After meetings with Steve i have decided to change the story slightly, because the beginning and ending were a bit weak.
The main part of the story is when Alice is actually in wonderland which is what i was focusing on, and i needed to make sure that was rounded off nicely as a whole, by having a strong before and after. It needs to be clear why Alice goes to wonderland and there needs to be some sort of ending thats an advance from the beginning.
I have found it really challenging to write the story and script, because i don’t want to write something that is going to look terrible to shoot, being on a student budget etc. I want it to look realistic, and coherent even if it is a fantasy film.
The original synopsis was that Alice was an evacuee in a manor house in the country and was bored of her surroundings, on one occasion when she is working in her room, she finds a camera and starts playing with it, hears someone come towards the room and hides in a wardrobe. She falls asleep and wakes up in ‘wonderland’ which is an escapism from her life. She goes through various stages meeting different characters that lead up to meeting the queen, and then she gets chased into the woods to see a light. She runs towards the light and you see an old lady in her death bed and it reveals that she was narrating the whole time.
The before and after wonderland were too boring and asked too many questions, like why and how was she in wonderland, why didn’t she show the tapes to anyone etc. so i changed parts of the story, to have more of an impact.
Now the film begins with Alice writing a letter to her friend from the city who has also been evacuated but to a different location. She writes about how she is bored of her surroundings and is upset she never gets to see her mother and father and also the male and female owners of the manor she has no relationship with. She only has her nanny, as a parental figure. The only other children staying at the house are twins who keep to themselves and just play tricks on Alice. As Alice narrates this section we get little snippets of shots depicting these characters in realistic settings. Alice ends the letter telling her friend she had herd people talking about sleeping tablets and how she thought they are a good idea, and if she took enough she could sleep until the war ends. She does not reveal where she will sleep in the letter but she says its in her favourite hiding place where no one will find her. There is then a shot of her taking the tablets and her belongings to a bookcase where she pushes it and theres a secret room. Inside is a little blanketed area with all her bits and bobs, including a camera. She closes the door and lights a candle to send her to sleep.
She then opens her eyes and she is in a bright flower bed, she gets up and looks around and comes across the characters of the twins, who are wearing gas masks, and matching costume. They lead her to the character of the caterpillar, who emulates the male figure in the house and also her father. (The gender roles in 1940s were still very traditional in aristocracy, eg. Male, father, figure is working so never really gets to spend time with daughter, now is fighting in war so again no connection, mother is worried for the war, their husband, brothers and relatives would have been fighting so they would have been very depressed and had a lot of emotions to deal with, all the children would have been lonely and worried for their future and that of their family and country)
The caterpillar character leads Alice to the mad hatter, who emulates the nanny, and the motherly guiding figure she has in her life, she is more personal with alice, and helps her make the decision as to wether she wants to stay in wonderland or go back to her life as it was. Alice needs to take more sleeping potion to stay there or she needs to have an antidote to wake up, otherwise she will ‘disappear’. Alice is unsure of what she wants to do but knows she does not want to disappear so needs to find the potions which are with the Queen.
The Queen of wonderland is a scary looking character, but seems nice enough and seems to help alice. She gives her both the potion and the antidote, and lets Alice decide. The bottles are unmarked though and Alice leaves it to fate to decide what her destiny is. she picks a bottle at random and the scene cuts to black.
you see the candle in Alice’s hiding place flicker out with alice still asleep.
Narrating is a reply to Alice’s letter, from her friend telling her she understands and its the same for her, as she’s going through the same thing. She says the war is almost over and to just wait it out, and she says how the sleeping tablets are a good idea however you should not take other peoples drugs, as you can die from them if they are not right for you. She ends the letter saying she looks falward to seeing her soon.
The camera pans out from the room to suggest that Alice does not wake from the wonderland, but its left as a cliff hanger.
Suzii Globe Final Major Project 