Pitching Ideas

25th November 2016
Pitching Our Ideas

Lucy:             When it came to discussing what we each wanted to do for our film openings, we had a lot of similar ideas so we decided to look at those in more detail. We wanted social realism to be a big part of our film opening as it has lots of opportunities for symbolism and it does not exceed our limitations.

Lizzie:            Our first idea is to have the social realism issue of drugs and teenagers. The genre is roughly an indie teenage drama with themes of drugs, teenage life, 

We will be representing age, regional identity, but we said it is important to us to go against stereotypes so we will make sure our use of camera angle, costume, etc does not make any characters appear victimised for their age, gender or ethnicity but for other reasons.

Rida:              This is the colour palette that we chose… We might use post production editing and tint the film to make it appear dull and sad.

Charlotte:     The set will be in quite a small room, maybe a bedroom, which can give the sense of a claustrophobic situation. We thought it would be fairly easy to find good teenage actors and we do not need a large cast so we won’t have to research into too many people. The sound that we want to use will be mainly diegetic sound to start with because we want the audience to realise that this is what the character is hearing in their head.

We also think that there should be the use of contrapuntal music to contrast the sad depressing image on the screen to demonstrate how the character is trying to ignore the negative reality of his life but actually he cannot beat it.

Everyone:                 The narrative of our opening is roughly is this:

It starts with a black screen and a sound bridge of contrapuntal music of reggae so it’s set an atmosphere of calm and happiness. Then an extreme close up of the main character’s eyes will appear and it will slowly zoom out to the whole of their face and they are behind a white screen. Then there will be a sort of sound which we will have to find out how to make ourselves that will bring the character back to reality where it jump cuts to them in the bedroom. Then the camera will pan down to a low angle shot of the character, by placing the camera on to the table. It will focus in on the white powder on the table and then move from a low angle prospective of the drugs to over the top of the drugs to not only gain a clear depiction of the credits (written in the drugs) but to also demonstrate how powerful and daunting drugs are. But then the cocaine will be swept away by a credit card and the camera will move down again to another drug (maybe a cigarette packet with a printed credit on it and unfocused in the distance you see the main character walk around their room. And we will continue this use of credits being embedding in the drugs and other objects until it has delivered all the names and has given enough information away about the main character as it is the character’s room and it is them who is allowing us to see the credits.

Lizzie:            We will use a lot of panning shots in our opening and extreme close ups as we feel that it immediately makes the audience very involved in the main character and allows us to notice how the film revolves around particular themes. We thought it was important to focus on just one particular character so the audience can understand from the opening that they need to feel sympathy and relate towards this character for the rest of the film.

Charlotte:     We discussed the possible limitations and saw that both our ideas were fine as long as we do not show any ‘drugs’ in public.

Rida:              Our second idea for a film opening was based on the social realism issue of transgender bullying. Again, it is about the impact it has on one particular character so there is the use of lots of tracking shots and possibly an inner monologue voice over.

We thought we would start the opening with a tracking shot of a person whom appears to be a woman walking down the street but the camera quickly pans to other people on the street making judgemental looks and turning away from the person. It sort of an opportunity for making the audience to feel guilty as they wonder why people on the street are acting so shocked and harsh at the sight of this person but as soon as the camera pans round (breaking the 180 degree rule) and reveals the it is actually a boy dressing like a girl, the audience may also be shocked.

Lucy:             We gained a lot of inspiration for the opening from Trainspotting as we like how it revealed particular aspects of his life and the shots that they used demonstrated these issues with pace and excitement but also a level of seriousness of the issue.