Group 1's Final Treatment Idea

Title: Not yet agreed upon.

However as our production progresses, we will come to a unified film title that embodies our film’s plot.

Genre: Psychological Crime-Drama

An Original Screenplay by: Eniola, Conor, Sonny, Lauryn

Date: 14/11/12

Group 1 presents:

A complex Psychological Crime Drama that establishes and unravels, (as the plot advances), the issues of domestic violence on the mentality of those that are victims. We are going to identify the loneliness and humiliation that erupts from it, through our main black female character. Whether or not there is a murder is not revealed in the opening sequence, instead it is up to an active audience to use the bits of information we, as a group, give to them to deconstruct. Whether or not there has been a murder and who the victim of that murder is, is left to the audience to guess. Our plot is so complex, (this is a typical convention of a crime drama), that even the murderer is not overtly shown, so assumptions have to be made by the audience.

Plot Synopsis:

A young (18year old) girl enters into a relationship with an older male (25years old).

At first their relationship appears ‘perfect’ but the man turns out to be abusive and maltreats her constantly. Feeling alone, and believing she has no hope or any other option, she then makes the horrible decision to end his life before he ends hers.

Challenged Stereotypes:

     Main character is a young, black female, whereas in crime dramas they are old, white males.

Targeted towards a demographic composed primarily of females- especially those who like films that highlight somber subjects that affects quite a number of women. Our film will greatly appeal to this demographic due to the emotional representation of ‘broken’, young women. Also young people can identify with our film, due to the central character in the film.

Opening Sequence:

•      Opens in the present day with a long shot of Sarah -our main character- curled up and shivering, in a sitting position, in the corner of a room. She is holding a bloodied knife close to her.
•      Through the long shot the audience can see that Sarah is wearing a black vest top, shorts, and is barefoot.
•       Then there’s a pan of her surrounding area, which shows a messy floor.
•      The room is quite dark and there is low-key lighting.
•      There is then a slow zoom, into an extreme close-up of Sarah's face. Sarah appears to be looking past/behind the camera/ audience.
•      Her make-up is completely smudged and her face looks a mess, the audience can tell she has been crying a lot.
•     Sarah closes her eyes and there is a flash, then a plain white background.
•      She is having a flashback.

In The Flashback:

•      Begins with (in the form of an old footage- either a Sepia or Black and White editing) a love scene of Sarah and a man in a field-like setting, the man is chasing Sarah and she’s grinning from ear to ear. The man is never facially shown.
•      In the love scenes the camera shots will range from a long shot, from behind, whilst he’s chasing her, into an over the shoulder shot, where the audience see the back of Sarah as she runs. The man catches up with her. They both tumble- this is viewed via a long shot and then there’s an over the shoulder shot, where the audience see Sarah's face smiling at the camera/ man.
•      There’ll be no dialogue during the love scenes- only shrieks of laughter.
•      There’ll be parallel music that is light-hearted, sweet and sensual played in the background that helps to accentuate an atmosphere of romance.
•      In the love scenes Sarah is wearing summery clothing- a dress and flat shoes.
•      The love scene is a contrast to the scene at the very beginning in terms of the happy atmosphere of the love scene and the melancholic nature of the first scene. Her costume heightens both the atmosphere and the nature of both scenes.
•      There are quick/sudden and swift,  ‘random’ and ‘disjointed’ cut transitions incorporated into the love scene,  of subtle/covert violence from a dark figure, towards Sarah, which will be shown blurry and unfocused.
•       (The audience will view snippets of some of the incidents where the dark figure abuses Sarah either physically or verbally- the actual act of physical abuse is never fully shown in the opening scene.)
•      For example, when the man catches up with Sarah in the love scene, there is a cut transition and through a Point Of View (POV) shot, at a low angle, the audience view a large, dark character hovering over the camera/Sarah and due to the POV, the audience realise that Sarah is cowering away from the figure, which lashes out at her and at the very point of physical abuse the camera fades, and the audience are yet again, brought back to the love scene.
•      Every time the blurry inter-cuts between the love scene happens there is either a screech or the sound of a record scratching- as a group we have not yet decided which of the two sounds would be the most effective and appropriate.
•       The love scene is shown again, through an over the shoulder shot of Sarah looking lovingly at the man, as they both sit down on the grassy ground.
•      (Flashbacks ends...)

•      There is a sudden jump cut, and Sarah is shown again in the present, sill in the same curled up, sitting position. She had been brought back to the present due to the loud, piercing sirens from multiple police cars (the police cars will be heard not seen).
•      No background sound is heard during this scene, except from the diegetic noise of the police sirens.
•      There is a long shot of Sarah getting up. The camera zooms into her face which has a look of panic.
•      Then there is a fade to black transition.

