welcome in her apartment. She walks towards the front door and he follows her, she opens it and there is a client who is about to knock. The client looks uneasy but Layla puts on a big grin and asks him in. Jai however slams the door shut in his face and drags her back inside the living room. He continues shouting at Layla which causes her to ask him “If you’re so concerned about your family and why I hurt them, ask yourself why you allowed them to kick me out when I was pregnant?” Jai shuts up and Layla continues about her bitterness towards him and her parents because ever since they were little she was treated significantly worse than him. Jai softens his tone and explains that they were protective of her, but Layla reminds him of the fact that no matter how much good she did she was never appreciated and no matter how bad Jai was he was still the favourite. Jai then asks about the baby and where it was and Layla’s only response is “things happened”, Jai then starts to get frustrated asking what she means by that and Layla states it’s none of his business. Jai then damages something and Layla sarcastically asks if he’s going pay for that/clean that up. He then moves onto why she had to be a prostitute, she said that she needed to make ends meet and pay off some debts and this was the easiest way. Jai says that Layla has brought shame to the family and that he misses his sister, Layla shows signs of coldness and distance and says that they pushed her away a long time ago and that she’s never going back. Jai then get’s angry and grabs Layla’s hair, he pulls her to the front door. She starts yelling and holding his arms to get off of her, but is unable to be free. Jai opens the front door and the client is still standing there in shock by what he sees, he shouts after Layla if everything is alright, and she says yes. Jai shoves her in his car and gets in, he locks the car and drives. Inside the car he throws Layla’s coat at her telling her to put it on. She tries arguing but, straight away Jai yells at her and threatens to kill her in a way that she’s never really been exposed to and slowly puts on her coat. She starts silently crying and shows expressions of fear and hysteria. She’s hesitant to speak and just sits there quietly crying.
She builds up the courage to ask where he is taking her. Jai is silent and focused on his driving. She sees the anger in his eyes through the mirror. Layla asks again where he’s taking her, Jai is still silent, she then asks what he is going to do to her. Jai looks at her through the rear view mirror and looks back on the road.Layla concludes that she is driving to her death. She slowly undoes the rope holding her robe together and contemplates using it to strangle Jai. She is not courageous enough to hurt her own brother and put the rope back around her waist and looks down crying.
The car stops . “Get out” says Jai. Layla looks surprised and asks why he’s brought her here. Layla looking through the window saying she’s not getting out of the car. Jai gets out from the front seat and and opens Layla’s door. She refuses to get out so Jai grabs her from the arm and pulls her out. Jai closes the door and says to her walk, Layla starts getting hysterical and begs Jai not to do this and to let her go. He starts walking and pulling her arm, Layla is reluctant to move, but isn’t able to stand her ground. They walk up to a nice looking front door and Jai gets his key out still holding onto Layla’s arm so she can’t go anywhere. He still doesn’t say anything, but Layla says quietly “Jay, please?” with a pained hurtful expression, Jay looks at her and says “get in.” He opens the door and pushes her in gently. Layla walks through and sees an older lady sitting on the couch, however she’s not surprised, she’s simply scared. The older lady hears the door closing and looks around, she’s clearly upset. She’s in shock to see Layla and, Layla doesn’t know what to do other than look around and then focus on the floor. The older woman then approaches Layla, and when she lifts her arms to hug her, Layla flinches as if she’s going to receive a slap. However is shocked and surprised to find that she’s being hugged. Jai walks over and looks at Layla smiling, Layla looks back and is still in shock. She feels the woman crying on her and pulls away. The woman looks at her and holds her face, crying out that her daughter is back home. She hugs her again and this time Layla starts slowly crying. She doesn’t hug her properly at first and then she looks at her brother who is still smiling, causing Layla to tighten her hug and burst into tears. The mother becomes hysterical, asking why she left, Layla is confused again and says that her parents kicked her out. The mother says that she regrets ever letting her father kick her out, at the time she was so mad that Layla was pregnant, but when Layla left the house she instantly resented how badly she allowed Layla to be treated even as a child. The mother continues saying how it took a toll on all the family, relationships started to wither away because they knew what they did was wrong and the father paid the price most of all, because he died. It is Layla’s turn to be shocked and looks at Jai who is now looking down at the floor. She starts crying again, and walks up to him, asking if this was the reason he brought her back. He looks at her and says how that was the last straw, he never cared about the baby or the prostitution, he just wanted his baby sister back. The mother then gets up and asks Layla where the baby is. Layla continues staring at Jai, but responds that the baby died, it miscarried, so she became numb, and lived her life as a prostitute to make ends meet. The mother showed no emotion other than crying and holding Layla. She says simply how happy she is to have Layla back and tells Jai and Layla that she’s going to warm some food up, and Jai quickly run upstairs. Both leaving Layla on her own. She looks around and before sitting back on the couch, she looks in the mirror staring at herself, this time breaking a small smile at herself.
Me and Gurleen were debating on how we wanted the film to end in an attempt to prevent predictability. An experiment we undertook was to tell people the treatment till the part where Jai (an Honour Character) forces Layla (Honours Protagonist )in his car. We asked people what they thought would happen next. Most people felt he was going to hurt her. A feedback we got was that the Title Honour played a big part in deceiving their final prediction as people related it to the idea of Honour killing.
Kennedy Nkemdirim year 3 