Discussion of Early Ideas

From left to right: Elizabeth, Shauna, Cristian

 

 

Here we are discussing our ideas so far as we feel that we need to clarify them as a group. Megan was away for a few lessons so is not included, but has watched this and commented on it.

Value of Research So Far

After the early research into what makes a good opening sequence,  I watched several kidnap and abduction films. Although we have not totally agreed a plot outline, we all agree that our film will be on this film so it's good to look for more specific ideas.

One of these was ‘Taken’, especially the abduction scene. I liked how they filmed it from the girl’s friend’s point of view through a window which somehow made it seem so much more immediate and as if you as the audience are watching helplessly too. We haven't written in a friend character, but I would still like to create the same feeling in the audience.

 One film I quite liked was Martha Marcy May Marlene. There wasn’t really a kidnap as such but she was held against her will and was abused, similar to our plot. I also liked how she tried to adjust back into society but couldn’t because she still knew in the back of her head they were out there, this helped me thinking up the story line for after the girl gets back from her abductor. I also learned that we need to concentrate on the main characters' facial expressions to get across how affected she is by what has happened.

Also from watching beginning scenes I have realised that many of them do not show much of the film at all. I had to take this into account when making up our first two minutes because all our original ideas had much too much information for the first two minutes. We need to get information across without getting too far into the plot. This is hard because of course we want our courdework to impress, and we need to find ways of doing that without showing much action.

Initial Film Ideas

Story Outline

A girl (17) gets abducted at a young age is abused and raped, and manages to escape by hitting her kidnapper on the head with an object. She runs home. Her family are over the moon to see her, ask where she has been she can’t talk about it as she’s traumatised by the events. It takes a couple of weeks for her to eventually speak about it, the police go to the man’s house and find it empty, the man’s not there. She’s trying to get back to normal life but can’t because of bad recurring dreams of the night she escaped because she knows he is still out there. Eventually he tracks her down to finish her off because she told the police about him. They have a final fight she manages to kill him and can finally start to rebuild her life.

This is a rough idea for a film that I feel we could make an effective opening sequence for.

Ideas for Opening 2 mins

First two minutes

Camera pans around to look through a half closed door of a girl of about 17 sleeping in a child’s room (pink and fluffy). Girl in the bed is having bad dream, tossing and turning. We then cross cut to a P.O.V shot of the girl running though a forest heavy breathing. We will do this several times each time using a different camera angle. Trying to give the audience the sense that the girl is having a dream of something that happened to her. This will account for the majority of the two minutes. The last 30 seconds we will have the girl burst up from the bed; we will have a close up of her face to show that she’s very scared then cut to her talking to her parents asking her about it asking what she sees in the dream what did he do to her etc.  

Maybe we shouldn't show the girl in bed? Maybe it would make a tenser start if we don;t know whether it is dream or reality? 

Value of Initial Research

I have looked at several more films to add to my initial research. At the beginning of my research, I was looking at how film openings work. From this I have learned that we need to have  a very clear focus about what we want to achieve and to be sure what we want our audience to know and understand. I also have learned various ways of manipulating the audience eg use of sound. I am still looking at this but also looking more closely at my genre, and also for more specific ideas now that we have a good idea of what the overall plot of our film is going to be. Some of my recent research includes:

·         Taken 2 – Starts off in the middle of a situation leaving the audience to understand what is going on without explaining it (sitting in the car waiting for his daughter). This makes it more interesting as you are more engaged with the film as you want to know what is going on as it is not given to you. We are going to start in the middle of a scene like this.

·         Paranormal Activity 4- starts with a big killing scene which leaves you sitting at the edge of your sit. This is a big opening for the start of a film, this is good as you are so build up at the start of the film that you can glued to the screen. This could also be a bad thing as you are so build up at the start of the film that you are expecting even more from the film so the rest of the film maybe a letdown if it is not as rushed and gruesome as the start.

·          Kidulthood- starts off with cross-cutting from different angles of the playground , this I think is effective as it establishes the area as well of getting everyone’s POV of what is going on. Even though it is a different type of film this can help us with our opening two minutes as it is very effective. We will be cross-cutting between the police station, the girl running and the flashback and we need to make this dramatic and intriguing but not messy and confusing.

Ideas for First 2 Minutes

My Ideas for Film Outline

In my group I am going to be working with Megan, Lizzie and Christian. For our film we are going to be working on thriller. For our production company we are using the name ‘Dancing Pens.’ We came up with this idea as we have done some practise animations and this is a name we can make a short animation for quite easily and it also sounds lively and catchy.  I was thinking that we could use very dark colour pens with a dark background rather than bright colours to show that our film is not uplifting and highlights the fact that it is a thriller. After they finish dancing we could flicker them changing colour to show mystery which links into our film type, if we feel this would be the kind of film where the production company want to match their logo.

My plot for the film is about a girl being kidnapped by a man for years and years and she finally escapes. When she does escape she is receiving night mares about it and can’t seem to live with the fact of what has happened and what has been done.

It starts off with a long shot where you see the girl (played by myself) from the crack in the door of her bedroom is cause mystery feeling very vulnerable whist having a nightmare in bed. There is then a cut to a bridging shot of her running  away from something. The sequence keeps cross-cutting from the girl in bed to her running, each time it cuts the camera is being positioned nearer and nearer towards the girl so that the audience can establish where she is and can see her emotion more clearly as the camera becomes closer . The shot then changes to the girl stopping running and looking down at her hands and seeing blood, the camera could then do a slow motion/360 degree shot to show confusion that the girl is feeling. She is feeling this way as when she went to break out of the house where the man was killing her, the man was trying to hurt her and she had had enough of it and found the first thing she could and hit him with it. She was so afraid that she did not even take a minute to look down at her hands and see the blood. The scene then changes into a shot of her in a police station still looking at her hands to show a link between the two scenes. The police man is asking her questions but she is not answering. When she finally does answer, it is with bluntness and confusion. The rest of the film is about her having to live her life with what has happened to her and trying to go back to everyday life without people asking questions. The reality of her hurting and running away from a very dangerous man comes back and haunts her as she has to face her worst night mare of the man and his group trying to come back and find her and trying to hurt her. She spends the rest of her life trying to hide from him, whether she does or not we will never quite know..................