Our one (and a half) page pitch!

Our one page pitch!

Age rating:

Our age rating is a 12. I looked at the BBFC regulations and have selected an age rating that I think will be appropriate to audiences. A rating of 12 seems suitable as our thriller will glaze over the murder scene so there will not be any graphic violence displayed. There will not be any scenes involving drugs or sex. However the theme will be mature and suitable for ages 12 and over.

Target audience:

Our target audience will be between ages 12-25. We are targeting our film at young adults as we think that is a good age to target our thoughts about the issues raised in the media text. Our media text will be used as a form of escapism. It will be used for people to escape from reality and everyday life. The media text is used to provoke an emotion from the audience or can be used as a way of expressing ideas about the topic of the film with friends, family or acquaintances. We do not want audiences to be passive when watching our thriller, we want people to question our ideas and what happens in the film, as it will raise issues regarding gender empowerment and sexism.

Statement of intent:

For our story, our theme is envy and jealousy, and how it can drive people mad. We have chosen to tell the story that we have to portray how delusional love can make people, and the drastic ending that one woman had to take when her love for a man was disrupted. For us as a group, we feel passionately about this subject, as although we haven’t personally experienced it, we know how being unfaithful can shatter someone’s heart. The feeling is unimaginable to comprehend, as the love of our main characters life betrayed her trust, as well as using the other woman. The audience, we feel, will care about this subject, as it is very commonly portrayed in the media and women’s feelings and thoughts are never shown.  In the modern day, we feel like the story of a man having an affair leaving a woman heartbroken and deluded, is appropriate to tell. Our aim is to make men think about their actions, as not many women will just forgive and forget. Our main woman character is strong, and although a murderer, her motive was that she either ended his life or hers, because she couldn’t take the news of his affair. We hope that the audience will feel the need for the story to be told, as it is an important aspect in relationships – and the gluttony of men or woman thinking they can have two loves, is sadly mistaken.  We have chosen to make our thriller a film opening, as opposed to a TV drama, as with TV drama characters can develop over time, whereas our characters we want their personalities to be clear throughout.

 

Plot

For our plot we have chosen to have many characters stood around a coffin, either viewing it in the morgue or crying, or around a grave. We want the characters to show emotion, to know that the loss has made a massive impact, and 2 women we want to stand out immediately, perhaps by cutaways from one to the other. But one noticeably crying, the other one noticeably looking angry ( the girlfriend and the one he is later revealed to have had an affair with ). For the second scene we want a clear flashback, where the main character BOB and his girlfriend MARY are shown in a montage of clips doing things together such as going on dates – the story of how they fell in love. After this we want a clear shot of suspicions, with MARY lurking around where BOB is, later to be looking out of a window and seeing BOB with the girl he’s having an affair with ( JESSICA ). After BOB returns from his affair that night, we see MARY look smiley and happy, however we (THE AUDIENCE) see she has a knife behind her back. We have shown to include the audience in dramatic irony, that she wants to kill him, as then they can infer for themselves what will happen, without actually being shown it.

Film title; The Black Widow

Tag-Line;

•          The female of the species is much deadlier than the male

The what if premise:

•          What if the love of your life, the one you held closest to your heart, the one who you would do anything for, cross mountains and oceans for, betrayed you? What if the man, who promised to love you and to cherish you, no matter what, lied to you?  What if because of his poisonous and vile lies, everything you worked for and everything you’d treasured had come crumbling down?  What would you do? Could you forgive him? Or would you take your revenge?

Regulation: BBFC

The British Board of Film Classification is an independent, non-governmental body which has classified cinema films since it was set up in 1912 and videos/ DVDs since the Video Recordings Act was passed in 1984. The BBFC Annual Report provides a review of the activities and classification decisions of the Board over the calendar year, as well as information about the BBFC's financial position as required by law.

Cinema
The British Board of Film Censors was set up in 1912 by the film industry as an independent body to bring a degree of uniformity to the classification of film nationally.

