Film Treatment

Our film is set in modern day Belfast, following the life of Bobby who is a lonely man, aged around 19-20, looking for love. However, Bobby is also a serial killer and is tricking the dating agency he is with into setting him up with Poppy, who he is planning to kill. 

Our film opens with a narration about singletons looking for love over shots of people doing daily activities, such as pouring coffee and turning on the TV, as well as a shot of Bobby sharpening knives. This narration is interrupted several times by Bobby explaining his situation and why he is looking for love. The narrator will introduce the idea of dating agencies and shots of middle aged women working in an office with files and typing, with obvious typing sounds, will accompany this.

The next scene will be Bobby receiving a phone call saying that he has a match. The narrator will explain this, and we will hear and see a part of Bobby’s phone call. Once he is off the phone, he will explain to the camera who she is.

Poppy, Bobby’s match, will have her own introduction scene. We will show long shots of her walking around a park, with her doing a voiceover and introducing herself, which switch to a close up or a mid shot of Poppy on a bench explaining why she is here. This will also be accompanied by shots of her carrying out activities such as feeding ducks (and having an obvious cookery book for duck) and people watching. We will hear details about Poppy such as she is 19, a cocktail waitress and is looking for love.

The next scene will be the actual date itself. It will begin with the narrator introducing the date, as Bobby is sharpening his knives. Bobby then sets the table up, and the shot makes the knives and wine prominent to foreshadow the events, as the door knocks. We then see Poppy standing outside the door acting nervously and the camera catches a glimpse of a bottle, which will later be revealed to contain poison. As Bobby opens the door to greet Poppy, he pulls her in and hugs her and holds the hug for too long, smelling her hair. Poppy pulls away and the couple walk inside.

Inside the house, a candle lit table with red roses and dim lighting is set up. Bobby offers Poppy some wine, and she offers to pour it. As the pair sit down, they strike common ground about slasher films and a conversation ensues - it is at this point that the sound fades out and we leave Bobby and Poppy to themselves. The narrator helps the scene transition into an individual interview style set up of both Bobby and Poppy.

A chair is set up in front of a bedroom somewhere in Bobby’s house. Bobby walks in and sits down, then looks at the camera man: a voice off camera is heard asking him how the date is going to which he responds positively. There is a similar set up for Poppy, in a different room. She is already seated and we don’t hear the question being asked this time, however she also responds positively to the question. The camera man then asks her if she thinks it will end well tonight, to which she says “we’ll have to wait and see”. Both responses are going to include puns such as “I’m going to take a stab at it.”

After the interviews, we return to a scene of the couple laughing at the table. Bobby checks his watch and tells her that he is going to check on the dinner. He turns his back and Poppy pours a substance in to his wine. Then Poppy asks him to show her to the bathroom so that she can freshen up before dinner. Bobby agrees and shows her to a downstairs bathroom. As she is entering the bathroom, he offers to get the door however he stabs her in the back. Poppy falls to the floor in a pool of blood and the camera looks at Bobby, then back to Poppy and zooms in. As the cameraman fumbles to turn it off, we can hear the narrator saying “the date has taken an unexpected turn for Poppy.”

The next scene opens with Bobby putting the final touches (i.e. herbs/salt) on to a dish with meat in it and sitting down to eat it. The camera shows an insert of his recipe for Poppy Pie.  He sets his dish down and takes a sip of wine at the exact same moment that he sees Poppy’s bottle of poison lying on the floor. He breaks the fourth wall and looks into the camera in shock and then chokes.

Updated Locations (ADD PICTURES)

February 2nd 2018

After some thinking about our locations and our travel options, we decided to change our locations because of some problems we thought about with the locations we were previously thinking about. 

Office Scenes

For these scenes of the woman who works for the dating agency answering and hanging up the phone and flicking through the client files, as well as the shots of files on a shelf, we have two options for these scenes. We could use the careers room in our school which has quite bright colours and natural lighting, as well as plenty of shelves for us to film the shots of the files on. There is also a desk that has a computer at it, which we could use for the shots of the woman on the phone and working - however, if we have an outside-of-school actress for this scene, this may not be possible. However, we could still use this location for the shots of the files on the shelf if we needed.

Our other option is an outside-of-school location, which is my dad's work building. My dad has given us permission to film there if we need. The offices there are a lot more suitable for the scene we're to create, as it is a real workplace. There are larger desks with computers, with lots of paperwork and files on the desks as well as telephones, so this would be more realistic as a business because it actually is one. This also means we wouldn't need our own props, apart from our own client paperwork to put in a file, and a few colourful files for the shots on the shelves. This location would be more suitable if we had an outside-of-school actress. 

