Demographic for Boost

Boost- Who my audience is.

I am hoping to gain a teenage audience for my film Boost.

To be more specific this film might also appeal to film students since they watch short films to get inspiration. 

To this end my film focuses on teenage love, paranoia, jealousy and suicidal heartache. With a happy ending 

I feel these themes will attract my demographic since most of them will have some experience in this area. Added to this  I am using young people and hope that the narrative will be identifiable with a large percentage of them.

The genre is romantic drama and although teen films are often focused on horror or action there are films that are attracting this demographic such as ‘The Perks of being a Wallflower’ and ‘Lymelife’ Both films deal with teenage issues around love and deceit.

Inspirations for Boost

I have selected several short film and feature length films that deal with similar subject matters and themes that my film deals with an example of this is Teen Suicide which is a drama romance with a tragic end same as my short film which is about a young boy who discovers love and goes on an emotional journey with his lover he ends up being the cause of the break up which leads him to take his own life.The feature film leaving Vegas which is about addiction my character also suffers with a strong dependency onEnergy drinks to conclude this post I feel these films follow the same narrative structure as my film.            








This short deals with unrequited love. Like my film it is about teenagers. 
The main protagonist is in love and tries to engage her but it is to no avail
She has no way of dealing with the despair she feels.
We see her high up on the school roof with a rook on her arm, possibly signifying death?
She swan dives off the roof.
It also uses the editing technique of blank screen with text. I am interested in using this for my film
I am also interested in suicidal tendencies in young people and the extreme difficulty of dealing with heartbreak.




Leaving Las Vegas deals with giving up and using and the physiology of thinking that something outside of yourself can make you feel better, which is the same theme that my film will try to attempt.
Also there is a romance connected with suicide as though it is a welcome refuge rather than self murder. 
Suicide is dealt with in this film as a final place of retreat and I want my film to try to convey this. 
However, both my idea and this film deny the truth, that suicide will not bring relief only an end to life.




Lymelife: 
This film has an ensemble cast but within it two teenagers. During the film we see the young boy try to get the girl. However for most of the film she sees him as a friend/idiot and is quite cruel to him. Some of this dynamic I would like to attempt in 'Boost' 


Bad Lands:

The Film Band Lands inspired me to make my film since it's subjects are orientated around destruction. My character is also fixated with acting out destructively but instead of physically hurting others he is emotionally hurting is girl friend and himself.  The film's genre is romantic drama which I am keen to make myself. In Badlands the protagonist goes on a killing spree as does mine, not with a firearm but with a can of 'Boost' and hurtful words which leads to is predictable catharsis, suicide. Both the characters smoke which symbolise destruction and self hatred.





Blue Valentine

The task list

 I will have to create a working title
I will have to research the conventions of my film/ audince research/ delvoment
 I will have to create a script

I will have to create a storyboard

I will have to create a cast list

I will have to find loacations
plan rehersals
I will have to find props

I will have to direct

I will have to shoot the film

I will have to find non copywritied music to go with the film

I will have to edit the film/sound edit the film

The brief

I have to make a 5 minte long film
I have to make a poster for my film
A radio trailer for the film
A film magazine review page featuring the film

I have decided that my genre for my film is drama. The subject matter is passion love pain, selfhated, gulit  and exceptionce. What inspired this subject matter was a break up that I have reasintly experinced and a short film called 'The Plan.' and a feature film called leaving Vagas. The deadline for the film is the 13th of december. Knowing this I know I have alot of planning to do firstly create a script and I will write the first draft this week. Once its been analyses by the media teach and or assitant I shall then decide weather it needs to be rewritten or to move on to the story board. 

Preproduction

I would like to start creating the script for the film I am going to use an open sorce software known as Celtx this allows me to make a script and create other necerythings to help me plan such as a storyboard with created animations to make the storyboard more visaly effective. In todays lesson we went into detail about equipment and reaserch. So for my reseach I will watch and amananalyse  reality drama shortfilms using the world wide web.  The film has to be compleated by december. Knowing this I would like to start filming in two weeks. Knowing that I will be the leading character in the film I will need a camera man and a female to play the role as my girlfriend, since I do drama A2 leval I am confidont that a girl from my drama group would be more than happy to play the role. The two things that inspiered my idea was a short film  call  'The PLAN.' and my break up. Eventhough I have not yet found my female character I know what costume I would like her to wear which would be a gothic girl look or metal head for example dressed in black no lipstick however I would want her to wear alot of eye shaddow. I am going to wear jeans aTshirt compleate with a dark blue demin shirt.

The Plan

Director : Matthew Kallish

Year : 2008

The film deals with the difficulty in breaking out of a rut. This is a story of a young man who tries to escape his current life and find another. This includes leaving his girlfriend, Claudia. 

The film is shot in black and white. The film opens with a shot of a highway as if looking out of a rear view mirror, suggesting leaving.

