Post 8

Developing a script was initially a lot harder than I anticipated; to allow me to get the best possible outcome I created a lot of planning and additional notes prior to my lessons. The first image shown below is a time line of the events that I intend to take place throughout my short film. Developing this benefited my understanding a lot more and enabled my ideas to get from my head to paper so I could therefore be more organised and have a better understanding of what I wanted to happen.

The penultimate piece of work I completed before actually writing my script was to create a series of character profiles for both my main characters. Having already completed detailed character profiles in the previous post, i focused mainly on the characters emotion and how they act within the short film. This helped me to become visual and jot down, prior to my time line of events, any additional ideas I wanted to develop for my short film. As shown below my character profiles have words and short sentences to briefly describe their personality and the events that happen to them. By doing this my ideas became a lot clearer in my head and I felt near enough ready to then write my first draft of my script.

To conclude in my background study for creating my script, as a class we completed an “8way thinking guide” to bring all of our ideas together. The guide consisted of 8 points, where in which we had to develop questions that could be raised for our initial ideas. Our aim was then to answer the questions in our short film and research. For example, in the point “Feelings” my main question was “What emotions do both characters feel when they find out they are talking to each other?” This was highlighted to me as a key idea that I needed to answer and within writing my script I ensured I answered the question. Furthermore the other points were: Words, people, nature, sights, number, sounds and actions. By completing this guide it enabled me to focus on all aspects that should be included when creating a short film.

Prior to all the research for my script I thought it would be in my best interest to research into Anorexia. By doing this I will have additional information which will help with dealing with the problem in the latter part of my script. I am focussing the idea of an eating disorder on character Jayney Ray; I intend to explore the ideas dealing with her parents and how she has kept it hidden for a long period of time. I found a lot of information out whilst studying in depth into these ideas, and the websites I came across linked me to a range of people’s views and past experiences. With this in mind it was helpful due to know I am more aware of the sorts of anxieties and confidence the characters have. The link below shows a website which I used a lot when planning ideas based around anorexia. The website is mainly for family and friends coping with someone’s eating disorder, this enabled me to work with these ideas for the pros and cons of my character. FamilyAndFriendsCopingWithEatingDisorders.html

I decided to take a photo of my progress when writing my script, as you can see I am using all my independent study rescources to help me develop my script in the best way possible.

Post 7

In post 6 I produced a visual image reinforcing how to make a “good” short film. Within this image I elaborated upon the “Step Outline” which is said to be a good way in which you can check that you have no slack in your film. The step outline includes developing one sentence that summarises what happens throughout the whole of your short, an explanation of what is revealed that is significant to the plot, an account of what is revealed and that is significant to the audiences understanding of the character, finally there needs to be the question raised as to whether there are any indications of a specific theme or genre.

Post 7 mainly consisted of preparation for the making of my script for my short film. This involved making a character profile and discussing briefly my intentional plot outline. Furthermore within post 8 you will receive an insight as to whether i have stuck to my original ideas and how i have developed them.

Planning for my script was one of the hardest aspects to the pre-production work. As a class we generally had a tendency to watch heavy social realist films, with this in mind our teacher recommended we watched “Signs”. The film draws attention to a simpler, yet effective message. As a short film “Signs” did very well at the Schweppes short film festival, and drew in a larger more mature audience. “Signs” encouraged me to focus on a subject that will have an effect with the audience and won’t necessarily be predictable. With this in mind, i aim to leave audiences in confusion – and encourage them to wonder what really is going to happen next! When we were watching the short film our class teacher occasionally paused the viewing and asked us to guess what we think we happen throughout the remainder of the film, with this in mind it left our imaginations to conclude the story. As the film ended, the majority of us had different ideas as to who we presumed it would conclude. This had a great affect on the audience, and i hope to achieve this in my short film.

"SIGNS"

When planning for my script I made a rough outline of notes and indicated 6 vital points that helped to shape my basic plot line. I was encouraged by my class teacher to focus primarily on the world in which my character will live in, my main character themselves and the problem that will occur during my short film. Once all that information was processed I needed then to work out a want, need and obligation for my character. This planning then led me to develop my script.

