"Shadows Present" - Synopsis for Opening Sequence

A few hours earlier:

Peter walks along a footpath and discovers a body. Peter wears a woolly hat, a brown leather jacket, dark crumpled trousers and some black trainers. The person that he has just discovered appears to be dead and has a brown paper package in their hand. Peter reaches for the package, and prizes it away from its lifeless owner.

His eyes seem to wear that of a panicked expression. Of course, this event was a flashback, and coming back into the present day he speaks of how this was the day that his life finished.

Present Time

Jason walks through the door to his apartment. In the room that he enters is a table in the centre of the room, a chair situated in one corner of the room to his right, and a window on the wall opposite the door he has just come through, blinds drawn and partially letting light into the room. On the table sits a whisky glass, a bottle of whisky, a black biro pen and a scrap piece of paper. A stand-alone wooden cloak hanger sits to the left of the door, where Peter has placed his scarf. He reaches for his woolly hat on his head, pulls it off and places it on the table in front of him.

Peter drags the chair carelessly across the room to the table, then collapses into the chair. He is weak, and only just sober. He slowly reaches inside his jacket and pulls out the brown paper package that he had prized away from the lifeless owner. His hands shake vigorously, as if shivering, as he carelessly places the package on the table. He starts to inspect it.

Peter pierces his hand through the opening and draws out a ball of money in his hand. Twenty-pound notes. He rolls his eyes to the corner of both eyelids, then his face is shadowed by the blinds, then he rolls his eyes back to the package further inspect its contents.

He describes (in his mind) how he is like “a panther prowling through the undergrowth stalking its prey.” Then he asks himself “was I the panther, or the unsuspecting gazelle staring into the great gorging eyes of abyss without even realising it?”

The blinds seem to let in more light. The disturbing eruption and sudden burst of light causes Peter to remember more about how he had come across the package, only a few hours earlier. He remembers the landscape. A footpath, squelchy and dirty, yet dominated by foliage and weeds. He clearly remembers panting as he ran away from something. Whilst inspecting the package, he tries to remember what he was running away from, but he cannot think straight with the tension that is building through his flashback. He just remembers a shadow, but whilst running he was unable to make out where the shadow was coming from.

As he remembers glancing for a brief second behind him, his flashback suddenly stops and he is forced to continue inspecting the package to remember more. He asks “why me? Why me, the keep your head down, no fuss, always do as you’re told, unimportant cog. The one whose eyes you always avoid because otherwise you might actually have to acknowledge they exist. The bloke who melts in with the crowd. No one taking second notice!”

He again remembers running, rushing through the dense woodland. Lifeless winter leaves fall from branches onto the foliage-dominated pathway as Peter rushes past, and as the shadow seems to snake its way through the branches.

Back to the present time, as the flashback fades away for a brief moment, Peter pulls out another item from the package. It is a piece of card, which he unravels to discover someone’s contact details - an address and telephone number. It has been done in some sort of code, with cuttings from newspapers and magazines.

Wondering why he has come to possess someone’s contact details, he remembers more as his flashback claws it way back into his mind. He had tripped on a loose branch on the path and dropped the package. Going back for the package he briefly glanced behind him at the shadow, a pair of feet coming slightly into view. He picks up the package, and whilst doing so he comes back to the present time and looks at the package like he did on the path. Only this time, as he puts his hand into the package he draws out a photograph, which has been taken of him as he had walked on a different path some time ago. It was now obvious that someone was following him and watching his every move, but for what reason was still unclear.

Lots of ideas, thoughts and concepts filled his mind as his imagination started to run wild. The flashback again dominates his current state of mind, as he remembers stumbling back to his feet with the package in-hand after tripping on the loose branch.

The next item that he pulls out of the package is an A5-sized notebook. Turning the cover, he discovers a date scrawled on the inside cover, a date not so long ago.

