The Long Run- Final idea synopsis and treatment

This is the synopsis for our whole film.
we came up with the title, The Long Run.

This is set in a big bustling city, something like Los Angles or New York, the Ghetto/ Downtown areas. We follow a young late teen’s boy called John (Johnny) Nickel; he’s your average kid, just trying to survive in a neighbourhood, full of drugs, guns, and crime. He lives with his 40 year old father, Tom Nickel, who has a drinking problem, Johnny and him aren’t on the best of terms.
The story starts of as a normal day for Johnny, slowly waking up to another day of college, his phone goes off, which stirs him and he answers. It’s his best friend telling him that the teacher says he has 5 minutes to get there otherwise he is in detention. Realizing this he comically gets dressed, steals his father’s bagel and legs it out the door. Gets on his BMX and pedals as hard as he can.
Upon arriving he knows that he is already 10 minutes late, so he takes his time in locking his bike away. He then hears voices and sees a girl who to him is of absolute beauty, a Goddess if you will. Her name is Rebecca Soar, a girl the same age as him, they both go to the same college, but swim in different shoals. She has always been a mystery to him, and now he sees her holding hands with a man, he is in the light so Johnny can’t make out who he is.
Johnny gets into class and he gets a detention, throughout the day he can’t get Rebecca out of his head, including the mystery man. It’s the end of the day, and he goes to sit in detention, several other kids are there, however what strikes him the most is that Rebecca is there. He sits down next to her, nervous as hell, and jumps when she asks him his name. They get discussing, and she says she would like to meet up again sometime, and leaves him a note saying where a party is.
It’s the night of the party. Johnny arrives and he sees drugs everywhere, people doped up, high, hallucinating, having sex anywhere, as if he had stepped in Babylon. He feels uncomfortable, until he sees Rebecca, he sits next to her and she passes him a splif. Not wanting to look like a loser, he takes a drag, and a rollercoaster of a night starts.
He wakes up the next day, to find a random girl naked in his bed. He tries to remember the previous night, and all that comes to mind is him and Rebecca kissing, people laughing, screaming, and then a hand grabs Rebecca away from him, a man, he is all blurred, Johnny can’t make him out at all. He searches the house but to no avail he can’t find Rebecca. He asks one of her friends and they say to forget about it, she was his.
Johnny doesn’t understand, who is ‘he’? Was it the same guy as before? If so what is the connection between him and Rebecca? Confused, hurt, and angry Johnny decides to find some answers, fearing that Rebecca is in trouble. He heads off for her house, knocks on her door, and Rebecca answers. He is relived and surprised, and told Rebecca what he thought and who was this guy supposed to be? She looks around nervously tells Johnny to leave her alone and slams the door into his face.
Johnny wants answers, and if Rebecca wasn’t going to give them to him then he’d just have to find out himself. He heads off to the mall and finds one of Rebecca’s friends, and asked what was going on. After a lot of following and nagging, he finally gets her to spill. She says she doesn’t know who the guy is, but he has a connection to the dude who supplied all the drugs. He is to be found at the music store on 5th.
Johnny makes his way there and demands the dealer to tell him about who the mystery man was. The dealer refuses, laughs in his face and punches him. Johnny retaliates but, is quickly overcome by the dealer’s strength. In a final attempt he says that he will go as low as possible to find out the truth, and threatens to tell the police about the party, everything. The dealer succumbs and tells him all about the man, who is only known as ‘Boss’. Also that Rebecca got to know him too well, and he thinks that they are a couple, when all she wanted was him to pay off her debts, but things don’t go so easily, and gets caught up so deep in the plan that she can’t get out.
Knowing this information Johnny makes his way back to Rebecca’s house, to comfort her, to tell her that everything was going to be alright. He gets there and at the door she bursts into tears. The house is empty, and they become so emotional that they end up having sex. The next morning Johnny wakes up, and hears the shower running. He smiles happily that all was going to be well. He gets out of the bed and looks around her room, and sees all the pictures, he moves to her desk and opens the drawers. More drugs and photos of the like, till he gets to the last one, a gun. He turns around, only to be smacked on the head by something heavy, as he losses consciousness he hears Rebecca scream his name.
When he comes to he is tied up, on the floor of a place he has never seen. He sees someone sitting in a chair, however he can’t see his face and realises that this was the Boss.(We are now at the opening of the film). After the Boss mocks him and tells him its’ the end, Johnny blacks out again. He wakes up on a roof, stands up and sees the Boss standing there with a gun, and tells him to ‘walk’. Feeling betrayed by Rebecca he turns to walk off the edge of the building. Then he stops at the edge and turns around to look at the Boss, who laughs and tells him that he planted the gun not her, and now he was going to die for nothing, he didn’t even rescue her.
Boss raises his gun and a shot is fired. Johnny stands there, all is quiet, he looks down at himself and sees that there is no wound. He looks back up and watches the Boss slump down to the ground, dead. Who shot him? It was Rebecca, overflowing with tears. Johnny rushes to her, and they embrace, knowing that the nightmare is over.

