Treatment draft 1

Treatment

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My evaluation of winning idea

eWhether or not you have lost someone it will pull at your heart strings. This story is extremely poignant and will allow you to truly understand the narrative from the characters perspective and will allow the target audience to fully experience the pain. Those who are involved in creating the project have experienced these feelings and the narrative is based on the emotions that the film makers have felt. Fountain of youth is very personal to us and we are passionate due to it being close to our hearts and we believe everyone can relate to this narrative. After discussing the idea we automatically began debating how to create and show the narrative using camera, sound and mese en scene, arranging location also come up, showing our drive for the project. The change of events also is a fantastic way to show our creativity as a group, we didn’t want to show just a sad narrative, we wanted to control our target audience’s emotions. The twist is an amazing way to tie up all loose ends. The idea about the bus within the second treatment was just not practical. This is just not practical because it wouldn’t be done in time and that is not fair on such a fantastic narrative. We would not have been able to create the narrative as it deserved to be due to the time period. We had originality with the first treatment, the way we want to show death, is far different to anything we have ever heard before.

Different films and pitches

I picked two short films that I liked and created an interesting summery of the film for them. 

I did this in order for me to gain some experience for writing in an interesting way for my pitch and treatment.

Being trapped has a new meaning in this short film. Stuck in a cell with no idea of where she is or what she’s doing there it’s up to (main character) to find her own freedom. It’s the great escape with a matrix-like twist. What does it truly mean to escape? And when you do escape what does it mean to be free?

(main character name unknown) Main character falls in love with the love of his life and just as you think everything going right suddenly everything goes terribly wrong. You’ve heard of boy meets girl; you’ve even heard of girl meets ogre, but this time around boy meets chair. A romantic silent thriller about the bond between a man and his chair with a chilling change of events.

Subject matter and evaluation of pitch presentation

Feedback for first idea on Prezi

Our pitch

Story idea's and feedback

Tagline- A trauma effecting people through the ages

Pitch- Older sister (haven’t fought of name yet) is an average young adult with more than just a job to juggle. How will she come with the dramatic change in responsibility? An epic drama between two sisters and the pain they suffer due to the 9/11 attacks.

Sister and sister are travelling around together through the streets of England. They are both asylum seekers. They just came to England just before the 9/11 bombings. Both sisters are from the Middle East. Although they don’t believe in the Islamic religion everyone the older sister works for fired her or abused her due to the fact that they assumed she was part of the culture or religion of the people who were bombing the planes. They suspected her due to the fact she was always carrying large bags that they assumed were bombs ect. In reality those large bags contain cloths due to the fact that the sisters were homeless and had no money. They spent their nights on the streets or in homeless shelters. At the end of the story the eldest sister breaks down and gives up, but the younger sister reassures the older sister that “everything will be ok soon and that they will be able to sleep in warm beds again”.

The younger sister

The younger sister shows signs of maturity and hope. She is always optimistic and pushing her older sister to do her best and reminding her what there fighting for; freedom. She is 8 years old and has black short hair. She’s quite skinny and timid, but is extremely caring. Her costume should be a worn out jacket and worn out jeans and a pair of black shoes that are too big for her.

The older sister

She is mature because she has to be mature for her sister, but in reality she is quite weak. Her mother got them both into England in order to protect them from the civil war that was going on at home. After there farther died there mother decided to send them away because she didn’t want to see anyone else die. She is 20 years old and skinny as well and has black medium hair that looks scruffy. Her costume consists of a pair of warn out jeans and trainers and a jumper that is too big. Sometimes she’s able to cope with the hardships of  life; but because the role of  mother was forced upon her unexpectedly she finds it difficult to cope, so there are times in which she has her moments of weakness.

Camera

We see a lot of long-shots of the sisters travelling a lot together, while carrying a huge bag with all there possessions in it.  There may also be a lot of two shots of the two together. I think their should also be a lot of low angle and high angle shots to show the power struggle between them and society.

Society

They are living in a society that has just suffered one of the most traumatic events in history. Due to this everyone is on edge and acting out of their usual characteristics due to fear. It was an event that truly shocked everyone and woke up the world.

The other way around

The other way around

Oscar is in a wheelchair because his legs are paralysed. Oscar is picked on by the school bully. One day Oscar is being picked on by Billy and both of them get electrocuted/static passes through them. When they wake up the next day Oscar can walk again, but Billy can’t walk anymore. The film ends with Oscar walking towards his mum and both of them are happy, while Billy’s mum is crying, while he says “I can’t move my legs”. Finally the dad comes in with a brand new wheelchair.

Lighting-

low-key lighting at the start of film. High-key at the end of the film for Oscar, but low-key at the end of the film for Billy.

Billy- quite large, black hair and a snub nose

He loves his family, but is really annoyed with the fact that his little sister gets all the attention because she suffers  from dyslexia. He can’t go out that much because he always gets stuck looking after his sister. Instead of compassion for his sister he has resentment for her. When everyone starts giving Oscar attention at school he fears that he will lose his life again; like how he lost control over his life at home. He starts picking on Oscar to stop this from happening and to let out his frustrations.

Oscar- Skinny, fragile and pale looking

His father left when he was young due to him not wanting to take responsibility of  a disabled baby. His mum is a social worker and she loves Oscar very much. Their living in a house the council gave them due to Oscar being disabled. He knows his mum works very hard to look after him. She works late at night to pay for the extra money  needed due to Oscar’s disability. He thinks that it’s his own fault that his dad left and his dad is always tired. To pay her back for what she does for him she doesn’t tell her about the bullying, so that he doesn’t worry her.

Props

Wheelchair for Oscar and Billy

Both boys are 8 years old and they are both English families.

Camera shots

There would be a lot of low-angle shots looking up at Billy to show how he’s more powerful than Oscar.

Editing

Black and white colours for Oscar and colourful colour’s for Billy. At the end the final scene will be a split screen and the black and white world will become Billy’s world and the colourfull world will become Oscars.

Short films

The first time it hits

The filmmaker used animation in order to show the love relationship between the girl and the boy and the fact that everything else was black and white made the animations more distinct. They also kept on cutting from the girl to the boy to emphasise their relationship. There were a lot of fast cuts that represented the fast pace life of a teenager and how quickly the boy fell out of love. Two characters helped keep the story simple and the narrative was simple as well, but it was kept interesting by it having an unexpected turn (the girl got hit by the skateboard). The black and white also showed the audience that the teenagers weren’t your everyday teen due to the fact that one of them is a skater boy and the other one appears to be a Goth. The fast cuts also made the audience concentrate more because if they didn’t concentrate they would miss everything.

Job Street

When the one of the male characters were waking up the camera became out of focus and became in focus when he was rubbing his eyes. The audience were seeing the short film from that characters perspective. The camera kept on cutting from one character waking up to another, which told the audience that the narrative was going to be about three main characters. The filmmaker was very careful in making sure that each character got just as much film time as the other. It seemed like a normal day of work for the three men until we saw them lining up on a street. The Asian man needs money because he’s sharing a room with too many other people, so it’s overcrowded. The white man needed money to provide for his family. The black man needed money for his family as well. All the other people had a roof over their heads apart from the black man.

Hard Labour

It wasn’t a simple story, so it was too complicated for it to be a short film that lasts five minutes. I thought the narrative however was very strong. The diegetic sound was constantly playing a sad song, which eased the audience into the world of the film.

Ice-cream dream

Quite interesting establishing shots were used. I thought the short film was surreal and the music made it more surreal, but that’s because the film is targeted at young children not teenagers. The main characters rite of passage is getting over her fear of making friends.