My Film Synopsis

My next task is to write a film synopsis for my film. Even though I am only going to film the opening of my film, I need to know the whole of my story so that I can film my opening in context to the complete film. This is essential for my planning and will hopefully make the narrative a lot clearer for my filming, so that I am ready to go out and film.
My Film Synopsis

[Henry is sat looking through a photo album. We see images of him and a woman we later find out to be Olivia. A letter is at the back of the scrapbook, and a woman’s voice reads the letter out, as Henry subsequently has a flashback of his and Olivia's relationship before the baby.] - Film Opening

Olivia and Henry, meet fall in love get married. Meet at 16, marry at 18. Whirlwind romance, reflected in fast paced editing of their love.

We then see Olivia and Henry in a doctor’s office, the doctor tells Olivia that she is pregnant but she has cancer. She can’t be treated for the cancer because she is pregnant unless she has an abortion. This means that she may not survive the length of the pregnancy and even if she does, she may not survive the labour. Olivia and Henry argue, he thinks she should have an abortion, she doesn’t want to kill a/her baby even if it kills her. She tells Henry it’s her body, her life and he should support her in whatever she chooses. Henry breaks down and says he doesn’t want to lose her. He agrees to support her in her decision to keep the baby and tells her he will make the next nine months the best in her life.

We see a fast paced, edited sequence of Olivia’s pregnancy, Henry takes her on holiday, buys her presents, treats her like a princess, but as the pregnancy develops she becomes weaker and weaker. Henry is strong and composed in front of Olivia but by himself he breaks down and is a mess.

Olivia goes into labour and gives birth to a baby girl, both Olivia and Henry are ecstatic as Olivia survived, momentarily they forget about the cancer. Olivia is very weak and dies during the night, taken aback and full of grief Henry can’t even look at the baby and even considers smothering her but stops himself after seeing the resemblance of Olivia in their daughters face. He gives the baby to Sarah’s mother to look after and sinks into deep depression and turns to alcohol. Henry decides to move away from the painful memories but whilst cleaning out he discovers a letter obviously written by Olivia before she died. The letter tells Henry not to blame the baby and to look after her as she knows that he would blame her for her death.

Henry realises that he should never have given his daughter away and decides to clean up his act, stop the booze, clean the house and decorate a nursery. He decides to stay in the house because he wants to keep the good memories.

Henry is sat looking through his and Olivia's photo album. We see images of him and Olivia, the letter is found and read out by Olivia while Henry has his flashback.  We obviously know that Olivia is no longer around.

The scene goes back to Henry where the camera widens out and we see a women walking towards Henry holding a young baby sleeping on her shoulder. Henry tells the woman he is ready and takes the baby from her, who awakes and smiles straight at Henry. Although no dialogue we can see a deep connection and the love felt by Henry towards this little girl.

This piece of work, made the narrative of my film solid in my head, so that I know what is going to happen in my film and what I need to storyboard for the actual film opening. This work was really important as I now know exactly what I am going to do. I now also know that I am not going to have a chronical narrative for my film. I am going to film the opening where Henry finds the letter in the photo album and has flashbacks of his relationship with Olivia.