How does your media production represent particular social groups?

On a whole our media production represents a very wide-spread social group which is the younger generation of today. Throughout the years many of the younger generation have experimented with drugs which is why I believe this film will have a large audience intrigued by this film.

But our characters are also portrayed to represent specific social groups. The character I played (the drug dealer) is portrayed as a criminal, troubled-male teenager. The camera shots show this character pulling suspicious faces to enhance this.

The other two Characters where portrayed to be fairly normal teenagers who have picked up a ‘friend’ who is involved with drugs. These characters are effectively portrayed as the victims of peer pressure. The camera shots show close ups of worreid faces on these characters to further emphasise the fact that they do not want to proceed.

The setting did not perticually represent any specific social group apart from maybe that of a fisherman, these youths are just out on a day out fishing for fun and would not be considerd as 'fishermen'.

Brief Filming evaluation

On our first day filming our driver did not turn up so we could not get to our location (Pickworth lakes), so we used this time to focus purely on the office scene shots; these shots came together smoothly and overall after that first day we where happy with what we had created.

As we could not reach our destination the first time we arranged another day, this went well and we reached our filming destination until ten minuets later it started pouring down with rain forcing us to evacuate the scene and get the cameras to safety.

We sat for an hour whilst waiting for the rain to stop but there was no sign of it stopping so we where forced to go home.

After two failures we decided to choose a similar location which was more local to us (Bourne woods) filming here went very well as we where only walking distance from any resources we needed ( in this case red food colouring for fake blood). After 4 hours of filming we felt we had enough to proceed and create our final product.

Fragmented Memories

Storyboard

Fishing scene:

1)Pan shot of

Environment,

Shots of teens fishing,

Mainly wide angle shots    

        

2) Shot of Laurie approaching with a bottle of pills in hand,

Close up of Laurie shaking bottle of pills,

Close up of Laurie talking about the drug.

3) Close up of Conner pulling concerned face,

Conner expresses that he does not like what’s happening

4) Close up of  Steven pressuring Conner.

Extreme close up of pills in hand, then pills being given out.

5) Close up of pills being taken; switching between each character.

6) Same pan shot as at the start but with high saturation to emphasise the effects of the drug.

7) Tension rises Conner grabs a knife.

Steven witnesses Conner threatening Laurie.

8) Steven witnesses the murder of his best friend (not shown)

Conner lunges for Steven but he escapes.

9) Shots of Stevens escape

As all of the fishing scene is filmed as a flashback the fishing scene shots will be alternating with the following shots;

1)      Steven working in conservatory ( 3-4 alternations between this and fishing scene)

2)      Steven Collapsing from trauma

3)      Steven coughing up blood from drugs long term side effects. ( 2-3 alternations of this.

Location

Our initial location idea was that the fishing scenes would be filmed at Pickworth lakes  and the office scenes would be filmed in Stevens conservatory (with the appropriate mise-en-scene to create an office).

 But after a pilot filming test we found that the person who was supposed to be driving us was extremely unreliable so we decided to choose a more local location to ensure we could get the right ammount of shots and have plenty of time to do it, so we chose Bourne woods ponds;

Allthough we where advised not to use a local location we thaught this location was fairly suitable as we have chosen to film at the smaller pond which is less familliar to locals and is out of the way of families.

Thriller Script

Scene 1: Steven’s conservatory                                                                3 characters total

                                                                                                                   John- Jake

1, multiple shots of Ryan working                                                                 James- Lorry

                                                                                                                   Ryan- Steven

Outside shot

Inside shot

Kitchen window shot

2, character appears fine, normality, quiet

First flash back

Second flash back

Third flash back

3, first flash back

Running through the woods, high speed, multiple angles

Over head

4, cuts back to conservatory,

Character begins to look distort, worried, phased

5, Second flash back

Running, first person shot, breathing heavily, looking about frantically

6, Cuts back to conservatory

Close up of Character, eyes, book, losing focus

7, final flash back

Side angle, branch brakes beneath feat whilst running, trips falls, close up, fade to black

Scene 2:  wood Ponds? Cold, bright, normality

1, pan shot of pond, fishing, camp

3 characters sitting around camp, fishing, quiet, peaceful

2, second character reveals a small bottle containing unknown pills

Script:

James - (revealing bottle of pills) I picked these babies up off a friend up In Stamford

Ryan - so this was the little surprise you were talking about earlier

John - What surprise, what are you guys talking about!?

James - (shows john the bottle) now I’ve been told they got quite a kick, so if your too much of a pussy john, u can fuck off now

John - (hesitant, cautious, looks at Ryan) Ryan, a.a.are you sure we should be doing this?, I don’t like this at all

Ryan - (grabs the pills of James) quit being such a little fag john, u gotta try everything once right? (opens bottle,  hands James one, holds another out to john)

John - …

Ryan – You gunna take it then? (john reluctantly takes the pill from Ryan)

James – atta boy, guess you’re not such a massive fag after all…

Close up of the three characters hands, with a small white pill in each, camera rotates around the three characters, they take the pill

3, Cuts to black

4, first person shot, vision blurry, Ryan laying on the floor, looks about

Ryan sees john with a fishing knife held to James’s neck against a tree, fades to black (losing consciousness)

5, ( Ryan regains consciousness) first person shot, camp is destroyed, no sign of James, blood in the water

John walking over slowly, close up of knife by his side covered in blood, Ryan’s vision begins to blur and fade again as he losses consciousness)

6, Ryan back in the conservatory, he looks down, and reveals a clean shiny knife, runs his fingers along the blade, a single tear rolls down his face and hits the blade, cuts to black

The END

Final idea- Thriller Opening

Me and Steven both had different views on what would make a good thriller as you can see from our ‘Pitch PowerPoint’; my idea was mainly based around using enticing shot types and a psychedelic environment  to catch the viewer’s eye. Steven put a lot of thought into an interesting idea to combine with these ideas about a young teen who is suffering from a mental trauma from a horrific event that he witnessed whilst fishing with his friends.

Ryan (Steven) is the main character in this and he is the one who is having severe flashbacks due to witnessing the killing of one of his friends. The whole reason his friend was killed is because James (me) gave everyone a psychedelic drug at the lake which caused John (Conner) to have a ‘bad trip’ and think that James was his enemy so he grabbed his fishing knife and lunged at James.

Steven is working in his conservatory (Ryans office)  when he collapses and begins to have flashbacks of this terrible event the rest of the opening is flickering between real time and the past also any point after the drug is taken is emphasised appropriately.

This is only the opening and after this the idea is that Ryan (Steven) continues to have these flashbacks and it drives him to insanity when this happens a whole range of strange events begin to occur and the viewer will feel true sorrow for this unfortunate character.