Narrative

My film would be told from the perspective of the main character, as it is her who we follow on her trip.  might consider widening the narrative as the story goes on though, to allow the audience to get the impression that she too is widening her points of view, but I'm not sure if that would work. But certainly in the opening two minutes of the film, we would see her daily life from her point of view; in this way, the narrative should also show the monotony of her life, setting the tone and potential for things to change through the film.

I do like the idea of having the end of the film at the beginning, playing around with the time perspectives of the film, but I don't think that it would fit in with the concept of my film; the main character goes through a journey, and the audience need to be able to see her progress from this bored woman at the start, dreaming of doing more adventurous things while she waits for the same train every day, to the woman actually doing these things.

I have, however, thought of the use of flashback, and if I were to continues with the making of the film, I would include these, with the woman remembering back to her childhood and upbringing at different stages of her day, and wondering how she ended up in her dead-end job and why she's done nothing about it. The flashbacks would explain what's happened in her earlier life and why it's affecting her now or it may even be the reason that she decides she wants to change how she lives, or get more life experience.

To do:

Narration
Conventions

More potential lkocations and how they fit

Video/podcast audience research footage

Cast; who and why?

Storyboards

Script

Music

Opening Titles

I need my titles to reflect the tone of the film, from their physical appearance to how they get onto the screen. Considering that my film is basically about someone becoming who they want to be, I would consider having a nearly transparent title darken into a more obvious colour, and then possibly fade out again. I definitely won't want to make them too obvious, or garish; I'd rather they be more subtle, and not appear too dramatically as this may seem too unprofessional and distract the audience from the content of the opening.

I don't yet have a title for the production, but this is going to be very important, and needs to fit in with the overall tone and idea of the film without seeming too boring or illfitting.

Mood Board

Here I've included some images to represent inspiration for certain sections within the opening of the film.

Opening Titles

Scott Pilgrim vs the World: This opening starts with giving us some basic information about the character through an everyday conversation with his flat/housemates. In this way, we find out who he is, how old he is, and what he does. The sequence then goes on to introduce other characters in the film, which lets us immediately get into the film. We are almost in the position of the character of "Knives" who doesn't know any of the characters or their music etc.

Any Human Heart: This introduction s very different to the previous one, as it gives us no real information about the film, or about what is to come, which  I think is fine in an opening as we don't want to be overloaded with information as soon as a film starts. It's an animated opening sequence and is quite visually interesting, so captivates the audience without them knowing about anything that is going to happen.

FIght Club: The opening sequence to this film leaves the audience with a lot of questions about what's going on, once they have seen to whole opening. The very beginning takes us through the character's brain, but before we see the whole picture, we have absolutely no idea of what's going on, which is quite an effective way to open a film. The colours are very dark, setting the tone perhaps for the rest of the film, and the audience is only introduced to one character visually; we still don't know who he is or who is holding the gun to his mouth.

Opening Details

How I am starting my film will be with a black screen and some softish music, fading into my production comapny title and logo, just for a few seconds. After this, the screen will fade to black again, and once more fade in to an image of a woman stnading at the window and opening the curtains. This static shot will last for probably 1.5 seconds, and this shot will be repeated seven times, with the woman opening the curtains over and over as if on different days. This will be followed by the woman picking up keys seven times of different deays, folowed by a sequence of her on a train, probably sitting in the same seat, but wearing different clothyes in each shot to show the passing of time. We'll then see her in a queue for coffee, moving closere to the bar with each of the seven shots. This willl be followed by her eating her lunch on the seafront possibly, which is near where she may work. After this, we'll see seven more shots of her walking down the beach in the same clothes as the previous sequences, but getting further and further away from the camera, so we assume she goes on this walk each day. It would aslo be a good note to fade the screen to black on, as she disappears up the beach, but I'm not sure how long this sequence will be overall; if it's significantly under 2 min utes, I would need to extend it beyond the shot of her walking away, possibly by shots of her putting her keys back down at home, and then sighing and sitting down/ almost collapsing on the sofa, just oncea tthe end of the opening, to show how she is bored of her life.

For actors, I would ideally like to use a woman around 30, but as of yet I am not sure if I will have access to someone like this, and I may have to use someone younger, which would not be as good, as we wouldn't get a proper idea of the pattern that she has fully settled in to.

I would need, for this opening, a house overlooking somewhere fairly rural probably, a train, a coffee shop or hut, and the beach, which should all be fairly doable.
This is a shot of Sheringham beach, where I'd consider filming the beach scenes.

I'd quite like the coffee hut to be an outside one, not very permanent looking, as this would both be less hassle to fim, and more visually interesting to film. There are several huts like these on beach fronts and so they're easily accessible.

Production Titles and Logo

Name of Production Company: I haven't really thought much about my company name yet, but it should probably be something personal to myself to disitnguish from other companines. That woulod mean basing my company name around my own name probably...
On the other hand, if I were to think of something not based around my own name that sounded good, I'd be ahhpy to use that.

