Treatment:

 

A

TREATMENT

FOR “ READY OR NOT // HERE I COME “ 

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Prepared by KPM Productions and Mele Leaaetalafoou

13/04/2021

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It is proposed that the film will be 1 to 2 Minutes long, and it will be filmed in Coatesville. We have chosen this location because it is the best location that fits our story line, it is easily accessible by everyone in our team.

This film will include the following conventions of thriller films: 

• Symbolism & Iconography - The girl's clothing will be white and ‘home-like’ linking to her innocence and vulnerability. The man’s clothing will be black symbolising darkness, and cruelty linking to what his role is in the film. 

• Sound - In the beginning of the film we will have soft music and maybe the diegetic sound of the girl in her house, as the story goes along the music will build getting more and more suspenseful as the tension in the film builds. When the Kidnapping happens the music will be very intense, matching the intenseness of the filming. In the ending it will just cut to silence, adding effect as we end the film on a cliffhanger, putting the building suspense with a silent ‘bang’

• Lighting - Most of our film will be shot with the natural lighting of the night, with the help of the light of the house and the light from the moon to help create shadows. We will alter the lights in the house, leaving some lights on and some off to create a ‘dim’ lighting effect.

• Shadows - When filming the man, we will be aiming for a silhouette effect, only capturing the outline of the man watching the girl, throughout the whole film, we will not be capturing the man’s face, but will be focusing more on his stature and how he conducts himself, keeping his face as a ‘mystery’.

• Narrative - Our narrative has a cliche, simple story line. It engages with the audience from the beginning right through to the end, playing with the audiences emotions as they interact with the characters in the film, as the story line makes the audience feel worried and scared for the girl, making them also feel annoyed by the fact that the girl is oblivious to what is happening. 

After watching the following thriller films/thriller openings I have been influenced by the following: 

Hush - 

In this movie the part where the intruder is shown looking through the window (shown in the Photo/Example above) Is what we will be trying to do but in a different way and perspective. In the film there is also a lady who is seen as vulnerable, especially since this guy ( Man above in mask ) is seen as following her, and watching her, Similar to our story line.

( Example of the Vulnerable lady and the Intruder/Stalker )

Problems encountered:

We haven’t encountered many problems yet, but one thing that would have been a problem would have been finding house fit for our film. At first when asking around for a house to do the filming at, not everyone wanted to use their house, but luckily one students house was/is available. 

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Character names and their motivations/representation in the film:

Our film consists of only two Characters, Our first main Character Molly, she is an innocent/vulnerable girl, and Our second main character Richard, who is our intruder/kidnapper. 

Molly is our vulnerable character in that she is young and she thinks that she is alone at home, she is wearing white, which symbolizes her vulnerability and how she is innocent. 

Richard is the intruder, the name of this Character is a real name taken from a serial killer named ‘Richard Ramirez’ He was a kidnapper, pedophile, serial rapist and burglar. When we saw this Guy’s name and profile we immediately thought that this was a good name for our character as the profiles are similar in that we are picturing our character as a kidnapper as well. The Character of Richard will be wearing typical black clothes representing that he is the ‘bad guy’.

Ideology:

The girl is young - in her late teens, she is vulnerable in that she is home alone, she has no source of protection and does not look like she would be able to defend herself in any ‘bad’ kind of situation. She is oblivious to the fact that she is in any sort of danger until the kidnapper makes it known to her. 

The kidnapper is much bigger and older than the girl and poses a threat immediately when seen ‘stalking’ the girl in her own house. He is also immediately seen as a threat by the clothes that he wears. 

There is no specific challenge in our film apart from the fact that the girl trying to escape from the hands of the kidnapper is a challenge for her personally because she is incapable of doing so.

The film is so cliché in all aspects and forms especially in that the girl is the innocent one which is typical in reality as women/girl’s are seen as weak and vulnerable. Whereas the man is the kidnapper, linking to that fact that men/boy’s are seen as stronger and more powerful than most girls/women. The type of clothes that they will be wearing is also cliché for the type of roles that they play, with the innocent wearing white and the kidnapper wearing black. 

 

Mood and Tone: 

The Mood and Tone shown throughout the film is going to give off a feeling of loneliness adding to the suspense. We will try to create a soft tone for the first part when just showing the girl, to get the audience to almost feel scared and sorry for her when they see how things take place. The tone will then shift to a scared and tense tone when the intruder comes into the scene. The moods and tones shown throughout our film will help give the audience feel worried and uncomfortable in a way. It will help create a sense of darkness and mystery, especially when we end the short film with a cliff-hanger, the audience will be left worried for the girl and wondering what will happen to her, whether she will be saved or if she will die. The overall tone of our film will be serious, suspenseful, and engaging. 