He remembers suddenly diving behind a tree to catch his breath after running for what seemed like ages. Whilst catching his breath, he turns and looks around the tree at the footpath he has just run along. A silhouetted figure in the distance hides behind one of the other trees as Peter looks towards them.

Peter again dives behind the tree, now fully aware that there is someone on his trail. He takes three deep breaths, then makes a run for it, in his last final sprint, in order to try to lose the figure that is stalking him. He stares in desperation at the blinding coldness of the white winter sun.

Something that we, as the audience, see on-screen is a berry on a branch. A cold, wintry, whistling wind catches the berry, causing it to gracefully fall down from the branch. Halfway to the ground, the shot fades into the next shot, where the berry dropping from the branch is substituted by an ice cube, as it falls into a glass of whisky (inside Peter’s apartment, at the present time).

A hand comes into shot. It is Peter’s hand, as he reaches for his whisky glass. He picks it up and consequently gulps-down the whisky, unaware of a certain presence behind him. Peter gulped down the drink as if the whisky was the only thing he had left that was worth living for.
As Peter drew the glass away from his cheeks, he felt a presence, as if someone was behind him. He felt insecure for a brief moment, until a voice broke out of the dead silence, advising him on the way he should drink alcohol:

“You know that stuff will kill you.”

Bewildered by the contents of the brown paper package that lay so still on the table in front of him, Peter was not sure whether or not his imagination was trying to speak to him. But an accidental creek in one of his floorboards behind where he was sitting reassured him that there was actually someone there, though he does not turn around.

The creek suddenly sets off a series of last minute thoughts that pass through Peter’s mind. From the piercing white light appears a shadow, which crawls up the leg of the table to Peter’s left as the shadowed figure approaches from behind. The figure keeps on approaching until the shadowed ball of his head rests on the edge of the table. Peter is not alone.

The figure takes out a knife. The sound of the blade as it swipes the edges of the figure’s jacket pocket disturbs Peter, so much that he immediately closes his eyes after noticing the light that has been reflected off the shiny metallic surface of one side of the blade crawling down his right sleeve until it rested on the back of his right hand, which was face-down on the table.

Peter decides to reply to the shadowed figure’s rhetorical question, seeing no gain or loss from replying.

“I suppose that’s your job then isn’t it.” (closes eyes)
“It was all set up. Right from the off.”

Just to be sure that he was heard the first time, the shadowed figure speaks two more lines of dialogue, and consequently gets to speak for one final time before committing what he has come here to do. The greed dripping with determination from his shadowed and silhouetted lips as he spoke.

“Manipulation does indeed taste sweet in success.”
“Whilst revenge on the other hand is best served cold.”
“And it’s said that death is so very, very cold.”

The figure has spoken of the key word, which leads to a series of unfortunate events. As the figure starts to approach from behind, and as more floorboards creek under the weight of his feet, the light from the window seems to fade and Peter reaches inside his jacket with his right hand, and pulls out a gun. He had found the gun in the package, and had already placed it in his jacket pocket after it fell out of the package on the way home.

The camera tracks, or pans, over to the blinds on the window. The light has faded into more of a dark grey. The sound of a wooden chair moving across the floor. More floorboards creeking. And suddenly, the sound of two people struggling to defend themselves from each other. Peter with a gun, the figure with a knife. The light from the blinds increases steadily as the struggling drags on, until the battle comes to its climax.

A gunshot, the light from the blinds suddenly comes at full beam, then dims as the struggling of a person dying, as they fall to their knees.

Was it Peter who won the battle? Did he manage to disarm the mystery figure and shoot him? Or did the mystery figure kill Peter? The next camera shot is focused on the floor, which is fully-lit by the light from the window. A hand falls into shot, the fingers letting-go of a scrunched-up piece of paper. And written on the paper is the title of the movie, “Shadows Present”.

All light and noise seems to die down (fade) after the hand has fallen, and consequently the shot fades out to black. As to whose hand has dropped is unclear. The enigma of the movie - who died?

(A shadow passes over the hand just before the light fades away).