Treatment research

Every film requires a treatment and is much like a story, placing the writers and directors concept into an easy to follow, quick, snappy narrative creating a mental image of how the film will be shot and constructed.


(TAKEN FROM WIKIPEDIA)

A film treatment (or treatment for short) is a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards (index cards) and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline (or one-page synopsis), and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits. They read like a short story, except told in the present tense and describing events as they happen. There are two types: the original draft treatment, created during the writing process, and the presentation treatment, created as presentation material.


Treatments are widely used within the motion picture industry as selling documents, whereas outlines are generally produced as part of the development process. Screenwriters may use a treatment to initially pitch a screenplay, but may also use a treatment to sell a concept they are pitching without a completed screenplay.

Our film concept: The girl in the white dress

We are going to create the first 2 minutes to a thriller movie, containing titles, interesting camera shots/angles and techniques as-well as some new editing ideas e.t.c. But mainly to show the conventions of a thriller and our interpretation of one.

As you can already see I have been looking at some thrillers and analyzing them for conventions and the sub genres they contain (refer to previous blog posts.) The most common and widely used thriller conventions I have found are:

• Mise-En-Scene props such as guns, knives, cars, dark colours, law e.t.c.
• The weather and time of day is different dependant on what genre of thriller the film is. For example psychological thriller or a thriller containing the sub-genre Horror would tend to have bad weather and be set at night most of the time, whereas a political thriller would tend to have good weather and be set during the day.  This is because of pathetic fallacy which changes the mood and atmosphere by changing the weather.
• Crime thrillers tend to have car chases and illegal activity such as mugging, drug smuggling, murder but many thrillers use this as a sub genre so in many cases a film doesn't need to be based around crime to include these conventions.
• In many thrillers there is tendency for them to have a conspiracy and mystery
• Music tends to be dramatic and based around action or Horror
• Conventions taken from other genre's e.g. fast rapid camerawork and editing from action, frights, blood & gore taken from horror, mystery and conspiracy taken from crime and adventure, which in my opinion makes up a thriller. 

We are hoping to use the following conventions in our film:

Car chase(in a fashion)

fast rapid camerawork in the intro

Mystery

A bathroom scene
Tense developing music
Bus/car/loudnoise that goes past and the person disappeared out of shot
Graphic novel features perhaps?
knife
Wounds(bruising on 'said girls' face)
Graphic matches

Here are some pro's and con's of our film idea

• The ideas are simple enough however the film on a whole will require some heavy editing, good camera-work and an excellent script to go by, this is to stop any 'cheesy-ness' that will prevent the film from living up to its genre.
• The criteria to create the film is in reach but will take a lot of work.
• The graphic match we hope to use will use a noise as well as the scene change e.g. she screams and then her screams transform it her shouting wait as a bus goes by.
• towards the end of the first 2 minuets of the film we will have to make sure the camera doesn't see her the whole time.
• There will be no room for continuity errors
• The make up and costume will have to be closely looked at and watched to simulate as much realism as possible.
• The titles will also require much thought and attention whether to use 'real' titles, use livetype alongside an image or to use photoshop.
• The locations are well planned out e.g. using a unisex bedroom, enough space to film, the usage (if its public use)
• Hopefully we shall be able to challenge a few conventions for example, the main protagonist also being an antagonist. The main character being a girl.

Genre: Psychological Thriller
Sub genre's: crime, mystery

Please listen to our film pitch and give us a feedback response. Any advice would be much appreciated as would criticism.

Genre: action, comedy, sci-fi

Here are some clips of films from other genres, they reinforce my points from a previous post on thriller genre's on how budget, special effects, and subjectiveness have affected our genre choice.

Step Brothers:
 Genre-comedy
Sub genre: romance
Conventions-Offensive jokes, rude behaviour, slapstick humour
Indy and comedic sound/music




Were Were Soldiers:
Genre-Action
 Sub genre's-Romance, war
Conventions-Guns, helicopters, Jet planes, fire, bombs, shouting, Fighting, blood & gore.
Music-Formal percussion 'army' music, sad.



