SWOT Analysis of Final Treatment

Today everyone in the class had to pitch their ideas as a group to the rest of the class, this is the feedback we received after we'd told everyone our idea:

Strengths: I feel that my groups had clear ideas, a well structured plan and enigma codes for the audience to deconstruct and interpret in their own way. My group are not necessarily focusing on the matter of the girl having an issue, we're focusing more on how people perceive the issue and how they adapt to it.

Weaknesses: The sensitivity of the issue, my group received feedback saying that our idea is good because it doesn't make fun out of mental health issues and we deal with it in quite a sensitive way as we're using art as a release for this character.

Opportunities: A member of our group is an artist so we have the opportunity to get the correct art resources and equipment that we're going to need during filming, we are using the school as it has all the right places for us to film in such as the art classroom when the girl is painting and the media classroom when the girl is being bullied.

Threats: As it's a serious issue my group need to be careful of how we go about showing it in our opening sequence.

Doing this activity has helped my group realise the good and bad things about our idea for our opening sequence, we now understand that we must be extremely sensitive about the issue we are representing as it can be a very touchy subject for some people who suffer with the condition. We have also realised that we are well of in terms of talent as Ralph is an artist, this has made the idea of art being Jodie's release for her emotions a lot easier to communicate. The fact that OCD is a serious issue among people  means that we have to be extra careful about how we show the issue in our opening sequence and be very sensitive about it at the same time.

Initial Ideas

Today in my Media lesson I had to pitch my idea for a Psychological Thriller move to the class, this involved me getting up and telling my class about my ideas. I found that doing this pitch was quite helpful in getting me to think about all the other possibilities for my movie idea, and trying to expand and adjust my original idea became easier. I was being assessed by a fellow pupil called Billy Pidgeon, he filled out a sheet that we had been given which told me about my strengths and weaknesses in my pitch to the class. Although I didn't find this very helpful, because he had mentioned turning it into a crime thriller even though Ms Butler has specifically said not to, I felt it was a good way for him to get his opinions on my pitch across to me without criticising everything I had said. I also got some teacher feedback which I felt was much more helpful than being peer assessed, my feedback from Ms Butler included that: my ideas were simple and realistic so she could visualise it in her head, they were strong and focused on the particular genre I was doing and there wasn't too many characters or suggestions to the whole storyline. This helped me to finalise my individual ideas as I got positive feedback from my pitch which then made me feel like it was a good pitch and I should go on to use it within my group. Once everyone had pitched their own individual ideas to the class it was time for us to regroup and decide as a group with idea we were going to use for our very own opening sequence. My group seemed to struggle with this because we couldn't really come to a decision and stick to it, this frustrated me as I felt that my idea may have been a good one to use. In the end we decided to have the idea of a young disabled girl who was getting bullied at school and not taking her medication, we wanted to do this idea because it's a real life problem and we want to be able to get a message across to people that bullying isn't right no matter what.

This is the feedback I received from Billy Pidgeon:

Treatment for Group 3

Title: SIXTEEN

Group 3 presents a psychological thriller about a teenage girl called Jodie who has an obsessive compulsive disorder, the opening sequence shows how she struggles to deal with the disorder as it gradually takes over her life and makes her usual daily tasks more difficult. The first scene involves Jodie sitting in her bath at home with the bathroom door locked, she's crying and wiping her eyes, then she looks at her hands and realises there is pen on them so she washes her hands more than once. She starts to scrub her hands viciously as the pen doesn't come off, there is a close up of her hands covered in soap and she scrubs them harder with a nail cleaning brush which then leaves a red mark on her hand. Her mum knocks at the door and asks if she's okay, there's a close up of Jodie's face as she turns around to look at the door, she looks scared as if she doesn't know who's knocking at the door. However, she says everything is fine and she'll be out soon, the scene then cuts to Jodie at school putting her pencil case and books very neatly on her desk ready for her lesson. There is a voice over of her talking about her life and 'the incident' that changed her life, and how the people that she called her friends are no longer there for her when she needs them most. During the lesson the person sitting closest to her moves her pencil case so it's not in line with the table, Jodie moves it back and then the person does it again, Jodie then moves it back so it's in line with the table and there's a close up of her face to show the frustration that this is causing her. A piece of paper is then thrown at her with the word 'retard' written on it, she smooths the paper so it's perfectly laid out on the table and when she sees what's written on it she throws it on the floor and looks up to find people her class laughing at her. The class is then dismissed, there is a long shot of Jodie putting all her notes into her folder alphabetically, the scene cuts to Jodie walking down the corridor holding all of her folders. The same person who moved her pencil case in class sees Jodie in the corridor with all of her belongings and barges her so she drops all of her folders and her notes fly everywhere, people laugh at her as she begins to pick up her notes. Once she's picked up all of her notes she storms off and goes home, the scene cuts again to her at home with a voice over reflecting on her disability, she then gets out a photo of her and her friends from a while ago and starts to cross out their faces with a red marker pen.

