Production Diary: Film Treatment

Treatment:

Working Title: Self Fulfilling Prophet. (I am using this title for now as it matches the theme of the story, but may change it later to something more abstract or meaningful/interpretative)

Characters: Dan-protagonist, Emma-romantic interest, Mark-Antagonist

Synopsis:

The opening shot is a wide shot of a woman at a table in an office space. A close up of her phone screen reveals that she is listening to ‘Glimpse of Us’, Joji. She is listening to this and eating lunch when someone sits opposite to her. She takes her earphones out and says hello to him, welcoming him “to hell”, thereby revealing that this is his first day working there. He surprises her by saying that she was listening to the artist’s best single. She is taken aback and laughs awkwardly, but agrees with him. They then share headphones and begin listening to it together.

The film cuts to a man sat in his kitchen is looking at a laptop screen. He is looking at an email that he is drafting and preparing to send to a business to apply for a job there. They take a break from the computer and make themselves a drink and put on some music, which is the same song from earlier. As the song plays they consider sending the email and slowly shut their eyes as they listen to the song. When they next open their eyes there is suddenly no music playing and they are in a new place, an office. They stand and look around. They have a new phone, and look much older now. They look out their office window and see a garden outside.

They leave the building and sit outside in the garden where it is quiet and they can think. They sit for awhile, obviously confused by what is happening. They shut their eyes and suddenly return to their kitchen. They breathe heavily and quickly shut off the song, clearly disturbed by what is happening. After a few seconds of calming down and re-considering, they put the song back on and slowly shut their eyes again, opening them after a few seconds to find themselves back in the garden. They realise that wherever they are, it is in the future and a few years have passed by now. They then re-enter the building and begin walking around to see more of the place. As they walk around they come across a group of men who seem to be his co-workers. They joke about making him redundant, and one of them, who seems to be the man’s boss, takes him aside and genuinely threatens to fire him if he does not work the weekend. They then laugh at him as he walks away.

After walking around for a bit longer they begin to hear a distant song playing, the song that they were listening to in the kitchen. They approach the source of the sound, eventually coming across a woman who is playing it on her phone speaker. After a few seconds they turn around and realise that their headphones aren’t plugged in. She laughs awkwardly and apologises that it was so loud. The man awkwardly says it’s fine and that he would only be mad if she was playing bad music. They then talk a bout the song and the history of the artist. After they talk, she asks him is he’d like to listen to it with her. He does so, sitting next to her and putting a headphone in. They slowly make eye contact and laugh together, before the man suddenly return to his kitchen.

The song ends as the man sits at his kitchen table, looking straight at his laptop screen. After the room falls silent, the man sits in thought for a moment. He then moves the cursor on his screen to the ‘send email’ button. The film ends just as he sends off his application email. The final shot is of the older version of the protagonist preparing to go over and talk to the woman, which is the opening shift from his perspective.