Since my two characters in my script are a Father and Daughter. I wanted to find inspiration from a short film on how the Father would talk to his Daughter, since I'm not a Father and I never saw my sister and Father sort out their differences, I had no idea how they'd speak. How I finally got the idea for a calm and protective Father to start with, as if he was talking to a 7 year old girl rather than a 16 year old girl. Was from the short film "The Talk" which can be seen here:
'The Talk' plays on the idea of a Father giving their child the talk about what sexual intercourse is, at first anyway. The idea that this is a very awkward situation to talk about with your child and that you'd want to discuss it when they're a teenager, so between 12-16 years old, rather than a younger age since children are often protected from sexual content or talk. This short film makes out as if the Father is about to have this talk with his Daughter and even by him holding back when saying "Your mum and I..." and then it changes to the Father is actually telling his Daughter that Santa Claus isn't real and that it's been the Mother and him bringing the presents and pretending to be Santa Claus. The film then goes into a more comical film by the Father opening up and telling his Daughter that she was an accident, he's always stressed, he stays at work late just to have time to himself and misses his old single life even though he loves his family. The writing for this plays with the feelings that some Father's do have after years of being in a family. He always goes back to tell his daughter to eat more pie as 'it'll help'. We think this is the twist as he goes from comforting and apologetic to very blunt and almost like he doesn't care, as he also eats her pie himself while telling her all these facts.
The real twist and comical turn comes towards the end of the film though as at the end the Daughter turns around and begins to tell the Father facts as well like:
- She's not actually his daughter
- The Mother is having an affair
- The Mother plans to leave him in a few years
The writing for this is very clever and makes the script very unique in the sense that we think we've seen the height of the film and then suddenly we get a complete change where the daughter is actually having a much serious talk and acting like the adult and the Father begins to act more like the child and then the at the end we get a brilliant moment where the daughter passes the plate over and says "Here, eat some more pie, it'll help" which is what the Father tells the daughter at the beginning of the film.
What I actually took from this short film was the way the Father acted. When writing my script I wasn't sure how to write the Father, I knew I wanted him and the daughter to argue but at the beginning of the script I couldn't have him shouting at her straight away because then there's not build up to the argument, I also couldn't have him mourning over his wife as this takes away the surprise at the end and takes away the build up to the discovery of her death. When having the script surgery with my tutor Simon he suggested having the Father trying to be nice and then from this film as well I saw this working. This idea of the Father being friendly, polite and caring, talking to Lily like she was a child would help get the audience on the Father's side and helps make more of a story then, this also helps the impact later discovering the truth of why the Father acts the way he does.
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