Treatment (Balloons) [Discarded]

Balloons

Duration: approximately 5 minutes.

Audience: Age 15 and above, aimed toward older teens.

Synopsis/summary: A down on his luck, unhappy man lives a routine life of all work and no play until he stumbles across a similarly cheerless woman. 

The man awakes abruptly to his alarm, gets ready for work and jumps on the bus. We see him live his average day of boring team meetings and photocopying before he heads home again ready for the same day tomorrow -

he goes through work in a similar to fashion to the 'signs' short film (linked in 'analysis of short films' post). The character must appear comedically miserable with long stable shots of his emotion and reaction to work.
On his usual trip home from work he crosses a similarly miserable woman and the two bond on the finding of 2 balloons whilst walking home together.

Both balloons have faces drawn on them (male and female, although the characters are unaware of these faces as the
drawings are non-diegetic).
The pair begin walking home regularly and quickly begin a relationship shown in montage (in the style of Up!'s 'married life' scene). The couple carry their retrospective balloons wherever they go and the emotions on the balloons change depending on the state of their relationship. Over a natural course, the relationship begins to fall apart and the balloons begin to appear lifeless and aptly miserable in coordination with the couples relationship. During a heated argument, both the balloons loudly pop and the main character returns to his routine day of the work the following day. As he continues his work of photocopying and team meetings once more, he returns to his computer to sit down and finds his balloon, now repaired with plasters and Sellotape with an apologetic card tied to the bottom of the string, insinuating there is still hope for his relationship.

Suggested elements of the short film are temporal frequency in relation to how many times the main characters monotonous work routine is shown to the audience to create empathy for the character. There is also emphasis on the progression of the relationship through montage and the quick succession and state of the relationship in accordance to the balloons emotions.
The narrative is completely linear and restricted to avoid confusion to a simple, charming story.