This colour is my personal input story and summarises my points or not yet completely concluded ideas in my group, in the hope of no confusion.

Examples of my Enigma Codes:

•      Why is the woman crying?
•      Has the woman killed someone? If so, who and why? Is it the man in the love scene flashbacks or the dark figure?
•      Who is the man in the love scene flashbacks?
•      Who is the dark figure?
•      Is the man in the love scene flashbacks and the dark figure one and the same person?
•      Why does the dark figure mistreat her?
•      Where is the man/ dark figure now?

ALTERNATIVELY:

•      Why is the woman crying?
•      Has she severely injured herself? If so, why?
•      Has someone severely injured her? Is it the man in the flashbacks or the dark figure?
•      Has she severely injured or even killed someone? Is it the man in the love scene flashbacks or the dark figure?
•      Who is the man in the flashbacks?
•      Who is the dark figure?
•      Is the man in the love scene flashbacks, and the dark figure, one and the same person?
•      Why does the dark figure mistreat her?
•      Where is the man/ dark figure now?

Approval of Executive Producers: Ms. Butler and Mr.Lawes

Our Effect on our audience:

For our Opening Sequence, we as a group decided to use a maximum of two characters because we felt it would be a more effective way of introducing our main characters to our audience, which in effect, helped us deviate from bombarding our audience with a multitude of our main characters. Their names (Sarah and James) will not be mentioned in the opening sequence in order to emphasise the mystery and leave our audience wondering who our characters are- the revelation of names is a form of knowledge impacted on the audience that helps them relate more easily to the character they view on their screen, we don’t want to create that relationship yet and want to wait for the further development of our plot before we reveal the names to our audience.

 We made the decision to include only soundtracks and some sound effects but we wanted no dialogue in the opening sequence, so as not to divert the audience’s attention from the action taking place in the scenes, we thought that dialogue would lessen the effectiveness of our opening sequence.

In addition, we plan to not explicitly show the acts of violence, instead making it subtle and requiring an active audience to decipher and deconstruct the following actions that would take place. Also, this would add to our enigma codes due to our violent scenes being covert and leaving the audience wondering the events that took place, before the scene changed.    

We wanted the dark figure/man’s face to never be shown, and he will have his back turned away from the camera in the happy scenes and also be a dark blurry figure in the violent scenes; so that he will represent abuse itself- this character would be an embodiment of domestic abuse, in a way he is no longer a person and is instead characterised by the abuse he enforces upon Sarah. Our particular costume of as black vest and shorts in the present day (worn when Sarah is in the dark room) was chosen in order to represent her surrounding and the sombreness of her situation. We also wanted to create juxtaposition between the main scenes and seasons of summer and winter (Sarah in the present in the dark room and Sarah in the field) that will appear in the opening sequence through the use of costume; in the happy scenes (Sarah in the field) Sarah will be wearing summery clothing that is parallel to the sunny season she and James are in, but that juxtaposes the clothing of her in the dark room.

We had decided as a group to film the ‘cheesy love scene’ or happy scene in Parsloes due to the field that is there, which makes it an ideal location to film this part of our scene. For the dark room scene we chose the drama room in the drama department of our school as the location for our enclosed apartment, this was because we would have access to the lighting in the room and create a spotlight on Sarah to make her stand out from the darkness and bleakness of her surroundings- we thought that it would make it easier and make our production look more effective if we created our low key lighting in this format than in just using normal light.

We also choose a screech/record scratch that breaks the music in order to highlight the change and sudden break in screen to our audience- the sound effect will foreshadow the negative violent scene and event yet to come from the current happy scene they are viewing.I think by using the flashback from a POV shot of Sarah and  representing James as a dark figure, the audience are not completely certain if the images they see are actually those two characters, in the opening sequence it is an assumption that they make, and the reality of that assumption might be revealed as the plot thickens.

Domestic Violence:

Domestic violence is the:

v  Physical,

v  Sexual,

v  Psychological,

v  Or Financial violence that takes place within an intimate or relative relationship.

Domestic violence tends to form a pattern of coercion and controlling behaviour.

 Research by Women’s Aid, shows that over two women per week are killed by current or ex-partners and that domestic violence accounts for between 16% and one quarter of all recorded violent crime. Women comprised of 89% of all those who had experienced 4 or more incidents of domestic violence- due to this being a statistic and not just a stereotype, that is one of the reasons why our main character is a female. Also there are 13 million separate incidents of physical violence or threats of violence against women from partners or former partners in any one year.

