Tuesday, 12 January 2016

Major Project- Story Outline & Some Areas of Research

I have recently begun refining my story idea, and creating characters and situations that I believe would be the interesting for a television series. The series is set in 1970s America, and revolves around the idea of a group of friends reuniting after a period of time at a lodge in the fictional mountainous region; "Crystal Hills" in Massachusetts. Upon arriving a snowstorm occurs, preventing any chance of the characters being able to safely make it back to society.

They also discover that one of the friends; Stanley- a former U.S Marine is subject of a nation-wide manhunt and has been accused of committing a massacre killing many Vietnamese villagers and fellow marines during his time at war. The series will revolve around the idea of the characters having to deal with being essentially trapped in a the middle of nowhere with an accused murderer, with mistrust being the main theme.

A lot of character development and story background will take place through the usage of flashbacks, in the same vain as the television show LOST. The hope is that the way viewers feel about the characters and situations at the start of the series will be completely different to the way they feel about them at the end.

Some things I have to consider when creating the overall story is the time period that the story takes place in. Since the series takes place during the Vietnam war, it is essential that I get a  good understanding of what life was like back then, including how people spoke and dressed, and what kind of things were in popular culture at the time.
I plan on investigating this using the internet, watching videos from that time period, and making careful notes about the kinds of phrases that were being used, what kind of trends were being set, and especially how people spoke to each other. This should allow me to create a sense of authenticity in my script if I can create dialogue and situations that seem realistic for the time period.

Since a lot of the series takes place as a flashback in South Vietnam from the point of view of Stanley as a Marine, it is also important that I review what life would have been like for someone serving in the Vietnamese war, and the kind of experiences they might have had at that time. In order to do this, I have been reading the book Vietnam At War by Mark Bradley, which details some of the more gritty experiences people went through during the war using documents that have been recovered, including the make-shift diary of a Vietnamese medic who was caring for injured Vietnamese villagers and soldiers.
The book has fantastic descriptions of the actual living conditions people were going through in South Vietnam, and has such descriptions of the unsanitary sleeping and crop-growing conditions they had to endure, which will come in handy when I want to describe locations in my script.
There are also depictions of the hostile America/Vietnam relationships, which I could reflect in my actual storytelling.

I also discovered that there are several films that could be used to show the brutality of the war, including Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, both of which take place during this war. It would be worth me watching these two films and looking at how the set pieces look, as well as checking out the actual production scripts for these films, so I can see exactly how they match up with the films, and use the same kind of descriptive words for scenes in Vietnam in my own script.


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