2001: A Space odyssey:
Genre-Sci-Fi, Sub Genre- Adventure, Mystery
Conventions-Space, High Tech computers, Space suits/Ships, AI, Alien tech, Zero gravity
Music/sound-Very instrumental and quite loud

Kill bill vol 1 opening sequence

This is the opening sequence for kill bill volume 1. Conventions used are blood, gunshot, footsteps, heavy breathing, very plain opening credits leading off from a gunshot and person speaking's face, we do not see with music in the background related to the opening video also it is quite thriller.

The Shining

The music used really adds the tension and is classic thriller but also also horror conventions. The mountains symbolises isolation and then the characters talk about cannibals, which is rather strange and has horror elements. The music used is non- diagetic and is very 'creepy' and thriller like and sounds very insane. There are opening credits, common in a thriller also note that Stanley Kubrick is the first title to come up, this is because of his films being famous and him being an excellent director.

link to sin city opening

In these open titles you can see the graphic novel style it is in aswell as the conventions used in a thriller; such as; Guns, desaturation, blood, the music used is that of a crime thriller and is in comic book style.



The narration and footsteps are very classic thriller conventions, but also the suits and glamorous dresses are also classic thriller conventions used in classic thrillers such as the Godfather. 'Care for a smoke?' again, another classic crimey, thriller based convention.
The camera directly looks at the packet of cigarettes, emphasising there impotance. Again this time this a camera shot of the lighter. And again the rain adds pathetic fallacy showing us that something bad is going to happen, then in mystery he holds her as if they're in love and then shoots her with a slienced pistol which again is an important convention. But challenges conventions by unexpected murder as he kills her. then the reverse shot out zoom, is almost science fiction.

thriller examples

During the Pre production of our film we need to think of some ground-breaking films in the thriller genre, the examples listed below contain some interesting conventions and ideas we could include in our film. This list will help us analyse what makes a thriller and what a thriller basically is.

here are three examples of thrillers:
The Shining
Released 1980
leading role was played by jack nicholson
directed by stanley kubrick
sub genres- mystery, madness, horror
conventions- isolation, 'heres johnny', 'all work and no play makes jack a dull boy', axe wielding maniac, mystery, frights, random

sin city
Released 2005
directed by frank miller, robert rodreguiz and guest quentin tarrantino
sub genre- crime, action
conventions-set at night, shootout, comic syle, 9mm pistol, police chase, murder

kill bill
released 2003
directed by quentin tarrentino
sub-genre- crime, action
conventions-waking up from comas, matrix style fighting, samurai swords, elemenf of confusion, whistleing

GENRE: Thriller

During my media course I was set with the task to construct and evaluate a film of 2 minutes in length. We decided to create a thriller, this is because action typically requires a large budget and special effects. Horrors require excellently developed costumes and special effects. Comedy is subjective and what some may enjoy others may despise and the same goes for romance.

The thriller genre main aim (other than making money) is to freak out or thrill the target audience. I believe the target audience is aged between 16-30 (however obviously younger people and older people do watch these films) and social classes range from D-A this because the 'damsel in distress' and protaganist characters are mostly likely rich 'white trash' american teenagers that drive lambo's and ferarri's, thats a pretty good convention, dont you think? But also in thrillers, because of the sub genre's it contains sometimes it can be quite a mystery and sometimes very creepy.

Mise-en-scene: The main use of guns and weaponary as props, shocking music and sometimes quite intsrumental. The music then bodes well with the visuals, adding that 'tension' that is needed in a thriller.

Sometimes desaturation and changes in colour are nessacery and are almost a convention themselves. An example of this is in Sin City which wouldn't be the as good of a film if it weren't for the desturation or as it is now known as 'the Sin City effect' which also is used to make a piece of film look like a graphic novel.

Obvious conventions are used aswell, such as the motel manager who is not all that he seems, or the the loving father and husband who slowly goes insane, but the use of sub genre's like action or horror make the thriller.
These elements are blatently seen like the action genre's car chase or shootout and matrix style fighting, and horror's axe wielding maniac and the serial killer that is really a ghost, but rather than these conventions being seperately classified i believe that they are a hybrid of both that makes up a thriller.

CAM-RAW Pictures

Formerly 'i'm always right' production and previously TIAB productions now CAM-RAW Pictures editing team now consists of Holly Sandford, Matty Wallis, Sam Beckett and my myself Josh Clarke.