PRE-PRODUCTION; JORDAN PEELE

Jordan Peele is an American filmmaker, actor and writer. He began his career with acting, appearing in 5 series of Mad TV, as well as being known comically for the sketch show Kay and Peele. From around 2010, he was began to produce and star in his own productions such as Keanu, The Last O.G and Wanderlust.

His biggest success of his career so far has been 2017 film Get Out, which Peele wrote, directed and produced. The writing of this is what I am looking at here because I would like to see what ideas I can link to my own writing ethos
-Get Out was extremely different to anything Jordan Peele had done before, due to his previous work in comedy
-He began writing a horror because it was a genre that he enjoyed and he had fun whilst writing it, however the story about race came along and he released the empathy he could make the audience feel but using the race issue with the protagonist
-Peele was worried that it would be a divisive film in terms of audience reaction, due to depicting black people as the victims and white people as the villains, however he found that the audience managed to relate to the character regardless of pre conceived ideas
-He said it was about bringing 'representation' in terms of ethnicity, to the horror genre
-Wrote in the inclusion of 'the sunken place' to include the audience in the film, perhaps make them question if they are the bad guys also
-Wanted to give a film where a character, who you think has a minor role, is saying what the audience is thinking. The main characters best friend was a funny character who said the obvious, but by the end of the film is proved to be right
-For him, the 2 main characters chemistry was most important because at the heart of the horror, was a love story, the audience needed to believe this love story in order to believe the horror that comes with it.
-Feels within the horror genre, that ethnicity isn't ever covered and his goal was to bring this topic to light with Get Out
-Pacing of the film was an important part of the scriptwriting journey, you know you're heading to a twist, but you have no idea what it is until you see it. Also when you see it, you realise it was obvious all along
-The ending became very important, he originally wrote the police turning up and stopping the narrative, but he changed it to give the audience a hero character, the protagonists best friend turns up and saves the day, this was Peele's way of suggesting the audience save the character, because the character who saves him represents the audience.

For me, I am writing a plot twist at the end of my script, Peele's writing technique of making it completely unknown throughout but obvious by the end is something I would really like to create. I am going to ask some of my friends to read the script, people who are completely new and know nothing about the script will be able to help me in terms of if my twist is obvious or not. Based on this feedback, I will then adapt it further as I really want to create this completely unexpected and shocking twist. As Peele notes, the pacing of a film is really important as well, whilst researching this I came up with an idea that my main characters, Nova and Marlo will have a fun filled time, they will do things together that make the audience see how in love with each other that they are and how much they like each other. At the end of this day, they will have a crashing argument which will bring all of the issues and arguments suggested throughout, to the forefront of the film, leading to a frantic and dramatic rampage of Marlo which reflects the plot twist that will be coming.

Jordan Peele is a very interesting and complex writer, he enjoys dark comedy and focuses on issue based stories such as representation. His work, I think, is very inspiring because it connotes issues and societal problems, shocking the audience but also serving a purpose to the story. The protagonists best friend, mentioned above, is a perfect example of a funny character that doesn't really go with the theme of the narrative, who unexpectedly solves the entire film and saves the day.