Group Planning

Structure of our opening.

Overall idea

In our group we decided to come up with the theme of an independent rom-com, with a twist… We plan on creating a short POV dream sequence to portray the protagonist’s fantasy. He then gets awaken by his mother, and this is when the true identity is revealed to the audience that he is a high school geek, fantasising over the ‘it’ girl.

Dream Sequence (George’s house)

·         Setting – Party, house party

·         Camera shots – POV, distorted grainy view to emphasise dream. 

·         Transparent layered shots symbolising the flickering of his memory, as his mum tries to wake him up. Echoed voice “you can’t be late”.

·         Spots girl with back to him, as he approaches and embraces her – increased distortion and change of speed (slow mo.)

Bedroom Sequence (shot in Dan’s Bedroom)

·         Silence, only the sound of alarm clock, establishing shots of room (nerdy bedroom camera can linger longer than needs to). He gets up – shows quick nerdy routine.

·         Sits down at computer (turns to POV of him and computer) also close up of hands on keyboard.

·         Credit sequence: profile names credits,  (also world of warcraft account name being credit)

·         Short clip of Leah in New York presented as video upload on dating profile, also show his profile as hot hunk- he leaves comment on her video.

School (Maths corridor)

·         Walks into school, bell goes. Rushing around.

·         Walking through the corridors, everybody blanks him and gives him grief, he is bullied. (by same people who loved him in dream sequence).

·         Sees girl again with back to him, again she turns around as he approaches, this time she ignores him (shot of Girl in party flickers onto screen) title flickers up (compute font).

Research and Planning PART 1

After looking at the briefs that were laid out for us, our group found preference to Film Brief 3 An independent movie featuring a young protagonist. -Your film should appear to be financed through regional funding.

This interested us as it featured a young protagonist, that we could easily relate to and create ideas for. We began by looking at films that feature young people as the main character. ‘This is England’ starring Thomas Turgoose a 12 year old boy that’s life is based around the hole film. This film although features a 12 year old boy is definitely suitable for adults, in fact the target audience is aimed at those who appreciate adult humour.

This enlightened us to realise that our audience could be as broad as we wanted. We began thinking of ideas that would be challenging to express in an independent movie. We began thinking of the idea of a dream as out opening scene. A personal perspective that could maybe fool the audience into predicting what the film was about.

Ideas

Format –

·         A typical geeky character, no social skills, not very good looking and addicted to computer networking.

·         However this is not shown until the last section of the opening scene. The audience does not see what he looks like and they do not know he is having a dream.

·         During his dream, he walks into a party; everyone is acknowledging him as the coolest kid in the party. All the girls fondle after him as he struts through, there is a beautiful girl waiting for him and approaches him with a kiss.

·         It is all from his perspective and the camera shows us what he sees.

·         The audience get a feeling that he is this ultra-cool, good looking character as this is the impression we get from the people at the party.

·         However, when he wakes up in reality, the audience sees his actual appearance.

·         They also see his lifestyle and his bedroom.

·         The opening scene progresses into us watching him get up and go straight to his computer.

·         The credits and names start rolling as online profiles on a dating website.

The PESPECTIVE

For further research we had to find an example of the camera angle that we want as he enters in the party. The PROGIDY – ‘Smack my bitch up’ official video, is a perfect example of how the audience can be fooled into assuming who the character is and what they are like as a person. The camera is very jittery and is constantly moving up and down and left and right. This adds excitement and drama to the perspective. It is also satisfying at the end of the video when you are shocked to find out what gender the character is and proves how an audience can perceive and stereotype people in to categories.

This video illustrates how a camera angle is made personal and from a characters perspective. The 'juttery' technique adds a more realistic feel...