Treatment Outline:
The film I have chosen to do an opening sequence for will be
a teenage drama film, called “Breaking Point”. The audience I’m aiming to
entertain would be late teens (ages between 15 and 22), coming from working,
middle and upper middle class, seeking for Status and Escape, putting them in
the group E in the young and rubicam’s psychographic profiling. My secondary
audience would be middle aged people who know what being a struggling, late
teenager is like, or are parents of ones. Main themes would be dance, coming of age, conflict, friendship and struggles. The main binary oppositions the film will accent on are hard life vs freedom and happiness, crime and danger vs creativity, calm setting vs scary urban, intense mood vs upbeat and flowy (shown through the music). Music is a key convention to the opening sequence, as it opens up to introduce the character, with a rough, intense instrumental, and then develops into an upbeat inspirational song, representing the movie clearly in the opening. It would fit perfectly, as it is a dramatic, heavy song that has its high and low points. We will gain rights to use the song for our opening sequence, by emailing the record label that released it and asking for permission.
Todorov's Narrative Theory:
The storyline will follow a struggling girl with being
kicked out of her house due to family problems, being forced to get involved
with a gang in order to maintain her normal life and fund her dancing. When the
narrative is broken down by the Todorov’s narrative theory, we end up with:
↣ Equilibrium:
Eleanor, main character gets kicked out of her house, owes money to gangs, and struggles with debts that stop her from paying for her dance school and general needs in order to keep her life up. (negative equilibrium – she has a bad life full of struggles)
↣ Disruption:
The gang she owes money to is looking for her, wanting their money asap – her life is endangered.
↣ Recognition:
Just when everything is going downhill for the main protagonist, she gets accepted into a dance competition, with the chance of winning a huge amount of money, which would help her pay her debts and finally start clean.
↣ Repair:
She finally takes her life in her own hands, getting a part time job to save up money, and keeps practising for the competition. However, she doesn’t win, the gang finds out and confronts her again, this time hurting her to prove a point (a period of violent scenes, fighting and drama takes over this part of the movie … seems like nothing can get any worse for her, everything is over).
↣ New Equilibrium:
She finds out she got scouted at the competition, which lands her a well-paid part-time job so she can finally stabilise. Stays to live with Tory until she finds her own place. The gang doesn’t bother her anymore and her life is finally stress-free. She is happy.
Overall, the idea of the film is to follow a linear narrative, and the opening sequence reflects on that.
Main themes would be dance, coming of age, conflict, friendship and struggles. The main binary oppositions the film will accent on are hard life vs freedom and happiness, crime and danger vs creativity, calm setting vs scary urban, intense mood vs upbeat and flowy (shown through the music). Music is a key convention to the opening sequence, as it opens up to introduce the character, with a rough, intense instrumental, and then develops into an upbeat inspirational song, representing the movie clearly in the opening. It would fit perfectly, as it is a dramatic, heavy song that has its high and low points. We will gain rights to use the song for our opening sequence, by emailing the record label that released it and asking for permission.
Overview and Concept:
The visuals in this opening sequence act as a big role, as drama openings are usually very dull and boring, so we need something that would grab the audience’s attention on the story. The editing would be fast paced and original – we would have transition fades from objects in order to make associations with certain memories and emphasise on the important bits from the first 3 minutes of the movie. The titles would be displayed originally, as moving titles around the dancers, using the movement as credit opening. The sound would be a mixture of diegetic and non-diegetic to confuse the audience, cause shock and keep them on their toes. The music would start with an instrumental of a song to represent loneliness, fighting on your own and having to be a strong person no matter what. However, later on, after Eleanor gets approached by her best friend and gets dragged into the dance group, the lyrics start building up to show power and confidence – something unachievable when one is on their own. In terms of Camera movement, there would be a range of camera angles in order to show different sides to the story. There would be POV shots, where the audience gets involved in with the story and sees things from Eleanor’s perspective, wide shots will introduce different settings to the audience and give them an overview of the situation through stereotypes, medium shots and close-ups would accent on specific characters, objects, emotions or action. They would point the watcher’s attention to the key elements, not giving them a chance to lose interest. Change in angles will affect the way the audience views characters and their behaviour. Colour is another aspect of the film that accents on the binary oppositions. Warm, bright colours would be used in the dance scenes and when she is with friends and works on getting her life better, while darker, cold and uninviting colours will overtake the flashbacks, the violent, gang related scenes and everything to do with her dark past.
Propp's Character Theory:
According to Propp’s character theory, there are 7 types of characters in every well-developed story. In our film we have categorised some of our characters and broken them down into:
↣ Heroine – Eleanor
She is the main protagonist, in her late teens, struggling with life, a dancer, gets involved with the wrong people which leads her to debt and puts her life in danger.
