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.