Camera Shots, camera movement/lighting/angles, lighting:

The camera’s perspective will be jumping from subjective and objective, which will help add to the element of suspense. It will be jumping from both perspectives, the perspective of the innocent girl and then shift to the perspective of the intruder/kidnapper. We will have lots of Mid-shots, Close-ups and Wide shots. These specific shots will add tension and suspense as the audience watches the film, especially the Close-up that will take place on the girl as she is cooking, as she will be cutting raw meat, we will be specifically closing up onto the knife slicing into the meat and the blood of the meat coming out. This will be a symbolism of something ‘bad’ happening. Here is an example of a close up that we will be trying to aim:

This is an example of what we have envisioned for this shot, except that the meat will have blood coming out of it as well and the lighting shown in the photo won’t be as bright as that, we will be going for dim lighting in the house as it will be night time.

The Mid-shots will be of the intruder as he watches the girl from outside her own house. The Wide shot will be our establishing shot of the house in mid-day. These types of shots will help add to the story line and how everything unfolds. 

Here is an good example of different types of shots that can be taken place, only few of them will be used in our film:

For our lighting we will just be using natural lighting, as our film is set in the night time. We will use the natural light of the moon and the lights from the house to visually see the intruder in the dark, we aim to just see the outline of his body kind of like a silhouette. In the house we will also just use the natural lighting of the house and maybe leave some lights off to create a dim lighting that will add to the suspense created throughout the film.

Themes and motifs:

It will be evident in our film that we will have a theme of:

•  vulnerability - The girl is in a vulnerable position in that she is home alone. 

• Superiority - The Guy is bigger and taller than her, showing superiority physically.

•  A foreboding - Our film will take the audience on a journey of suspicion and it will create them to have this ‘feeling’ that something bad is about to happen, sooner or later. 

• kidnapping - The girl is going to be kidnapped and taken in the end but the audience will be left on a cliff-hanger and won’t know what’s gonna happen next.

Narrative:

The Narrative itself builds suspense as the audience watches and see’s how vulnerable the girl is. The audience will be able to see everything unfold meanwhile the girl is oblivious to how everything happens.

Mise-en-scene/setting:

Our film will be set at Porcia’s house in Coatesville, we have decided to do it at her house because it is easily accessible by all of the casting crew. The whole film will be taken at her house.

Symbolism:

The white clothes that the girl wears symbolises - innocence and vulnerability, white being the colour relating to purity linking to the fact that the girl has not done anything to harm or hurt the man, she is purely just a target of interest for the kidnapper.

The house that the girl lives in will symbolize - wealth. The fact that she has some form of being wealthy could be a reason why she is a target for this kidnapper.

The black clothes that the intruder/kidnapper wears symbolizes - the color black is said to be a dirty color linking to the fact that the things that the kidnapper is doing is seen as disgusting. The color also resembles death, pain, fear and suspense.

Sound and music:

The sound and music is based on our own individual Choices when editing our own films.

 Basically all of our sound and music will be suspenseful and eerie, in the beginning it will be chill music setting the scene adding to the fact that the girl is vulnerable. It will then shift to soft but suspenseful music when shown the intruder, this is when the audience realises that the girl is in trouble. Most of our film will be diegetic sound from the sound made when filming. 

Use of credits and logos:

We will be using the same logo from Preliminary Task One, it will be re-edited and perfected for This Preliminary Task. In the film our Logo will be shown in the beginning of our film. We will have music that will accompany the logo as it opens into our first scene of our short film. This will add a flow to our film. 

Basically our KPM Productions logo will appear before our film and throughout the film we will have the names of our actors coming through while our film goes along, then at the end we will have our ending credits. The ending credits will roll along the screen in a professional way, starting from the bottom and scrolling off from the top.

Editing: 

We will all be doing our own individual editing, but for the overall editing it will be eerie and suspenseful. We will try and differ from our First Preliminary Task and avoid doing a whole lot of fades to black, instead we will try and incorporate something new, maybe instead of facing to black add fades to the next scene, or something else. 

BEGINNING:

The vulnerable girl is in her house, in her kitchen cooking, when she receives a text notification from a random number , a person whom she does not know. The text she receives is a photo of her in her own house. 

MIDDLE:

The girl is stressed and worried about who is watching her, she looks outside the house in the direction of where the photo was taken and does not see anyone, she goes towards the window and looks more closely, checking to see, and as she looks out she hears a knock on her front door.

END:

When she hears the knock she runs back to the counter of her kitchen and grabs the knife that she was cooking with, then slowly walks towards the front door. As she gets closer to the front door the door is open, she keeps walking to the door and looks out to try and see who was there and that is when the intruder/kidnapper walks up behind her and kidnap's her.

Finishes on a 'cliff-hanger'

THE MAIN CONFLICT/TENSION IN THE SEQUENCE:

When the girl walks towards the door and gets kidnapped.

By Mele Leaaetalafoou