 There is a V.O of the young man explaining ‘his plan’ to leave. We see him in his room packing. This is a hand held shot focusing on the contents of his hurriedly packed bag, which implies a impulsive decision rather than a planned journey. We see him chucking together what he thinks he might need such as tinned food, tapes, camera, vodka, ‘What I may need to sustain life.’ Lastly we see him rejecting a call from Claudia on his mobile phone. We hear her message, which is both insulting and full of contempt for his plan, describing it as ‘a phase.’ His response is to look at the phone and the V.O say’s and ‘to leave Claudia....for good this time.’ Again suggesting that his life is in a rut and he is escaping.

This cuts to a shot of him walking towards a bank, with the V.O saying that he will take all the money out of his account.

Next shot is a highway taken from inside the drivers P.O.V (through the window screen) followed by a shot taken at the side of the road showing cars passing. The V.O then reveals his plan, to go to Vegas ‘and put it all on red.’

Cut to white with the film’s title: The Plan.

Through most of the film there is a constant sound of soft non digetic music which inspires a feeling of tension that something is going to go wrong. We see him on the side of the highway taking photographs we see what he is shooting as a wide angle shot. Next location is a rest stop. He appears from the rest-stop observing a notice board, advertising a casino. We hear a  voice, ‘that’s a good casino.’ The camera pans round to reveal a pretty girl, a short pice of dialogue prevails, later he takes a picture of her, she gets upset and walks away. He returns to the car park ask’s a truck driver for directions. Suddenly she appears in shot and steals his camera, we see this through a high angle shot. He runs after her through a maze of trucks he comes out the maze and we experience his confusion /isolation mirrored by the use of an extreme wide angle shot with him being the only person we can see.  He gets back in the car hears the phone ring- see’s that it is his ex girlfriend and triumphs over the temptation to pick up. It’s now night and we see the glowing lights of the casino with the inference that he is about to enter. 

The casino is shot in very tight frames revealing only the various gaming tables such as the roulette table. It is clever because despite never seeing a casino setting by using a soundtrack of a busy casino sounds and the cross cutting of hands moving across tables of games we are convinced of the experience. We hear the croupier announcing that there were ‘No winners’ on the roulette table and by that we realise our protagonist has been unlucky and lost all his money.

We go back to the rest stop, the protagonist is slumped on a bench. The shot is a mid shot which looks hand held and documentary in style, as does a lot of the film.  A sound of a mobile and the camera goes to extreme close up on mobile. We hear Claudia’s voice pleading ’ Come home Mitch, just come home’ Although his facial expression registers pain and defeat he looks really pissed. As the audience we are expecting him to submit and turn around and go home.
However, as he looks away with the mobile still to his ear we see his eye focus on something out of shot. He sees a picture of himself on the noticeboard.  The music which we could no longer hear suddenly comes back to underscore the feeling of renewed energy and hope. The camera goes into POV. He turns the picture over and sees the words, ‘Now we’re even.’ and the address of where the thief  lives. The film ends with an establishing shot of his car driving on the high way, we are left to presume that he is driving towards the new girls place. Interestingly the car drives in the same away direction it has done the whole film which again establishes that he is breaking free and not returning home.

Symmetry

Director:  Everynone 

Year: 2011

This film has a rigid presentation of a split screen of equal size. So in effect we are watching two screens. The images shown oscillate between  opposites, for example cop and robber to people and things that seem to go naturally together such as salt and pepper, popcorn and movies. 

The film starts off showing almost humorous opposites, like cat and mouse as well as visual plays on words for instance we see a paint box with brushes that an artist would use and on the other screen we see a decorators kit. 

The short film then moves into a more reflective area, for instance we see a toddler walk across his screen reappearing on the other screen as an old person using a stick to walk across his screen, alluding to the life cycle, again this idea is repeated with the end shot where the camera looks down at a new born baby and a old person, both are in hospital type environments but one has just arrived whilst the other is dying or even dead, we can tell this by the diegectic sound of the medical equipment making a series of beeps that gradually slow down to one continuous beep. 

The split screen often shows two images that are opposite but as with the toddler becoming the old man the split screen is used to make a point, we see two cars, one in each screen, driving in different directions which in this case is towards each other.  We see a young boy in an arcade pointing a toy gun at a an older man in the other screen who is in the country also with a rifle pointing back at the child.  So the split screen allows for the images to combine.

The photography is quite static in style for instance we see a corn field, the shot is still but the corn is blowing in the wind. The same shot is then set up at night.  Other static shots use the frame to make the story, for example we see half a boys face and half a girls face in their respective frames which then creates a whole face and shows the natural symmetry. 

For all the shots there is growing and continuos non diegectic soundtrack of music which seems to get faster as the film progresses. This creates a strong sense of an unfolding story and manages to make it a cohesive story. There is also diegectic sound, for example the squeezing of the ketchup, the sounds of children crying,

I feel the theme of the entire film deals with the different stages of life and the naturally occurring symmetries that occur even when they are opposites such as man and woman or child and an adult.