Video
In 1984 Parliament passed the Video Recordings Act. This act stated that, subject to certain exemptions, video recordings offered for sale or hire commercially in the UK must be classified by an authority designated by the Secretary of State.

Finance
The BBFC is a not for profit organisation, and its fees are adjusted only to cover its costs. In order to preserve its independence, the BBFC never receives subsidies from either the film industry or the government.

How does the classification work?
In order to protect children from unsuitable and even harmful content in films and videos and to give consumers information they might need about a particular film or video before deciding whether or not to view it, the BBFC examines and age rates films and videos before they are released. This independent scrutiny prior to release ensures the highest possible level of protection and empowerment.

Case study: Fight club

Film information

• Fight Club
• Director: David Fincher
• Status: 18 uncut
• Year: 1994

"The first rule of Fight Club is: 'You don't talk about Fight Club'. The second rule of Fight Club is: "You don't talk about Fight Club". Thus runs the tagline for this David Fincher film submitted to the BBFC in 1999.
Based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the film had caused something of a sensation at the Venice International Film Festival when some critics reacted strongly to both the film's thesis and its level of personal violence, while others praised its imaginative approach and strong performances from Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. In particular, Alexander Walker, then veteran critic of the London Evening Standard, who had seen it in Venice, inveighed against the film as "a toxic experience ... an inadmissible assault on personal decency ... and on society itself. It resurrects the Führer principle. It promotes pain and suffering as the virtues of the strongest. It tramples every democratic decency underfoot."
There was much debate about the film's subject matter – it was seen as a blackly comic satire of capitalism and consumerism; as an exploration of the loss of male identity in a feminised society, and as about violence as a way in which the powerless male can reassert himself against the corporate world he inhabits. Whatever the meaning, the film presented sequences in which men challenged other men to beat them up, and then allowed their opponents to do so without any resistance from their ‘victims’, the result being scenes of strong, and sometimes bloody, violence.
The film, which came with an 18 request from its distributor, 20th Century Fox,  was seen by most of the BBFC's examiners, and also by the BBFC Director, Robin Duval, his Deputy, and the President and Vice-Presidents, provoking a wide range of opinion. While BBFC examiners found the film stylish and challenging, and some felt an uncut 18 was acceptable for this adult viewing experience, there were concerns under the BBFC Guidelines of the time about the glamorisation of violence and the potential for encouraging an interest in organised bare-fist fighting. Neither the novel nor the film condoned brutal fighting, as the conclusion of the narrative makes clear.

Representation of disability

I have been looking at issues around the way in which disability is presented and represented in TV Dramas. Representation of social groups in our thriller is something we need to make informed decisions about.

Firstly I looked at an article called Unlimited: Disability on screen - BFI.
This article presents the views that the writer believes that the presentation of disabled people in TV dramas is improving significantly. During the Great War, newsreels recorded the rehabilitation of visually impaired and physically disabled servicemen; double-amputee fighter ace Douglas Bader was later immortalised on the big screen. However it said, film has nevertheless provided a catalyst for positive developments in language and social attitudes towards disability - including learning disabilities and mental illness, which endured a troubling history of misrepresentation on screen.
It suggests that the 21st century have made space for strong disabled characters varying from characters suffering from motor neuron disease and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Secondly we looked at an article named Women, old, and disabled still under-represented on TV, says diversity study
This article suggests women and older people are seriously under represented in media. The study of small screen diversity said television was far younger and more male than the population at large, with large gaps in the representation of disabled, ethnic minorities, and lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Men outnumbered women by a ratio of almost 3:2, with women more likely to be aged between 20 and 39 than their male counterparts.

