Discussion and decision of narrative elements for our production (Planning)

 After conducting research and gaining a much clearer understanding of the genre we were working with, and having the basics of how to do storytelling, we began planning our narrative.

After watching the film excerpts from our research blogs, we decided to focus on certain aspects at a time, what we wanted versus what we needed.

- We wanted a protagonist or an antagonist so that the story would be focused on them, but after realizing that this would be complicated in two minutes, the director suggested that we focus on using a Causal Agent. The cinematographer added that this was a good idea since we could fulfill the need to follow mystery conventions by not explaining the causal agent, which naturally generates questions. With this in mind, we started brainstorming an idea. And I proposed a book as our Causal Agent; this would make sense since it creates confusion in the sense that the story revolves around it, but it also creates tension and anxiety (thriller) about what it contains or what it could do. Furthermore, we said that to maintain the mystery of the book and create even more questions to the audience, we're probably not showing was inside the book, this will help us to maintain the audience engaged since they would feel the necessity to know what is in there.

Image that represent our draft idea.

As we can see in the image above the books is the focus of it, we have questions, who is that? why we can't see the book? why is everything dark? We find this image to be very inspiration for our elements for example we can use darker colors for the mise en scene to achieve suspense or for me as an editor because I can visualize doing cuts to the cover of the books and the characters.

- I wanted to have dialogue to provide more context to the story, however, the director showed me that we could take advantage of not including audio, since we would follow thriller conventions by creating strong emotions through visuals and music instead of dialogue, and this would avoid distracting the audience. This was good because it allowed me to concentrate on giving more intensity to the cuts and transitions of the visuals (thriller conventions), and the cinematographer added that it would be easier to focus on the mise-en-scène and create impact with it.

So, the elements of the narrative we have are:

Driven by visual storytelling over auditory. We are going down the path of circular narrative, as we want the book to be the cause of continuous episodes or multiple perspectives, since several people can have different experiences and opinions on the effects of the causal agent (this will be clarified later, it's just a basis of ideas).

Introducing the causal agent instead of a protagonist or antagonist, this especially allows me as an editor to add more skills since I will have more access to transitions, meaning that whether we decide to use a multiple perspective or a circular narrative, by having the book as the focus of everything I can plan to make cuts between the book and the people, whether it's their reactions, behaviors, or events.

Maintaining everything within the 1 Act since we have the hook: what is this book? and we are working in the inciting incident.

Image that showcases the Book as a Causal agent for everything that happens.

Takeaways & Lessons: As an editor, having a better concept of how our narrative will be allows me to start planning appropriate transitions and edits. I also cleared up doubts and concerns such as the audio, and I learned that the research was a fundamental basis for effectively planning the next step, since everything is based on the genre and its conventions.