↣ The Helper – Tory
Eleanor’s best friend, distracts her from her hard life, tries her best to cheer her up and help with her struggles – offers her a place to stay towards the end of the movie when she finds out how bad her situation is. Stereotypical teenage girl, very girly and carefree, rather innocent and childish.
↣ The Villain (antagonist) – Jack and Camilla
Gang leaders, hate Eleanor with passion because of reason we find later on in the film. Very aggressive, cold and intimidating people. Guarded and mysterious, which scares the audience and warns they aren’t ones to be messed with.
Locations:↣ Equilibrium:
Eleanor, main character gets kicked out of her house, owes money to gangs, and struggles with debts that stop her from paying for her dance school and general needs in order to keep her life up. (negative equilibrium – she has a bad life full of struggles)
↣ Disruption:
The gang she owes money to is looking for her, wanting their money asap – her life is endangered.
↣ Recognition:
Just when everything is going downhill for the main protagonist, she gets accepted into a dance competition, with the chance of winning a huge amount of money, which would help her pay her debts and finally start clean.
↣ Repair:
She finally takes her life in her own hands, getting a part time job to save up money, and keeps practising for the competition. However, she doesn’t win, the gang finds out and confronts her again, this time hurting her to prove a point (a period of violent scenes, fighting and drama takes over this part of the movie … seems like nothing can get any worse for her, everything is over).
↣ New Equilibrium:
She finds out she got scouted at the competition, which lands her a well-paid part-time job so she can finally stabilise. Stays to live with Tory until she finds her own place. The gang doesn’t bother her anymore and her life is finally stress-free. She is happy.
Overall, the idea of the film is to follow a linear narrative, and the opening sequence reflects on that.
Main themes would be dance, coming of age, conflict, friendship and struggles. The main binary oppositions the film will accent on are hard life vs freedom and happiness, crime and danger vs creativity, calm setting vs scary urban, intense mood vs upbeat and flowy (shown through the music). Music is a key convention to the opening sequence, as it opens up to introduce the character, with a rough, intense instrumental, and then develops into an upbeat inspirational song, representing the movie clearly in the opening. It would fit perfectly, as it is a dramatic, heavy song that has its high and low points. We will gain rights to use the song for our opening sequence, by emailing the record label that released it and asking for permission.
Overview and Concept:
The visuals in this opening sequence act as a big role, as drama openings are usually very dull and boring, so we need something that would grab the audience’s attention on the story. The editing would be fast paced and original – we would have transition fades from objects in order to make associations with certain memories and emphasise on the important bits from the first 3 minutes of the movie. The titles would be displayed originally, as moving titles around the dancers, using the movement as credit opening. The sound would be a mixture of diegetic and non-diegetic to confuse the audience, cause shock and keep them on their toes. The music would start with an instrumental of a song to represent loneliness, fighting on your own and having to be a strong person no matter what. However, later on, after Eleanor gets approached by her best friend and gets dragged into the dance group, the lyrics start building up to show power and confidence – something unachievable when one is on their own. In terms of Camera movement, there would be a range of camera angles in order to show different sides to the story. There would be POV shots, where the audience gets involved in with the story and sees things from Eleanor’s perspective, wide shots will introduce different settings to the audience and give them an overview of the situation through stereotypes, medium shots and close-ups would accent on specific characters, objects, emotions or action. They would point the watcher’s attention to the key elements, not giving them a chance to lose interest. Change in angles will affect the way the audience views characters and their behaviour. Colour is another aspect of the film that accents on the binary oppositions. Warm, bright colours would be used in the dance scenes and when she is with friends and works on getting her life better, while darker, cold and uninviting colours will overtake the flashbacks, the violent, gang related scenes and everything to do with her dark past.
Propp's Character Theory:
According to Propp’s character theory, there are 7 types of characters in every well-developed story. In our film we have categorised some of our characters and broken them down into:
↣ Heroine – Eleanor
She is the main protagonist, in her late teens, struggling with life, a dancer, gets involved with the wrong people which leads her to debt and puts her life in danger.
↣ The Helper – Tory
Eleanor’s best friend, distracts her from her hard life, tries her best to cheer her up and help with her struggles – offers her a place to stay towards the end of the movie when she finds out how bad her situation is. Stereotypical teenage girl, very girly and carefree, rather innocent and childish.
↣ The Villain (antagonist) – Jack and Camilla
Gang leaders, hate Eleanor with passion because of reason we find later on in the film. Very aggressive, cold and intimidating people. Guarded and mysterious, which scares the audience and warns they aren’t ones to be messed with.
