Week 6 - Ideology

The right way to see things.

This week was a bit manic because I didn't decide on which idea I wanted to present until last minute. I kept changing my mind; is it good enough? Too messy? Uninteresting? Is it boring? In the end I went for the idea that I'd enjoy to watch as a film. I got the idea from the term 'Government Baby' which is used to refer to a baby that is born to a parent or parents that cannot afford to raise it themselves. The parent(s) then require to live off the government for food, welfare, housing, and/or medical aid. At the moment the idea has more of a reveal narrative which I intend to work on. As David C says if it's not shit you have a problem. Here's my pitch;

Government Baby by Tom Stock

Frankie is asleep in his mate’s car. Ben beeps his horn several times at the traffic. It jolts Frankie awake. Ben takes the piss out of Frankie for being hung-over. Frankie looks out the window and sees a gang from the rival college and asks Ben to pull over. Frankie shouts at them to come over and they exchange playful insults. Frankie, to gain power, spits in one of the guys faces and Ben bolts the car down the road. They stop at a local shop and Frankie shoplifts, while Ben buys fags.

We then see the boys leaning on the car and smoking next to the ‘Williamson College’ sign. A generic speech about ‘their bright futures’ and ‘successful careers’ is told by cutting between several different teachers standing in front of the class. Frankie lazily puts up his hand and the teachers (in unison) ask him what he wants. He asks them what the point of the speech was and in doing so gets sent out of the class. Walking down the hallway, Frankie sees Tiff and struts up to her and asks if she got his text. She finishes her conversation with her girlfriends before she turns to Frankie, looks him up and down, and asks him if her slept with Chelsea a month ago. Frankie sweats for a bit while she loudly chews her gum. Tiff asks him to be honest for once. He sincerely tells Tiff that he likes her and that he and Chelsea just kissed and he hasn’t seen Chelsea since. Thinking he’s sorted the problem he leans in to kiss her. Tiff slaps him. She tells him the reason why he hasn’t seen her since is because she’s dropped out of College. Frankie looks confused. Tiff bluntly informs him that Chelsea is pregnant and he’s fucked.

At home Frankie walks into the living room bewildered. Whist Frankie turns on the telly his Mother coos ‘Who is it?’ from the kitchen. He states to her that it’s not going to be his Dad and she makes the excuse that he knows his Father is very busy at the moment. She then calls to him to put the news on, asks how his day was and states her desire for Mr Croft to be behind in the polls, all in the same breath. She then walks in, sits down next to him and hands him a cup of tea before commenting on how quiet he is today. She moves a photo of Frankie’s Dad and David Camron shaking hands outside the ‘Williamson College’ and places her mug next to it. They both sit in silence for a moment. The telly informs them that Croft is ahead of Williamson in the polls. She then tells Frankie to drink his tea to make him feel better.

I wanted the idea to be a reaction to the negative portrayal of today's youth throughout mainstream media in much the same way anyone from Iraq or Afghanistan has been tattooed as a terrorist. Short films like Steve Looker's Sacrifice and more shockingly Brian Percival's About a Girl almost play into this generalisation that with each generation society becomes a little bit worse off, more segregated, more dysfunctional, than before. You could say this trend of film acts as a cerimonial passing of blame from societies fault onto the parents and then finally the kids themselves. Even I feel like a visual tourist watching films of this niche and I grew up on esates much like those shown. I guess you could say that this is my controlling idea; to suggest that working class problems are not exclusive to the working class.

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Brief for Week 7

Draft a treatment for your short film idea.

A treatment is a summary of your story written in paragraph form in the present tense. It may contain the occasional significant line of dialogue. Unlike a script, a treatment should only include major scenes. It should give a good sense of character and the central conflict, and may suggest the visual style.

The total length should not exceed 1200 words.

Bring it to class next week on paper.

Week 5 - Fantasy, surrealism, mysticism

Saying it without saying it.

It would be naive to assume that fantasy has no place in a short film grounded in British social realism. Fantasies can easily convey aspirations for the future or longing for an unobtainable lover. Surrealism could convey a perverted mind or drunken fumble in the bushes. Mysticism can imply segregation by lack of heritage or someone knowing more than they let on. I watched Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's deliberately blasphemous surrealist film L'Age d'Or which emphasizes how symbols can be used to create a feeling of unease. For example the scene in the garden with the couple who are passionately (and awkwardly) sucking all of each others fingers at once. He strokes his lover on the cheek and his fingers disappear revealing a deformed hand as if she's just eaten them. My first reaction was horror and then I questioned myself why I found the image so repulsive. I found it a really responsive moment that brought to my attention my prejudice against ugliness and how I equate it with negativity. This is hopefully something I can aim for in my final script; an audience reaction.

