Alternative Ending Ideas

We used shot planning sheets to get more detail into 3 alternative ending scenes. We wrote about the advantages and disadvantages of each ending.


This is our first ending which shows a newspaper neglected in the gutter blowing in the wind with an article showing about a young boy who was killed in a hit and run. The ending will start with a long shot of the newspaper with people walking past it and it will gradually get closer until the article takes up the whole shot and it stay there for about 10 seconds. This is our least favourtie ending becasue it doesn't let the audience have a there own interpretation of what happened and what happend to the child. This ending will be hard to shoot becasue we would have to create a newspaper article and it make it turn to one page without it flicking over to the next page.

This is our second ending, this is our favourite ending because this it leaves the film on a cliff hanger and leaves the audience thinking of what happened. The swapping of the birthday symbolises that it was the mother's birthday all along, and it was her imagination of the day with the boy. The candles will gradually melt, as the camera shot fades out, the time it takes for the candles to fade out will allow time for the audience to conclude there own ending and start piecing bits together from the film. The credits will roll in this ending shot with sad, dramatic music playing. I think this will be the most effective ending because it will give the audience freedom to make there own ending but it may be difficult to film this ending.

In this ending we will focus on a family picture which was shown briefly earlier in the film so the audience can relate back. There is a difference in the the picture at the end because the boy in no longer in the picture. This gives the audience a chance to come up with their own ending.
The negatives about this ending is the fact that it might give away too much, it might be better to leave the ending more open and let the audience have there own interpretation of the ending. It would be difficult creating to identical pictures but making the second picture believable enough.