The day ends, and
he comes back a few times a week. She is there everyday and she finds herself
looking forward to his arrival each time. They smile and look at each other
more. He wipes a huge amount of soap on the window and draws cute things (like
snowflakes, smiley faces, hearts). They both smile. As he wipes it away, more
bubbles appear. (He blows bubbles from a make shift bubble blower to maker her
happy?) He then leaves like normal, however he doesn’t return for a while. She
begins to get sad again and thinks it was too good to be true.
It comes to Xmas
eve and she closes up shop for the holidays. It’s evening, she has a coat on;
it’s snowing beautifully. She holds out her hand to catch snowflakes, and looks
at the sky, then she notices a bubble land in her hand, then more float around
her. Confused, she turns around to see the enormous tree spectacularly
decorated with bubbles for baubles that glisten with the lights. The window
cleaner is standing next to it, smiling and blowing bubbles towards her. They
both grin, she runs over and they hug. Ending shot: hug, and both looking at
the beautiful tree.
Okay - but not sure about the 'glowing christmas tree' that she sees through the window. Shouldn't it just be a tree at this point - nothing special - just a bit of background? You need to show the tree nice and early, and establish its spatial relationship with the shop etc, so it's appearance at the end of the film doesn't seem like a cheat. Personally, I'd get rid of the hug at the end - it will all be all the more beautiful if we just get a sense that we're at the beginning of something - let the audience imagine the actual moment they make contact in this way.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to establishing the 'downtrodden but beautiful' cleaner in the parlour, I think we need to be shown how the other women in the parlour (who are all superficially more beautiful) are dismissive of her, or treat her as if she's invisible.
I suggest that you look at your ACT 1 set-up; right now, everything happens in the same moment - so the window cleaner and the cleaner make eye contact the first time we encounter them. Try setting up some parallel action instead. So, we first see the window-cleaner (it's spring, because there's blossom on 'the' tree); you spend a bit of time showing us that he's melancholy and alone; we see past him, and just get shown that there are women below him in the parlour; and they're leaving; he splashes some water on the window, and then we see a mop appear, and now we're inside the parlour and we're watching the other cleaner; we spend some time with her. She looks up, sees the window cleaner - he sees her; he smiles, she looks away. End
Next scene - window cleaner - the tree behind him as he works is in full leaf; skies are blue, it's obviously summer now etc. (so you use the tree to describe the passing of the year)... in other words, I think you need a bit more time to set things up, and not try and develop their relationship in the space of one moment.
In terms of the tree, I think if at the end of your story, it's a bare tree, with just the soap baubles in snow-like soap suds on the branches, it could still look very festive and beautiful. It would really help your story I think if the tree is deciduous, as opposed to an evergreen specimen, because that way you can use the different states of the tree to convey the passing of time.
Ookily dokily :)
Delete