DRAMA FILM IDEABY CHILAPI BWALYA

SECONDARY RESEARCH

• We gained influences from Tyler Perry’s ‘For coloured girls’ film which was released in 2010. The film itself is a drama that portrays common life damaging events occurring to a few females in the narrative. One of these is a woman being raped in her own home by a man she sees and speaks to regularly on her way to work every morning. We found the rape scene quite interesting and we took it to our own advantage, reasons for this being said would be that while you can see the depressing event going on we don’t actually hear what’s going on, in fact we hear opera music ( La Donna In Viola)being sang in a theatre that’s being watched by another character in the film. Due to this we keep getting cross cuts of the woman being raped and the other characters watching the theatre however, all we hear is the opera singing. Another thing that grabbed our attention is that the pitch and tempo of the song got louder and stronger each time the rape scene got too intense. The sound juxtaposes the victims cry for help, her weakness and how intense things get. It also helps raise the sympathy that is shared towards the character as well as help feel how pain and struggle. We thought this would be a good technique to use in our film as our character ‘Alex’ walks to her friends house after she’s raped. This would really intrigue our audience.

• I found a blog online that gave me the influence to make the whole film a silent film. This decision had been made when I saw the head title of the blog which was ‘silence is the most powerful scream’, this was another reason to why I wanted my film to be a silent film. Most people in my target audience range would find the technique of making it silent a bit dull and boring but due to the actually storyline and meaning to the story I strongly do believe that this technique would help engage the character Alex with the audience even more, no matter the age range. It also suites the story and protrudes the deeper meaning and emotion.

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• The left of the father is another film contributed ideas to my short film, there is one scene that uses specific camera angles and techniques that I strongly believe would be suitable for my own. The camera angles used in this particular scene are wide close ups, and medium shots, these would be the type of camera angles that we would need to produce in order to get our message across to the audience. The main idea is to get as much detail as possible, we want the audience to acknowledge every detail of the attacker due to the twist in the film that goes on by Alex noticing that the person that had attacked her is actually one of her so called friends that she sees in a gathering at her best friends house. In order to achieve this, we would need many medium and close up shots so the audience could identify who the attacker really is at the end. One special feature, for example a scare on the hand, would give it away to the audience, however it would also be left to suspense because they wont really know if it was actually her friend or not. That would be for the audience to decide.

‘Facing Fear’ is a film that came out in 2014, it was directed by Mike Flangen. When read an article about the director of the film I saw an image of two characters; male and female, the image contained the man strangling the woman from the back. The woman looked breathless, she seemed as if she could not protect herself due to the way that the mans arms are wrapped around her neck, when looking at this image you can straight away tell that she’s in deep shock and there is absolutely nothing that she could do about the current situation. This gave me the idea to have the rapist that attacks Alex in my film to attack her from behind as it makes the scene more intense; she wouldn’t know who it is that’s attacking her which makes her even more paranoid. Also, if the attacker wants to get away with the cri8me he’s committed, he would have to try and hide any form of identity. That’s the mind set of the character that attacks Alex. We will copy the technique into our film, also the camera angle that’s used creates a claustrophobic atmosphere towards the characters, that’s why we would be using similar camera angles from the image in the part of my film where Alex gets her first physical contact of the attacker.

The image on the left is of a still advert of an x-box game called Wolfenstein that was found on a film magazine. It shows three very dominant men that look similar to special evil agents, soldiers or just people that are set out to do wrong things such like killing innocent people, this was connoted from the weapons they all have with them. These characters are all dressed in black, the colour black connotes death, violence and danger; that’s what makes these characters look so intimidating. Each of these characters are wearing a special steel hats with matching masks to cover up their identity. Due to the clothing choice of these characters they all seem to give the audience a very deadly and life threatening atmosphere. They grab the audiences attention straight away due to the all black dress code; plus the masks enhance their intimidating image. This is the type of image and atmosphere I want my audience to feel towards the rapist in my film therefore there would be a few similarities between the him and the shooters in this advert in terms of image and appearance.

