Scripting

Scripting is a very important aspect when making a film, whether it be a comedy, drama, or even a horror it is all important, how the script is written is important, that is what makes the film.

Some genres such as action would not necessarily need major amounts of dialogue, but would need major amounts of action which gets the adrenaline pumping. As our film is drama scripting is very important, not a lot of dialogue is needed in our film as it is only a short film, but we still need to be careful of what we write.

As always i wanted to check that the script was okay to use so we got advice about the script we wanted to show the audience that he has lost his girlfriend through death of Laura…Advice we got back suggested that the script doesn’t show that she has passed away so an updated version of the the script had to be made.

Updated Script:

Louis voice : You really miss her don’t you?

Louis: (nods head)

Louis Voice: You could have changed?

Louis: Maybe she didn’t to change, I tried my best to keep her happy

Louis Voice: You didn’t try hard enough and now shes dead for what?

Louis: I know I know…I..I..I just want her back in to my arms again

Louis Voice: That neighbors getting nosy again

Louis: eh? what neighbor?

Louis Voice: you know the one that was  friends with Laura?

Louis: (Confused face)

Louis Voice: Better fix up, you need to sort yourself out mate.

This updated version of the script gives a clear indication that Laura is dead and where it says ‘you need to fix up’ the audience will think that he has an alcohol problem.

Creativity

What Is Creativity?

Creativity is very broad and has no proper meaning. different people will find different things creative, this is all down to peoples opinions, it can even be down to age or gender. For example if a film has come out a 15 year old male might have a different opinion to a 15 year old female, also a 15 year old might find the film very good whereas a 20 year old might be bit more mature and might not find it very good.

my interpretation of Creativity

– Thinking outside the box

– Doing something that has never been done before

– Innovation

– Unique idea

– Extraordinary

some people define Creativity as:

1) “Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others.” – Robert E. Franken

2)  “Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one… What counts is whether the novelty he or she produces is accepted for inclusion in the domain.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

3) “Creativity is generating new ideas and concepts, or making connections between ideas where none previously existed.” – Mitchell Rigie and Keith Harmeyer.

4) “Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being. Creativity requires passion and commitment. It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life. The experience is one of heightened consciousness: ecstasy.” – Rollo May,

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0deXiIQSF0

Is creativity Natural, learnt or taught?

I believe that creativity is natural although it cant be learn’t, this is because everyone is different, some people are naturally more creative then others and can spark ideas out quickly whereas others may need time to think of ideas. some people may need a trigger for there creative side to come out. For example someone would say a original idea then the other person would spark of the original idea and come up with something different. Creativity can also be learn’t this is done by seeing different things everyday which can almost build a little story, talking to different people everyday, watching different TV show or movies. They learn to be creative and think or ideas.

 

The roles within the Group

Hamza being a member of my group thought of a good production company name we can call this Short film which was Blue Print Productions, I thought this name was very good because its simple and straight forward.

The roles within the group are:

Mehul Laxhman

Role: Director/ editor – Having two roles with my group as a director, I have to actually manage the filming and say what shots to use the different camera angles which would make the Short film entertaining for the audience, whilst actually thinking of different shots and camera angles to use I have to actually think right where can I cut to link with another scene so basically doing a but of visualisation of the whole film together so editing scenes in my head.

Hamza Kazmi

Role: Hamzas role within the group is the producer, he works very close with the director, Actually thinking of a story is a producers job but as we working in a team we all contributed into ideas. So he has a lot of responsibility is making sure the preparation building up too the task is done properly, which include the health and safety and legal issues, booking the equipment, making sure where we film permission is required before we do start to film.

Alia Nagayi

Alias role withing the group is the cinematography this involved shooting being very artistic and creative the way the film is develop, this also requires Alia to do storyboard and work with the director so director can pass on to the cinematographer what shots are needed when.

StoryBoard

Story Board is a very important aspect when planning a film as it gives a rough idea of how to shoot the film, it also helps when actually filming as you can film in sequence and do it in order. 

