Plot Synopsis

My film opening will begin with some shots of the main character sitting on a bench at the train station. There will be a few cuts to other parts in his life - e.g., driving to work and making coffee. He is reading a newspaper, and flicking through the pages without really concentrating on the content. He looks up from his newspaper, and looking around at the empty station, he sees a pair of black shoes on the other side of the platform. They look brand new and unworn. He puts his newspaper down on the bench, and crosses the platform to the other side. As he bends down to pick up the shoes, a train goes past, and once it has gone, the man has disappeared. We then see the man walking toward the exit of the train station, wearing the shoes, and placing his trainers down on the floor in place of the black shoes.

If I was to make the whole film, the plot would develop to tell the story of how finding the shoes have, although they match his outfit and he may feel more comfortable in them than the other ones he is wearing, made his life a lot worse. Bad things start happening to him, until he discovers that something about the shoes that he found is affecting him - (he then eventually find out who they belonged to, as referenced in a voice-over quote I am planning at the start, and finds out about their bad backstory), and the bulk of the story would be about his trying to get rid of them.

I would definitely make it into a non-linear story, as I think they are a lot more interesting. Most of my favourite films, such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Adaptation (2002), are non-linear, and that's part of the reason they are so great - they can withhold the most important part of the film until the end in the most unique and beautiful way, or choose to piece the story together at a certain rate, and so it not only gives the filmmakers a lot more control, but it makes the audience think about what's happening. Also, something I really like about a lot of non-linear films is the fact that you understand them retrospectively - you aren't necessarily allowed to understand a lot of what's gone on until the end, and every time you watch them you understand something new (e.g. in Eternal Sunshine - tiny details, like the small dots on the side of Joel's head in the scene where he is in his car, you either don't notice/hardly notice them until you watch it a second time, where you realise that it is him coming back from the clinic).

Already, in my opening, I have planned to have a few non-linear parts - the parts where he is driving, the shots of the coffee and the shots of him opening the boot will be non-linear, as they happen at an ambiguous time outside the main storyline. This adds in the possibility for a much greater amount of shots to be present, making it a lot more fun to watch.