The End

Opening Sequence
On screen you will see Johnny tied up in the foetal position on the floor
the boss moves around him and threatens him, while this is happening Johnny has flashbacks of him and Rebecca kissing, Rebecca and the Boss and then of a gun in the draw. then the screen fades to black and on screen Johnny appears laying in bed and his phone rings. throughout the action Johnny is doing a voice over.

Then after we came up with out synopsis we did a treatment.

Cinematography- With the opening sequence at the end, in a dark damp place with our hero tied up and at the mercy of the Boss. I want to try and achieve that sense of tension, fear, the disorientation in the beginning since Johnny has just become conscious . With close up’s of Johnny at all times, when it comes to the Boss, I want his face to always be in shadow, so that there is an enigma. With the Boss I want to create the dark brooding power he contains, with hardly any visuals on him. So that he becomes a presence at the back of your neck, always there but not.

Mise-En-Scene- I am going to have the first scene in a dark room which is very dimly lit the majority of the light being on Johnny. Johny will be wearing very light colours and have blonde/light coloured hair this will help to emphasise he vulnerability and his innocence and how he got caught up with a bad crowd. He will be laying in the Foetal position this will help to emphasise how scared he is.
The boss character will be barely seen by the audience we will use heavily contrasting shadows to hide the boss face and he will be dressed in dark clothing and a hoodie which will emphasise his bad nature and his control over everything the hoodie will also show that he is a teenager as the connotation of hoodies to the audience will symbolise a teenage male who is not to be trusted it also signifies gang culture. the flash backs in the opening sequence will be tinted in different colours, the flashback of the first kiss will be bright and warm in colour, the flashback of Rebecca and the boss will be in a washed out bluish tone and the flashback of the gun will be in grey tones.




Sound/Editing- we will be using a voice over this a typical noir technique and will help the audience to understand what is going on. we will be using a backing track this is non diagetic sound. When we edit our piece we will edit the colours of the flashbacks as stated in the mise-en-scene section.

Final Project- Group Meetings

For our final project we were put in to groups.
In my group there is Me, Kamal And Nick.
After we were put in to groups we had to come up with ideas for our final piece.
Our group came up with alot of ideas. we all had our own individual ideas and views about what we wanted to be included in our film noir.
we came up with this spider diagram.

Click on the image to view on a larger scale

We came with many good ideas but we couldn't all agree on one.
Some of our ideas were far too compicated and involved too many locations and whould have been confusing to the audience.

After a few lessons debating our ideas we came with the idea of a guy that was trapped by a big boss type character we kept expanding on our ideas and came with The Long Run synopsis by this time Nica had decided to leave college so Me and Kamal shared out his roles. We started dicussing possible locations and we found that the college studio would be the perfect place and Kamal's bedroom could be used for the other parts of the scene.

I took an a producer/director role and Kamal took on an Editor/Art Director role.
Then we filled in the appropriate paperwork such as a location finders checklist, Risk assesments and evaluation sheets.
Kamal did a story board which eventually turned into this animatic

[Insert Animatic]

Film Opening sequences

To make a successful film opening, you have to understand how a film opening works.

