Idea for Opening Scene and Synopsis

This is my own synopsis for my idea for a thriller film and a walkthrough of the opening scene. I did this as part of my research and development of idea for the real thing.


Synopsis
It’s 1976 and a 24 year old black working class woman, Sarah Meredith, is working two jobs to keep herself fed and housed. She works as a cleaner for a white business-buff high up in the social rank of London. After stumbling upon a classified document in his house about one of the most famous unsolved murder cases of the 50’s she ends up being sucked in to a world of violence, hatred, corruption and greed. Though as the story begins to unfold, she finds herself being erased from society, the government begin to do all they can to make sure no one knows who she is or cares what happens to her.
By a chance encounter she begins to rendezvous with her boss’s 28 year old son, James Cabot, who has been aware of something suspicious and threatening going on with his father for a couple of years, decides to help Sarah uncover the truth. She realises as her life begins to crash down around her that there’s no point running, so her and James set out to uncover the truth about the murder. As the pair become more and more involved in the story, they begin to fall for each other. The story ends with a solved mystery and a dead lover…


Opening Scene
The opening scene to this that I thought would be effective is starting it with a scene from the end. The first few seconds is a black screen and there is off-screen diegetic sound of a woman lightly sobbing. Then we see the two characters, (Sarah and James) standing holding each other. Sarah is crying and James is staring at someone holding a gun. The shot cuts to this person, he’s slightly hidden in shadow. There’s a deathly silence until the man holding the gun says ‘you should never have gotten involved. It’s… It’s for the best.’ As he begins to step forward the shot cuts to the couple, James kisses Sarah’s head and whispers, ‘till the end’. There’s a gunshot, and the screen goes black. This scene lasts for about a minute, the black screen turns into the woman from before opening curtains to a bleak morning. The rest of the minute of the opening consists of her bustling around her flat getting ready for work like any other day. There are credits as she does this on the screen in a bold Verdana font and the music playing in the background is either the first minute of ‘No Love Lost’ by Joy Division, or ‘Gimme Shelter’ by the Rolling Stones.