A storyboard breaks down a whole film into small chunks so you can imagine what the film will be like when its all fit together. A storyboard is a brief sketch of what parts of the film you can shoot when and how it will all fit together it also includes the camera angle and the shots which will be used to make the Short film as effective as possible.

The storyboard was created by myself..as it was Alias responsibility to create this storyboard and failed to deliver I had to take responsibility into my own hands and create a storyboard.

Thinking Of Short Film Ideas

Me and my production team came up with few ideas

1st Idea was:

The Mischief Child:

Narrative – Boy who gets everything from his parents, anything he demands he gets. In some ways he is always rude to his parents he never does what he is told. He always kicks up a big fuss when his mother has told him to do some housework, he is basically relying on his parents  for everything. He is also a very lazy person who can not even make himself a cup of tea. Everything that is done for him like parents giving a surprise on his birthday or buying him something unexpectedly he does not appreciate so he does not appreciate his parents thoughts or helpfulness. So through out the movie we see him doing all this stuff to his parents, but as the Short Film progresses the mother and father have had a car crash and have both unfortunately died. Meaning that the child is left alone and in the hands to take care of all fathers business and the house all by himself, after they have died he realises how hard his parents worked to give him the best possible life. All the time he didn’t appreciate life is living in sorrow and wishing his parents were here, not so he can go back to his original life but to actually say sorry and too give them help in hand in everything they do. At the end of the film a quote comes up saying “Appreciate everything you have life, because one day all those things will just fade away”.

Genre and target audience – This type of film would be a Drama because of the events that have been going on. It would been targeted towards a more teenage and parents because that’s who we want to give the message to and get across especially with the quote because I know that there are kids out there who take everything for granted and don’t appreciate everything they have no matter how big or small.

This idea is relatively easy to make as you would need only couple of location one would be the home of parents and child and the other the scene of the crash, not major amounts of props would be needed and costumes would mostly be for the parents who would need to be in work clothes and sometimes in casual clothes. The major difficulty of this idea is actually filming a car crash this would be difficult because it will be hard to make it look like a car crash, trying to get it on fire and also due to the health and safety elements we would not be able to this. An alternative to actually showing a car crash is showing an ellipsis and cut away the actual car crash but the audience will acknowledge that a car crash did happen. The other thing I  could do is making a phone call from the hospital to the little boy.

2nd Idea:

Narrative – Similarly to the 1st idea but, a man comes home from a hard day of work, we see that he is a wealthy man by when he is pulling up to his house he is driving a nice house and we see him having a nice house too. we see that he has a girlfriend or wife living with him and he doesn’t really pay her any attention, she asks to do stuff over the weekend he just ignores her or says no I cant i have got a lot of work to do at the office i wont be back home this weekend i am away on a meeting in another city. After year of being together he comes back from his meeting to find a note on his bed as he reads the note it says things like how she has left him because it hasn’t worked out and he doesn’t pay any attention to her. Bringing the realisation to what he actually has been doing.

Genre/Target audience – Once again the genre is Drama, and the target audience will be more adults from ages 20 and above because it reflects around adults lives more then it does in teenagers lives from 15 16 years of age. There some sort of stories all the time how somebody has left this person for this reason.

This idea is actually more tricky too make because we would need to find an adult male and female to act in this Short film that would be hard because to find a good actor/actress is difficult. Also it would be hard to find somebody who not only has good acting skills but also a good car and nice house. Some people are not willing to have that sort of relationship acts within peoples relationship.

                              

3rd Idea:

Narrative – This was a  person who has gone to work and the employee has a huge crush on the worker, and so does everything she can in order too actually try and get with this guy, but its done in a way that is bit unique and different like always trying to make him fail at all the work he does, she is aware that the guy she is trying it with is actually married with two children, being at the company for 3 months he think its actually time to get back at this woman for all the stuff she is doing. So he takes revenge by trying to set her up by firing her. This is done by him making obstacles and attempts of fooling her in various different ways, but with trying too hard to make her fail in the work and get her fired, he trys another approach by actually going along with all the stuff the employer is doing but actually tricking her into something that makes her caught.