The helmets worn by the shooters in the advert look quite similar to bucket hats which is what the youngsters wear nowadays, our rapist would wear a black bucket hat to match the teenage/youth characteristics but to also imitate the shooters on the magazine ad. To fully imitate these characters, our rapists would be dressed in all black, this also includes some sort of black balaclava or mask that covers his face from being seen by the victim or any witnesses, this would bring suspense towards the character in my film and that’s what I would need on the character to make the twist of the rapist being her actual ‘friend’ seem more dramatic.

The wording of this gave us an idea to make the rapist ‘have the opportunity’ to be someone that the victim knew and trusted, the idea of the text stating that ‘I have the opportunity to play any character’, this inspired us to play around with this rapist character, make the film more intense and the idea was to have him 'play any character’. The fact that the rapist is actually her friend sends a message out to the audience that they shouldn’t trust everyone and that your friends may even be the one to deceive you. We want the audience to be taught a lesson when watching our film, the text written on this article made us be more creative and give our short film an amazing twist.

The fact that the character on the right hand side of the image is being blindfolded and guided by some mysterious looking man influenced us to make the rapist in our film anonymous, however, it also gave the idea to reveal one specific mark/evidence as evidence to the audience to reveal who the rapist really is…this technique would really gain the audiences attention and really feel involved in the fil, this technique also leaves a mystery/ cliff hanger. Our audience needs to be in deep thought by the end of the film

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• As a group we didn’t fully know exactly how to present our rape scene to the audience. In order to grab some ideas we had a look at films that contained rape scenes in them. We came across an 8 minute short film that had a rape scene in it. This caught our eye due to the fact that we were confused on how we could create an effective rape scene that lasts up to 2 minutes or less. The film we looked at was called ‘Be Mine’, it’s a film about a female dreaming of getting raped by her boyfriend, but it turns out that he actually did and it wasn’t just a dream. The way the rape scene plays out in this film really gains the audiences curiosity and makes it more spooky. You could tell by the low angle shot and zooming in effects used to get closer to her face that she’s being watched, this creates suspense to the audience and has them feeling the same way the victim does. We also get medium close ups of the female searching for anyone other than herself in the car park as she feels like she’s being stalked. Once she takes a few looks around her circumference, she gets attacked from behind by someone dressed in black, wearing a mask to cover up their identity in a medium close up which connotes how weak she feels seeing as how she cannot get herself out of the situation, the way that the rapist attacks her is in a way that she wont be able to get the chance to see who the attacker is. They did this by having the attacker grabbing the victim’s face, by doing this she got an instant fright, the audience also get this feeling as its an unexpected act. We felt to use this method as it’s a great way to entertain the audience, show them how serious this situation is and help them feel the fear that the victim feels.

These results proved to me and my pre production crew that not a lot of people watch drama films on a regular basis, this was something we found interesting because we then decided to created something that made people watch something new and come out their comfort zone.

However, this was a slight risk because we can definitely see that not a lot of people watch drama films and we obviously want to make a successful box-office out of this film, producing something so emotional could cause us risks to whether people would actually pay to watch our film let alone enjoy it. Never the less, creating anything is always a risk because you never know what kind of response your going to get from the audience.

PRIMARY RESEARCH

To make sure that our film fit our target audience we had to collect some primary research in order to grab their opinions on what they would expect to see in a drama film containing rape. We built up a questionnaire containing 5 questions that we thought would help us create a better film for our audience. We gave about 8 questionnaires out to 4 boys and 4 girls in the college to make it equal and fair so we could grab up both sex’s opinions and adjust our film as much as we can to their approval. The 5 questions that had appeared on the questionnaire were:

1. How do you expect to feel when watching a drama film ? 2. What do you like most about drama films ?3. Would you prefer the narrative to contain Todorov’s theory or

nonlinear ?4. Do you prefer short films to have a lot of dialogue or a few? Explain

why5. What would you expect to see and not see in a rape scene ?

