Research and Planning: Treatment Presentation w/Audio Feedback

Requiescat in Pace Treatment


Presentation of Treatment to Peers w/ Q&A








Above is our first draft of a treatment for our film. We are making a Romantic, Psychological Thriller that will be primarily aimed at an older audience of both male and females (ranging between 25 and 50). This has been created in the style of a real film treatment, since we looked and research the treatment from existing product, Terminator.

Also, an initial title for our film is included; it is Requiescat In Pace, Latin for 'Rest In Peace'.

Secondly an audio file, hosted on Divshare, is present. This is a presentation of our treatment, read aloud to a group of our peers, including our tutor. At 12 mins 45 sec, a short feedback session begins where the group comment and question areas of the treatment presentation.

Main points to take from this when altering our treatment include:

• The ambitious use of locations (13:10)
• The dependency on weather (raised throughout, including 13:25)
• The authenticity of the cast's age, as all characters are over 25 (15:45 - 16:20) 
• Keeping the time and flashbacks obvious to audience (16:35 - 17:10)
• The excellent level of detail should be consistent (18:10)

Research and Planning: Thriller Research - Iconography

Setting: Can be urban, isolated suburban settings, cities or quiet country villages.

Mise-en-scene: Normally dim lighting hiding parts to a character, large threatening weapons for props e.g. large knives, guns etc. Camera shots are normally point of view shots, frames within frames, or close ups. Also, there is often a lot of camera movement. Colours are also used to signify different emotions like red symbolises  blood or danger, blue cold mystery or death.


Narrative: Events in the storyline enable the film to progress, and allow the audience to second guess what will happen next. In many films this will be wrong so adds to suspense.
The dialogue in thrillers never contains a complete explanation of events or plot, to give it pace, and maintain the mystery, which is essential in building up suspense.

Research and Planning: Conventions of Our Selected Genre - Contrasting & Similar

Our film idea that we decided upon contains strong elements of two genres, making our film a mix of the genres Romance and Psychological Thriller. Our film contains conventions that challenge and conform with that of both genres.


Firstly, our film is half based around the Romantic film genre. Here is an example of a scene from a Romantic film, Dear John, containing many conventions such as the slow editing and the fade-in of slow instrumental music.



Here are conventions of our film that are similar to that of the Romantic genre:

1 The editing in scenes containing the couple together are edited slowly, representing their care and happiness together.

2 The slow editing in the introduction to the main character allows the audience time to judge his character and 'get to know him'

3 The couple spend time apart and the man is shown wanting to be with her again - This is true, however she died as opposed to them splitting up

4 There is often soft music playing as a soundtrack to some scenes

5 The weather often represents the mood of the scene, for example sunshine equals love/happiness and rain represents sadness or bad times

6 The audience is led to side with one character

7 Flashbacks show how the couple used to be when they were together

Conventions that challenge that of the Romantic genre include:

1 The man is quite deranged, however this is not apparent to the viewer at the beginning

2 There is an unexpected twist to plot at the end, not usually present in Romance films

3 There is a few scenes of quite heavy violence and deep emotions, making the film unsuitable for some ages. This is not usually the case in Romantic films



Secondly, our film relates to the Psychological Thriller genre and below is a clip containing many conventions of a typical Psychological Thriller. This is a clip reviewing Shutter Island (2009), it contains a scene where Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio) is imagining his wife and trying to talk to her but she does not really exist in the scene (0:50).


The following are conventions in our film that are similar to that of a Psychological Thriller:

1 The male character is not the man the audience thinks he is, he has a hidden side to his personality

2 The ending contains an unpredictable twist

3 Flashbacks reveal events that have previously happened that change the audience's perception about a character

4 Tension and suspicion is built up throughout the film to a climax at the end where all is revealed

Conventions in our film that challenge the conventions of a Psychological Thriller include:

1 The plot contains a big focus on genuine romance, whereas most 'villain' characters in the Psychological Thriller are known for their repetition of the same crime

2 The main character is made out to be very innocent and relatable, when really he is the one who has committed the murder

3 The audience is never quite certain whether the protagonist is guilty of any crimes or whether he is imagining it all



Overall, we plan to take conventions from both genres, main conventions including:

• Slow editing and leading the audience to side with a character (Romantic)
• The male protagonist is not who the audience first thinks he is and the ending contains a twist (Psychological Thriller)

Research and Planning: Decision Regarding Film Idea

After sharing our evaluations of each other's film ideas/pitches, we needed to make a decision about which idea we were going to pursue, or which elements we were going to use.