The last article we read was called, Thank you Ricky Gervais, for improving the lives of disabled people
This article was written by a lady with two daughters who suffer from disabilities, here are a few of her thoughts on the disability employment scene created by Ricky Gervais.
Long before disability was a campaigning issue for me I'd found actors playing disabled characters embarrassing. Mimicking disabled people had been pounced on and swiftly dealt with when I was growing up. Yet at drama school this was embraced. To me playing disabled, when not disabled, was as incongruous as being asked to black up. I can't imagine people calling a performance under those circumstances brave or moving or ground breaking, but there we were acting disabled yet simultaneously being told to find the truth in performance.
I hope that my daughter Lizzy, an actor with Asperger's syndrome, will have the same opportunities as any other performer but full representation of disabled people is uncommon in any profession, let alone television or broadcasting.
In advertising, drama series, sitcoms, soap operas or comedy panel shows, disabled performers are notably absent. There are a few disabled characters but fully inclusive casting is not routine. And this is despite there being more than 250 disabled members of Equity, the actors union in the UK.

We will take these points and articles into consideration when we plan our thriller and discuss whether we feel we could address the sensitive subject matters cautiously and thoughtfully in our thriller.

Six stages of media preduction!

In the film industry there are six stages of media production. They are used to answer any questions people or industries may have regarding the film, it is used to ensure the research and planning for the film is completed correctly so everyone knows what is happening and what each sector are doing.

Here are the six stages:
- negotiating a deal
- pre-production and preparation
- production
- post-production
- distribution and marketing
- exhibition.

Negotiating a deal in contemporary Hollywood

The international film industry is dominated by a handful of major companies, still referred to as 'studios'. A film begins as an idea, it is pitched to a studio. It is conceived as an individual product and put together by a producer as a package of a story, stars and a director and crew. There are a number of ways in which the package can be financed, but for big budget films the deal will nearly always involve one of the major studios.

Here are a few of the major studios!

- Warner Bros
- Sony pictures
- Universal
- Disney
- Paramount
- 20th Century Fox
These are the six majors, which are all part of media conglomerates.








The concept behind a new film could be developed from many sources, but to interest the studios in Hollywood it will probably need to be supported by evidence of previous success associated with the ingredients of the proposal:
-A sequel to a recent box-office hit
-A remake of a European box-office hit
-An adaptation of a best selling book
-An original story by a proven scriptwriter such as Alan Ball.
-An original idea from a successful director/star team
-A new twist on a story from a currently popular genre cycle
-Any combination of the above.
Film producers have to make an educated guess on what will work with audiences a year or more on and they have to gamble with very large sums of money.

Pre-Production

Once the go ahead has been given, the production team have a great deal to do before shooting begins. Parts must be cast, locations chosen, costumes researched, dialogue coaches and wranglers hired, hotel rooms booked etc. All this may take several months, during which time the script will be reworked and the direction of the project may be altered. It is necessary to polish the script and preparing storyboards for action sequences is the key to the high technical quality of the finished product. At this point the producer should have a clear idea of the final budget. This will be used in the monitoring of progress on the shoot. If any costs look like over running, changes to the script may have to be made.

Production

This stage is often called principal photography, and it is likely to be the shortest stage of production. Modern films usually wrap up in around fifty days of shooting- an average of two to three minutes a day- depending on the demands of the script. Directors and crews who can stick to schedules will be rehired and save money. Special effects which require shooting with actors can be a major problem and cause some productions to come back to studio lots or specialist facilities.
Shooting is the most visible aspect of the production process and is frequently filmed in order to be used for publicity purposes.

Post-production

Post production is the longest process of post production. Here the film is edited. The relationship between the director and the editor may be distant or very close, as in the case of Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, who work together for months in order to complete a picture. The importance of sound during the last ten years has added to the work done in post production. More time is spent on tidying up dialogue through looping or automatic dialogue replacement. It also involves adding sound effects and special visual effects. The completed film then goes to the laboratories for colour grading and other adjustments.

Distribution and marketing

Distributers promote and market films in particular territories and negotiate release patterns with exhibitors. The distribution of most big budget Hollywood films is directly controlled by the majors themselves. In North America each major studio usually distributes its own pictures. In the UK, Paramount and Universal, with MGM-UA, are joint owners of the biggest distributor, UIP. In the other important cinema markets around the world the majors may have an agreement with a local distributor, but as the international market grows they are increasingly opening their own offices in every territory.

