Treatment: Scripting our sequence

Below is a very much shortened version of our original script, many of our original ideas had to be withdrawn from the script for both time constraints and practicality reasons. The script was drafted 3 or 4 times and finally condensed into this version which should last around 2 minutes, have very few set-ups and can be sectioned into short sequences that can be easily remembered by the actors and allow us to film from various angles with ease.

We made sure that there was definitely a sense of drama and a hint of romance in the script, so the audience would be able to identify the genre. We 

Treatment: How we plan to connote genre in our sequence

After our proposal, we made some changes to how we would connote the genre in our sequence to what is mentioned below:

In order to make sure the audience was able to clearly understand that the genre is Romantic Drama, we looked at some film opening of the same genre. For example, 'The Notebook', 'P.S I Love You' and 'Silver Linings Playbook'. From analysing the opening sequences of similar films, we came to the conclusion that: 

Many Romantic Dramas tend not to make it initially clear what is the cause of the drama; it may have been something which happened prior to the films starting point, it may happen during the film, or it may be a mixture of both as is the case for our film.

The music that we plan on using will help us convey in more depth the emotions of the characters to the audience, since Romantic Dramas depend a lot on emotion. This genre tends to have the protagonist in conflict with themselves or another character, which happens in our opening sequence.

Treatment: our planned film narrative

The concept for our story follows Todorov's theory of equilibrium; this gave us a set structure to follow when creating the narrative. It is also a trusted theory used in many films that ensures the audience are able to understand the narrative.


Our film narrative is similar to that of 'Remember Me'. From it's narrative we came up with our own narrative as explained below:

A young woman gets back to normal life after tragedy strikes. Equilibrium: Jess’s (protagonist) life is turned upside down after Michael; her boyfriend of two years dies. She isolates herself from her surroundings as she’s trying to cope. At the start of the new academic year, Jess has been finding it hard to deal with the death of her boyfriend. She starts college along with her best friend Alex. He acts as a guide for her.

Disruption: Jess decides that if she can’t cope with her life the way it is, then the best thing to do is to create a new one. A new Jess, with new motives and a new outlook on life. She begins skiving off college, going to parties and taking drugs. She turns into the complete opposite of normal self.   Resolution: Alex cannot stand by and watch while Jess continues this spiral of decline. He decides that it is time to step in and force Jess back onto the right path, because he knows this isn’t the true Jess. The two of them bond over this event and become close to one another. New Equilibrium: Jess realises that she isn’t being true to herself and that if she continues then she is only heading towards self-destruction. Alex and Jess have become an official couple. The two of them decide that the best way to honour Michael’s memory is to plant an evergreen tree in her back garden.

Treatment: Planning our use of effects

There are a range of possible effects that we could use in our piece, but we want to keep things simple and neat. To do that we will keep the use of effects to a minimum and if any were to be used, then they will be subtle and meaningful.

This is the type of effect we would like to use when the main title for the film appears on screen. It will be integrated onto the memorial card, so that it looks like it was typed on there initially.

Our score for the sequence will be fairly slow and soft, building up in tempo as the characters emotions begin to flare up. It will not be introduced into the sequence until the last few shots as we feel that it may distract from the scene.

As it stands this is our chosen piece

With this as a contingency plan if any problems occur

Treatment: Planning our film-making techniques

Our use of film-making techniques is very important in telling the story and conveying certain things about our characters. Making the wrong change could in fact lead to the audience getting the wrong perception of characters and story.

Camera:

We will use panning in our first shot to convey the location of objects in relation to Jess.

We planned to use focus pulls in our first shot to blur the alarm clock which becomes sharper, symbolising waking up (imitation of Jess’ perspective). However this has now changed, to us panning from the alarm clock to Jess as she rolls over in her bed

Composition:

We are planning to frame most of our shots with focus on just one character hence portraying the sense of emptiness in the film.

Mise-en-Scene:

Use of set and props in Jess’ room will give a large amount of insight as to the type of person she is. Our mainly monochrome colour-scheme of the room reflects her state of mind at the time and shows that her life is in a state of disarray. Our props will include empty ice cream tubs, vodka bottles and other objects associated with mess. This will be used to depict the stale bedroom that Jess has created. The male lead, Alex will interact with the props such as straightening the photo and clearing up Jess' mess.

Continuity:

To create continuity in our sequence we have used a series of techniques. These include:

- Match-on-action: When Alex is pushed outside of Jess' room, we see him being pushed out and then we see the door slam in his face.
- Shot-reverse shot: We will use this to illustrate the conversation between the two main characters, Jess and Alex. 

- The props on the set will be set out the same throughout all our shoots. To do this, we will take a picture of the room and use it as a template to rearrange the bedroom every time we shoot.

- We have complied with the 180 degree rule to make sure there is no confusion experienced by the audience.

