My personal script idea

Nowhere

Screenplay by

Kymberly Tran

2009

Establishing shot: Birdseye view of central London. White out.

Location: Emily’s room; morning.

Fade up on Emily’s room; it’s very tidy and organised. It’s dark; the curtains are shut, letting in only a slight purple haze across the room from the colour of the curtains.  A close up shot of the sleeping teenager, an alarm clock goes off loudly four times. Emily slams the off button and jumps immediately out of bed. She is wearing a vest top and pants. She pulls on a thin light grey cardigan, slips into some dark-wash jeans and puts on some small brown leather ankle boots. She goes to her desk and picks up a small picture frame. A beautiful woman is sitting in a wicker chair holding a child in her arms.

Emily:

Five years today mum…God I miss you.

She puts down the frame and walks out of the room; slamming the door on her way out.

We see Emily running down some stairs covered in an assortment of junk. She runs through a dark, rather bleak looking hallway leading into a messy kitchen. Two boys are sat at the breakfast bar, we hear them arguing. They start to play fight.

Emily:

Will you two knock it off! You’re two years older than me yet you still manage to have the personalities of a couple of seven year olds. Grow up!

We see Emily pick up a small piece of paper and a pen. We watch her as she writes the words “Dad, sandwich in fridge back later.” She leaves the note on the counter, and puts the pen to one side. She picks up a heavy looking cream canvas bag full of books; and flings it over her shoulder; she hastily walks to the front door.

Emily:

If you guys haven’t sorted the house out by the time I get back I swear I’m going to ring the how clean is your house people. It reeks in here.

Emily unlocks the padlock on the front door and walks out, slamming it behind her.

 Waiting for her, leaning on the old wooden gate at the front of her house are her two friends, Alex and Esther. They are talking about college work.

Alex:

…Yeah of course I did that piece, it was so easy, I mean whoever couldn’t write an essay about a protagonist pig like that guy would be a complete idiot.

Esther:

Well I wouldn’t say he’s a protagonist pig. I just think he had his own views and…Oh hey Emily, or should I say lazy. You know we’re probably going to be late now!

Emily:

You’re right sorry, let’s go.

The girls start walking down a street; it’s a dreary grey day. They pass a row of colourful houses. Quite contrasting to the weather, overhead is a clouded sky. The girls cross the road to a pavement next to a slow flowing river, trees at every other interval of where the railings are next to the river. Alex begins to wonder in and out and around each of them. Emily catches the eye of a handsome boy on the other side of the road. He starts to walk over to the girls.

Handsome boy:

(Asking Emily directly) Sorry, I don’t suppose you have the time do you?

Emily:

(Looking at her watch) Um, sure…it’s twenty-five to nine.

Handsome boy:

Thanks (he nods gratefully, smiling at Emily).

Emily:

(Smiling back) No problem.

The handsome boy crosses back over to his side of the road, glancing back at Emily to smile at her once more before continuing to walk away.

Esther:

Who was that?

Alex:

Yeah, he looks familiar. Does he go to our college Emily?

Emily:

I don’t know. But yeah you’re right he does look familiar.

They carry on walking along the river. Emily stares in the direction of where the handsome boy walked off. She smiles thoughtfully.

Location: College classroom.

We see Emily in her first class of the day, business studies. She is sat in a dim lighted classroom. We hear the teacher chatting about business ethics. Emily is sat at the back of the classroom, next to a window; she is looking outside at a leaf slowly falling to the ground from a tree. She is quietly tapping her pen in a rhythmic pattern on the desk. The bell suddenly rings and Emily rapidly gets up and walks out the class. The handsome boy from earlier is leaning against the wall in a very laid back/bored manner.

Handsome boy:

Hey (he smiles at Emily).

Emily:

Hey (she smiles back at him). I thought I knew you from somewhere.

Handsome boy:

Hmm, business eh (he sniggers)? Why bother (still smiling)?

