R+P Post 4: Our film's genre, title and plot outline

Our film's genre is Mystery Drama and our working title is 'What Happened to Peter Smith?' We have also figured out a basic plotline at this point, detailed in the table below:

This is the basic plotline for our film. It follows the conventional classic narrative pattern, and has been broken down into steps using this pattern. Click to enlarge.

One film we looked at quite a lot to inform our ideas was 'The Usual Suspects,' a Mystery film with neo-noir influences. This film starts similarly to ours, in that the line between Equilibrium and Disruption is blurred. 'The Usual Suspects' shows a crime that takes place chronologically near the end of the narrative as the first scene, and then transitions to an interrogation, which forms the majority of the film- the rest of the scenes are told through conversations between the detective and his interviewee with flashbacks and visualisations of what they say. 

A still from the boat scene from 'The Usual Suspects.' After the opening credits, we see a shoot-out and other events take place here. This is initially confusing, but the film soon cuts to an interview with the only known survivor of the fight, and throughout the interview (and thus the film) more and more becomes clear, and the story is revealed. Click to enlarge.

Our film, in comparison, also introduces the Disruption along with the Equilibrium, as we seek to create a fluid, almost unnoticeable movement between the two. We also liked the idea of telling the story through interviewing, so we decided to use the interrogations as part of the basis of our film, but tried to innovate and move away from 'The Usual Suspects' a bit by also featuring the detective doing police work and the teenagers going about their lives to push the story forwards.

In 'The Usual Suspects,' the lives of these five characters leading up to the event shown at the beginning of the film are explored through an interrogation of the only survivor of said event. It is a very influential film for us, in this area of planning and others. Click to enlarge.

At this point in planning, we have made quite a few key decisions, but I think we have chosen our inspirations and how they influence our choices well. We have a good basis to build on for the rest of the development process, and our decision to have the disruption in the opening 'The Usual Suspects' style should allow us to create a compelling sequence.