Story telling Unit: The Meeting - Trailer Development

Yesterday I completed both my storyboard and script for my two minute trailer. The trailer is based after the short film where a amateur reporter and cameraman try to uncover the urban myth of George Figgs after there have been rumours going about that this man has been covering up stories and secrets about celebrities, however there is no evidence of this man ever existing. These two amateurs break into a flat which they believe is owned by Figgs in order to find evidence of his existence. The trailer appears as a mock-umentary in contrast  to the actual short film but takes a serious turn when George appears. Below is a storyboard of the trailer.

 

Story Telling unit: The Meeting Development - storyline redraft

After thinking about my script and how I can improve it, so I came up with the idea to give the main character George a motive and to steer him away from being greedy and money grabbing personality that he has at the moment. He now does his job to save up enough money for him and his wife Anna to move to Italy and start a new life. George has it all planned out that after he finishes his next few cases and gathers 15 million pounds to pay for a house and other living arrangements him and Anna will leave the country together. At the moment he has 14 million so only needs to gather another million until he begins his life in paradise.
The film starts with George on the phone to Anna, she is in Manchester at the moment visiting her mother who is quite ill, they talk about how much they look forward to living away in Italy and how much George has to go to reach the 15 mill and that it will take a year or so. As George is on the phone we see him looking at an Italy poster which he has on his office wall and in the corner of this poster we see a small picture of Anna. The conversation ends but just as George puts the phone down it rings again and it turns out to be Patrick Heartly a famous journalist who wants info on some of the stories George has covered. George refuses to give out the information but Patrick manages to get it out of him by offering another million. Although George contemplates taking the money he still refuses and turns down as he thinks of the long term effects it would have on his future with Anna and not to mention the fact that he would lose all the faith he gained from his clients. Patrick becomes aggressive and tells George to watch his back. George becomes distraught by this but shakes it off and carries on with a current job.
The next day George is woken up by loud knocking noises at his front door followed by cursing and then a window smash. George knows that these are people sent by Patrick so grabs a few things from his office (the Italy poster, pictures of his wife, case files and a credit card) and makes a run for it out the back door of his house.
We now see George running down the street clutching the possessions from his house. He rings up his younger brother Craig and begs for him to hide him in his house, Craig agrees and picks George up in his car.
George and Craig arrive at Craig's house where George tells Craig what happened. Not long after a car pulls up in front of Craig's house and two burly looking men step out demanding to see George. George not wanting Craig to get hurt goes outside to confront the men leaving his possessions with his younger brother, he is punched and shoved into the back-seat of the car. The two men are about to get into the car, but suddenly an angry man waddles over to the men complaining that they're parked in his disabled spot. The two burly men start an argument with the angry neighbour, totally forgetting about George. Craig takes advantage of this by sneaking up to the men's car and freeing him out of the back-seat. They both jump into Craig's car and drive off leaving the two men cursing and still arguing with the angry neighbour.
George asks why Craig helped him and what they were going to do. To which Craig replies that they will head up to Manchester to meet Anna and all will be sorted out from there.        

Story Telling Unit: The meeting - meet the Characters

This is the look I wanted for George. A young smart yet scruffy looking character who knows what he's doing most of the time. I didn't want him to look too old or middle aged and also wanted him to look cool and relaxed.

I have some ideas of what I want my characters to look like.

 This is the look I wanted for Craig (George's brother). I wanted Craig to look a little bit more scruffier and slightly younger than his older brother. I also wanted him to look slightly scruffy due to the conditions in which he is living in.





This is the look I wanted for Anna (George's wife). Although she isn't featured in the film that much I still had a very clear image of what she looked like. I wanted her to have a caring look about her to show that she has feeling for George.

This is the look that I wanted for Patrick Heartly the journalist. I wanted the kind of person who would do anything to get a story with a sleazy sort of expression. I also imagined Patrick to be in the 40-50 year old age bracket and in some ways to look more professional.  

REVIEW: Project X

A couple of days ago me and some of the other people on the course went to see a film called "Project X". The  film is shot entirely through handheld view, either from camera phones or a handheld camera. The film is about four teenagers called Thomas, Costa, JB and Dax who decide to hold a house party for Thomas's birthday. These four people are quite low on the social scale at high school and are shown being bullied in some scenes. Regardless Costa invites everyone in high school to the party which is being held at Thomas's house while his parents are away for the weekend. Thomas's parents allow him to have a party at the house but as normal parents would, they want the house to be left the same as when they left it.
So as the night draws in the four boys are at Thomas's waiting for the guests to arrive, but the party's an hour in and there isn't a sign of anyone. Just as the guys are about to call it quits hundreds of their classmates arrive at the door and the party gets started. All goes well for Thomas and the gang as the party is a massive success everyone is having a good time and getting drunk but Thomas can't help but notice that the number of guests are getting larger. The party then spreads from the back garden, into the house, then into the front garden which causes George's neighbours grief and they phone the police. The party gets way out of hand as the guests start to get violent, the number of guests has risen to over a thousand and Thomas is powerless as he loses control over his own party.

I had not seen any trailers for this film before seeing it so had no idea what this film was about, what genre it was or how it was shot. I have been very critical and weary of films shot in this sort of style after watching Cloverfield (In my opinion the worst film ever to hit cinemas) but after watching this I have found myself more willing to watch something similar to this. The film was clearly aimed at teenagers and students as they would be able to relate to the storyline in the way that every teenager has been to a house party (whether or not it has gone out of control). I also loved the concept of the film and how the main character has evolved from a social reject to possibly the best host to a party ever.

Overall I found the film quite enjoyable because of the concept of the storyline and the way it was shot has changed my opinions on films using a handheld point of view. If I were to rate this film on a scale of one to ten I would give it a 7.5.

Till next time

James       

Story Telling Unit: Scriptwriting feedback

Today we all had feedback to our drafts of our scripts. I think mine went pretty well but my script needs a lot more work, I need to improve the dialogue and make it match the characters, make the characters more believable and make it more into a story. As I said the script still needs a lot of work but this is only my first draft so it is still in the processing stage.

Story telling Unit: The Meeting development

Yesterday we had to discuss our ideas in pairs, and pitch each other's idea to the rest of the group. By doing this it gave me a few ideas of my own, and showed me how I could make my script have a more story element to it and have started to write my script and have started to plan my two minute trailer.