My Early Film Ideas

The different type of film genres and conventions that I have considered using is:

Realistic life/ documentary

Highschool based

Romcom

I've decided upon these genres because of the scenery/ locations, technology and actors that I have available. As my actors will more than likely be around a young age I will have to make sure that the conventions of the film suits them and the roles that they may have to play.

A main concepts that I may choose to focus on for my film trailer, could be a documentary on cheerleading which would follow my cheerleading team the “South East Stars” in different events from training, to competitions and a trip to Disney Land Paris to partake in the Disney Parade.

Another concept I have thought about is making a documentary based on college/ school life and use my sixth form trip to New York within this. By filming parts in New York this could give a lot of different scenery as well as just using the college/ school premises to film on.

As my final decision I have decided to make my film a documentary. I have chosen this genre because its real and nothings fake, people can get an insight to things they dont know about or haven't experienced and also insight to other peoples lifes/ experiences. I also like the idea of a documentary because the characters play themselves. I like the idea of creating something that the audience can relate to or can get a deeper insight into things they dont know too well.

Research into existing films for ideas

By looking at the differnt type of films that already exist I can get ideas of the particular genre I want to focus on and look into it more deeply. I am mainly focusing on the lower budget films because my film trailer will be made on a lower budget.

Examples of high and lower budgeted films include:

Kidulthood. (A film based on a day in the life of troubled 15 year olds growing up in west London) This type of film was made to make the audience feel and understand how it was and could be portrayed as a documentary type of film that looks realistically on life. This film only had a budget of £600,000.

Fishtank. Again this low budgeted film follows Kidulthood in the sense of looking realistically on life in a documentary style following a foul-mouthed, stroppy fifteen-year-old who lives on an Essex estate with her tarty mother. This film had an annual budget of £4 million and was directed by Andrea Arnold. Here is the trailer for Fish Tank to help get a feel for what the film is about:

This trailer is useful to my film because it shows alot of realism, this is a main factor which I want to incorporate into my film. The shots used in the trailer are also good to the audience because they can relate to the surroundings and scenes from the realism used. This trailer uses shots/ scences which I could use in my film easily because the mise-en-scene is so basic but realistic, this would mean that I could create shots/ scenes like this myself from the resources which I have.

American Teen
Amerian Teen is a documentary film which follows seniors at a high school in a small town in America and highlights the steriotypicalness of their various cliques. The film was written and directed by Nanette Burstein. Heres the trailer for American Teen:

I like this trailer because of its documentary style and this is what I'd like to create. I also like how it follows a group of teenagers and uses alot of voice overs. This is something I would like to adapt for my film trailer. The part I like the most in this trailer is the shots from 24 seconds to 34 seconds when each character is introduced but not for who they are, but who their social status has made them known as. I like this because it doesn't tell you about them but atomatically a sterotype character may come to mind so this leaves so much more for you to find out.

Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propps theory examined 100s of examples of folk tales, to see if they shared any structures.Propp looked at 100s of folk tales andidentified 8 character roles and 31 narrative functions.

The character roles and the functions identified by Propp can be applied to allkinds of narrative. In TV news programmes we are often presented with'heroes' and ‘villains'

The 8 character roles are:

• The villain(s)


• The hero


• The donor - who provides an object with some magic property.


• The helper who aids the hero.


• The princess (the sought for person) - reward for the hero and object of thevillain's schemes.


• Her father - who rewards the hero.


• The dispatcher - who sends the hero on his way.


• The false hero

Todorov's Theory

Tzvetan Todorov's theory is a narrative theory that studies the devices and conventions governing the organisation of a story (fictional or factual) into a sequence. Todorov suggested that stories begin with an equilibrium where any potentially opposing forcesare in balance. This is disrupted by some event, setting in chain a series of events. Problems are solved so that order can be restored to the world of thefiction.

The diagram below shows the three different stages that his theroy supported.