Draft Treatment

Act 1
A young boy is tucked up in bed on Christmas Eve and his mother is sat beside him. She has just finished telling him a Christmas tale. After the mother has wished the boy goodnight and left, his older brother sneaks into his room. He tells him the 'real' Christmas story that happened years before: a young boy with mental problems was taken away from his parents near Christmas time and was sent to a mental home. During this time he went crazy and escaped, killing those who got in his way. One Christmas he came back and killed his family in the very house the boy lives in.

Act 2
After hearing the story his older brother told him, the young boy is scared and begins to hear and see strange things around his neighbourhood. He has yet to see this mysterious killer but feels as if he is being watched by him. Strange things continue to happen until someone is killed and the boy realizes this story is actually real and that the killer is coming for him. People start to disappear and the older brother, with his friends, hear a womans scream so they go to investigate. The split up and the 2 friends are killed. The killer attacks Sebastian who is left injured but alive, when the killer is about to make the fatal blow a passer by sees the events and goes to hunt them.

Act 3
More people are being killed. Several people are murdered and the boy starts realizing that the killer is getting closer. The boy gets trapped in his house and after running around trying to hide the killer has cornered the boy and is about to kill him when he is suddenly saved by his older brother and he stabs the killer with a kitchen knife, seemingly killing him. The boy and the older brother leave the house and the police arrive outside, the film ends with the killer on the floor and his hand twitiching once.

Treatment questions

1.What is the main theme or idea?
The main theme is centered around the traditional story of Christmas which is twisted in our film. It is going to take the well known character of Santa Claus and subvert him into an evil, sadistic killer.

2.Have you created a distinctive main character who is a rounded, believable character?
We have the created the character of a little boy who is going to be the main protagonist of the trailer. The boy's name will be Ethan. Throughout the trailer, he will be the subject of the killers attention and will be trying to escape from him.

3.What is his or her goal? The goal of our main character Ethan is to survive.

4.Who is stopping him or her achieving this goal (the adversary or villain)? The killer who will be dressed up and representing Santa.

5.What is at stake and why? The lives of the boy and the people that live in his community. This is because the killer used to live in the boys neighbourhood and therefore returns to get revenge for what happened to him many years before.

6.Where does the film take place? The film will take place in the house and around the neighbourhood of our films main protagonist.

7.Have you created other interesting characters? We have created other family members for the protagonist of the film, his older brother and also his mother. The older brother will be called Sebastian and his mothers name will be Julie.

Mood Board

This is our mood board, we have incorporated all our ideas and what we want to achieve in our trailer. We chose the photo of the little girl to show that our trailer will have children involved as the main character(s). We have pictures from Pan's Labyrinth & Donnie Darko because we want to give our trailer a fantasy feel to it. The middle of the mood board is the title of our film 'Silent Night' , we thought this was a good idea due to it being Christmas based and it also sounded like a horror film title.

We used bright colours to show a christmas setting and to show that we wanted our film to show the contrast between light and dark. The light would come from the mornings when everything is fine and the dark would be the night when all hell breaks loose and the killer is free to roam around without people seeing him.

We chose to use a lot red to symbolize blood/gore and it is also the colour that is linked with christmas and/or Santa. The word 'Music' is there because we thought that it was vital to showing the genre of our film and it plays a big role in creating suspense and an enigma, this is what we hope to achieve in our trailer as we think that it is important creating/using the right piece(s) of music in order to make the audience feel what we want them to feel. The word 'Fear' is used because we want our character, like many iconic horror film antagonists, to strike fear into other characters and the audience. We thought that Santa was ideal for this as he is a character that near enough every person knows and 'Twisted' is on the mood board because we want to twist the idea that Santa is good and it also implies that the character himself may be a little psychologically fragile.

The characters from Saw, Halloween and A Nightmare On Elm Street are there because we thought that these were the scariest characters and the films themselves used a lot of gore and violence, these are elements that we hope to encompass within our trailer.

This is my presentation on Forms & Conventions.