Film Opening Planning

  Week 3

        This post marks the beginning of the story planning portion of the blogs. So far, posts have been focused on drama movie elements, and in these planning posts, Camila and I will reflect the research in our plans for the film opening. The story is being thought-out in order to fit within the drama genre. So far, we have thought of including an aspect of drug addiction. This can work greatly with the drama genre as it includes real instances of tragedy, a crucial element to the drama genre. Drama is the best choice to tell this story for a few reasons.

    As learned from prior research, drama is a great choice to tell any story, whether it be about an abusive perfectionist jazz instructor ruining the social life of a promising young drummer (Whiplash), or a pair of star-cross'd lovers who are doomed to die as a result of their love for each other (Romeo & Juliet). Our story fits in with this genre since it incorporates elements of real life emotion, while also allowing for symbolistic elements like meaningful lighting, costume design, and other mise-en-scene elements to dramatize the story. Our story, focused on drug addiction and how it impacts the people involved is the perfect realistic story that contains elements of tragic truth coupled with displaying emotion of characters within the story. Ultimately, drama elements will work to portray our story.

      Furthermore, our story contains characters that the audience can resonate with. The drama genre is heavily focused on pulling the audience in with characters that they can relate to. Drama characters have flaws that bring them down. These flaws allow the characters personality to show and allows audiences to pity, hate, fear, or cheer on characters. Our main character, a drug addict, fits in to this perfectly. Addiction is something people struggle with on a daily basis, it can be something as small as a phone addiction. The repercussions of addiction will be portrayed within our film. These elements are what allow the audience to "connect" with the characters. For audiences to be truly hooked though, there needs to be a turning point within the film. This could be success in recovery, or our character falling deeper into addiction. These elements will not be completely fleshed out in our opening, but are important to consider when introducing the characters within it.

    Finally, a clear plot needs to be shown within the limited time we have for our film opening. Camila and I want to present a sequence of events with our lead character in the film opening. As this is the beginning of a longer film, it should display the current personality and background of our character through the choices they make. These expository choices will set the groundwork for our character and allow them to grow throughout the movie, eventually leaving their old self behind for a newer one. As our character is dealing with addiction, Character vs. Self is the conflict. Addiction to a substance is self-inflicted, and our story will show how our character attempts to crawl out of that addiction. Essentially, our film opening will be the foundation for our plot to develop.

     All in all, our film opening will successfully display the essential parts to a drama film. A well-structured plot which follows a conflict, characters that are relatable and can be viewed in an emotional sense, and a story capable of harboring these elements while also being both engaging and interesting. This outline will be reflected on and revised if necessary to fit into our story. 

Sources:

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Romeo and Juliet, 1597. Oxford :published for the Malone Society by Oxford University Press, 2000.

Chazelle, Damien. Whiplash. Sony Pictures Classics, 2014.

(All other information was paraphrased from past blogs)