Improved Treatment

After some constructive criticism from my class friends and Miss Butler my group decided to change our idea for our opening sequence, it's now a psychological drama as we thought that our idea followed more conventions of a psychological drama rather than thriller. We wanted someone from outside of our group to be able to guess the genre and we were worried people wouldn't get it right so we changed it to fit in with the conventions. We decided to be very subtle about her problem by having her painting at the beginning of the opening sequence. This offers an enigma code for the audience to deconstruct as they don't know why she's painting or what she's painting, throughout the opening sequence Jodie paints and soon gets frustrated as her painting isn't looking as nice as she wanted it to be, her music gets louder and faster the more angry she gets. Whispers of people who don't like her start to be heard and this upsets Jodie even more, so she starts painting black all over her painting and ends up ruining it rather quickly, she throws the paint and paintbrushes to the floor in anger and leaves the art classroom. A jump cut into an establishing shot then reveals Jodie walking down the street with her folders and belongings, the whispers reappear and she gets upset, drops her folders and begins to cry. The screen then fades to black and the whispers continue.

My Psychological Thriller Research

PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER RESEARCH 

This research has helped to inform my production because I have now changed the genre of film that I want my opening sequence to be, looking at psychological thrillers has helped me understand that my initial idea didn't conform to these sorts of conventions and that it didn't have enough 'thriller' in it. My group then made an informed decision to change our idea so it conformed more to a psychological drama as we feel that this will be a better genre to do an opening sequence for.

Half Term Homework

The film genre I have chosen is horror, this is because personally I enjoy horror films as they give me a thrill and a bit of an adrenaline rush when it gets to the scary climaxes. This genre came about in the late 1890's by the film pioneer Georges Méliès, the film was titled as Le Manoir Du Diable (French for: The House of the Devil). It was released in 1896, on Christmas Eve, in Paris. It was a two minute long film and contained many traditional pantomime elements and the film depicts a haunted castle and manor of the devil. Horror films were first made in the 1890's and were said to be reborn in the 1930's by a number of producers such as; Tod Browning who made Dracula in 1930 and Freaks in 1932, James Whale who made Frankenstein in 1930 and The Bride of Frankenstein in 1935.

Key texts in this genre: A family, somesort of disruption to their normal everyday lives, a ghost/demon that ruins/kills everything. Young children that get possessed or taken in by the evil, police that never get to a scene on time so the evil ends up destroying something.


Themes and ideas often explored in this genre: A family that has to cope with the changes around them that is caused by evil, or young people have to overcome the terrors of what's happening to them.

How has the genre been changed/adapted in the past? Used to be silent and in black and white, death scenes never used to look real, but now it's a lot more gory and graphic for the viewer which gives them a real insight to the genre and the effects it can have on people.


Examples of opening sequences from this genre:

Saw movie: A guy is on a table with his arms locked in vices, his legs tied down and a huge saw thing hanging from the ceiling, something happens and the saw starts to swing down from the ceiling and finally ends up cutting him in half.


Orphan: Woman giving birth in hospital, sitting in her own blood, baby dies and she screams and get sectioned.


These films all grip the audience with their shocking opening sequences which keeps the audience engaged with the action making them want to watch the rest of the movie, they all have dialogue that is interesting in the way that it doesn't reveal much about the storyline which will have the audience wanting more. The films all introduce some characters that will either be in the film or get killed at the beginning to shock the viewer and keep them engaged in the action.

Initial Idea For Opening Sequence

During todays lesson we all individually wrote up our initial ideas and then peer assessed someone else's, this is mine which got peer assessed by Lauryn:


Romantic drama: Set in a house/flat that the couple seems to share, it’s messy and untidy which annoys the woman who has just come back from a business trip abroad. Man drinks a lot and becomes abusive, use over the shoulder shot to show each of the characters speaking so the audience can see their facial expressions and how angry they are, they’re both shouting. Man is tired of the woman always moaning and the woman is angry at how lazy the man has been while she’s been away working hard. Man hits the woman and she falls to the floor in tears, man leaves the room and takes his bottle of vodka with him.

Five things I will need to do to keep within this genre would be:

1. Have the couple argue a lot and then the man storms out of the house/flat
2. Woman calls her best friend and tells her what’s happened
3. Have lots of conflict between the alcoholic man and his partner
4. Have scenes where the woman is just crying and trying to deal with what’s happening to her
5. Have the man realize what he’s been doing to his partner or she kills him

One thing that you could possibly do is when the couple are having the argument instead of an over the shoulder shot use a point of view shot to show their prospective a bit more.

Add more camera angles, for instance you could also use a few close ups on the woman as she starts to get angry or cry to show her emotions building up just before she breaks and they have an argument using a high angle to look over the man to show he’s still being lazy and not caring even though she is the more dominant partner as she has more money and does most of the things.

Where is it set? Tell/show the audience where they are such as a big city or a quieter town.

Peer assessed by Lauryn Corbett :)<3

Prelim Evaluation

 During the procedure of making our prelim task I felt that my group actually worked very well together, this is because we all co-operated with each other and listened to each others different views. This made working together much easier as we didn't have any arguments or conflict during the filming, this also made the production process run more smoothly as we ended up finishing earlier than expected with all the correct material that we needed for the editing process. The camera man for our group was Ralph Akhigbe and the actors were Dylan Streader and I, these were the roles each of us took on and as a group we all contributed to editing the footage. This way we all got to play a part in putting together the prelim task, which then gave me a sense of achievement as I had never edited something before so it was all new to me. As a group I felt that nothing went badly, this is because we all got on well with each other so there were no arguments during the filming process and this helped us to cooperate better with one another. To improve my coursework I will try even harder to get everything right, work to the best of my ability and redo work if I get it wrong the first time. I have discovered that the production process can actually be enjoyable and worth while if the group you're working in all work well together, it makes the job a lot easier as there's no tension between the group members.