Short Film Pre-Production

Notes typed and edited by Roisin

Character Profiles

The female protagonist:

• Slim
• Nothing special
• Some unusual features
• Own sense of style - arty

The Seductress:

•  Pixie-like
• Light-footed (dancer)
• White Dress, pink lips (dream)
• Skimpy clothes/rah-rah skirt, red lips, dark eyes (nightmare)
• Represents the temptation to drink

The guy:

•  Normal looking
•  Similar look/style to Justin Bieber
• Represents the female protagonist’s addiction

The friends:

•   Own style

Production Schedule

Sunday 24^th – Friday 28^th October

(Actual days for each location depend on weather)

Two days park:

• Before dream sequence
• Part of dream sequence
• Part of nightmare sequence
• Female protagonist: 2 days
• Seductress: 2 days
• Guy: 2 days
• Friends: 1 day

One day tunnel/underpass:

• Transition from dream to nightmare
• Female protagonist and Seductress

One day leaving house, bathroom and symbolist shots:

• Mostly indoors
• Female protagonist (maybe Seductress)

Synopsis

A girl leaves her home with a bottle of, what appears to be, water and sits in her local park to watch the world go by.  However, everything changes and the world isn’t what she knew it to be; she enters a dream-like world and is led by a girl in white through a forest to a small gathering of friends who are happy to befriend the girl.  Amongst the friends is the girl’s dream man and he leads her farther into the forest.  After presenting her with a gift, the dream world shifts and becomes a nightmare.  The girl feels powerless against the horror and stops everything the only way she knows how to...

The News (Future Shorts)

The camera captures the female protagonist from a wide range of angles, makes it look interesting and shows how happy she is. The voiceover makes it seem as though she is conversing directly with the audience (with pauses for the audience’s to ask questions) and a personal relationship is thus established with her. The camera angle as he explains what has happened to her sister is taken from her point-of-view, which allows the audience to empathise with her and experience the changes of emotion she is experiencing.

The couple are madly in love and everything at first seems ideal, her pouring out her heart to him about he has made her so happy and declaring her love for him. The suddenness of the statement, “I killed your sister,” is stated in such a matter-of-fact tone of voice, that at first the audience do not realize like the female protagonist and have to recheck what he says. The way he also continues to talk as though nothing is going on creates repulsion for the audience. The absence of a reply from the woman leaves a hole in the narrative, one of shock, a contrast to the beginning.

Causality (Coffee Shorts)

The opening of the film and opening shot of the ‘shrine’, carries a mournful tone in the music and the pictures, which every time they change or move flashes like an x-ray, which implies that maybe the couple are dead. The use of music increases the tension of the situation; it reaches a peak with a sound that forebodes, which grabs the audience’s attention to type of situation even before we see the gun.

The slow movement of the camera reveal parts of situation and this again heightens the reader’s interest. As the camera zooms into a close-up of the female protagonist’s face and her reaction to what she has just done, the flashbacks help the audience to understand why and refer to her not knowing what to do.

Her distance from her friend’s ‘death’ is hard for the audience to watch because she is uncaring and harsh The director explores the heights of anger and the depths of despair and juxtaposes them in the protagonist to show how closely they correlate. The audience actually believe that the woman has gotten away with her deceit so are shocked when her friend is we resuscitated. By leaving it on a cliffhanger the director makes the audience curious because we want to know what happened. I actually found this short quite comedic because of the use of music and the ending, it made me laugh.

http://www.coffeeshorts.co.uk/drama.html

Group Discussion

In today’s lesson we got into our groups and started to talk through ideas. I’m working with Justyn and Roisin, we started to think about what sort of topics we would like to explore i.e. secrets. I’m happy to be working with them again after our Media Analysis project, because we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and also we know what sort of ideas work and what doesn’t when it comes to formulating ideas etc.