Treatment Redraft

 

LIAR, LIAR, GHOST

You may be familiar with the story of ‘The boy who cried wolf’, but are you ready for the tale of the girl who cried Ghost?

A story by Maddy Finlay-Hudson, Julia Malamoo and Julia Durham

KEY CHARACTERS:

Nathalie Kors is a St. Hildas Student who lives in the on-site boarding house; she is very laid back and fairly lethargic. Her peers avoid her because she can be both immature and rude and often finds amusement in pranking others. She is average height, with blue eyes and golden brown hair; she has a fairly squared jaw, with a fair complexion and braces. Nathalie is haunted by a recurring dream from her childhood, in which a shadowy figure would try and pull her away with it, because of this she finds comfort in her fears by mocking others and making crude jokes about ghosts living in the dorm.

ADDITIONAL CHARACTERS:

Nathalie’s dorm mates consist of Gabby Burey, Olivia Bathurst, Kelsey Sheekey, Georgia Phillips and Julia Durham. Olivia, Georgia and Julia are often victims of Nathalie’s pranks and are not found of her. Gabby and Kelsey, on the other hand, are rowers and usually angered by Nathalie when her pranks cause them to be awake much earlier than they are expected to be for training.

KEY LOCATIONS:

Dorm Setting:  Nathalie’s room is located in back corner of the big open room, there is a small section of the large French window inside the half walls of her room, beneath it is her bed with a small walkway and a desk opposite. Her room is one of the smaller rooms inside the dorm and has poorer light than the rest, meaning the light over the desk is the main source of brightness in her room.

Hallway/Bathroom:  The hallway is in the boarding house, during daytime it is flooded by natural light, as there are windows all the way down the outer wall however at night it is unlit and the darkness offers no natural light. There is a white door at the end, which opens up to the top of a long, red, carpeted staircase that leads into an abandoned reception area. From here there is a few more stairs leading to a single toilet outside, due to the fact the upstairs toilets are ‘out of order.’

The film opens with a black screen, the white title reading ‘Liar. Liar. Ghost.’ slowly fades in before the title and the black background fade out to reveal close up shot of a tap dripping slowly into a bucket of water. The camera then zooms out, panning backwards to reveal Nathalie turning the tap off and reaching for the bucket handle. The camera then follows her, panning slowly as she walks along the corridor and follows her up the stairs. Nathalie reaches up to place the bucket of water on top of a cupboard, the camera panning upwards, following the bucket, focusing on the string hanging down from the handle. The shot then cuts to a close up of her hand tying a piece of string around the door handle. The sudden sound of someone walking up the stairs startles her and she jumps, the shot then becomes a close-up of her face as she looks side to side. She then runs out of the room and hides around the corner stepping into a different room down the short hallway. The sound effect of footsteps becomes louder, echoing, as a girl approaches the room with the bucket of water. She groans inwardly as she looks up cautiously, expecting something to be placed there and as she expects, sees the obvious bucket on top of her cupboard. She calls out to Nathalie and begins to laugh at Nathalie’s pathetic prank. Nathalie sighs in defeat as she walks around the corner to see her proposed victim, Gabby Burey, laughing at her. Just as she is reaching up to take the bucket of water down from the cupboard top, she hears the supervisor call out saying it’s time to go to school. Nathalie grabs her bag and her schoolbooks in a hurry and dashes out of the boarding house to avoid her peers, as the shot fades away to black.

After a short break, a shot of Nathalie returning from school and opening the front door of boarding fades in from the previously black background. She pulls a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and the camera zooms into an extreme close-up shot of her messy pencil scratching’s, revealing it is in fact a list of her pranks. All of them are shown crossed out, as they have been attempted, except for one, which reads ‘The Girl Who Cried Ghost’. Nathalie looks up from the piece of paper and casually strolls down the main boarding house hallways, smirking widely. The shot fades out and when it fades back in it is nighttime and the setting has changed to a tall walled, gloomy dormitory. The dorm is poorly lit, and looks almost sinister with the beams of light from the moonlight shining through the few windows. The camera moves through the dorm in a first person/point of view shot. It continues to do this until it reaches Nathalie’s room. It then follows the door as it creaks open slowly and pans to look at Nathalie where she is in her bed sound asleep, zooming into her face. The shot cuts and changes to another shot in Nathalie’s perspective. Showing her suddenly opening her eyes, the light increases in the room as she turns on her bedside light and the sudden movement of her sitting up in her bed. She breathes out in relief. The camera then follows her hand in a close up shot as it reaches over to her desk and picks up the same piece of paper that she was holding earlier. The shot becomes an extreme close-up, focusing on the only prank she has left: ‘The Girl Who Cried Ghost’. She smirks before raising her hands up to her face and cupping them around her mouth before she begins to yell out in fake panic, ‘Ghost! Ghost!’ The sound effect of people thumping around their rooms from the fright and panicking slightly echoes around the acoustics of the room before fading into a shot of then Nathalie’s door. The faint sound of her sniggers can be heard over the sighs of her dorm mates. The screen then cuts to black to end the scene.

