For my practical coursework, I intend to create the opening scene(s) for a film. I will initially develop on the concept which I already have, then create my screenplay, complete the filming and finally I will go through post-production to create my final piece.
I aim to create the opening scene for a social realist film, which is based around a diary entry for the protagonist's seventeenth birthday. From research that I have done, popular social realist themes include fighting the system, alienation, depression, unemployment, family, friends, relationships and love as well as violence, drugs and drug use, abuse, youth and the generation gap. The themes in my production include bullying, alienation, friendship and although quite minimal, issues of family relationships.
Although I am aiming to create a film with social realist themes, I would like to experiment with the visuals and develop a film noir feel for the mise en scene. Therefore, instead of grim, gritty desaturated colours, I could use a harsher monotone colour scheme whilst using more shadows. I feel that this would make the film memorable, and also challenge the conventions that are associated with the social realist genre.
I will do this by looking in depth at techniques used by film makers in the film noir genre, and seeing which ones would be appropriate to use in the scenes I am to produce.
I intend to shoot on location, doing most of the filming within Palmer’s College. This is because it is a key location for many people within the target audience, but also because much of the storyline revolves around events at college.
I feel that the target audience for the production would primarily be females between the ages of 15-25, as it is in this gender and age range that the main character of the story falls, and therefore it is most likely that this segment of the audience will have a stronger response and reaction to the events which take place. I feel that they will also connect with the protagonist as the story is told through a series of diary entries, drawing the audience into the events taking place.
I feel that females especially will relate to the main character as they, stereotypically anyway, have the cultural capital surrounding the importance and function of diaries. However, I feel that males in the same age band could also relate through their own experiences from being in similar situations, and also because it is filmed and set in a college, much of the audience will hold sufficient cultural capital for them to relate to the characters and interact with the film in that way.
I hope to achieve a production with a unique visual style for the genre, but that still enforces the events and issues within the work.
I think that the hardest thing to do will be getting people to participate in filming, whereas the easiest but most time consuming part will be either the script development or post-production editing.