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film story ideas

Directing  

Melodrama  

  • A young man bumps into a girl who is running through a forest, she is knocked over and the man asks if she is okay, she says that she is being perused and she continues to run into the forest. 
  • A few seconds after the Girl runs away a man appears and he says that the girl is a Princess and that she ran away in order to escape an arranged marriage, the man asks if he has seen her and the man lies, he says that she went in the opposite direction and the man runs of after her.  a few hours later, the man, who is the Princesses’ betrothed is seen dragging her through the forest and the young man comes up behind him and smothers him. 
  • The young man walks up to the Princess and apologizes for scaring her and he tells her that he hates it when people’s free will is forcibly taken from them and he tells the princess that he will take her to safety. 
  • An epilogue shows that a few years later, the Princess and the young man get married and live happily ever after.  

Influences  

  • The Cabinet of Dr Caligari  
  • Victorian melodrama e.g. Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red barn 
  • Silent films. 

Extra information 

  • I intend to make the film silent and replace dialogue with cards, like the Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari and it will be filmed in black and white. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slapstick comedy  

  • Two women are sitting at a coffee table gossiping when a third woman turns up and shows them a gold ring that she found. The other women fawn over it and ask questions about it. 
  • A fourth woman turns up and claims that the third woman stole the ring and the second woman denies this and this makes the fourth woman angry so she slaps the second woman and the second woman slaps her in return, the second woman proceeds to pick up a cup of cold tea and throw it in the newcomers face and the fourth woman does the same to her and they continue to throw objects at each other until a man who is a jewel thief turns up and reveals that he was the jewel thief. 

Influences  

  • Old comedy films e.g. the work of Charle Chaplin  
  • Monty Python  

Extra information 

  • It will be filmed in oversaturated color  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Editor 

romance  

  • A young boy and girl meet in a diner and they start to flirt with each other, their parents hate each other so they are forced to keep their relationship a secret.  
  • The boy asks the girl to meet him at the beach and he is devastated to discover that the girl’s parents have arranged for her to marry another man, he asks her to meet him again, later that night  and when she gets home , the girl writes a note and she goes to the beach and the lovers   it is implied that they ran away together.  
  • The girl’s mother discovers the letter and she screams.  

Influences 

  • Rome + Juliet (1996 Baz Lhurman)  
  • Breathless (1960, Jean Luc Godard)  – the film had a sad ending  
  • French New Wave  

 

 

 

 

Horror comedy 

  • In the 19th century, Rose Blythe was always kind to everyone, and she was one of the wealthiest women in the town, but she died in an accident when she fell down the stairs and hit her neck. 
  • Rose is buried but the people of the town don’t forget her – they continue to pass down memories of her and, even in death, she encourages people to be good. 
  • About a century after Rose’s death, her corpse is brought back to life by a mysterious force   that tells her that she is still needed and she continues to walk the earth, helping people everywhere.  

Influences  

  • Warm Bodies (2013) 
  • Shaun of the dead (2004)  
  • Zombie comedy  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing  

  • Catharine Johnson is the granddaughter of a wealthy man called Lenard Johnson and she is going to visit him, but when she arrives, she finds that he has died under suspicious circumstances. 
  • The police are called, and Catharine is named as a suspect, even though she had arrived after the death of her grandfather, since she was left a lot of money in her grandfather’s will. Catharine loved her grandfather and recalls fond memories from her childhood when he took her in after her parents died. He has left her a plain wooden box in his will, and he left her a letter which says that the contents are “very important” and that she must only open it in the most “dire of circumstances” 
  • The police suspect Catherine of murdering her grandfather and Henry Hornby, the police chief is particularly quick to accuse her, and this seems suspicious to Catherine, so she looks in the box that her grandfather gave her, and she discovers that Hornby used to be Lenard Johnson’s business partner but he tried to swindle her grandfather out of his earnings and her grandfather cut him out of the business. This revelation causes Catharine to realize that it was Hornby that murdered her grandfather. Hornby enters and tells her that her assumptions are correct and that he killed her parents as well, he attempts to kill her to cover up his crimes, but she escapes, and Hornby is arrested. 

 

 

Influences  

 

  • Film noir  
  • Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles) 
  • Femme fatale  
  • Trope subversion – the femme fatal is not evil , she is a victim of circumstances  

Extra information 

 

  • Black and white  

My Story ideas

Directing  

Melodrama  

  • A young man bumps into a girl who is running through a forest, she is knocked over and the man asks if she is okay, she says that she is being perused and she continues to run into the forest. 
  • A few seconds after the Girl runs away a man appears and he says that the girl is a Princess and that she ran away in order to escape an arranged marriage, the man asks if he has seen her and the man lies, he says that she went in the opposite direction and the man runs of after her.  a few hours later, the man, who is the Princesses’ betrothed is seen dragging her through the forest and the young man comes up behind him and smothers him. 
  • The young man walks up to the Princess and apologizes for scaring her and he tells her that he hates it when people’s free will is forcibly taken from them and he tells the princess that he will take her to safety. 
  • An epilogue shows that a few years later, the Princess and the young man get married and live happily ever after.  

Influences  

  • The Cabinet of Dr Caligari  
  • Victorian melodrama e.g. Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red barn 
  • Silent films. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slapstick comedy  

  • Two women are sitting at a coffee table gossiping when a third woman turns up and shows them a gold ring that she found. The other women fawn over it and ask questions about it. 
  • A fourth woman turns up and claims that the third woman stole the ring and the second woman denies this and this makes the fourth woman angry so she slaps the second woman and the second woman slaps her in return, the second woman proceeds to pick up a cup of cold tea and throw it in the newcomers face and the fourth woman does the same to her and they continue to throw objects at each other until a man who is a jewel thief turns up and reveals that he was the jewel thief. 