I quite like the name "Workhouse Productions", and for this I might have my logo just as a workhouse with perhaps some steam coming out of one of the chimneys; it's quite a ismple idea but one that would probably work quite well.

I also quite like "Henhouse Productions" as it's different to other company names, and would give my company more individuality. For I would find a line drawing of a henhouse, or similar, and have the title appearing in an interesting way across the image.
I'd be looking at using a line drawing similar to the one above as it's simple and different.

Ideal Actors

Ellen Page would be a really good actress to portray my main character, if I given access to any actress, as she is very versatile and has the right sort of look for the part. She's been in films from Juno to Inception and she's got excellent ratings in both films in very different roles.

However, clearly I cannot use her in my film, so I'll need to find another actress to be my main character. There won't really be too much "acting" as such involved, because I am not having any speech in my opening, and the person I use just needs to look around the right age, even though I don't have access to anyone who's actually the right age.  However there are lots of people around school who I'll be able to make look the right character, and who will be happy to be in the opening.

Genre

My film doesn't really have a set genre; it is definitely not a horror, a thriller, not a romance or a drama, and not a western or comedy either. As such, I would probably need to decide what to call this new genre, or what to combine it with, as genre is a key aspect of marketing a new film. The closest genre to my film would be an adventure film, but it's more about self-discovery than going on an actual adventure, and without any action. It would be crossed with an art film, so it has a more melancholy feel while showing the character during new experiences, as is usual in adventure films. To conform to the genre of adventure, my film will include new experiences and exotic locales, which is one of the points of an action film. They do not put so much emphasis on violence and action as action genre (my film will probably not include any violence), but focus more on travels, conquests, explorations, struggles and situations that confront the main character.


Genre is so important because it labels the film and allows the viewer to know what they're going to watch, ad what to expect from the film; genre is considered to function in the same way as a language system does.

Audience Research from Anna and Sarah on Vimeo.

Here, me and Sarah have interviewed 6 different people on the five questions that we composed. This has allowed me to confirm the ideas for my opening; despite some conflicting ideas, most people enjoy only seeing a few characters in the opening, with not much going on.

Film Pitch Feedback

Good Points:

• It sound new- good.
• Arty, very different to what e see regularly. Make sure you show there is a market for this type of film (Cinema City/ Village screen)
• Opening sequence, 7 days 7 different shots of same routine etc, reinforces idea, good.
• Spoke clearly and well.

Bad Points:

• Powerpoint would have been good to aid presentation.
• More indication of potential audience/ audience research needed to help "sell" the idea.

From this feedback I decided to carry out more audience research. I have some preliminary research already completed, and I need to put this information in a clear form so I can tell more easily which type of film in popular anhd what would sell a film to an audience more.  I'm going to do some more indepth research soon, and get that on my blog.

Film Synopsis

The opening of the film shows us the woman, Eve Robinson  opening the curtains or blinds in a sequence seven times, so it looks like she is opening them over and over again on different days in a week. This is followed by a sequence of seven shots of her sitting on the train, then seven shots of her waiting in a queue for coffee, seven of her eating lunch, seven of her on the train home and then seven of her putting her keys down back at home. This sequence is followed by a shot of her sighing and then finally the screen goes black, where the title of the film appears. Each shot will be about 3 seconds, and so the viewer gets an overall idea of how this woman's life progresses on a day to day basis. This sets up the idea that she is just an ordinary woman to start with.

After the opening, we see Eve as a girl, in the scene where her parents are arguing, and as she is only five at the time, she does not understand the repercussions that a divorce in the family could bring, and so she just stays in her room doing what she normally would on any other evening. We see her at school, going about a normal day, and we see her coming out of the school to meet her mother, who looks as though she has been crying. We'd see a few more minutes of this childhood, so that the audience gets the idea of the discomfort and tensions in the family, before returning to the present, pulled back into the present by a phone ringing.

The film  continues like this, giving us long flashbacks and memories from the Eve's youth, such as when she was seventeen, coming home from a night out and having an argument with her mother, where it is revealed that her parents overcame the problems they faced when she was younger. We then see her graduating from university, then when she gets a job and her life starts to settle into a pattern; one that she still carries, and doesn't particularly enjoy.

Back in the present day, she sees on television an event, which will most likely be the bombings of 9/11 or 7/7. This makes her realise how she needs to make herself be her own person, and how people go through life being pushed around and shaped by other people, when all they need to be is themselves. This leads her on to questioning herself and what she's doing and why. This in turn leads on to her trying to break free of the social norm, and the influence of other people. Questioning what makes us who we are, she takes a year leave from her work to go and live with people around the world who don't lead the life she does; she will visit the slums of Brazil, and the inuits of Greenland for example. She sees the places that the world left behind, and finds out what really matters in life; not the things we own or the places we work. Throughout this year she takes a photograph at each place she stays, with the people she meets, and at the end of the film we will see a montage of all of these photographs, with Eve having found out what matters to her and who she is. She goes back to her home town with this knowledge, and we once more see her sitting on the train on her way to work, but this time with a smile on her face.