Emily:

(Sarcastically) Well it’s better than waiting outside of a stranger’s classroom.

Handsome boy:

Who said I was waiting for you?

Emily:

(Smiling) No one.

Emily starts to walk off down the hallway. The handsome boy starts to follow behind her, copying her body language.

Emily:

What ARE you doing?

Handsome boy:

Oh, nothing (he smiles).

Emily:

Look I have to go to my next class. I’ll see you around yeah?

The handsome boy grabs a hold of her arm.

Emily:

What are you doing?

Handsome boy:

Come with me.

Emily:

What part of ‘I have a lesson to go to’ don’t you understand?

Handsome boy:

Will you just shut up and come with me?

The handsome boy takes hold of Emily’s hand. Emily looks at him and smiles. They start to wonder down the now empty corridors. They stand at the back exit door. Emily drops her bag and her hand full of books on the floor.  Still holding hands, they both turn and glance at each other smiling. The handsome boy gently kisses Emily’s forehead. A bright light is shining from the other side of the exit, shining around the outlines of their bodies, the sun in pouring through the lifeless hallways as they walk out together.

White out.

Personal Story Idea

Documentary/Drama

A day in the life of a teenager named Emily.

Title: Emily

Emily is a typical teen living in London with her dad and two older brothers. Her mum passed away five years earlier and ever since then she has never had strong connections with the men in her life. As a hard working college student in her last few months of studying for her A levels, Emily is the type of student who is able to zone out on life’s problems to focus solely on work. Although her close friends don’t realise that one of these days maybe work won’t be enough for her…

The day starts off normally, we see Emily running down the stairs and through a messy hallway to the kitchen where she grabs a piece of toast and bites it in her teeth while we watch her write a note “Dad, sandwich in the fridge, back later”. She leaves the note on the counter, then putting her bag over her shoulder she hastily walks through the front door.

Emily is greeted by her two friends, Esther and Alex, who are leaning against the old wooden gate of Emily’s house chatting about college work. The girls start on their routine walk to college. It’s a dreary grey day; they pass a row of colourful houses, and cross the road to be on the side of the pavement near the river. As Alex and Esther continue to talk about college work, Emily attracts the attention of a young good looking boy. In seeing her, he crosses the road too. He asks her for the time, she’s sure she knows him, or that he looks familiar. Emily tells him the time in a rather bored manner, he nods and smiles gratefully then he crosses back to his side of the road.

Emily arrives at college, we see her sat in her first class of the day, staring out a window, quietly tapping a pen on the desk in a rhythmic pattern. The bell rings, and we see Emily walk out the class. Waiting by the door is the familiar looking boy from earlier. He tells her that she needs to stop following him – jokily - she says sarcastically that he’s funny and walks off. He starts to follow her, copying her body language. She asks what he’s doing, he says come with me. She says she has class and starts to walk again. He pulls her back, they exchange glances and start heading towards the exit sign. Emily drops her books on the floor in the entrance way. Once again they share a glance with one another and leave. A light is shining from the other side of the exit, the sun is pouring through the small old wooden framed door and through the lifeless hallways as they walk out together…

Essay: Media: Using Two or More Examples of Film/TV Products, Discuss the Importance of Genre as a Form of Product Catagorisation…

  In film, genre refers to the method of film catagorisation based on similarities in the narrative elements from which films are constructed. Films are put into specific genres so that when the audience are buying and watching the films, it lets them know what they should be expecting from them. There are so many different types of genre and nowadays there are more and more films using hybrid genres, mixing two types to make a new style. For example instead of just a thriller it could be a crime/thriller. This is not a bad thing, it is just directors and writers coming up with a way to hook the audience even more and trying to be a bit more original. The word ‘Genre’ itself was used around two thousand years ago by Aristotle in Ancient Greece so that plays and poetry could be put into some sort of catagorisation and order. The play or poetry’s quality was judged by how well it suited what its genre was supposed to be. The Romans carried on this tradition of putting different plays and poems into different categories based on quality. It wasn’t until around the 1960’s that film critics started using the word ‘Genre’ to describe films, as it had really only been used for literature beforehand.

