Planning - Initial Cast List

Main Character: Max Reid - played by myself (Joshua Worth)

Main Character's Best Friend: Sam Devney - played by Jak Wright

Bully: Tiffany Jones - played by Eleanor Luhar

Tiffany's Boyfriend: Nathan Brecht - undecided

Bully's Friends: Britney Bryant, Whitney Wheeler - Darcey Page and Alice Nutter

Teacher: Mr. Anderson - Mr. Coulson

Extras: Students, other background teachers, helps set the school scene.

Planning - Conventions of Our Film

The music used sounds like it would be popular among teenagers. The setting is a school, where there are generally a lot of teenagers, the conversations that take place are revolved around teenagers, and the editing will be both fast and slow paced in different sections, which may represent the chaotic life of a teenager.

Planning - Target Audience

The main audience that we’re aiming for is a teenage audience, this is reflected in the music we will use, the characters, and the setting for the film.

Planning - Main Character's Narration

•Introduce herself at once music has started.

•Describe herself and her a little bit about her life while walking through corridors of school.

•Describes basic outline for film as she starts walking home across the field.

Planning - Shot List/Camera Work

•Fade in to clock face on wall from black screen with ‘Lone Wolf’ logo on it.

•Camera pans around to see class and teacher.

•Cuts to close up of main character, looking bored.

•POV shot,  of character looking around, daydreaming.

•Shot reverse shot of character and teacher when teacher asks question.

•After bell has rung, close up of hand on door handle.

•Birds eye view outside of the room as people leave the class.

•Slow spinning birds eye view of character going down stairs.

•Wide shot of character getting to the bottom of the stairs, and starting going down the corridor.

•Multiple panning shots and wide shots as character walks through corridors.

•Camera facing character and turns to look out of window as character turns, to see Tiffany, Brittany & Whitney bullying someone, then turns back to character after a few seconds.

•More panning and wide shots as character continues to walk through corridors.

•Long shot of character leaving school.

•More panning and scenic shots as character walks across the field.

•Final shot as character comes to road crossing, with camera on the other side of the road.

Planning - Basic Plot Outline

Start in classroom, not paying attention, teacher asks easy question, Max gets it wrong, gets shown up by tiffany, and Britney & Whitney laugh.

School bell rings, top down view of people leaving the room, title on the floor.

Max puts headphones on, background noise dulls down, music fades in, then dulls a bit, as narration starts.

Walks down multiple corridors, and eventually sees Tiffany, Brittany & Whitney are bullying Someone, Max doesn’t react.

Max keeps walking home going across priory park

Scenic POV shots of Max walking across the park,

Opening sequence ends as Max gets to the road and is about to cross.

Planning - Unique Selling Point

The basic USP of our film is to explore the struggles that a socially anxious person would have to confront on a daily basis, and is helped by putting the film from their perspective. It doesn't follow all of the typical conventions that a teen angst film would portray, and it is intentionally done like this to help this film stand out from the crowd in this respect.

Planning - Storyboard

Planning - Shooting Schedule

We will try and shoot all our planned filming at around the end of the school day so that there will be a lot of people around, and we will try to film all of our different shots fairly close together so that it will all be roughly the same time of day, and so that we don't have to worry about the weather changing outside. This will help in our endeavour for continuity and not creating confusion for the audience, which will break the immersion. We will probably try and shoot our shots in chronological order so that it is easier to find the correct shots when it comes to editing.

Planning - Drafted Script for Our Opening Sequence

SCRIPT

(Fade from black, for this segment audio is muffled)

MR ANDERSON: (talking about *interesting* history stuff for roughly 5 seconds)

MR ANDERSON: Max.                                                                         

MR ANDERSON: MAX!

(audio fades in, Max wakes up)

MAX: (quietly) Huh? What?

MR ANDERSON: Hey Max, since you are very attentive can you tell me the date at which World War 2 began?

MAX: uhhh (brief pause) I did know, but I kinda forgot…

MR ANDERSON: (sarcastically) Can anybody here please enlighten me with an answer?

TIFFANY: Uh, sir, it’s the 3^rd of September 1939, when Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister, declared war on Germany.

MR ANDERSON: (talking while Tiffany speaks, praises her and continues speaking)

TIFFANY: (Quieter, looking at Max, leans towards her) Looks like you aren’t a smartass after all.

BRITNEY, WHITNEY: *giggling*

(School Bell rings, people begin to pack up and leave)

MR ANDERSON: (Louder voice) Don’t forget your history assignment for Friday please, and don’t forget the test on Monday.

(Max leaves frame, shot changes to a match-on-action of her walking out the door, then looks around briefly)

(switch to internal narration, Max is standing in front of the door)

Max: *sigh* That was embarrassing. At least I can go home now, I guess. Not like anyone will actually talk to me or anything.

(Max moves to one side and puts on headphones and proceeds to walk home)

(Some titles put during this sequence)

Max: My name’s Max if you didn’t catch it. Mr Anderson has a habit of picking on me for some reason.

(Max sees Tiffany, Britney and Whitney)

Max: And, of course, the stereotypical clichéd mean girls. And they picked on me because I can’t afford clothes that cost literally 10 times my allowance.

(Max sees Sam)

Max: And there’s Sam. He’s nice and I’m grateful that he isn’t a dick. I guess not everyone hates me. Think positively, as mum always says. It’s hard though, when it doesn’t feel like you’re a part of the school. Just some weird girl who can’t answer a basic history question.

Inspiration for Our Film

Our film takes its main inspiration from the film Easy A. This is because both the main character in Easy A and the main character in our film are considered unpopular, although having a supportive friend. They also both have to deal with significant problems which affect how they are seen by other people. However, this is where the similarities end. Although we of course want to set our film in a school, we will want to try and break away from typical conventions that the majority of teen angst films have. We will use characters which have no set stereotype. They will have traits that stereotypes have, but they will never fully fit into that category. Although we won't be able to portray this in our opening, this is a part of our film that we will want to elaborate in the bigger picture of it.

Planning - Risk Assessment

Planning - Basic Mise-en-scene

Costumes:

•Max, Sam & Nathan : General Sixth form wear

•Tiff, Brit & Whit: Expensive looking Clothing

•Mr. Anderson: Suit/General Smart Clothing

•Extras: School Uniform/ general Sixth From wear.

Props:

•Classroom: Stationary/ Books/ Bags

•Corridor: Headphones/ Phone

•Field: Headphones

Planning - Production Company Logo

Here is our company logo, entitled 'Lone Wolf Productions'. This is very apropos to our film that we are making, which is based on a socially anxious teenager who doesn't have many friends.  We believe that this is the best idea for a company logo because 'lone wolf' is a term for somebody who enjoys being by their self, so this phrase was incorporated into the name, along with a depiction of the moon, with a silhouette of a wolf in front of the moon. We made this logo in Adobe Fireworks and added a shadow effect to the moon to make it seem more three-dimensional, and editing the wolf such that it fits in front of the moon perfectly.

Media Film Task ~ Initial Ideas

 Initial Ideas

For our film task, we have to create an opening sequence along with a title sequence, which shall be no longer than 2 minutes. When I grouped up with Jak and Adam, we brainstormed ideas and we thought it would be best if we tried to make a teen angst film that did three key things:

1. Create a unique storyline and narrative;

2. Play with the typical conventions of the teen angst genre;

3. Create a film with unique bits of comedy.

The film is all about somebody who has social anxiety, and tackles daily issues that this person has to face. The general film's story arc is this main character becoming a more confident person, and not letting other people bring her down.

Linked below is a video of our presentation. It outlines all of the details as to what we will be doing.

Link: Media Studies Presentation