Initial Film Ideas

We would like our film to be simple, and yet we feel that for it to be interesting,  it must have an interesting twist at the end. The Guardian advert which we collected as inspiration is the kind of idea we would like to develop for our own use.

IDEA 1

• The basic driving idea in this suggestions, is of challenging stereotypes. A seemingly homeless or poor person is walking down the street. We see him watching a gentleman in a suit on the opposite side of the road. Instinctively, the audience assumes the worst and presumes that he is going to mug or attack the suited man.
• The suspicious character crosses the road and sees the gentleman struggling with an umberella against the wind. Offering his help, the suspicious character forces the umberella down with the gentleman, and at the same time, slips the man's wallet out of his pocket. The two characters part on good terms.
• The suspicious character stuffs the wallet into his jacket and puts quite a lot of distance between himself and the gentleman with the umberella. A short walk later, and the audience realises that the suspicious character was in fact stealing the wallet back for another man.

                 

Homeless people are heavily judged for stealing and
such because they are desparate. People instinctively
judge others because it is human nature.

A gentleman dressed in respectable clothes is not usually judged to be a
criminal or even capable of stealing. By challenging this stereotype, we can
engage the audience to think about their own morals.

IDEA 2

• A young girl/boy is sitting on a bench. They slide a purse/wallet into their bag and insert an iPod. Unknown to them, another girl/boy of the same age approaches the student from behind and extracts the purse/wallet easily from the bag. Then they hurry off in a new direction, slipping the purse/wallet into their own pocket. The audience will naturally judge this second character due to the kinds of clothes they are wearing, or simply by the way they walk or act. The camera follows this second character as they head back into the town centre, and when they reach a certain shop or bench, another person is there waiting for them - an older man/woman. The audience will assume at this point that the character is going to exchange the purse/wallet for money or drugs, but it turns out they were stealing back the purse/wallet for the elderly person. They part on good terms.

Character 2 could wear an outfit similar to this
to make them appear suspicious

Character 1 could look something like this so that the
audience would never suspect them capable of stealing

Ideally, whichever plot we choose, challenging the stereotypes will make the twist ending more surprising for the audience because it is not at all what they are expecting. Similar to the Guardian advert, we could use freeze frames and a voiceover to present ideas about how roles can be reversed if people are not blinded by prejudice and stereotypes.