TREATMENT
Title- We have not yet decided on a secure name for our opening sequence and so to help get us going we have just decided to have the title as 'Megan's Story' in order to help set the scene and get the ball rolling and so it is a working title. Our title with be conventional for the British Social Realist genre and so it does conform to it. We want our title to widely appeal to our target audience, and to do so i think we will need to do some research on some other British Social Realist films to understand why the films have the title they have.
Target Audience- Our target audience will be from around 16-20 year old's and obviously anyone above 20 is enabled to watch it however we strongly want to encourage the film for the age level i have mentioned above. It will appeal to both male and female as we feel it can happen to any gender, also we have are going to include both sex's in our final piece. It will also appeal to the working class and upper class people. Our film will appeal to them as the characters we are going to use will be apart of that age and class (representation)
Technology- We want some parts of the film to be filmed from the main character 'Megan's' point of view, and to do so we will be using a steady cam. This gives off the effect of it being a documentary like feel to it, making it seem more natural, it also gives it a better sense of verisimilitude. Also by having a documentary feel to it makes it seem like we are following Megan throughout her life and following all the choices and decisions she makes which is our overall achievement of the film. This technology is very suitable as we get to see her journey through her eyes, also we dont want there to be any limitations to it.
Representations- Megan is our main character in our film, However we are going to have a protagonist which will be Megan's sister Kelsey who tries to help Megan do the right thing in life and we are going to have the antagonist's who are her new friends shes made in school Aaron and Stephanie. They are badly influencing her to do wrong and it quickly gets out of hand. It challenges the typical representations of groups in society as Megan comes from a rich background and she is forced to move and make new friends who come from working backgrounds.
Narrative- Brief summary of whole film...Megan her sister and her mum are forced to move home and Megan is forced to move school. Megan then get involved with the wrong people and begins doing bad things e.g. Drugs & Alcohole etc... and it eventually gets extremely bad that she begins to rely on them in order to live. She then looses her friends and doesnt want to turn to her family for help and so she is forced to deal with her crazy situation alone.
More detailed summary of opening sequence... Megan's dad dies and so her mum cannot afford to live in their current house as it is too expensive and so they are forced to move to a much smaller house in a new area. Not only this but Megan also has to moves school and has to make new friends. After all whats happened Megan turns very angry and upset and begins getting into trouble and up to no good when she finally makes her new friends, unfortunatly she makes friends with the wrong crowd. She gets into drugs and alcohole and is forced to cope with her addiction alone.
Conventions- Going to create a sound track to suit particular moods within the film. Also going to have introduction to location (Mise-en-scene)
Conventions- Mise-en-scene - We will film a nice big house from Megan's point of view then as she turns around film a shabby or less big/nice house. Also will then film the school from her point of view with differnent groups of teenagers surrounding it to show differnet classes to her mixing together.
Style and Iconography- We will use many close ups and longshots and establishing shots in particular to show emtion and surroundings. This will make it more active and dynamic which is the effect we want to give off, we want Megan's life to seem abit wild as she turns angry once she loose's her dad. The costumes for our film will be casual everyday wear to fit in with the social class. Also we will be creating our own music to fit our film.
Institution- We are making this film for film4 and so we have a very low budget. This will effect the distribution of the film as it wont have enough money for advertisement and marketing.
We particularly want our film to be for home exhibition for channel 4, and on DVD's. This is because we feel it will get more viewers and will make more money as alot of people prefer to watch films in the confort of their own home. Also this way i feel it will conform to being a British Social Realist film as it will be exhibited on a channel which shows mainly them type of films.