A film opening is used to entice the audience and hook them so that they watch the rest of the film. Enigmas are used to pose questions to the audience, these questions make the audience want to watch more so the questions they have in their mind will be answered. Opening sequences can also be used to establish a relationship with a character in the film, the opening sequence is also where the audience decides whether they like or dislike a character.

Kill Bill Volume One. Director: Quentin Tarantino, 2003.

Before anything appears on screen the audience hears the sound of heavy breathing this immediately sets up and enigma, Who's breathing? whats wrong? so this encourages the audience to keep watching. Then the first thing we see on screen is a close up of a woman's face and i can tell from the mise-en-scene that she has been beaten up, she is also wearing a brides vial which brings the connotations that she is a bride on her wedding day this shot answers the audience s questions about who was breathing and sets up new enigmas. There is pleonastic sound on the male characters footsteps this makes him seem ominous and dangerous and it also add dramatic tension to the scene.
In a close up shot of the females face the male character comes in and wipes her face with a handkerchief that says bill this is clever shot as it establishes who the male character is. Bill (the male character) also has monologue type dialogue which he uses to torture the female character before he shoots her then she reveals some information but the shoots her before she finishes this sets up even more enigma and hooks the audience.

Evaluation of the Exchange

The Evaluation
As a class we watched all the exchange projects and evaluated them
here is the evaluation of my groups clip.

The end shot from behind the grate was well done, the use of the handheld camera style as opposed to the tripod help to create and eerie and confusing shot which is essential in film noir.
The costumes-The female character- The heels show everything about her character they give away that she is a sexy strong confident woman the fact that she is wearing a long coat and black tights give and air of mystery and enigma to the piece.
Location- Our location was an underground car park, although different to what was storyboarded it gave and excellent feel to the project it helped to create a dirty and seedy atmosphere which is again typical of a noir.
Cinamatograpy- The grill shot and the heel shot are good and work well in the context of the genre we are trying to portray.
We have good framing (rule of thirds) especially in the over the shoulder shots and the walk towards the male character.
We also followed the 180 degree line rule well and all our cuts and edits worked.
Sound- We feel that our chosen music fits our project well and it is creepy and mysterious much like our femme fatale.
Our tiles are also good and work well in our genre and overall our piece is very noiresque.

We could have improved however, with more adventurous camera shots maybe with a dutch tilt.
The cigarette lighting shot was also awkward as the actress(me) had trouble opening the lighter and lighting the cigarette this could have been solved with a cut away shot to the male character and had we had more time we would have done that.

The Exchange preparation

As part of our course we were asked to do a preliminary exercise.
Our brief was to create a short 1-2minute clip showing an exchange with no dialog just music.

Before we shot this we were asked to do a rough synopsis and treatment as individuals and then collate the ideas as a group and pick out the best elements.

Here is my synopsis and Treatment-

Synopsis
A woman walks across a courtyard carrying a briefcase, to a man standing by the trees.
She puts the case on the floor and lights a cigarette.
He smiles at her looks around then reaches into his inside coat pocket and pulls out and envelope, he passes it to her, then picks up the briefcase and leaves. She stubs out her cigarette, puts the envelope in her breast pocket and walks off.

Treatment
The woman is a femme fatale type character that is commonly associated with film noir.
The weather will hopefully be wet or damp and the sky will be grey creating a unpleasant atmosphere.
The backing music will be eerie medium paced and shifty.

Before going out to shoot, i had to fill out paperwork to evaluate different aspects of my shoot, eg safety.

These are what i had to fill in-
* A location finders checklist - answering questions about the location (e.g. suitability and availability)
* A 10 shot storyboard - this is to help us get the shots we visualized in our heads onto film.
* A risk evaluation sheet - examining the potential hazards of filming in our chosen location such as noise, distraction and disruption from the public.
* A risk reduction sheet - actions we would take to reduce the risks that we found on the risk evaluation sheet.
* A call sheet - containing all the vital information needed for our shoot to run smoothly (e.g. equiptment needed, directions to our location and group member's phone numbers)
* A camera logging sheet* - used whilst editing the film to establish how long each shot is and what each shot contained for easy reference if need to find the shot on the tape again.