My final idea for my individual proposal came from a visit to the train station at around 9:00pm. I arrived and it was completely empty despite from four people who I thought would make good characters in a film, these were:
1. A middle aged train assistant. He looked bored, however kept alert in his body language.
2. A elderly, homeless, trainspotter. He accompanied the train assistant and was clearly passionate about Englands football team as he wouldn’t stop talking about it. His voice echoed in the station. He struggled with his grammar and he would only go silent when a train would pass, so he could concentrate on writing.
3. A young girl, she looked around 17/18 years old. She was moping the floors.
4. A man in his late twenties. He was wearing an orange hi-vis outfit, he was removing a billboard poster from across the tracks.
While I was waiting for my visitor to arrive, I thought that one of these four characters would make a great protagonist in a feature length film. I was already set that I wanted to use the train station as my setting and location for my proposal, and I started to think of a couple of film ideas, these were my strongest two ideas:
1. The middle aged train assistant or the trainspotter, who works/ spends their nights at the train station. He wants to escape as he doesn’t have a very good life, he lives rough, alcoholic and lonely. They sneak onto a train that pulls up a midnight, heading to Edinburgh. He meets a woman on the train, possible love interest. An hour and a half passes and the train stops suddenly, in the middle of nowhere. The train then gets attacked by Aliens. The protagonist becomes a hero. Genre: Sci-fi/ Action/ Horror.
2. The young girl (17) works late nights as a cleaner at the train station. She also wants to escape due to the fact she has a lot of problems at home. She meets a strange man at the station who informs her of the train that pulls up at midnight but isn’t scheduled on the stations rotas. (This strange man is a key character and will appear later in the film). She gets on the train, which takes her to a fantasy land. She becomes a likeable girl, however the Queen of this land doesn’t want her there. Genre: Fantasy. Inspired by Alice in Wonderland / Harry Potter.
I asked a couple people which idea was strongest and I think I am going to write about the first idea with the Aliens. As I feel I can talk a lot more about it and I can add more character development into it.