Tuesday 29 September 2009

Preliminary Work Media AS (week 1)

As part of my Media AS course, I was asked to get into a group of at least 4 people for my first piece of preliminary work. Before we begun our work as a group, we were individually asked to write a story and interpret the title 'Bad news' and also draw out a story board. When it came to working in our group we were asked to create a short film of around 2 minutes long using a camera and a tripod. The people working with me are Dzung and Amelida. We all came up with a draft version of our story board and we also worked on our scripts together. 

We had a couple of issues with the camera. In technical terms, it was hard to control the camera and learn different camera shots(match on action and shot reverse shot), and we also broke the 180 degree rule but we will be fixing our video in editing. We also had a situation in which we thought we lost all our work which caused us all to worry and feel upset, but luckily everything was there and its something we learned to be prepared and organised for when it came to the actual coursework. We have now reached the point where we will be editing our video and making it have a good outcome.

Monday 28 September 2009

Treatment for Small Film ('Bad News') - Short Description

At the beginning of the Media AS course, we were all asked to come up with a small description for a movie called 'Bad News'.
We had to interpret the title 'Bad News' and think of a genre and story line to go with it! I tried to Interpret 'Bad News' into different genres such as comedy,action, thriller and drama.

As I carefully thought out different/possible story lines for each genre, I found that 'Drama' stood out the most to me and was more appealing than the other choices of Genre.

My Final idea/Description:


Chosen Genre: Drama
Themes: Death, Loss, War, Companionship
Based: 1930s (During WW11 1939-1946)

Plot: Set in the 30s a family of 5 are forced to evacuate their home and go their separate ways as WW2 commences.
Seen in the perspective of the children, we learn to understand their feeling, their responsibilities and the 'bad news' they receive along the way (children write letters to one another-explaining what is going on).

Characters:
Mother: Suzie
Father: Jake
Children: Lily (youngest child-age 12) - narrator
Sammy (Age 15)
Harry (Age 18)

*Children: Boys are forced to join the war with their father whilst Lily is left with her Mother.

Main Parts of Movie:
(Story follows perspective of the Children writing letters to one another and expressing their feelings of concern, anticipation and hope):

- 'Bad News is revealed as children start to experience loss and the sadness and deception of being without one another.

-War continues and letters pile up and tragic news arrives as their father is lost in battle (loss of memory)

(The story line is the opposite to the fact that the children are taking care of their parents where as in real life you find parents looking out for their children)

-Lily has a major breakdown
-Harry and Sammy fight as tension rises because of their fathers death.

(4 Years later)

-WW2 ends
-No letters received in a month-Lily and her Mother expect the worst (they start to suffer from depression and anxiety)
-Death List- Brothers are seen as 'Unfound'
-Lily breaks down but to her surprise she finds her brothers by her side.