Once we collected back the questionnaires from the eight selected people that answered them we compared specific differences between their comments, comments and suggestion, by doing this we automatically found ways to improve our film in order to satisfy our target audience.

FEMALE QUESTIONNAIRES

MALES QUESTIONNAIRES

1.HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO FEEL WHEN WATCHING A DRAMA FILM ?

• This was the first question that was asked. Most of the females stated that they wanted ‘to feel excitement’, ‘eager to know what’s going to happen next’ and they expected a lot of suspense.

• The males stated that they ‘wanted to get to know the characters’ and feel like they had a connection between them so that they could relate or try to in every situation. The also stated that they wanted to ‘feel as if they were in the film themselves’, intrigued, surprised and they expected a shocking twist.

• From these statements of the first question we could already tell that our audience wanted to expect the unexpected, that meant that we had to really use our single camera technique skills to our full advantage in order to impress our wide age range of audience of 15-30.

Male Female

2.WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT DRAMA FILMS?

This is the second question that was asked, we needed to make sure our film was accepted and enjoyed by our target audience, so in order to do this we asked a couple of our target audience what they liked most about drama films so we could entertain them to the fullest. The feedback we received from this question on the questionnaire were similar for most boys and girls that participated. Most participants stated that they enjoy it when they can relate to the story line of a drama film, when the characters personalities are believable (good acting), major unexpected shocking twists that surprise the audience, they all enjoyed feeling a lot of suspense in a drama film. With this being said, I decided to use the single camera technique to be best ability, because they want to be feeling a lot of suspense I decided to use a lot of low angle shots to show specific details of the characters, setting and important crops. This angle shot could enhance the fear and suspense that the audience would be feeling. I also thought a bout using the high angle shot, this kind of shot connotes loneliness, it can make something/someone look vulnerable, isolated and powerless. This would be the perfect shot for the victim in this film as it would help the audience engage with the characters emotions.

3. TODOROV’S THEORY OR A NONLINER NARATIVE ??

• This was the third question on the questionnaire and it basically questions how the narrative should be sequenced. Todorovs theory is pretty basic, he believed there should be a equilibrium, disequilibrium and a resolution which is basically a beginning, middle and a ‘happily ever after 'ending. A nonlinear narrative doesn’t proceed in a straight line, the story could start from the middle or the end and make its way through. More people requested to have a nonlinear narrative due to the level of interest it could gain to our audience. they also requested for that because they thought that it gives the narrative a more dramatic climate and its not too predictable, when a film is predicable it could be boring and it looses its chance of being unique and different from other films.

4.DO YOU PREFER SHORT FILMS WITH A LOT OF DIALOGUE OR LESS?

‘enough dialogue so viewers no what’s going on’

‘Not too much dialogue’

‘Enough to understand that characters personality and charisma’ ‘A lot, it makes the

atmosphere more interesting’

‘A lot of dialogue so we can understand everything that’s going on’

Some people stated that they would prefer the short film to contain a lot of dialogue so that its much more easier to understand and others preferred less as it contributed to the level of suspense. Due to this we decided that our film will only contain a small amount of dialogue, this will leave the audience with cliff-hangers and intrigue them more.

5. WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS OF A RAPE

SCENE?

MALES

Most of the males stated that they would want to see a lot of violence in the film, but the violence shown has to relate to be obvious that its for a rape scene. They requested to have scenes where the victim is running away from the perpetrator, this would be done by the use of tracking or zooming out of the scene.

FEMALE

The females that did this questionnaire thought that showing rape scenes would be very inappropriate. They also expected to see a build up without no explicit scenes of the actual rape. We took this into consideration and made sure that it was clear that Alex was being sexually abused but we didn’t want to make the audience feel any sort of discomfort.