Indoor Scenes

Originally for these scenes of the main plot (ie. the dinner scene, the killing scene and the end scene), we we're going to use Maeve's house, however we noticed a few issues which were easily fixable by changing locations. The first issue was that Maeve's hallway between her kitchen and her bathroom is carpet floors, and in the killing scene, Bobby drags Poppy from the bathroom to the kitchen meaning that the blood would be trailing along the ground. This is easy to do on a tile/wooden floor as it's easy to clean, however, it would stain a carpet floor, so if we filmed in Maeve's house we wouldn't be able to include that scene.

Another issue we found was that her house was a bit further out from the location we would be filming the outdoor scenes in, so it would cost us more in travel purposes and also take up more time in the day by travelling from one location to another. 

For these reasons, we decided that Eimir's house would be more suitable for filming in because the layout of her house still matches the initial idea we had, but she also has tile floor between her kitchen and bathroom, so we can easily clean the mess made on the floor from the blood scene. The lighting in her house is also better in terms that we can use our own artificial lighting, so we can control the lighting throughout the scenes. 

In terms of travel, her house is also a 15 minute walk from a park that we can use for the outdoor scenes, making it much easier and less time consuming for us to get from one location to another. This also means that we can definitely do all of our filming for these scenes in the same day.

Outdoor Scenes

Originally, we were going to use Wallace Park as the location for our outdoor scenes, however, due to the change in locations for the indoor scenes, it made sense to relocate for the outdoor scenes as well to a closer location to Eimir's house. The place we're going to film the outdoor scenes is Moira Demesne which is a large park near Eimir's house. This location offers us the same features that Wallace Park does, except it might be even more beneficial for us as it would be a bit quieter than Wallace Park which would make filming dialogue much easier in these scenes. The location is still really beautiful and similar to those in 'The Undateables' so this location change was fairly simple. 

Interview Scenes

For the interview scenes, we've just decided to use a plain white wall in Eimir's house and make our own sort of backdrop for it, with Bobby/Poppy sitting in a chair. All of the shots in the interview scene will be taken from the waist upwards, so we only need to worry about the appearance of the background for the upper half of their bodies. We have an idea of making our own prop for the background, such as designing and cutting out a logo to represent the type of dating agency they're being documented for, such as using coloured card and creating a heart or something along the lines of that. We took this idea from 'First Dates' as they use a backdrop that looks like a white painted wooden wall, with a heart painted on it.

Character Costumes

January 29th 2018

The costumes for the two main characters, Bobby and Poppy, are both quite casual outfits. I did a bit of research into typical outfits for serial killers and had no real luck because they all dress quite normally/casually. I did find that Ted Bundy typically wore turtlenecks, but that was really all I could find. We're going to make the outfits quite smart-casual so that the outfits are suitable enough for a first date.

 Ted Bundy

Taking inspiration from Ted Bundy's outfits, I think a smart-casual outfit like the one I will show below would be suitable for Bobby's character:

The outfit consists of a black turtle neck jumper and a dark coloured blazer, however the blazer doesn't have to be black, we could use a dark maroon or even navy. I would swap the suit trousers out for a pair of dark coloured jeans to make the outfit a bit more casual and fitting for a first date.

In terms of colour, I would plan for the turtle neck to be red so that we can use the meaning and representations of colour in the film to evoke certain feelings within the audience.

Red typically represents danger and violence, so this colour being shown on our killer almost foreshadows the danger surrounding his character and what is to come further on in the film. I feel like this gives us a great opportunity to represent the danger in the personality of the killer, and evoke feelings of hazard in the audience.




Poppy's costume has a lot less inspiration as there aren't as many widely known serial killers who are female, and the ones who are more known have very generic outfits or don't have any records on what they wore at all. Because of this, we've had to take a stab at making her outfit up and still making it look smart-casual but still a little bit strange/eerie at the same time.

We were thinking about possibly giving Poppy some glasses that are very 1970's style because they add a bit of a strange vibe to her as she wears accessories from different generations than the one she is currently in, which makes her a bit different. We also took this inspiration from Rosemary West who was convicted of killing 10 young girls with her husband, Fred West, in 1995.

Rosemary West

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Characters - Characteristics

January 27th 2017 

Our film will only feature three characters, as well as a narrator who narrates many areas of the film.
The two main characters are the two serial killers who go on the date with each other, Bobby and Poppy. The third character is a lady who works for the dating agency. She briefly features in the film during the scenes where we show a bit of the dating agency office space such as the shots of her answering the phone and flicking through client's files, as well as the scene where she is on the phone to Bobby discussing his date.

The narrator will sound pretty similar to those on shows such as First Dates or The Undateables. Most of the lines for the narrator are plays on the common lines said by narrators in both of these shows, which will make the film sound as much like a real documentary as possible. The same goes for the woman working for the agency, she won't really show a personality, she's just there to fill a blank in the film to make it as similar to these shows as possible. She also will help us to make the story flow more, as she delivers the news about Poppy being Bobby's date.

