2nd semester update 2
Rob here.
I have completed 5 of my 6 videos to date. I have neglected my blogging of late as I have been concentrating on producing each film.
Here is the treatment for my 3 small screen media films:
THE LEGEND OF APPLECAT
MORNING MOOD
LOGIC
SMALL SCREEN MEDIA MICROMOVIES
Premise: Three micro-movies based on the themes of ‘Microcosm’, ‘Town and Country’ and ‘A New Decade’. These films will be shot on small format recorders and exported for low quality broadcast methods.
Synopsis:
The Legend Of Applecat: This video will show the ‘Legend’ Of a mythical cat which delivers apple pies to the residents of a Scottish island village. The video will start with the mayor’s wife of one village making a pie and sending it to the other, she feeds the peel to her doting cat. However one decade the Mayor’s wife is ill, so the mayor has to make the pie, he refuses to give the cat peel and gets annoyed and so places it in a box on a shelf. The cat then leaps out and drowns in the pie mixture. When the mayor realises that his cat is missing he thinks someone in the other town killed it and doesn’t send it. The story then cuts to a current retelling of the legend ‘every decade the cat rises from the sea to deliver pies to all of the children.’
Morning Mood: This video will feature lots of shots of very ‘uninspiring’ locations in the town, featuring rubbish littered corners, broken windows and generally dingy shots. I will then contrast this with Grieg’s Morning Mood from The Peer Gynt Suite and a slow reading of the following quote from Oswald Spengler; “Long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country.”
Logic: I want to film the first part of this video on four mobile phones, I will have all four images on screen at once in a horizontal line. The images will show a guy tied to a chair in the centre of a white room, he is gagged with tape crosses over his eyes and a white shirt with the word logic scrawled on his back. He is thrashing around on the chair and constantly screaming. The sounds of muffled and echoing voices, distorted sounds and dripping play constantly. He becomes more and more distresses and eventually thrashes around so much that he falls to the ground, all four screens cut to one image of static (still within the same frame) the shot then zooms out revealing the static is on a television screen, the screen is placed on a desk beside a man sat in a chair, there are wires going from the top of the TV set to a makeshift pair of headphones on his head. There are no titles with the world logic.
Notes:
Style:
The Legend of Applecat: This video will be completed using stop motion cut-out animation using a mixture of found images and images drawn with wax crayons. I want the film to feel like a children’s picture book, fitting the feel many story videos on children’s entertainment sites like Cbeebies. The sound will feature jolly Celtic music and over the top narration by (hopefully) someone Scottish
Morning Mood: I want this video to feel very sombre in the contrast of grim images and cheery music. Not what the audience would expect to see with the music. I want to increase the contrast and decrease the desaturation slightly on the images to add to the grey city look.
Logic: The four screens will feature a green tint with raised contrast, this is to make them seem like closed circuit television cameras, this same tint will also be applied to the static on screen, however the footage outside of the screen will have a slightly blue tint, making it appear as to normal life. The sound will be very disorientating and layered; when the camera zooms out from the TV the sound fades out ending the film in complete silence.
Intended Audience:
The Legend of Applecat: The intended audience for this piece will be predominantly young children- acting as an educational video to teach the children about the ‘real’ legend of Applecat.
Morning Mood: This piece will be aimed at late teens/ early 20s, possibly people with an interest in politics and who like to comment on society, the contrast can be used to spark comments without saying them.
Logic: This Video will be aimed at people aged about 16 to 25. Mainly fans of films like the Saw Series due to the dark psychological nature.
Rob.
