MAJOR PRODUCTION; WRITERS PERSPECTIVE 3

In hindsight to the filming, when considering the reshoots, there was a few things as a writer that I needed to consider. The first was a new ending, we all felt that the ending was very flat and not as cinematic as the rest of the film, so we needed a new ending. At first I considered the idea that we could end on Marlo and Nova saying goodbye at the park, but I felt that the audience really should see Marlos bedroom. For me, Marlo's messy bedroom at the start of the film is a symbol of his life, it is representative of how Marlo's life has been completely messed up and turned upside down. At the end, the idea of seeing his now clean, tidy and empty room demonstrates the change Marlo has had in his life. He has accepted his life now and made a positive change to move forward. With this in mind, the new idea for the end to is keep it simple, have the clean room, followed by Marlo loading his stuff in to Julie's car (ready to move out) and have him and Julie drive away. Whilst I think this is a very generic ending, it feels right for the story that we are trying to tell, it shows the story come full circle as Marlo ventures off to his new life.

New Last Scene:

Secondly, Simon felt that we needed to see Julie one more time, demonstrating that she knows he is missing and is looking for him. I have therefore added a new scene before Marlo gets to the memorial. The scene entails Julie in her car trying to call Marlo and leaving his a voice mail. This inexplicably portrays the idea that Julie is trying to find Marlo and I think creates an intensity around her closing in on him, almost like a clock running out before she reaches him and he has to admit to his issues.

New Julie Scene: 

These scene additions are something I'm really happy with, the ending specifically is something I think helps to round the film off in a more round way. It is a lot more cinematic for us to have the car drive away outside into the landscape, than end on a line of dialogue in Marlo's bedroom. With these new additions, I also needed to make sure the script was up to date with the changes that we were making on the day. This involved Mr Shipman's dialogue, as well as the 2 scenes that we ended up improvising on the day. For the scenes that we had improvised, I have wrote a description in the script describing what they would have been talking about in the script. For example this is the scene that Marlo brings a bottle of vodka to Nova.

Finally, since filming, there are two parts of the script that we have decided to scrap completely. The first is the idea of having the figure speak to Marlo by the memorial. Once we had filmed this part it didn't look exactly how we thought it would, it came across as slightly cheesy and gimmicky. Also, it didn't have a massive impact upon, or bring anything to, the story. Secondly, we decided to scrap the idea of the pocket watch. For me, the pocket watch was a symbol of Marlo's father, because he died when Marlo was young, Marlo has always struggled with loss and death and has always felt like something is missing. Nova's death brings back and emphasis these feelings upon loss and struggling with death, the pocket watch was meant to be a reoccurring symbol of this struggle before it is revelled in one of the final scenes how Julie and her husbands last conversation is very similar to that of Nova and Marlo's. However, it didn't seem to come across like this in the film, it seemed very random and almost like an unanswered question that the audience was had. As we have such a definitive end to our story, it doesn't really make sense to leave anything unexplained and unknown in this way, so as a group we have decided we will scrap the idea of the pocket watch.