In order to make sure that our two serial killers are as accurately portrayed as we can possibly make them, I decided to do some research into typical characteristics in serial killers. I used a few sources which I'll link here; 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3169359/How-spot-serial-killer-Criminologists-reveal-five-key-traits-common-notorious-murderers.html

https://listverse.com/2013/01/02/10-most-common-traits-of-potential-serial-killers/

http://twistedminds.creativescapism.com/serial-killers-introduction/holmes-typology/characteristics/

Profile Of A Killer Example from Agrosy University

These articles and facts helped me to mould the characters around the typical traits that serial killers tend to have. 

Bobby the Butcher Bennett
Bobby's character will come across as confident in the way he speaks, however he will be quite psychopathic. We want him to have similar characteristics to a typical killer, which will be made clear by the fact that he has an instability in his relationships (hence why he is using the dating agency) and an inability to maintain long lasting relationships.
Some of his psychopathic characteristics will be displayed by the fact that he has no regret, remorse, or expression of guilt. This is will be shown when he speaks about his previous murders, and shows the camera his murder weapons from those killings - and speaks about them in an almost joyful tone, which comes across as pretty sociopathic and creepy to the audience. From this scene, we can also take from his character that he is a repeat offender.
We can portray his psychopathic tendencies again after he kills Poppy, as he shows no signs of panicking about his actions, he just drags her into another room and proceeds to eat his meal. Bobby is also a very impulsive character, which is a similar characteristic in many killers, which we can show as he originally was looking for love through the dating agency, and instead, he brutally murders his date.

Another common trait that is found in serial killers is the fact that many of them are egotistical braggers, which we have decided to include in Bobby's character. Referring back to the scene where Bobby shows off his collection of 'trophies' to do with his killings, the fact that he is proud and bragging about his crimes and even keeps the murder weapons would make the audience very aware that he again, shows no remorse, and seems to be taking pride in the murders, which lets the audience know that Bobby really is a sociopath.

I would consider Bobby as the organised serial killer, the polar opposite of Poppy. Bobby is socially adequate, and seems to have good housekeeping skills. Although organised killers usually plan their murders a bit more than the average joe, many of them are still quite impulsive which is the type of killer we want to classify Bobby as. Organised killers are also more credible for dismembering bodies and leaving a clean scene - which is why we have the idea of portraying Bobby as a cannibal also as he cleans the scene up by literally dismembering the body and cooking it.

Poppy the Poisoner Parker
Poppy's character actually is based upon a woman who featured on an episode of 'The Undateables', so her character was quite a bit easier to plan in terms of her actions because we could physically see how she acts and the impression she makes on her date. The girl with the dark hair is the character we're basically trying to base Poppy's character around. By watching the clip of their date, especially the beginning of the date, you can see that she is quite awkward, not incredibly sociable and almost a bit shy. She struggles to keep eye contact throughout the date. We want Poppy to show these same sort of signs, such as not being able to hold eye contact or make conversation about anything other than murder - hence why she asks about Bobby's top 3 favourite kills in Wes Craven films.




Poppy's character will be a bit more subtle in terms of showing characteristics of being a serial killer; she will show more characteristics of a shy serial killer, more like an outsider, similar to a mass murderer who had been ostracised for years of their lives. She will appear as a more awkward character, avoiding eye contact and finding it hard to hold conversation. 
Poppy will appear as more of a disorganised serial killer, meaning that she is more socially awkward. She doesn't plan her killings, she is often the type to leave the body where it was attacked and flee the scene. She would be defined as the more dangerous killer, because she's unpredictable, lives on the fringe of society and doesn't have a daily routine. And frankly, people would be scared away by her strange aura and ostracise her because she seems weird and different (which she is). Poppy definitely fits into this category of killer, as they typically are very alone and rarely date, hence why she is at the dating agency. 

Another thing that is pretty common for disorganised killers is that they usually leave the evidence of their crime and flee the scene, which is exactly what Poppy will do after she pours the poison into Bobby's wine. She just leaves the empty poison bottle on the table and quickly goes to the bathroom. 

Film Title

January 26th 2018

We constructed a mind map of possible film titles by coming up with key words surrounding the general theme of the film and what it represents such as death, blood, murder and dates. From these keywords we came up with, we came up with any possible short and snappy titles that we could think of.

Some of these were too bland and boring, such as "The Killings" and "In For The Kill", and others were too long, such as "How To Murder Your Girlfriend".

We came up with "The Undeadables", which was almost like an homage to "The Undateables", which we are taking most of our inspiration from. However, this title seemed suitable for a film that was about supernatural beings like zombies or vampires, not as suitable for a film about serial killers.

From these titles, we narrowed it down to a final three of the best titles, which included; 

• Come Die With Me
• Last Dates
• The Deadly Dates

We decided on 'Last Dates', as it is short and snappy but also acts as a reference to another show which we are taking inspiration from, 'First Dates'. It also gives an ominous vibe to the film as 'Last' could leave the audience wondering why it is the last date - which they will soon find out is due to the fact they both cause each other's death.

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