Minor Character Profiles

As well as the two main characters in our opening sequence, there are going to be three other characters in it - however, these have more minor roles in the sequence.

Jason Greene & Kelly Thomas:

• Husband and Wife,
• Friends of Vivian,
• Jason works for Santander (this is how he knows Vivian),
• They have an overly positive view of life (environmentally-conscious, New Age couple)
• This attitude to life often annoys Mark.

Drake Cox:

• Mark's best friend (works with him at Optimum)
• Comes from Houston, Texas,
• Based on the actor Wayne Knight (pictured right)

Main Character Profiles

Here are character profiles for the two main protagonists in our opening sequence:

Mark Howard:

• Works as a Financial Advisor for Optimum Bank,
• Has worked for Optimum for nearly 10 years,
• Before that, he studied a Business degree at the London School of Economics,
• His father worked for Optimum for over 40 years,
• Although he is successful, he has often been overlooked for promotion,
• This has made him increasingly unhappy about his job,
• He feels that life is becoming more monotonous (as shown by his morning routine).

Vivian Ritter:

• Mark's girlfriend,
• They started dating five years ago when Vivian was Mark's secretary at Optimum,
• However, two years ago, she found a more successful job as a consultant for Santander,
• This means that she has to travel around Europe a lot,
• Vivian is more optimistic about life than Mark, but she is becoming increasing fed up with Mark's unhappiness.

Possible Title Fonts

As a group, we whittled the endless possible fonts down to a shortlist of 4 (from the top down):

Tall Dark and Handsome
Headline One
Mentone
Franchise

All of these fonts are available to download in the Basics category at www.dafont.com

In the end, we decided to go with the first font "Tall Dark and Handsome" this is the font that encapulates the film's idea. It is simple, clean cut and office worker boring. It also is ironic due to the fact that the protagonist isn't any of the adjectives in the font title.

Storyboard

This is our storyboard created in pre production. It was created as a visual reference allowing our group to see how the frames follow one another. When we come round to shooting our sequence, this may not be an exact replica of what the final result will be due to which location we decide to film at.

Working Title Amendments

Following discussions within the group we decided that the working title we had settled with was not that effective, so we rethought the title. Whilst renaming the title we took into account the tripling aspect of our work. What Went Wrong was the outcome of our discussion. This title is ambiguous as it has two possible meanings. Firstly, it is can be interpreted as a question "What went wrong?" and also it could be stating what went wrong before the film reveals it to the audience. Another factor is because of the historical reputation of question marks in film titles at the box office, previously mentioned in our working title post.

Tripling Test

After discussing ways to film our opening sequence, we decided on a continuity technique which will feature heavily in the actual filming of our opening sequence. By filming a morning routine in shots of three, we hope to give the sequence a sense of rhythm. To make sure that this would work effectively, we decided to try filming different sequences in shots of three. Our attempt at filming and editing such a sequence is above.

Initial Ideas

Our preliminary idea was a mockumentary (in the style of Warp films; Shane Meadows etc.) about a gameshow host that struggles to enjoy his job because he chose to host a very poor show, getting bad press, ruining his career. The subtle humour would be too difficult to pull off as many people might not get it. It would also be too difficult to achieve successfully in such a short time frame.

Our second idea was based on a short story one of us wrote for English coursework a few months ago. Using an original piece by one of us meant that we would have inspiration and complete artistic license over what we could do. This idea is the one that we decided to do because of its relevance in today's society and the scarcity of films in our intended genre/theme at the moment. However, because of the longevity of the film production process, there are likely to be a lot more recession-based films in the near future.

Similar Media Products - How I Met Your Mother

How i met your mother is an American sitcom which is narrated by a father who tells his kids the story of how he met their mother. This is similar to our idea in that the main character uses narration to tell the audience about their past and how it affected their present/future life.

Similar Media Products - Breaking Bad

This american TV series is in the same vain as our film due to the dark humour element of the show. Also the main character in both try to come to terms with loss in their own way.

Similar Media Products - Up In The Air

Up In The Air is a 2010 film starring George Clooney, it is similar to our proposed idea because of the links with the credit crunch/recession and how people are adjusting to the changes made.

Film Treatment - Title

We looked for inspiration in films such as: O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Did You Hear About the Morgans? to use a question as the title for our film. This hooks the reader into watching to find out the answer to the question. However, it seems that putting a question mark in a film title is a curse to the box office potential of the film. Using this information we decided leave the question mark out in such as: Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Film Treatment - Target audience/certificate

As our audience age group is certificate 15 we decided that the type of advertisement would have to appeal to this age group and over.
Therefore we thought that our film could be advertised in a magazine which was read by this age group e.g. Forbes Magazine, likewise the trailer of the film could be shown, obviously on T.V, but more specifically during the adverts of a show that also has a target audience of age group 15 and over for example, the news on ITV1, Channel 4 and Five. This is because the news attracts the most audience due to the fact that news is key to everyone.
The same thing could done at the cinema just before a film of the same certificate and similar genre. The advert itself would need to let the audience know its their type of film and age group without them just looking at the certificate.

The Royal Tenenbaums

This is a opening scene that has some of the same features as the one we hope to construct e.g. narration.

American Beauty

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSSCo3ncYag

Continuity Exercise

We did an exercise to put into practise the rules of film continuity and the 180 degree rule.

Induction Practical

As an induction to the practical process, we were set a brief to create an opening to a thriller film. Above is our effort.