Exhibition

In the US major studios were barred from ownership of significant cinema chains. Overseas there was no such restrictions, and in the last few years warner bros and UCI have built multiplexes in many cinema markets, including the UK, where other US chains such as showcase are also receptive to Hollywood films.
Ownership or control of every single stage of production is known as vertical integration, and it has obvious advantages for the majors in ensuring that they will have a cinema available to take a film when it is ready for release.
The lack of cinema screens on which to release new films became a problem in the UK in the mid 1980s and was a factor in the building boom within British exhibition.
The major change for the exhibition sector will come with digital projection, which will require all cinemas to invest in new equipment.

A touch of frost:Disability

Sound is used in this specific clip to represent one way in which disabled characters are represented. In this particular clip, the different characters use different dialogue and have different attitudes when speaking to the disabled character.
Firstly the inspector describes the character with down syndrome as "mentally subnormal", this is quite a rude an insensitive way in which to describe a human being, as we then hear his dad say "handicapped" which shows he has a more sensitive and understanding attitude towards his son. By the inspector using the word subnormal, it presents the character as different to others and is describing him as not normal. Different audiences would respond to this statement in different ways. Certain people who have been brought up on the belief that people with down syndrome are abnormal would have a passive attitude towards this statement, However others who believe that is wrong to discriminate and describe a regular human as abnormal because of a condition they have no control over, may become quite irritated by this statement and will question it and question the intentions of the scene or director.
The investigator also uses quite child like and simple language in order to converse with our victimised character, he repeats words like "hurt" and "fallen down". This presents that the investigator thinks that the character will not understand him unless he treats him like a child when he is actually a grown man. He is patronised and belittled by his family and the inspector as he is constantly spoken to and about as a young child.

The reception theory

The reception theory is a theory that insinuates people receive and have different emotions towards a media text depending on their background, their culture and their life experiences.

This approach focuses on the scope of negotiation and opposition on the audiences part. This means a media text is not simply passively accepted by the audiences. The meaning of the text depends on what relationship forms between the audience and the text.

There are three main responses that are part of the reception theory:

Dominant: The reader fully shares the texts code and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading. They accept the thoughts and feelings presented by the director.

Negotiated reading: The audience shares the texts code and broadly accepts the media text. However sometimes resist and modifies it in a way that reflects their own situation, experiences and interests.

 Oppositional: When an audiences social situation places them in direct opposition with the ideas presented and reject the media texts completely.

Suggestions from other students!

We decided it would be a good idea to get different suggestions from other members of our media class. We told them our ideas and they gave us feed back on what they thought about our ideas. Having another groups opinion will help us develop our ideas further and give us opinions about changes that should be made.

Defining your audience!

We will apply our thriller to one of the many categorisation theories, uses and gratifications, created in 1974. The theory suggests that audiences use the media texts for different personal reasons. Here are the main categories suggested by Blumler and Katz:

Diversion

Diversion is when a media text is used as a form of escapism. It is used for people to escape from reality and everyday life.

Personal relationships

 (social interaction) The media text is used to provoke an emotion from the audience or can be used as a way of expressing ideas about the topic of the film with friends, family or acquaintances. Generally when personal relationships are used in a film it is used for social interaction

Personal identity

Audiences use certain media texts to help create their own identity.

They use celebrities or characters to gain ideas about what they like or learn about different cultures, behaviour and values.

Entertainment

Some audiences use media texts as a form of entertainment. It becomes a means of relaxation, enjoyment and emotional release. Watched purely for fun.

Surveillance

The media text expands the audience information and knowledge about a certain subject area.

 

How will we apply the Uses and Gratifications theory to our thriller?

 

Our thriller will provoke emotion from our audience, causing them to be able to relate to the media text. It will be a way of expressing ideas about morals and modern life. It will also be used for social interaction, as it will provoke discussion between audiences. It could also be watched purely for entertainment purposes.