Further Ideas Development

Following the Dyer reading I completed yesterday, I have been thinking a lot about looking at the stereotypes of homelessness critically. The reading suggested placing the character representing a certain stereotype into a place or situation in which the audience wouldn't expect to find them.
One of the initial sequences for my film included an interview of the homeless individual. This idea was taken from my own experience working in a woman's night shelter. Every time a new woman came into the shelter we had to complete a questionnaire with them asking some quite personal questions in order to get an idea of the kind of support they may need, and to assess whether or not they were a risk to others within the shelter. Having read the Dyer reading, I have had the idea of switching roles in this sequence and have the homeless individual interviewing a non homeless person, possibly a support worker.

I have thought about setting the whole film in a night shelter with the main plot following this interview sequence. I would still like to include the shadow sequence and thought I could include some slightly surreal sequences exploring how stereotypes help us grasp reality and the effects re-positioning a stereotyped character has on our understanding of the concepts of this reality. I would also like to possibly include a 'puppet master' element to make the audience question who constructs these stereotypes. I was thinking that this may be a way I could literally incorporate the shadow element, possibly using shadow puppets - something I would need to look into.

I am meeting with Natalia again on Tuesday afternoon to discuss and develop our ideas further but hopefully this will form the basic storyline for my film. Both homelessness and stereotypes are very broad subjects which could take many possible directions so I still have a lot of reading to do and at the moment I am still open to this idea changing directions, but hopefully the more I read, the more strength I can bring to build this idea and take it into production.