- We would use elliptical editing: Alex turns to the door, then the camera cuts to inside the room as Alex knocks. The audience would assume that Alex had walked to the door despite there not being footage of him walking to the door.

Treatment: Visual Style

Our Original Plan for Lighting:

We intend to have the room lit in a fairly naturalistic way, we want it to look as though there are two main lighting styles used, low key and high key. Our preference is to have the low key lighting soft and feint, to almost reflect Jess' state of mind. It should look like a natural source of light.

For the dark scenes we will use numerous filters over one light so we can see her and it will replicate how her room looks before the morning. We are planning to direct our light at the ceiling so the light can bounce off the ceiling and walls to give the impression of room lighting.

The Final Approach to Lighting:

We still intend to light our room in a naturalistic way. We decided to use all three lights in the lighting kit with filters. We aimed to keep the lighting constant by blocking out light from the window so there would be less likelihood of continuity errors as the light outside changes as the day proceeds. We will grade the sequence further to observe our desired look for the dark scenes as well as the light scenes.

Papadopoulos & Sons

We took 'Papadopoulos & Sons'(Marcus Markou, 2012) as an example, at the begining, they made the lighting of the mansion have a sense of coldness as well as making it naturalistic.

For the main bedroom where the predominant scene is set, we will use two lights. One light will have a purple filter over white filter. The second light will have a grey dimming filter and a white filter. The first light provides clarity and gives the scene a fresh look. The second light lessens silhouettes and balances the light as well as adding a yellow tinge to colourise the look of the actors. We plan to direct both these lights out of shot so the walls and ceiling and reflect the light.

Treatment: Ensuring our sequence look like a Film Opening

The project is to create an opening sequence for a film, not a film itself. As such is it essential that the sequence is made in a way that allows an entire story to be put on the back of it. There needs to be some ambiguity, so that the audience are left with questions that will be answered later on in the film

Since it is generally the opening scene that sets the scene and first introduces the characters, we will use establishing shots to give the audience a sense of where the scene is set, as well as who is the main focus of the film.

To further identify Alex and Jess as the main characters, we will use a mixture of techniques i.e. cross-cutting. 

We intend to use slow pans also to show the interests of the character. The dialogue will be brief and only give a small amount of insight to the audience, leaving them with certain questions unanswered.

We looked at many different types of film openings, including: 
-One Day
-Silver Linings Playbook
-Now is Good

Treatment: Targeting the Audience

If we are going to have a specific target audience, then the film opening needs to be appealing to them in some way. Since Romantic Dramas rely on the story over anything else, this seems the most appropriate way to appeal and relate to them.


Characters:

-Jess initially appears to be a stereotypical lazy teenager as she ignores her morning alarm. She is then shown to be a reflective teenager as she flicks through the photos quietly.

-Alex is portrayed as the patient friend through him gently trying to get Jess to wake up and go to her lectures. As well as this, he is shown to have a tendency to be very jovial. He is shown to be the helper archetype as he straightens the tilted photo frame of Michael. 

References we used: Rae Earl and Finn Nelson from My Mad Fat Diary

Themes:

-Jess is mourning the death of her boyfriend. This is depicted through her reluctance to carry on with life without him. 

-The relationship between Jess and Alex is shown to be friendship. The comfortable manner between each other shows that he is able to influence her and help her.

Settings:

-The setting of Jess’s Room is very important so we will make sure it will be decorated with posters, depicting her interests. 
 

-The English accents will suggest that the film is set in the UK.

Treatment: Genre

We decided that our chosen genre should be Romantic Drama. Our reasoning behind this choice is that this genre depends predominantly on the script and acting to get across the narrative. Since our group consists of people with experience in script writing and others who are avid watchers of this genre, we felt that this was the best way to incorporate it all together. Some films/TV programmes we looked at for reference points included: -Charlie St Cloud -Now is Good -Remember Me -The Lovely Bones -One Day -Silver Linings Playbook Conventions of the genre:    -Narrative Structure used (Now is Good)        -Voice over to explain situation        -Establish Characters  -Soft and gentle non-diegetic scores (Charlie St. Cloud )  -Protagonist has challenges they must overcome, generally caused by  a love interest  -One of the main characters has a past best left forgotten or events  wanted to be forgotten The stereotypical romantic drama will explore 'love at first sight', unrequited love, forbidden love and tragic love. Romantic films are so popular because they are like fantasies for the viewer, for example, when two lovers overcome their difficulties and have the 'happily ever after' life that everyone desires

Treatment: Location Research

As a group we want to keep the opening sequence as simple as possible, in order to do this, we felt that one or two locations would be the most preferable of choices. Furthermore, we decided against any outdoor locations as it would mean having to have contingency plans in the event that if the weather was unfavourable, it would have also meant that there was a high chance of continuity errors in terms of lighting.

