Unit 13 FMP
Final Major Project
Project Proposal and Treatment
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18XOW6jqGBiWQtLSdYJ9XbqkhN5QrWe0C3clDejVuzFM/edit?usp=sharing
Task 2 Research
Myself and my collaborator, Jack Herriott, have had many ideas together about what our final project could potentially be. We both know that we want this project to be with something with a darker atmosphere whilst not becoming too try-hard or edgy. The first idea that we had was set in a taxi rank and would feature several different taxis drivers being interrogated by the police regarding the mysterious disappearance of a woman. It would focus heavily on them cracking under the pressure of interrogation and making false confessions/accusations. We held onto this idea for a small while, drafting up some first ideas of a script. It was very inspired by films like 12 angry men and the usual suspects.
Our second idea was about a struggling musician who pays a visit to the zoo, only to discover a chimpanzee with excellent musical ability. He would take the chimp (Sanguine) home and start a musical revolution with him. The rest of the film would see Sanguine collaborating with various renowned musicians, implying that he changed the music industry. Influences would include that thing you do! this is spinal tap and lyle lyle crocodile.
Our third and final idea followed two siblings on a farm during the foot and mouth disease epidemic in 2001 and how they deal with it during the absence of their parents. As the story went on, the older brother would be revealed to be unhinged and abusive, leading to the sister character running away with an orphaned lamb that she has grown to love. This would be inspired visually by Banshees of Inisherin, First Reformed and various other projects. It is worth noting that before we settled on this, various other less developed ideas were thought of and were started in script form. Overall we had about 8.
We knew straight away that we wanted dull, muted colour palette with harsh lighting to create a bleak feeling throughout and also to make the setting look as mundane as possible.
In preparation of starting our own project, we watched multiple short films.
Aftersun (2022)
Dir. Charlotte Wells
Aftersun wasn't a particularly creative premise, but it was a good one with interesting camera work and had a clever gimmick in the camcorder. It was a highly emotional piece and was carried by the performances, especially that of Sophie's as it is easy for children to be terrible actors and with subject matter like this you can't afford that. I'd argue that it was a very slow film and struggled to keep my attention, it all paid off in the last 15 minutes but wasn't very engaging prior to that. The lighting, use of colour and symbolism were all great and the writer is very talented at creating the right atmosphere.
Big Ears (2021)
Dir. Sam Baron
This film was interesting with some good dialogue, nice dry humour and a clear message about the 'shameful' types of cancer. It was a good watch overall but slow in some parts, overall wouldn't watch again.
Long Sleeves (2023)
Dir. Josh Ryan
This short was eerily similar to mine and Jack Herriott's script. There was enough difference for us to be able to comfortably proceed with our script as planned though. This film was brilliantly written, shot and lit. The only real issue I had with it was the performance with the brother character who was really overracted.
Task 3
Task 4
I took two projects on, mine and Jack Herriott's and then we helped our friend Kenz Day with his film Mia. I acted as first AD while Jack was D.O.P and Kenz wrote and directed. I also helped with soundtracking and sound Op.
23rd April
This was the first day of filming, taking place at our lead actor's house. We brought a lot of extras and props with us and I had an improvised cameo. I helped look out for continuity issues and direct the actors. We moved quickly and got everything done that we set out to do.
3rd May
All of our filming today was done in college, meaning we could move quickly and efficiently. Because of another group's lack of understanding of the equipment. This was sorted out with speed and ease due to our knowledge.
May 10th
There were over 4 scenes to shoot today, we planned everything around the daylight, getting all the outside scenes done first. When we moved inside, it wasn't quite dark enough so we had to use bin bags and tape on the windows. This day took a long few hours but this was due to the sheer number and length of the scenes. We moved as fast as we could and again got everything done.
Task 4 - Script
Although Mia was taking up a lot of our time, myself and Mr Herriott both made sure that we would have time to write our script. I started staying up late at home writing into the small hours to get it done and had also made various notes about ideas to review with my colleague. We also both watched clips from interviews and documentaries of the time to see how real life farmers reacted to everything happening. Myself and Mr Herriott bounced ideas off of each other incredibly well and both took the story in different directions that neither of us expected. The ending is very clear to us both and the final product will be linked here.
Task 5 - Evaluation
Overall, writing this script has been amazing for me. For the last two years, this is exactly what I've wanted to do and now that I have, I can say that I am very proud of the product I have produced. There have been times where it has been very challenging as I have at points felt creatively bankrupt but I've always pushed through it and prospered. My writing skills have vastly improved all due to this script and the process of it as it is the biggest script I've ever worked on.
It helped me think a lot about the emotional core of the characters, how would they feel about events? How would they as people react to what is happening? instead of following the logical path. This often led to being stuck in the writing process as I can find it hard to connect to other people's emotions but I managed to overcome this by finding examples of people in emotional situations doing whatever they feel is right.
I've improved a lot on collaborative work, sharing ideas with others and how ty determine which are best. Originally this idea was vastly different, involving a love interest and a much more 'Romeo and Juliet' sort of progression. As we began writing and bouncing ideas off of each other though, the story changed. We no longer included a love interest and the story was much more internal for the character of Fran, the tone became a lot darker, the setting more modern and everything was a bit more realistic and reliant on the farmer lifestyle.
One hard part of writing this script at first was making the characters distinct from each other when they spoke. We couldn't have everybody speaking the same way but we also didn't want to turn everybody into a cartoon just to differentiate them. This especially proved a challenge for Jack Herriott as he finds dialogue hard to write. To overcome this we tried to include subtle bits of slang, contractions for certain characters, linguistic quirks that could show relation between characters and over things.
While I am proud of this script, it isn't perfect. One gripe I have with it, for example, is the phone conversation between Craig and Jordan. It comes across as rather exposition-y and while the original idea was to swap this out with a news report, we felt that it would feel worse for the flow of the story to have two news reports (especially seeing as the one we have is a big part of the ending).
And while I still need to work on my technical skills, I learnt a lot while working on the set of Mia.
My next step is to try my hand as a D.O.P as working with the actual camera is where I am most lacking. I plan to shadow some people first over the summer, Carl Wilson Downie has offered me some jobs alongside him that I'll probably pursue.
Overall, I'm happy.
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