1. Pitch
Title of film: Les Lèvres (The Lips)
Plot Synopsis
A coke-addicted woman leaves her hometown, seemingly running from
someone or something, for the city of Newcastle, trying to start a fresh in a
place where she will not stand out, but is unknowingly followed, and
apprehended at a bar and told she has no chance of leaving, and wherever
she goes, they will follow. She runs, and is chased through the winding,
labyrinthe streets of the city, eventually escaping. She hides out at a safe-
house for several weeks, living life as a normal civillian, to her best efforts,
but always with the threat of her past catching up.
She begins to work, commits to a relationship, and all seems as normal. The
threat still haunts her, and torments her, to the point where her own mind
becomes the only real threat. She cannot live with her own personal torment
to the point where she begins to hallucinate and eventually contemplates
suicide. Her normal, ideal life suddenly shatters when she comes home from
work to find the man she ran away from waiting in her flat. After a long
conversation, he takes her down to his car and drives her across the city to
the countryside. He lets her out of the car, explains why he cannot let her live,
and shoots her in the back of the head. This is exactly where the audience
leaves this woman's life, just when she does. The film ends on the gunshot
with a sharp cut to total black.
Opening Sequence
The opening sequence of the film will consist of the train journey, the arrival in
the city and her arrival at the bar. The film opens on the woman walking down
the train to the toilet, entering and we cut straight to her sniffing a line of coke,
setting up her drug addiction and obvious anxious personality, then to a shot
of her pupil dilating. Then a slow push-in on her sat down on the train, as the
titles appear in the frame. When she leaves the train, she walks to a bar, buys
a drink, and sits outside with a cigarette before a man sits opposite her and
tells her she will be followed everywhere she runs.
Creative Techniques
In the way of creative techniques, we will use a lot of innovative and exciting
camera shots, as well as some tried and tested methods of emotional
connection with a character (a slow dramatic push-in, for example). We will
use a lot of noir conventions; the clothes (suits, a dress etc.), smoking, black
and white etc. Our character's past will be an enigma, never being fully
revealed and left ambiguous, for the audience to decide what she did and
where she came from.

2. Funding/Distribution issues
The film will come across some distribution issues as the style and story are
slow and not particularly made for mainstream audiences. It would probably, if
any, get a limited release in UK cinemas. The demand for a release in the US
would be very small. Funding may also be a problem as it’s independent, it’s
by a first time director and it’s of a very limited target audience. Although the
film would not cost much to make at all, as it is almost void of action scenes.
A woman’s guilt and anxiety both come into play in this sparse, dark thriller
about the consequences of running away from a dangerous problem.