We decided that a combination of my pitch idea with Richard's pitch idea could make for an interesting narrative. 

However, before constructing any kind of plot or treatment, we had to clarify which genre our idea would belong to because it would take some research into conventions and features of that genre for us to result in producing a successful film.

The genre of our idea is going to be a fuse between a Romantic and a Psychological Thriller, since we combined the idea of a struggling, frustrating relationship with murder due to mental illness or passion. 

Now, we will need to research conventions, features and audiences for the two genres and see how they are used or even combined in existing products. Next we will be able to create a treatment that will be our draft for our plot and narrative for the film. 

Research and Planning: Evaluation of Initial Ideas

Each member of our group pitched an idea for a short, 5-minute film, including a presentation and some location pictures and other research such as a rough treatment or script.

Melissa's idea revolved around christmas and Santa. The main idea was that Santa would 'shrink' whilst in a house on Christmas Eve and enter a child's dolls house. The genre is a festive/children's film and is quite original compared with examples we had seen from previous student's work. The plot was fairly consistent, staying focused around themes of happiness and joy.

PROS:
1 Original and innovative ideas
2 The content contains no violence or fast-paced action, making it easier to produce and available for everyone to watch
3 The green screen effects contained in this film would be very effective

CONS:
1 Only appeals to a small, younger audience
2 Effects may be challenging to recreate
3 Some scenes relied heavily on 'rare' snowy weather, also meaning we would have to film within a specific time period (December/January)
4 This film is seasonal, therefore may not appeal to anyone after Christmas.

Overall the presentation was very effective and informative, she had done a lot of research and thought of many aspects of this production, however it was difficult to include new ideas to this project and we found it quite restrictive.

Richard's pitch was very well thought out, he had made a slide-show containing parts of a treatment and script. His film consisted of a young man's memories being shown as he appears to be lay down in a field on some grass. It is later revealed that these events led up to him being stabbed and the camera pans out to reveal he has a knife in him.

PROS:
1 Nice plot with an effective twist at the end
2 Had a clear target audience, the character and events can be easily related to
3 Showed changes of mood and setting which would be effective to watch

CONS:
1 The plot could potentially lose people as it changes time setting along with locations
2 Relies heavily on editing
3 The genre was unclear

Overall, I liked the idea and felt that with contribution of extra ideas added to it, this could be a good film to produce. The presentation was filled with a lot of information but was sometimes unclear due to the amount of writing.

Jodie's presentation was very bold and bright, containing lots of images that helped people to follow the plot and the idea. The idea was about a prank that was played on a character to do with a glass of water. The idea was entertaining but the storyline was very weak.

PROS:
1 Twist in the plot was effective
2 Young characters are relatable and present a target audience
3 Locations and scenes included make it easy to film, giving us an opportunity to be creative with camera angles and shots

CONS:
1 Too short
2 Flawed storyline
3 Didn't give much of an opportunity to expand on the existing ideas here

Overall the presentation was great but once we dug deeper into the plot it became quite weak and we found very few ways to contribute new ideas to this film.

My idea featured an average man stuck in a dead-end job who dreamt about what his life was like when he was younger and where it went wrong. The film is a mix of a tale of romance but with elements of a psychological thriller. My pitch featured a slide show of location images to help the audience through the different stages of my idea.

PROS:
1 Good story, very detailed plot
2 Ambitious locations
3 Contains conventions of two kinds of genres
4 Appeals to a broad audience

CONS:
1 Weak ending, needed to be worked on/developed
2 Ambitious locations
3 Relies on weather and other 'natural' factors to create atmosphere in most scenes

Overall, I thought my idea would be good to do but needed contribution from other group members to make the storyline solid, as the ending was weak the way it was. My presentation involved a lot of talking and was maybe a little too long. Also, I only used images in my presentation when I could of utilised the use of text in the slideshow.

Research and Planning: Introducing Group Members

Our group was selected to contain 4 members, including myself, Melissa, Jodie and Richard. We agreed that there were different roles each member could lean towards in order to get the best results out of our project. The following are potential roles within the current group.


Richard is very experienced and talented in the technical side of the production (editing, titles, etc...) so I feel he would be more suited to taking the lead role in those tasks.

Melissa has a flair for Drama and English so I think she would be best suited to producing and creating the script, amongst other things such as recruiting actors and communicating with people to make our production possible.

Jodie is very confident and focused on what she wants to achieve and I think she would be ideal taking a directing role in the filming process of our production.

I would like to think I have quite a creative flair and am good at assessing and evaluating things, taking an overall role in most aspects of the production would suit me as I enjoy taking a lot of the creative control.