  In the film ‘Love Actually’, it is easy to tell what type of genre the film is even from the very beginning. The colours red and white in the opening of the credits give us a hint that it may be about love and Christmas. This mixed with the narrative over the camera shots of people as they hug in the airport make you realise this film has to be about love. Doing a narrative over these shots makes the audience focus on what is being said and how it links to what is going on in the mis-en-scene. The audience can immediately tell it is a romantic comedy; a hybrid genre. There are jokes made and friendly hugs and kisses galore, just in the opening scene, if you were to buy this film and were expecting a rom-com then you wouldn’t be disappointed. Love is the theme of this movie, the characters are falling in love, falling out of love, some are with right people, and some are with the wrong people and forth. It’s a typically British romantic comedy, with its sarcasm, its crude jokes, posh characters and happy/ not so happy endings.

 

  Hallmarks have a big impact on the genre of a film.  They are the distinctive characteristics of a particular type of film. For instance if the opening of a film has eerie music, shadowy forests, blood splattering and dark characters in the opening scene, the audience would immediately class the film as a horror or possibly a thriller. It is these specific hallmarks that make us associate them with these genres, things that are scary and unusual, delving into the unknown, and even possibly playing tricks on us. Much like in the film Sleepy Hollow, when in the opening scene the main character is writing a letter, the audience is tricked because they see a thick red substance which most would think is blood, it isn’t until the end of the scene that we realise that it is actually a wax seal. Playing clever tricks on the audience like this is a good way to draw them into a film. If a film is boring and has nothing special or interesting at the start then people aren’t likely to carry on watching it.

  Camera shots and angles are also a good - if not a subtle - way to guess the genre of a film. Again, taking sleepy hollow as an example, lots of close up shots are used even at the beginning so we can see how pale and scary the faces are of the main characters. If they would have been long shots, then the element of fear of those given off from the characters wouldn’t be there and the audience could get lose interest fast.

 The classic old western film ‘Rio Bravo’ is a good old stereotype of western cowboy genre. Westerns are the major defining genre of the American film industry, a tribute almost to the early days of the expansive American frontier. They are one of the oldest, most stable genres with very recognizable plots, elements, and characters (six-guns, horses, dusty towns and trails, cowboys, Indians, etc.). Over time, westerns have been re-defined, re-invented and stretched out, dismissed, re-discovered, and even spoofed. The main plot of the film ‘Rio Bravo’ is that a small town sheriff in the American West recruits the help of a cripple, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy. In the opening scene there is next to no talking, just loud crashed, fights and intimidating camera shots of the sheriff looking down at his victim. We can tell from the start this is going to be a powerful and violent movie. The establishing shot of this film is a dusty road surrounded by mountains, the music is your typical but sort of Hispanic music, typical music to find in a western and the credits are very jagged and bold like they’d been carved almost. This shot locates the audience and puts them in with the setting of being involved with a typical western film. Although at the time a western with such famous actors wouldn’t have been usual for the audience. The establishing shot cuts to a dirty cowboy entering a bar, acting timid and looking uncomfortable, we get shallow shots of this character which is good because he is a main character in the film.

  So in conclusion, we as an audience need genre, to be able to tell what we want to buy and watch, much like the directors and film crews need to know what they are aiming for when working on a product. If this sort of catagorisation didn’t exist, it would make the film industry so much harder to be judged. If an audience can’t tell just but an establishing shot or the front of a DVD cover or film poster exactly what type of genre a film is, then it would be a waste of their time and money. I think genre is important and will be around for as long as films are still made.

Research and Inspiration for Our Film

The inspiration for our film was a programme called such as ‘Skins’, as it are stars teenagers who play teenagers.

The audience can relate to them, and although there are some very outrageous story lines, they do still tend to be relatable to British teens.

