Wednesday, 14 December 2011

HOW TO WRITE A TREATMENT

A treatment is a description in clear English in the present tense setting out what your product / film / video has in it, starting at the beginning in the case of a video which has a linear narrative.




Monday, 12 December 2011

FOR KERRI & CHARLIE

Please read the two new pages about Music Magazines and follow instructions on Monday 12 December!

Wednesday, 7 December 2011

CONSUMING PASSION: 100 YEARS OF MILLS AND BOON

Today we analyse video clips from Consuming Passion: 100 Years of Mills and Boon (BBC Television 2008, co-produced by Abi Bach)

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the popular romance publishing phenomenon Mills and Boon, a colourful and camp drama which charts the witty and moving stories of three very different women affected by the brand's success: co-founder Charles Boon's wife Mary, daydreaming 1970s writer Janet and modern-day literature lecturer Kirstie.




The first story within the 90-minute drama features Mary (Jodie Whittaker), wife of Charles Boon (Daniel Mays), the wheeler-dealer co-founder of the publishing imprint with his staunch business partner and trusted friend Gerald Mills (Patrick Kennedy). Their decision to take a chance on the low-brow, high-romance genre proved to be so original and successful it went on to define the course of publishing history as Mills & Boon. Although Charles was brilliant at identifying the need for "romance" through literature in his publishing empire, he was less adept at identifying it at home. This story is inspired by the lives of the actual people behind the scenes. 




Second is the tale of Janet Bottomley (Olivia Colman), an ordinary spinster devoted to her ailing mother, but at the expense of herself.  Janet's life takes a U-turn when she meets a devastatingly, handsome consultant (Patrick Baladi) who must operate on her mother. Triggering Janet's fantastical yearning for romance, a comedy of errors ensues, changing her world forever. This story is inspired by the real experience of many women in the Seventies, discovering their voice during a time of societal and sexual revolution.



Finally, Kirstie's story brings the experience of Mills & Boon up-to-date. A university lecturer in literature and feminist studies, Kirstie (Emilia Fox) is in a stagnating relationship with her partner Nick. Thwarted, bored and frustrated, she is lecturing to students on romantic literature and its place within our literary canon, when a sexy young stranger (OT Fagbenie) enters her life. 

Friday, 25 November 2011

DEVISING OUR FILM TITLE

Today we worked on the exact wording for our film title. We wanted the title to:
  • establish the film’s genre (modern thriller, dramatic and realistic, with psychological and criminal dimensions)
  •  convey the key ideas (woman with a flawed personality and a dark secret)
  •  intrigue the audience (by suggesting an unresolved problem)
  •  tap into intertextuality through shared knowledge of cultural codes (through using terms or images that the audience is already familiar with)
OUR SHORT LIST
Bouquet of Blood; Bouquet of Barbed Wire; The Language of Flowers; Bouquet of Brutality; The Black Rose.
We settled on The Black Rose because it has so many connotations that work with our plot, in particular the central character of the florist with a dark secret:red roses are a traditional symbol of love and the woman in our film feels love and attraction for her victims
  •  she works in a florist and understands the language of flowers
  •   a black rose is the opposite of what you expect because it is a contradiction in terms, an impossible combination (flowers are never genuinely black)
  •  black has connotations of....
OUR DESIGN PROCESS
We knew that we wanted to create our film title in Adobe After Effects so we set about researching visual imagery to convey the woman’s disturbed state of mind and forbidden, suppressed longings. We explored how visual imagery worked in the following:
·       Black roses in photos and line drawings
·       American Beauty: the film posters
·       Fuselli Gothic nightmares
·       William Blake Oh Rose, Thou Art Sick
·       This led us to a discussion of the symbolism of snakes, serpents and evil within, with the snake being a universally recognised symbol for Satan



Friday, 18 November 2011

FILM 4 SEASON OF BRITISH FILMS

Seize the rare opportunity to see a Terrence Davies film
PREP: Watch 'The Four Lions' on Saturday 19 November at 9 p.m.
Get watching 15-24 November 2011!


Wednesday, 16 November 2011

G321 FOUNDATION PRODUCTION

Today we start selecting our brief:
  • you look at a grade A music magazine
  • you look at a grade A thriller film opening
  • you watch and analyse the opening 7 minutes of Don't Look Now (Nicholas Roeg)
  • you investigate other good examples