Assassin Project: Storyline and Victims

Victim 1: JERRY JENKINS

Character Inspiration: Mayor from The Taking of Pelham 123 portrayed by James Gandolfini.

Reason For Kill: Fraud

Time: 23:00 pm

This character is found with a bullet wound to his head. He had been taking a shower in his penthouse, when Vivian used a sniper to kill him. She had been sitting on a ledge on a building opposite his penthouse.

After each kill, Jim Washington sends a group of his agents to come and dispose of the body and make the crime seem staged. For this particular crime, the body had to be taken to the lab for an autopsy, as this man was in a position of power and his death would obviously be questioned.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Victim 2: DERRIL SMITH

Character Inspiration: Sonny from A Bronx Tale (1993) portrayed by Chazz Palminteri.

Reason For Kill: He is the founder of ‘The Silk Road’, an online black market that is known as a platform for selling illegal drugs. It operates as a hidden service through the deep web.

Time: 2:00 am

Vivian sneaks into his warehouse, which is where he stores all of his illegal drugs. She find him in his informal ‘office’ and uses one of his own needles to overdose him with heroin. The agents on standby enter the warehouse and begin arresting employees and guards and seize the illegal narcotics.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Victim 3: SIMON EDWARDS

Character Inspiration: George Harvey from The Lovely Bones (2009) portrayed by Stanley Tucci.

Reason For Kill: Human Trafficking

Time: 15:00 pm

Vivian discovers this man walking down an alley way as he had been stalking two young girls to be his next victims. She beats him up horrendously then proceeds to strangle him, as she allows her emotions (anger) to interfere with her mind.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Victim 4: JIM WASHINGTON

Character Inspiration: Robert McCall from The Equalizer (2014) portrayed by Denzel Washington.

Reason For Kill: He killed her mother.

Time: 23:30 pm

Vivian and Jim are working late at night on their next assignment. They are eating take away food, when Vivian suddenly makes a flirtatious move on him. She gives him a glass of wine which she had previously drugged. Jim assumes they are about to get intimate. Once he feels dizzy, she proceeds to confront him angrily about the death of her mother. He tries to reason with her, but she doesn’t believe him so she stabs him once in the chest and once in the neck.

__________________________________________________________________________________

VICTIMOLOGY:

All the victims are men who have who pose as a threat to the country or the exposure of confidential information and secrets in the government. Vivian attempts to kill the men without linking any emotion to the killing, but she does feel emotion in the third and fourth murders. This means that the first two murders are more clean-cut and better prepared, whereas the last two burn with anger and hint at the underlying theme of betrayal.

This is not the concrete version of events, but it is an outline for the storyline of this project.

Assassin Project: Introduction

OBJECTIVE:

To research, design and envision characters for a CSI Drama film product in order to pitch to the Fox Crime Network on DSTV. The crime scene investigative drama will air on DSTV at 22:00 pm every Friday. The research intends to identify characterisation that seeks to be effective in affecting a target audience.

For the purposes of this project, my protagonist will be a trained female assassin. The concept behind this approach is justice, which will be further explored below, through research and character exploration. This project serves as a basis for learning and developing new, practical skills.

Target Audience: The key ‘specimen’ are single females, ages 18-30, who attend university or have a full-time job, a middle-high income and are attracted to television series that involve suspense.

The story is established through the eyes of Vivian Mallory. We see that she is an ordinary 27-year-old female complying to her everyday routine and job. Or so we think.

We follow her through a series of compromising events. We learn that she is one way by day and another by night. She works an arbitrary job as an assistant printing helper at a crime investigation agency. The agency is located in a tall business building in the Cape Town City Centre. This is due to the fact that she secretly works for the government as a trained assassin, ready to eliminate any person who poses as a threat to the country or (actually) the exposure of confidential information and secrets in government.

Her mentor, Jim Washington (and boss) gives her all the information she requires for the next ‘elimination’, as well as providing her with gear, weapons and further training. These two characters share an unbreakable trust.

The motivation behind this concept was to explore the psychology behind an organised, premeditated murder – especially when the protagonist refuses to see it as murder, but rather, as justice.