The channel ‘Skins’ in broadcast on is ‘E4’, a channel that does a lot of teen dramas and comedies.

If our product were to be distributed it would be to somewhere like ‘E4’ or possibly ‘BBC Switch’. This is a programme on ‘BBC 2’ on a Saturday; it too also does a lot of short teen drama series.

Films like ‘Twilight’ inspired our camera work, slow romantic panning shots tilting down, making the audience feel more drawn to the characters worked well in our own film.

We wanted to take inspiration from ‘Skins’ as it has fresh story lines every week. We think this is important. Our film looks a lot like a trailer than a short opening to a film, but it is merely a taster of what could be achieved if we were able to make a longer film or series.

Sound Terminology

Sound:

Everything we hear from the audio track of the film.

Music:

Any music that comes from the audio track.  Music might be diegetic (a song on the radio of a car a character is driving) or non-diegetic (scary music when a villain appears on screen).

Diegetic Sound:

Sound that the other characters would be able to hear, a song on a radio, for instance, as a character drives down the highway, would be a diegetic sound, as would someone coughing audibly during a scene.  It is important to note that diegetic sound is a sound that characters could hear, even if they are not present when that sound occurs.  The sound of a radio playing in an apartment, for instance, is a diegetic sound, even if no character is present in the apartment during the scene.

Non-diegetic sound:

Sound that characters cannot hear, the two most common types of non-diegetic sound are voiceovers, which is a character’s narration that plays over any given scene, and non-diegetic music, which is music used to inflect the mood of a given scene.  Creepy horror-movie music, for instance, that plays when a character is walking into an old house, is non-diegetic music, since that character cannot hear the music.  Sometimes, this effect is parodied (with characters commenting on the scary music playing), and some directors will transition from a non-diegetic sound to a diegetic sound (or vice-versa), as when a song is playing on a radio that then becomes the non-diegetic music even as the characters move into a new scene without the radio in it.

Ambient sound:

This term generally refers to any sounds that are used to establish location.  The ambient sound of a scene in a park, for instance, might include birds chirping, children laughing, or a dog barking.  The ambient sound of a train station would include the whine of train brakes, the tinny sounds of arrival and departure announcements, and the general noise of people walking and talking.

Media Terminology

Genre:

This is the classification of any media text into a category or type, e.g. news, horror, documentary, soap opera, docu-soap, science-fiction, lifestyle etc. Genres tend to have identifiable codes and conventions which have developed over time and for which audiences may have developed particular expectations.

Generic Conventions:

Those recognisable and repeated elements in a film or other media text, which help to identify the genre.

Sub-genres:

A sub-category of a main genre, but it can be further categorised by the sub-genre.

Mise-en-scène:

Literally everything that is "put in the scene", or frame, This may include location, actors, costumes, make-up, gesture, extras, props, lighting, shot composition/framing, use of colour, contrast and filter, and sometimes also includes camera angle, movement, lighting and sound.

Narrative:

Narrative is slightly different to story/plot. A narrative is the way the story or plot is told, by whom and in what order. Flashbacks or flash forwards may be used as narrative devices. The simplest narrative structure is: equilibrium, disequilibrium and restoration of the status quo.

Representation:

The process of making meaning in still or moving images and words/sounds. In its simplest form, it means to present or show someone or something in a particular way.

Slogan:

In advertising, a Slogan should be simple, repetitive and have one-selling idea. Slogans also often mention the product name and identify its unique selling point.

Stereotype: A stereotype is an over-simplified representation of an individual or group of people based on pre-conceived ideas. It is assumed that individuals in a given group share certain characteristics. The term is often used in a negative sense. Stereotypes are common in the world of television and advertising drama, where they are often used as a form of dramatic shorthand.

Verisimilitude:

The appearance of truth; the quality of seeming to be true. In Media terms, it's the way in which the 'world' on the television screen or in the magazine advertisement is made to look like the 'real world.'

Theorist Research

Theorist Research

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