My brief idea this week came from an unlikely source; my mother. My Nan had visited a ghost whisperer to speak to her relatives whom had passed. Mum said that at some point during the session my granddads mother (who had treated Nan like an literal slave) came through asking for forgiveness because she was in a 'bad place'. Shocked my Nan simply replied that there was 'nothing to forgive' and that she doesn't hold grudges. Strangely all this happen before I realised what this weeks lesson was about. Couldn't of been more apt. My scene, involving two characters and including a reversal of status between them, is called The Good Women

In today's lecture we looked at the power of the unconscious and talked about Freud's structural model of the psyche;

Id - "It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. [It] produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle."

The Id could be likened to the over-riding desire of a character to maintain equilibrium.

Ego - "The ego separates out what is real. It helps us to organise our thoughts and make sense of them and the world around us. The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions. But the super-ego is constantly watching every one of the ego's moves and punishes it with feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inferiority."

The Ego is perhaps a characters sense of practicality over desire or even the acceptance of life as is.

Super-Ego - "The super-ego retains the character of the father. Under the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling and reading, the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on—in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt."

The Super-Ego could be seen as the consequence of a characters actions or the resistance of action.

In the lecture we discussed the way in which a characters psyche both affects and effects how a narrative plays out and how surrealist ideas can visualise those outcomes. We used an abstract method to create ideas in our seminars involving a person taking notes on two others having a conversation whilst they read a news paper. From the record of the conversation we then took an moment and embellished it into characters and a short narrative. My experiment resulted in to school boys talking about batman on the bus and then showing off to a girl they like - hardly Scorsese but it will do. I guess the most interesting characters are the ones that are recognisable to us in some respects but unpredictably volatile in others; the same applies to to real people I guess.

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Brief for Week 6

Write a PITCH!

Week 4 - Genre shorts

One person short.

Even though I missed the lesson due to illness I took the free time and brainstormed some possible ideas for my script. I'm currently playing with social realism and kinda reacting to the conventions of the movement which ironically is how the movement started. I figured it would not only be realistic to film due to the abundance of interesting natural locations within north London but also it keeps the cost down and allows me to focus on character over aesthetics. I re-watched Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank along with the more traditional A Taste of Honey by Tony Richardson. A few scenes in particular convey not only the desperation of the characters situations but also the possibility of hope and the beauty of the locations. These are both important to think about when writing;

Fish Tank - Mia goes for a walk

A Taste of Honey - Jo & Geoff visit a graveyard

Last weeks brief asked us to use memory to relive an incident that made us feel a strong emotion. I chose to use an early memory involving my little sister Sarah. It was the first time I remember being strongly self aware and thinking about others to the extent that I behaved differently.

Memory by Tom Stock

I remember not liking the fact that I had a baby sister. I remember hating her because she had stolen not only mummy and daddy’s love, but also my old baby toys that had suddenly become interesting to me again. Sarah didn’t help herself though as she had an awful wail, that only reinforced my hatred for her, always cried and had the most putrid nappies. I recall finding it strange that someone so disgusting was dressed so prettily. I remember being roughly four and my sister one. Mummy had taken us into town and as normal Satan was wailing her head off in a pink frock. I remember standing in the square, by a small kid’s park, beside Mummy with Sarah in her buggy. It was mid afternoon and there were only a few people walking by us and the shops all around. It was noisy but not scary and I recall it being a bright white day, though this may be added texture. Mummy had just told me off for some reason so I decided to leave her and my sister to be annoying together and wandered away. I think I must have walked into a shop or bumped into her because suddenly an old lady asked me where my Mummy was. I remember she smelt of lavender and bad breath and that I wasn’t scared because she reminded me of my Nanny. I stubbornly pointed to Mummy and Sarah because I knew she was going to take me to them. She turned and saw them and then asked me if that was my sister? I said yes. Then she replied to me, ‘I bet you love your sister so much that you deserve a sweetie’ and before I knew it I was overcome with such pride to have a sister that got me sweets that I screamed at the old lady, ‘My names Thomas and my sister is called Sarah and I love her loads and loads!’ I ran back to Mummy and gave my sister a big kiss (naturally she started crying) and then ran back over to the old lady who gave me a humbug which I quickly spat out. I’m told that for the rest of the day I kept running up to strangers in the hope they would give me sweets. I don’t recall if any did but Sarah’s had all my love and attention since.

Keeping memory in mind will explore some of the aspects of my working class background that may appeal to an audience. Issues surrounding race, class, sexuality all make interesting subject matter though that could be applied to anything that counterbalances the norm.

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Brief for Week 5

Write a short (2 to 3 page) scene, in screenplay format, which involves two characters, and which includes a reversal of status between them – one starting high and ending low, the other vice versa. The shift does not need to be large, so long as it's clear, and the scene doesn't have to involve spoken dialogue, although it can.