Film Treatment: The Students That Know
Logline: The police get a call from some college students concerning a professor harassing a student; when they show up the professor is dead, and each student is questioned individually about his death.
The film will deal with gender in that each student has their stereotypical “role” from the outside, but as the students tell the stories about their lives and what they think happened to their professor, we find that things aren’t exactly what they seem. The students have very modern and open-minded ideas about gender, gender roles,sex and gender. Sexualities are different than one might assume. The students all consider themselves open minded, though several reveal in their investigation that it hasn’t always been this way for them. It also becomes clear that the professor had very different ideas, especially when it came to gender.
In his office, Professor Newbert is slumped over his desk, his arms at the side of his chair, a pool of blood seeping out from his chest. An investigator says he needs to take all the students to the police station, and a dingy room is where the entire film takes place (This backstory is revealed to the audience through the various students story. We don’t see any of this, as the entire movie takes place in the “investigation room”.) In the investigation room, each student has a story to tell beyond just the murder. We get glimpses the good and bad in college life, but once they get more into what happened with the professor, more about the bad. As the film goes on, the students begin to reveal that the professor said questionable things about women and began to act strangely towards some of the girls in the class. Some of the students gathered after class and went to support Professor Newbert, but they find their efforts mostly futile because all they are assured if that they’ll question him. After several days, they still haven’t hear anything. A week or so later, Professor Newbert asks one of the girls to stay back after class. Some of the other students wait in the hall in case anything happens. He asks the girl if she’s having any problem with the class and she nervously says no. He asks if she’s sure, and she says he’s sure. She turns away to the door and he comes after her and grabs her butt. When she reacts, slapping his hand away, he grabs her wrist and pulls him to her, asking what about that bothered her. She yanks free and runs out of the room and out of the building, where she tells her classmates that waited what happened. They call 911 this time to report him and they wait outside the building. When the police shop up, they tell him the number of Professor Newbert’s office. Newbert, who’s office has a view of outside and must have seen the police, panics. He locks his door, stabs himself, and hides the knife in his desk while he’s dying.
The investigation room would look something like this:
This film would be shot in a documentary style and take place in one setting. There would need to be about ten student narrators. All of the stereotypical roles will be filled: the student athlete, the theater kid, the hipster, the strange kid, the kid that just doesn’t care, the book nerd, the sorority girl, the fraternity guy, and one kid who’s just bland and “normal”. However all these stereotypes are turned on their head as we learn that all the students have very different ideas of what gender and sexuality means to them, as they all attend a liberal college and are open-minded. This doesn’t mean they don’t each have their problems. We never learn what subject the professor teaches. There would also be a police officer conducting the investigations.
The main point of this film isn’t the creepiness of the professor. This film will explore themes of mental health, sexual harassment, and gender, and as each student’s story will reveal more about other students and college in general rather just the. The killing turns out to be a suicide, which is a problem on college campuses, but typically this stems from internal and external conflict in a student’s world. The film doesn’t suggest that sexual predators should kill themselves or be killed, but is meant to highlight the students, rather. It’s meant to bring to life the open-mindedness and acceptance of each other, and their compassion and willingness to help each other out despite their differences, something that doesn’t always happen on college campuses.