Type of locations we have in mind:

Bedroom 
-Dressed in black and white
-Rock band posters on     
     
wall
 -Well decorated
(personalised)
-Similar to the bedroom of Rae Earl from My Mad Fat Diary


Hallway   
-Nothing personal (e.g photographs)
                                   -Generic house hallway


Our idea was to have a bedroom for a female aged around 18 years old; the room will have that sort of "alternative" look to it. Not very girly and could be mistaken for a boys room if it weren't for all of the hair and makeup products. None of the females in our group can get permission to film in their houses, meaning that we would have to find a girl around that age who's room fits that sort of description, as it would be impractical to dress anyone else's room and expect them to keep it decorated in that way for the entire filming phase. Lucky, we got permission to film in Josh's house and he has a sister whose room matched this criteria.

This footage was taken by Josh on his phone so we would get a sense of the location before we went there to film.

Change of Location:

After we filmed the test shoot in our first location, we decided there were too many distractions and disadvantages, so we decided to change locations.

We wanted to change the location as we felt that the room was too small to film in. It seemed impossible to get establishing shots and was impractical for the camera and lighting equipment to be placed in the room. We found it difficult to adjust the lighting in the room as the intensity was strong even when it was aimed at the surrounding so it could be reflected. We also felt that the posters on the wall and the mess of the room made it too cluttered as caused the audience to associate this with our character being a busy person.

The floor plan of our new location

How we changed our location plans:

Hence we decided to film at our actress's house in her bedroom and corridor. Her room is spacious so we can fit our camera equipment there and we had more freedom to decorate the room according to the mise-en-scene we wanted. The walls were spaciously decorated thus not being too distracting to film in.

These are images from our location recce

Treatment: Opening Sequence outline narrative

This is the basic outline for our Opening Sequence, showing a step by step account of what happens. As you can see, there have been some alterations to the original outline. These changes were made as a result of feedback from our treatment, the strikethrough shows what was removed and the text in red is what it was replaced with. Set in Jess’ bedroom with most shots in her room, only one is in the hall outside. Only one Two location used.  A soft score will be added to the scene to build up the emotion, as the main focus of the scene is the dialogue  An alarm clock sounds signifying Jess must wake up, she ignores this alarm and stays sleeping.  An hour later, banging on the door by Alex to wake her up. Dialogue is heard from the other side of the door about getting up, missing lectures etc. He pushes open the door and pulls the blankets off of Jess. She mumbles the words “What was that for?” Just leave me alone to which he replies “Just make sure you’re ready for your next lecture.” As he walks out of the room. "Not until you get up", as he throws clothes at her from her wardrobe in an attempt to force her awake. Jess reacts badly to this and ends out throwing Alex out of her bedroom in a fit of rage. She picks up her phone, calls Michael’s phone and just listens to the voice mail. She stares at the photo of him as tears run down her face.  The opening credits are going to be kept very plain and simple, to reflect that Jess is a very jaded version of herself at the start of the film. The main colours will be white and black and placed general in the corners of the shots, so that they are neither intrusive nor distracting for the audience. Our last shot is a long shot to distance Jess from everything, because of this, the main title will no longer be imposed onto a memorial card; but instead appear as the footage fades to black. References: Struck By Lightning- Their use of plain whites means that the titles are noticeable, but allow the audience to still focus on what is happening in the sequence.

Remember Me: The disruption to the protagonist’s life is physically shown through the use of Mise-en Scene and Sound.

Proposal: Represetation

The way in which different groups are represented has an impact on the response the audience has to the film. Since we are producing an independent film it is important that some stereotypes are broken, as independent films are made to challenge preconceived ideas. Alex has the archetype of the ‘good guy’. He is dependable and the love interest of the female lead, Jess. Gender stereotypes are somewhat conformed to as the lead, Jess is shown to be very reflective and thoughtful. As well as relying heavily on her close-knit group of friends when in times of need or for support. However, the story does break from these stereotypes in terms of the setting/ mise-en scene. As well as Alex breaking the gender stereotype of males being emotionally inept, he is shown to be a very caring and kind person. He wants nothing more than to help Jess as much as he can.  Actors: Alice was chosen to play the role of Jess. We felt that since Jess is a particularly artistic person that her features and over all look should portray this. As you can see Alice's hair looks like it is naturally free flowing, we felt that this reflected her creative and free flowing nature. Anthony was chosen to play Alex, this was because he has a fairly caring look that naturally occurs in his eye. He also looks like when needs be he can take cotrol of a situation, this is perfect for Alex as in the end Alex takes charge when pulling Jess back onto the right path further on in the film. In the house:  Jess’s bedroom will not be designed in the stereotypical colour scheme of whites, baby blues and pinks. To oppose this stereotype, we will instead have various rock band posters on the walls and lots of black and white room decorations. Obviously, to still identify the set as a girl’s bedroom we would expect there to be make-up on the side table and hair-products dotted around the room. Film Character References:  Tessa Scott (Now is Good), Adam (Now is Good), Charlie St. Cloud (Charlie St. Cloud)