 The shot opens with light flooding onto the screen, showing a lightly distorted mid close-up shot of the hall with a blurred figure walking down it. The shot clarity then becomes sharper to reveal Nathalie walking out of boarding quad. In the background, a group of girls are gathered, eyes on Nathalie with subtle hints they are talking about her. As she walks nearer a weaker audio track reveals they are talking about her and how they dislike her and her pranks. The shot changes and the camera turns around to face Nathalie. A close up of her eyes tearing up and as she walks away the girls mimicking becomes louder and clearly audible.

The previous scene fades into an over the shoulder shot of Nathalie checking her emails. The camera slowly zooms into an extreme close-up of her typing her login details for her emails. The camera pans backwards into another third person shot to show her opening an email. The email is a chain mail, stating that is should be sent on to 25 people in the next 5 minutes to stop the ghost of ‘Jane Table’ coming to kill the recipient.  Nathalie simply disregards email as rubbish. The camera follows the cursor in an extreme close-up shot as hovers over the delete button. Nathalie clicks delete before returning to her assignment she had previously been working on. The camera zooms into show the clock in the right corner of the laptop screen; the sound of Nathalie laughing can be heard before she decides to repeat her prank from the previous night. She smirks  to herself before raising her hands up to her face and cupping them around her mouth before she begins to yell out in fake panic, ‘Ghost! Ghost!’ The sound effect of people thumping around their rooms from the fright and panicking slightly echoes around the acoustics of the room before fading into a shot of then Nathalie’s door. The faint sound of her sniggers can be heard over the sighs of her dorm mates. The screen then cuts to black to end the scene.

The next day Nathalie receives angry remarks from her fellow boarders as she walks past them at breakfast. The scene fades out and skips through the day with the scene fading back in to show Nathalie walking up the stairs to her room. She is greeted by a group of boarders (consisting of all additional characters) gossiping about her pranks and her persistence to make everyone hate her. Nathalie waves to the group happily however she is blanked as all the boarders stand up and storm to their rooms. The sound of slamming doors echoes around the room and the camera follows Nathalie to her room; the only sound being her muffled sniffles. The scene cuts to black as she enters her room, the sound of her door slamming fading out with the cut.

The next scene fades into show it is later that night and once again she wakes up from a nightmare to find herself covered in sweat and gasping for air. The shot alters to a first person shot through her eyes and a blurred black figure is visible at the end of her bed, Nathalie blinks twice and the figure is gone. Shaken by the sinister event she decides to go to the bathroom. The camera shot changes subtly into a 3^rd person shot and the camera follows her as she walks to the down the stairs, round the corridor and down further stairs to the outside toilet due to the toilets upstairs being out of order from an earlier prank.

The next scene fades into an over the shoulder close up shot of her washing her hands in the sink. The water suddenly cuts out and the mirror fogs up. Nathalie fells a presence behind her and turns to investigate however finds no one there. Dismissing the event to her imagination she begins to walk down the corridor however the haunting whisper of a child echoes around her (the voice is actually Jane Table-the ghost) The words becoming a short poetic verse. “Naughty, naughty Nat, I told you not to do that. I have been spying and you have been lying. You should’ve stayed in bed because now you’re as good as dead.” Recognizing the verse from the email she had read earlier (shown by a series of flashbacks to previous shots merged into a short sequence) she realizes she is in fact in trouble. She begins to panic and rush up the stairs to her room crying out “Help! Help! Ghost!” The sound of people stirring in bed, cursing and complaining about needing sleep for early morning practices echo around. As she is almost at the top of the stairs something grabs her ankle abruptly and begins to drag her down the stairs. The sound of Nathalie’s shrieks echo around the corridors, as the muffled sound of her body thudding down the stairs is audible in the background before it stops after the slam of the door. The shot fades to black and cuts into the light of the next day of a door at the foot of the stairs.

The scene cuts out to black and white text appears to contrast the background. The text explains that Nathalie has not been seen again and that the moral of the story is ‘Don’t tell lies and then expect people to care afterwards.’