Planning our Narrative

From consulting our influences we came up with a narrative that we all agreed on. We thought it was ambitious and achievable. 

After establishing the genre, a Teen Apocalypse, that sort of gave us basic ideas. In developing our ideas we thought about what was available to us (people, props and locations) as those inspired ideas. 

As inspired by Lord of the Flies (LOTF), we thought having no adults would be the catalyst for the storyline which would then achieve the aimed genre. We didn't really want to recreate LOTF by using children we thought focusing on teenagers would be more interesting as it's a middle-ground between being a child and being an adult. Realistically, teenagers would take over and probably try to maintain some stability in that life, but not all people think like that. We wanted the teens to be left alone, as a world without adults eventually takes a LOTF turn into anarchy and tyranny to show the breakdown of society and fight for survival. 

After taking the adults out of the equation, we needed a good reason why and how they disappeared. We realised that adults just vanishing takes us down a sci-fi route, and this brought us to think about The Hunger Games (THG) since it's set in a dystopian future. In THG, it's compulsory by the Capitals Law that people between a certain age (12-18) are entered in the Hunger Games. The government is the cause of the problems in the trilogy, so we came up with the idea that the government had a plot to remove all adults (people aged 17 and above-reinforcing the age idea to separate old from young, creating a HG/LOTF-like situation. We briefly thought about world-wide incidents like diseases, but that made us think about the somewhat over-used idea of a zombie-apocalypses- which isn't what we wanted. 

We thought about possible ideas for context to the story, like a government experiment on this certain area- this made us think about a dome, entrapping the people while sci-fi technology physically removes the adults, to see what occurs in the young peoples behaviour and such. This also provoked thoughts about an alien race conducting the experiment but then we thought it was too much when our focus is the teens after the adults are gone. 

This is when we came up with the folder idea. We decided that it could be hinted at that the government had set up this event, and we needed to communicate this through another character- we needed an adult, so we planned to use Lizzie's mother to function as that. We imagined all the adults disappearing all at the same time, like 10am in the day as that would disrupt school (a place that takes the viewer into the perspective of the teenagers). Lizzie's mother would be on a laptop doing work, until she gets a phone call from her work, and she would exclamate 'what? 12 hours from now?!' to suggest that the event will occur then and that she is in on it. To reinforce the Government idea and establish that she is Lizzie's mother, Lizzie would walk in, hug her goodnight and see her work folder with the governments logo on it. This would capture the context of the event and lead the viewers into the story. Not only would that begin the film, but we thought that the folder should be seen significantly throughout, as if it held the truth about the life changing event. The teenagers discover that anyone aged 17 or above vanishes, which added a sense of urgency of time (pace) within the story because the main characters are aged 16. 

We've established the generic idea that group rivalry was an outcome of the event, and to up the anarchy, we thought that the folder could create further conflict- as if the antagonist group steal the folder from Lizzie's house, disturbing Michaels group as they knew the situation was getting even more threatening. But also, raising question in the audience about what the folder says about the event, and what can be done? But the trailer wouldn't give everything away.

To sum up the conflict between the groups, here's a breakdown of the story:

(not all characters are  fully identified yet, only the main ones)

Disruption: All of adults disappears simultaneously, it’s inferred that it’s a government experiment that only few people knew about (Eves mother), but sworn to secrecy. The kids are left alone to fend for themselves. Focusing on a small group of survivors, there is one leader, Michael, who looks out for his friends, Eve, Fiona, Sam, Hannah and Eves little brother. Though it occurred to some people that with no adults meant not rules, no authority and this lead to tyrant behaviours. As a result the groups safety was disrupted by a power hungry and remorseless boy, Haden. Haden wanted that power, a rule over everyone- a chance to take over emerged, but Michael naturally took this role. Haden wanted revenge, and he was going to get it. He made his own; a group of alike teens, careless in their brutal nature, they began a hunt for Michael's group. Eve questions whether they can survive this after losing a friends life, Fiona, in a man hunt, but Micheal keeps them going and Sam (another protagonist group member) recognises the need to fight back, because it was too risky not to, they couldn’t live in fear and danger forever. This lead to a brawl between the two, and only one can walk away- the resolution is left on a cliff hanger, and it's not likely the adults will be back any time soon and time is running out...

Here's some sketch ideas of the hunt and Fionas death: