CHANGING OUR IDEA

We ended up changing our idea last minute because there hasn't been any development on Nyle's idea and we tried to organize a group meeting but not everyone turned up. We chose Carrie's idea & it's now developed and it's possible to film it.

Treatment

Working Title: Whirlwind

Length: 5 mins

Hook paragraph:

A story about  a teenage boy trying to come to terms with the feeling of love towards a girl. A journey about how he struggles to figure out how to feel with pure infatuation and desire which he has never experienced due to a sheltered life.

Narrative Development:

Beginning: 

The story begins by introducing Flynn, a teenage boy. A natural introvert and unpopular, Flynn narrates a story about love and fantasy. Flynn leads a troubled home life and his parents are in the midst of a messy divorce due to infidelity and secrets.

The story starts by him walking out of his house, you can hear shouting in the background. We then see him journey in to Sheffield whilst daydreaming/narrating about his life and how he feels about topics such as love and societal norms.

He constantly points out that his life hasn’t been ideal and he’d rather not talk to anyone – choosing to spend his time alone with his thoughts in scenic locations – drawing and writing despite living in the hustle and bustle of a city. We journey with him as he explains his life up to now and how he hopes to move away. In the city we get more darker as we enter the city (Sheffield). No one notices he’s there but he doesn’t mind. In the city he waits at a bus stop for a bus to the countryside and suddenly you can hear his heartbeat – he sees a beautiful girl in a red coat approaching him. She introduces herself – Flynn looks amazed.

Middle: 

We notice an obvious jump in time. A montage of Lily dragging Flynn around from the city to the countryside it shows how they’ve come together and how close they have become. Accompanied by music. Flynn explains his time with Lily and their whirlwind romance. She becomes his muse, he spends all his time writing about her and drawing her.  Flynn explains his infatuation with her and talks about his new emotion – love.

Lily and Flynn are now in the woods laid next to each other – Flynn listens intently to Lily as she talks about how her parents are also divorcing and how she has to move.  This rocks Flynns world. Lily explains how they need to appreciate what’s around them and that nothing lasts forever.

End: 

Flynn gives Lily a collection of drawings and poems as she gets ready to move.  We see a montage of Lily and Flynn tells us what love is and how it’s changed him as a person. Lily kisses Flynn and tells him to appreciate every moment and see the good in the bad. Lily drives off. Flynn returns home and hears quiet and tranquility when walking towards his house.  Flynn smiles – he holds a picture of Lily in his hand. The story focuses on seeing things positive makes you more optimistic.

Style:

Visually similar to “Submarine” by Richard Ayoade.

Heavily narrated by Flynn.

Vintage/sepia effect so it’s slightly off colour to give warmer tones, especially to the montage and woodland scenes.

Red is a main colour that stands out to represent love and warmth. Red is prominent on Lily, as she wears the colour.

16:9 Letterboxed for a more cinematic feel.

Soft yet upbeat music through ought the montage sequences.  This really stands out with only little dialogue in these scenes.

Lots of wide shots to make the characters stand out.

Strange effects when Flynn daydreams about Lily. E.g. Kaleidoscope.

Audience:

16+ though mainly aimed at teenagers.

Both male and female.

Working Class

Would be more of an independent feature – shown on Film 4.

Roles

Director - Carrie Marples
Producer - Carrie Marples
Cinematographer - Myles Chimutanda
Sound recorder - Chris Kelly
Editor - Myles Chimutanda
Sound design - Nyle Roberts and Myles Chimutanda

We slightly changed our roles since we had changed the idea.

RESEARCH

Since we were sticking with the plane idea, I researched into ways we could make it work and not look cliché.

I found a video called Mid air emergency which shows the interior of an air plane and how it was developed using adobe after effects. Watching this video make me almost think that our idea was possible to recreate the space we wanted. The complications that came with this was

1. I didn't know how to use adobe after effects,
2. The person editing the mid air emergency used some plugins which I do not have access to and would require money to buy them,
3. We would have to recreate the space for every shot in the scene which will be really difficult.

I looked at some feature films which had air plane interiors to see how they had recreated that space. I found the visual effects of the air plane crash in Final Destination 5 and it involve's a lot of animation and set building which I think will be time consuming.

Nyle told us he had a studio in which we could film and his plans of recreating the interior involved having the seats and a plane poster and the final touches will be made in after effects.

I think we are not going to be able to make it work because to make the interior of the plane will be really hard & non of us have any experience of how to do it. Even if we tried to do it in after effects, getting the plugins & creating the air plane interior will be hard and I don't know how to do it. I tried to convince Nyle to change the location and use a train or coach but hi insisted we stick with the plane. This made us think of a plan B because we weren't convinced about how this idea would work.

We had a session with a few actors who wread the script and they give us feedback and how to improve it. They liked the idea of the awkward encounter of the girl and his old boyfriend but were be concerned about the plane setting. They suggested we use a train, bus or coach.

Reference

Final Destination 5. Visual Effects of Death: Airplane Crash (Special Feature) Full HD 1080p. (2011). [Online], Last accessed 09 May 2014 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZcEGXEkHjo

Video Copilot. (2012). [Online], Last accessed 09 May 2014 at: http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/mid_air_emergency/

GROUP + IDEAS

I found a group but had to to leave because we had worked together before for the Documentary project. I had problems in finding a group at first then I managed to find one. I'm working with Carrie Marples, Chris Kelly and Nyle Roberts.

Two ideas were presented in the group. The first one was from Nyle which was about an awkward encounter between a girl and her ex boyfriend and This meeting takes place in an air plane and there's a sudden twist at the end. Firstly I liked this idea in terms of the story and characters but the air plane concept wasn't a good idea. I went along with the idea because it was fully developed & I thought we could change the location but Nyle didn't want to.

The second idea was from Carrie's which was a teenage love story influenced by Submarine. She only had a plot summary & it was under developed. I liked the idea but because it was under developed I pre-fared Nyle's idea.

Treatment of Nyle's idea

Boyfriend/girlfriend on flight from Australia, approaching stop off at Kuala Lumpur.

3 characters, 2 of them we know immediately have a relationship of boyfriend and girlfriend. The third is treated as a stranger, with no initial obvious relationship to the others. There is a slight Michael Haneke, Luis Bunuel, influence with slightly surreal ambience. Also inspired by recent events in the news.

Jamie Palter, 25 aspiring artist, middle class but with alternative edge background, sensitive well rounded introvert, but popular. Teaches art part time at a young adults college. Born near Brighton but Living in Sheffield after Uni at Leeds. Met Lucy at Showroom cinema.

Lula Ormsford, 25 upper working class suburban background, studied dance at Uni. has known Jamie for 3 years. Working as a teacher in a modern progressive school. Studied in Cardiff, but returned to Sheffield. She’s a loyal, giving, trusting person.

Third passenger is Jack Kerrigal, 27, studied journalism at Uni. but now working for sports agency, up and coming career, appears ambitious, ruthless, has been in Far East on sport business, caught up in a complicated deal to get investment finance for a British Football Club. Male who is secretly unsure of himself, and afraid of commitment in relationships.

                          Scene 1- Interior 3 seats on a long haul flight.

Distant fixed point shot of the 3 seats. One seat occupied by anon man. Interior plane hum sound of flying, occasional voice announcements.

The plot revolves around 3 passengers on a plane, two obviously connected, in a confined space, and the relationship between them. Their lives are somehow thrown together, intertwined by the past, the present and the future. Is there is chance or fate involved in their meeting? What’s their connection?

They are all on a journey, but which journey. Are they going to somewhere or going from somewhere? Are they contented or frustrated? How susceptible are they when confronted with an unexpected event, and total uncertainty?

We see their dreams, giving a brief glimpse and an insight into their lives, their aspirations, pre-occupations, and their worries. We hear their conversations so that we can gauge the closeness or distance of their connection. We can guess their bonds and also their conflicts.

The idea is to leave a twist at the end, we discover that Lula was in fact the girlfriend of Jack when they were at Uni together. Jack left Lula pregnant and in love, and it was a very difficult time for her. Suddenly she is confronted with this person who left her scarred emotionally. Now 5 years later she has a new boyfriend, Jamie, a different type of man, not commitment phobic like Jack. But is she sure of that?

Just when we are concerned with their personal lives, there is actually a second twist in the very final seconds, an unexpected event occurs, leaving the viewer in an ambiguous, interrupted, surprised frame of mind. As in a Haneke film, the viewer is deliberately left to make his/her own mind up about the possible resolution.

For this idea, these were our roles

Director - Nyle Roberts

Producer - Carrie Marples

Cinematographer - Myles Chimutanda

Sound recordist - TBC

Editor - Myles Chimutanda

Sound Design - Chris Kelly

Because there were only 4 of us in the group, some of us had to take a double role. 

SEMESTER 2 - TASK 2 DRAMA

The task for this project is to create a 5 minute drama film which conveys the notion of 'Journey'. I'm really excited about this project and I want to be the camera operator or editor in this project.

FINAL PRESENTATION

We presented our documentary film and it was great. We prepared ourselves for the presentation and we all knew what to say in terms of our roles and contribution and about our ideas of the film. Our colleagues enjoyed it and our lecturers loved it. They liked the mood and style of the film and the pace of it. They liked the background music as well, which was done by Paul's friend Anna Hambleton. A few minor tweaks they suggested was to increase the volume of when Michaels talking and to hold some shots for a bit longer.  

Overall I'm pleased with our documentary film. If we had more time, we would have corrected the minor problems. I enjoyed the whole process of making the film and working with Michael. As a group we worked brilliant and i would like to work with them again in the future. 

SOUND EDITING

I helped Louise on some of the sound editing she did. On some of the sounds I recorded, you could a fridge in the background and this interrupted with the audio. Using Pro tools and sound track pro, we removed as much of the buzzing sound as we could. 

Using pro tools we played with the high and low frequency to try and remove as much out the unwanted sound. We moved the audio files to soundtrack pro if we needed to more sound reduction. By using these two software's we were able to removed the unwanted sounds but if listened very carefully, you could hear some of the buzzing the background.

TUTORIAL WITH LEE

When we came back from Liverpool, our director and editor reviewed the footage and informed us about what we had and what was missing. We had the interview that we wanted and a couple of interesting stories about Michaels life as a violin maker. In terms of audio, we had the sounds that we wanted but some bits of audio were missing and some of the sounds had a buzzing sound in the background which was either the fridge or heater in Michaels studio. 

We had a 1 hour tutorial with our lecturer and he offered us some guidance in terms of themes to take with our documentary. We made a rough cut which we presented to him to watch, which had different themes ranging from his personal life to a professional perspective. Our lecturer made us aware about the mood and style that we taking, which was a persona approach of Michaels life in the studio and all the wonderful stories he told us. 

Our lecturer saw some of the other shots we had and in some of them, there were camera shakes or the image was either blurred. He informed us that such shots make the audiences aware that this is a camera and they become less engaged in watching the documentary. He also commented about the sound and how some slight adjustments needed to be made such as volume and background noise. He told us to think about a sound track for our documentary and Paul (Producer) was already on top of it, talking to a friend of his weather she will play a song for us with a violin. 

We informed him that we were going back to Liverpool to film more about the personal life of Michael and to record the audio that we needed.