I researched how the media represents women who go through/ have gone through domestic violence.

The reason I did this was because, domestic violence is a serious and sensitive issue, and  in order for our film to give the most realistic portrayal of the victims- without causing offence but  instead  raising awareness of the psychological trauma that some of them face as a result.

Title: Provoked: A True Story
Director: Jag Mundhra
Country: India, 2007
Plot: The true story of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, a Punjabi woman who sets fire to her husband's feet- whilst he is sleeping- unintentionally killing him; after experiencing 10 years of domestic violence.  She is sentenced to life imprisonment but is brought to justice through the campaigning of the Southall Black Sisters.

The director created empathy effectively with the character of Kiranjit, right from the beginning as a result of the POV shot chosen to reveal the death of her husband Deepak. As a result, the audience are 'led' to believe they had assisted and watched as she set fire to her husband’s feet.

When dealing with  the aspects of the domestic abuse caused by the husband Kiranjit, the director overtly showed the violence as it took place- the slaps, beatings and times when he nearly chocked her to death (during this physical attack the abuser’s mother was present). However, the physical abuses were always briefly shown and the sexual abuse was never shown, but insinuated at (an aspect we plan to incorporate in our opening sequence).
As a group we are aware that we can’t achieve the realism of the beatings as well as the director for this film “Provoked” did and due to the film being based on the real life event of Kiranjit, they had permission to show the violence and the confidence that offense to the victims of domestic violence would be terminated. We, on the other hand are more prone to offending victims of this form of abuse because as far as I know, none of us in our group have experienced such violence, for us to visually portray realistically enough.

We might like to incorporate the idea of showing verbal abuse before the hints of physical abuse as seen in the begging of the movie, when Deepak Ahluwalia (her husband) reproves and reprimands her for “dressing like a white woman” and harshly orders her to remove the clothes that she had previously believed was beautiful and had thought would have pleased her husband to see. The film carries on and builds on the violence- so as the film continues the violence shown in the flashbacks escalate. From this movie I have seen that our idea of using flashbacks would be an effective way of hinting to our audience, without revealing too much, about the pain and suffering that the audience assumes Sarah goes through. 

Title: The Burning Bed
Director: Robert Greenwald
Country: USA, 1984
Plot: An abused battered wife has had enough of husband beating up on her. Everywhere she turns for help, there's not much anyone will do. She sets the bed on fire with him still in it (whilst he was asleep).

The film’s opening sequence is similar to the way in we (101 Productions) plan to open our film. The main character Mrs. Fran Hughes, through the use of a voice over, is able to relate her thoughts and emotions to the audience; creating a personal relationship with the audience- this is an idea we have incorporated into our opening sequence.

In this film the issue of domestic violence is not insinuated at right at the beginning, instead the couple (Mickey and Fran) are shown to be completely and utterly in love- especially Mickey, who continually insists on the two of them getting married.

As the film continues and the plot thickens, the violence begins to be shown and with each time he (Mickey) attacks her over the course of the film the more the violence caused by Mickey escalates and becomes more vicious.

Quite similar to the film “Provoked” the husband of Fran gets annoyed, jealous and physically lashes out; when she wears an outfit she had originally believed would have pleased him immensely, he’s reasoning was she looked too “sexy/pretty”.

Similar to KIranjit this act of violence (whose was verbal abuse at the beginning, unlike Fran whose was physical attacks right from the beginning) was the first of many that the audience would view.

In “The Burning Bed” the violence were mainly physical but there were also verbal (he said death threats against her) and sexual abuse as well.

I noticed a similarity in both the film I analysed that had the theme of domestic violence. In their opening sequence they either showed the crime (murder of their husband) being perpetrated-as seen with the film “Provoked”, in which, the audience immediately know the killer and have already ‘mentally established’ themselves with the killer, through the director’s camera use of a POV shot- or after it had been perpetrated .

As seen with the film “The Burning Bed”, in which, the audience are left to deconstruct that the female character that had just entered the car, must have had a connection to the fire in the house shown in the background. This is similar to the idea we envisaged, as it is like the scene we created; where Sarah is sitting in the dark room with the bloodied knife.

 Personal identification and relationship have been created within an active audience as a result of the voice over of Fran that follows the fire incidence.

Due to analysing these two movies I have seen the effective of using POV shots and voiceovers in order to create sympathy (personal relationship) and empathy (personal identification) within our active audience.