The opening sequence will occur in only two locations – a dance
studio and a dark alleyway. The dance studio will be a soft, inviting
environment, showing us what her ‘heaven’ looks like. We are going to use one
of the dance studios in Kingston College – a roomy, all white and grey dance
studio with intense lighting, a mirror wall and wooden doors. Contrast with the
edgy, intense alleyway setting, which is dirty, dark, rough and claustrophobic.
Visual Effects:
Since drama movies don’t rely much on visual effects, we are
only focusing on colour and lighting to add onto the illusion the storyline puts
the audience in. The colour reflects on the mood of the scene through contrast –
warm, friendly and peaceful colours (dance) vs cold, harsh and monotone colours
(outside). In terms of lighting, we would use the bright, soft lighting in the
dance studio to compliment the dancers and their movement, and contrast it with
one, dim street light for the alleyway to create harsh shadows and accent on
the ‘roughness’ of the situation.
Costumes:
Costumes would be used to represent characters through stereotypes:
↣ Hero – wears all black and baggy clothes, doesn’t put much effort in her appearance.
↣ Helper – exactly the opposite, wears a lot of pink, crop tops, very bright coloured clothing, well done makeup and hair – very girly, cheerleader stereotype.
↣ Villains – Dark colours, tight clothing for the girl, baggy for the boy, branded and well taken care of.
↣ Dancers – different outfits show off their personalities. Range of colours, variations of street dance, comfortable wear.
Props:↣ Hero – wears all black and baggy clothes, doesn’t put much effort in her appearance.
↣ Helper – exactly the opposite, wears a lot of pink, crop tops, very bright coloured clothing, well done makeup and hair – very girly, cheerleader stereotype.
↣ Villains – Dark colours, tight clothing for the girl, baggy for the boy, branded and well taken care of.
↣ Dancers – different outfits show off their personalities. Range of colours, variations of street dance, comfortable wear.
The Props we need would be:
↣ Fake Blood
↣ Weapons (knife)
↣ Masks
↣ Speakers
↣ Expensive things
↣ Fake drugs
↣ Money (fake, printed off)
↣ Dancing bag
Equipment:↣ Fake Blood
↣ Weapons (knife)
↣ Masks
↣ Speakers
↣ Expensive things
↣ Fake drugs
↣ Money (fake, printed off)
↣ Dancing bag
The equipment we need when shooting is:
↣ 2 or 3 DSLR Cameras (Nikon and 2 Canon)
↣ 2 or 3 tripods
↣ A microphone
↣ Lighting and reflector
↣ Chargers for everything
↣ SD cards in case we run out of space
↣ Lenses for the cameras
Editing Software:↣ 2 or 3 DSLR Cameras (Nikon and 2 Canon)
↣ 2 or 3 tripods
↣ A microphone
↣ Lighting and reflector
↣ Chargers for everything
↣ SD cards in case we run out of space
↣ Lenses for the cameras
The programs we will use for editing are:
↣ Adobe Premiere Pro
↣ After Effects
↣ Audacity
Struggles:↣ Adobe Premiere Pro
↣ After Effects
↣ Audacity
When shooting, our main struggles would include:
↣ Mirrors, as there is danger of getting the equipment in the shot – we can solve this by practicing and checking the footage during filming.
↣ Cameras running out of battery – bringing Chargers on set
↣ Bad weather conditions – plan ahead, check the weather forecast and look for solutions in case something bad occurs.
↣ Location Availability – Book a specific time and practice loads beforehand
↣ Health and Safety while shooting – give everyone instructions and inform them of possible hazards
↣ Mirrors, as there is danger of getting the equipment in the shot – we can solve this by practicing and checking the footage during filming.
↣ Cameras running out of battery – bringing Chargers on set
↣ Bad weather conditions – plan ahead, check the weather forecast and look for solutions in case something bad occurs.
↣ Location Availability – Book a specific time and practice loads beforehand
↣ Health and Safety while shooting – give everyone instructions and inform them of possible hazards
When editing, the struggles could be:
↣ Continuity – always double check the footage
↣ Bad quality and colour correction – edit carefully and use colour correctors.
↣ Sticking to the time frame of 2 minutes – fast shots, quick transitions, getting to the point quickly and efficiently. Being selective with shots
↣ Not enough footage – improvising, reshoots.
↣ Continuity – always double check the footage
↣ Bad quality and colour correction – edit carefully and use colour correctors.
↣ Sticking to the time frame of 2 minutes – fast shots, quick transitions, getting to the point quickly and efficiently. Being selective with shots
↣ Not enough footage – improvising, reshoots.
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