Character Profile's

JAYNEY RAY: 

Character Jayney Ray has recently moved from Liverpool to where she is now. Audiences become aware of this when she tells opposing character via MSN. Jayney Ray suffered from an ongoing eating disorder; her parents took it within themselves to moe the whole family to Watford, where they are now. Jayney Ray left her boyfriend in Liverpool, and was hoping for a brand new start. The past still very much is Jayney Ray’s present and haunts her. Her family are seen to be overprotective, but out of the kindness in their hearts. The impact the eating disorder had on the character will appear to be very much overwhelming and will ultimately affect the whole of the short films narrative. As an audience you never once hear Jayney Ray admit to having the eating disorder, nor do you hear her talk about it. The only references made are when her dad implies they left the past behind them for a specific reason, as well as Jayney Ray looking at magazines paying particular attention to skinny celebrities. As the tension rises in the film, this becomes a lot clearer. As the film begins the character will appear to be a threat to next door neighbour Rachel, but as the filming concludes you are left suspicious of the both girls stability. I chose Jayney Ray to be 17 years of age, in my opinion that is the year where girls are vulnerable and emotional.

RACHEL:

My Second character profile is of the other protagonist Rachel. Rachel differs significantly from Jayney Ray, and this is noticeable from the beginning of the short film. Rachel is seen to be always unhappy, implications come from the fact that she has broken up with her long term boyfriend. Rachel has a poor attitude and is disrespectful to her Mother the majority of the time. Not only is Rachel arrogant, she is noticeably quite confident in the way she speaks about Jayney Ray, before she even knows her direcently. The ending of the film is focused on Rachel’s choice of actions and as an audience I intend for them to generally make assumptions on her decisions and whether she does in fact own up and tell Jayney Ray. Jayney ray lives with her brother, mother and father and is also similarly to Rachel 16 years of age. The character of Jayney Ray is very distant from the audience, she doesn’t have much to say or do and as the director of the short film I intend on making her extremely suspicious and intriguing. With this distance in mind, it is very obvious that as soon as she is presented to the audience they will almost straight away justify an opinion upon her. The only time as an audience we see the two characters meeting is when Jayney Ray knocks on Rachel’s front door, the majority of the shaping of characters is through individual actions and the conversation they have over the computers.

Plot Outline
The film begins with a focus on the character of Rachel and her constantly negative attitude towards near enough all attributes in life. Rachel is seen at home wither her Mother present in the house; prior to the filming there are implications of a previous family row. Being in such a negative mood, Rachel is seen sitting on her bedroom on her own, her parents are downstairs and with the music blaring there are constantly raised voices. Rachel makes no attempt to move to make an effort to talk to her Mum who is calling her. After Rachel leaving her bedroom she is then seen downstairs in her kitchen, after mooching around in the kitchen and observing a note her Mother has left her, Rachel looks outside and observes the family moving into the house next door. After implications of a “happy” life for Jayney Ray, Rachel takes it out on the note her Mother has left her and slams it on the kitchen side and storms out of the kitchen. At this point in the narrative, audiences are aware that Rachel feels nothing more than jealousy for former protagonist Jayney Ray.

After all the actions being directly from Rachel’s perspective, the camera focus moves to Jayney Ray who is in the process of moving into her house next door. Jayney Ray has a brother and lives with both her Mother and Father, they all are seen to be laughing and joking around whilst moving boxes from the car into the house. Soon after helping out, Rachel moves to her bedroom where she sits at her bedroom desk with her laptop open… After logging onto MSN and talking to a “stranger” about moving to the area, we begin to become aware that this plot line could develop! After a change in houses, audiences are then aware that the girls are in fact talking to each other, with this in mind it will set the audience’s mind racing includes the questions of what will happen next between both girls.

As the plot concludes, Rachel becomes aware that they are in fact talking to each other, and makes an attempt to apologise to her neighbour. As an audience we are not aware of weather she does in fact own up to her bitching, or leaves it. Rachel is last seen at Jayney Ray’s front door. Through muttered words and a nervous temperament Rachel shows a sense that she has personally done something wrong. But, with this in mind we are questioned that, due to her previously shown personality, will she have the guts to own up for what she has done? The last image audiences see is Jayney Ray sitting on her bed tearing up magazines with her music exceptionally loud. Due to this, there are indications that Rachel has in fact told Jayney Ray what has happened and it has affected her in the sense that she is now looking at the images of celebraties again.

Different Theories:
Further research led us to develop an understanding on a variety of theories. Todorv focuses on films that have specifically three main parts to them. An equilibrium, a disequilibrium and a new equilibrium. His ideas were shown through the example of Goldilocks and the three bears. At the start of the story everything is going well and all characters appear to be happy, as the film develops into the second part, a problem is at hand. In this case, the problem of course was Goldilocks herself. As the film concludes the tone appears to be happy again, but with a noticeable change. Characters have changed or developed and they are coping with a new sort of happiness - not identical to the happiness they all felt at the foundation of the story.