Genre/Target Audience – The genre would be comedy because it has humor and context viewers will find funny, the target audience would be teenagers and adults age from 20-20 this is because they can actually relate to working style, but also the humor which would be included the audience would understand.

This Short film can work as it can be done at an office or even in a class room, where a teacher is trying something with a sub teacher. The difficult part of this film is the obstacles the employer can face also the fact that making it a comedy will be very tough because some people might find it and some might not find it funny, this is all about taking a risk there’s a 50/50 chance it will be successful or not. My inspiration for this idea came from a movie called HORRIBLE BOSSES 

Horrible Bosses

Character Profiles

Name – Louis Ferdinand

Age – 26

Relationship Status – Widow

Occuption –  Director of Sweetheart Productions and a professional Actor, and also is very respected within the community.

Background – Comes from a middle class background, went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) and obtained a First Class in Acting BA(Hon) and also received a First Class in Directing MA(Hon). Set up his own production company called ‘Sweetheart Productions 3 years after graduating from RADA. It was at RADA where he met his girlfriend Laura Goodwin.

Name – Aaron Samuel

Age – 34

Relationship Status – Married with 2 kids

Occupation – Police Officer

Background – Comes from a middle class background, always wanted to join the police force from a very young age, got pushed to study he has a degree in aerospace technology, even with a fantastic degree he still wanted to join the police, help the environment and keep it safe.

Name – James Marsden

Age – 37

Occupation – Police Officer

Relationship Status – Single

Background – A well respected person in the neighbour, has been in the police for the past 14 years a highly experienced Officer who has been through all sorts of cases.

Intial Idea For Short Film

After a very long time thinking and developing ideas, we have come up with an final idea to produce.

Hamza being the producer bought forward the Idea, I read the idea and thought to myself I like the idea because it has got a moral about appreciating life. I wanted to seek for a experience persons view on this so we asked the teacher, she said this is a very long idea and wont be able to produce this in the 5 minutes.

After explaining our Idea to some people and and the teacher the feedback we received was it was way too long, so we had to change and develop our idea.

This is where I thought I was the most creative because I bounced of other peoples Idea to develop, Myself and Hamza thought of many Ideas on ways to develop whereas the other member of our team Alia just agreed with us and didn’t have much input on how to develop Ideas.

This is where I suggested we could show the london sights e.g Big Ben, London Eye and London Bridge.  The other Idea I came up with was showing the day go from night time to sunset or sunset to night time, to make it more appealing to the audience and be creative, I got inspiration of that idea from a movie called ‘Hangover’

There were a lot of things which I had to consider when developing the idea, this included:

Was it realistic and achievable?

do we need to pay money and need permission to film at a location

what props will I need to produce this Short Film and will I be able to get them quickly

Further Development Of Idea

Although we had a good and final Idea I thought we could develop this further into a stronger piece of work.

My teacher looked at our final Idea and thought it wasn’t very convincing and that interesting, so she suggested to have a twist at the end of the Short Film, this twist was to show himself killed his wife, so throughout the whole Film the audience feels sympathy for him because his wife is dead, and in the end the audience actually think wow wasn’t expecting that.

Whilst on the Ideas on twists I had a huge brain wave and thought of so many different things I could include in my Idea.

The idea I thought of was adding two extra characters these characters are two police officers coming to arrest louis (played by Hamza) because they’ve just found out that he is the actual murderer of his wife. Two police officers barge through the doors and shout ‘ Armed Police don’t move!’ they then go into the garden to check if everything is still clear, and a long shot shows the whole house the two police officers and Louis (Hamza) on top at a vantage point ready  to shoot them. I then suggested to make it more interesting all lights would switch off and the same time and it would be pitch black and all we hear is two gun shots.