Post 6 - What makes a good short film?

To begin our knowledge on short films our school organised a speaker to attend a triple lesson with us. Rebecca Knapp, who is involved with the film making industry, showed us a variety of short films that she worked with. Becky is a film produer and works with various script writters and came with tips and advice for us..

Becky defined the different varieties of short films with their separate timings. With the length of a short film being under 5 minutes, producers could only really focus on a jokey plot with your average stereotypical characters. With this in mind films that lasted between 5 and 12 minutes would have more of a plot, more unique yet still simple characters but a journey of events. Short films enable producers to present their ability to the media industry in hope their carer will proceed from there. With films lasting between 12 and 30 minutes they would have a secondary story line with more developed characters with multiple character traits.

During Becky’s visit she left us with bundles of information and most importantly a variety of scripts we can look at. The script I mainly focused on was “Does God play football?” I enjoyed reading through this script and found it benefited my learning due to already having watched the short film. With this in mind it helped me to develop my idea as well as get a good insight on how scripts should be set out.  

Within making short films, it is clear that the target audience is very narrow. It is important that I keep this in mind when producing my short film, by doing so I will ensure that the films genre isn’t too specific and instead is rather general so it will appear to a variety of audiences. When making a short film, it is important for producers to impress people such as Becky Knapp as ultimately they could fund the productions distribution. It is clear that people make shorts to get into the film industry and with this in mind competition of talent occurring in them is dramatically increasing.

When producing a short film it is clear that the writing and idea development part of any film is likely to be one of the more challenging areas for film makers. With this in mind when writing a script it is important to have previously approached the idea generation and writing stage of your short film. Many critics have analysed a variety of scripts and pre-production work and have said that the most frequent problem is that all producers want to include too much information for their short films.

The image to the left is a brain storm of information of elements that are important when not only writing a script for our short films, but also the remainder of the production work. The information indicated is from the sheets given to us from director/producer Becky Knapp, information on Becky is previously located on post 5, as well as independant study.

The attachment below links directly to the screen writing conventions website, looking at this website will be important as well a helpful when writing scripts for our production in the later part of the year.

scriptfactory.

For my independent study work, we were asked to complete 5 tasks of our own choice. My first piece of work was based upon the short film, previously analysed, “Plastic Bag” by Ramin Bahrani. The film follows the journey of the plastic bag, which encounters every obstacle along the way. The narrative is that of the plastic bag and in the end the wayward plastic bag wafts its way to the ocean. I enjoyed this short film, but it did leave me very confused. Personally I prefer a human narrative, because as an audience it is easier to relate to the story line.

My second bit of research was based around the short film “Mister Green”, this is a parable about change; both personal and political. The story line of this film makes you think a lot, and can have a huge impact on the audiences emotions. This is very common for short films; they do have a tendency to touch each viewer individually.

Thirdly I watched “The other side” by Amyn Kaderall. After researching what inspired Amyn Kaderall to produce the short film I came across the factors that she was inspired by the current immigration debate in the US. The film seeks to provoke American audiences into considering a different perspective. The film itself was produced by MMX Independent Television Service (ITV’s) and had a noticeably small cast, due to research it is also apart that it did appear to have a significantly small crew also.

For my penultimate piece of independent study I explored in depth more about shorts themselves. Throughout my research I was directly linked towards study on the UK Film Council. Within this study I came across an interesting quote, which summarised the purpose of short films: “Short films can help new film makers to develop their talent”. The UK film council was abolished due to a change of government, but before hand they funded script development, short films, film production, film export and distribution as well as cinemas. Before the abolishing took place there were a variety of arguments against the film council which complained about “miss using public money”. The council itself was set up in 2000 by the labour government as a non-departmental public body to develop and promote the film industry in the UK. When producing media texts, it appeared that the film council was beneficial and extremely helpful and personally I can not see the reasoning behind it being abolished.

My final study was based upon film director Stephen Mead. Mead is a director of short films and started his career designing at the theatre Royal Stratford East. It is notable that his real passion was however for film and photography. After working as a film editor and being so successful he was soon promoted to a director.  His works include “Little Birds”, “Wick” and “Waterfall”. Stephen is also seen to work intimately with business partner Holly Hartley in the production of his shorts.