Influences  

  • Old comedy films e.g. the work of Charle Chaplin  
  • Monty Python  

 

Editor 

Tragic romance  

  • A young boy and girl meet in a diner and they start to flirt with each other, their parents hate each other so they are forced to keep their relationship a secret.  
  • The boy asks the girl to meet him at the beach and he is devastated to discover that the girl’s parents have arranged for her to marry another man, he asks her to meet him again, later that night  and when she gets home , the girl writes a note and she goes to the beach and the lovers walk into the sea together and it is implied that they have drowned themselves.  
  • The girl’s mother discovers the letter and she screams.  

Influences 

  • Rome + Juliet (1996 Baz Lhurman)  
  • Breathless (1960, Jean Luc Godard 0  

 

 

 

 

Horror comedy 

  • In the 19th century, Rose Blythe was always kind to everyone, and she was one of the wealthiest women in the town, but she died in an accident when she fell down the stairs and hit her neck. 
  • Rose is buried but the people of the town don’t forget her – they continue to pass down memories of her and, even in death, she encourages people to be good. 
  • About a century after Rose’s death, her corpse is brought back to life by a mysterious force   that tells her that she is still needed and she continues to walk the earth, helping people 

Influences  

  • Warm Bodies (2013) 
  • Shaun of the dead (2004)  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing  

  • Catharine Johnson is the granddaughter of a wealthy man called Lenard Johnson and she is going to visit him, but when she arrives, she finds that he has died under suspicious circumstances. 
  • The police are called, and Catharine is named as a suspect, even though she had arrived after the death of her grandfather, since she was left a lot of money in her grandfather’s will. Catharine loved her grandfather and recalls fond memories from her childhood when he took her in after her parents died. 
  • A police detective by the name of Robert Notworthy arrives to interrogate Catharine and he suggests that she hired an assassin to poison her grandfather – Catherine takes offence to this and she reveals that her grandfather gave her an annual stipend of £ 1 million and that she was perfectly content with what she had. 
  • Notworthy goes away and discovers that everything that Catharine was saying is true and that none of what she was saying is a lie, but when he presents this information to his superiors, they do not believe him, and they say that Catharine has seduced him. 
  • Catharine is arrested for the death of her grandfather and she is told to confess to the murder, and they attempt to coerce her, but Catharine insults them by calling them incompetent fools and they take her away. 
  • The police chief, Henry Hornby says that Catharine has been arrested on suspicion of murder and he seems gleeful, and Notworthy discovers that Hornby was involved in a business deal with Lenard Johnson and once Johnson discovered Hornby’s tendency to lie and cheat, he ended his business ties with him, and once Johnson became rich, Hornby swore revenge. 
  • Notworthy attends the court and, to his surprise, he is called on to give evidence and he reveals all that he knew. Hornby is arrested and Catharine is immediately released. The pair meet later in the park and it is implied that they start a romantic relationship. 

 

 

Influences  

 

  • Film noir  
  • Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles) 
  • Femme fatale  
  • Trope subversion  

 

 

Breathless

Breathless (1960 , directed by Jean Luc – Godard ) challenged the established conventions of editing by employing jump cuts which help  to remind the audience that they were watching a movie which was unheard of at the time and Godard employed the technique because the New Wave movement was concerned with challenging the established conventions of films due to the Algerian war and the way that the French establishment treated the youth and this was a reaction to that oppression and the way this film was edited was a deliberate act of subversion against the established norms of the film world.

Breathless challenges the established rules about narrative because the characters have long conversations about trivial things that seemingly don’t contribute anything to the story and this subversive as the established rules of cinema say that every piece of dialogue should contribute to the story. Furthermore , the trivial dialogue slows down the pace of the film and it is nice for the audience to be able to relax and enjoy the film and it creates a high amount of verisimilitude because the film would be reflecting something that people actually do in real life.

Image result for breathless bedroom scene

Furthermore , The black and white cinematography helps the film to create it’s own distinctive tone for while it is a thriller  and this may be a conscious allusion to films like the Maltese Falcon ( 1941 , directed by John Huston) which stars Humphrey Bogart who is someone who is alluded to in the film  , the tone can be remarkably upbeat at times and  this can sometimes border on being comedic and this makes the choice to film in black and white , seem like a conscious one that was made in order to challenge established tropes in the cinematic medium.

Image result for breathless 1960

Finally , Breathless challenges the norms of film by using all of the aforementioned techniques in order to draw the attention of the audience to the fact that they are watching a film and this is not supposed to happen as films are supposed to serve as an escape to another reality , but Breathless is realistic and it creates a sense that  the film could be happening and it does not  provide the audience with an escape , instead it holds a mirror up  to our world.

 

Strike ! the use of montage

Strike (1925, directed by Sergei Eisenstein ) uses many versions of montage in order to convey its message to the audience.

The type of montage that is present most often is intellectual montage which combines two unrelated images to create a new meaning and this is used when Eisenstein inter cuts images of  the government men with animals and this helps the audience to immediately creates a negative connotation in the mind of the audience. For example , at the end of the film , the slaughter of the workers is compared to the slaughter of a cow and this conveys the message that the workers are considered to be less than human.

Right at the beginning of the film Eisenstein uses the tonal method of editing to create an idea of reflection and pensiveness. The workers walk through a puddle on their way to work and this scene is remarkably modern and it shocked me when I first saw it  I thought that it was from a modern film and this proves that Eisenstein was ahead of his time in terms of tonal editing  and almost a century later.

strike-opening

As Strike is a silent film , metric editing like what is displayed in Whiplash ( Damian Chezelle , 2014) will not have that much of an effect as Strike is a silent film and metric editing first developed after the intoduction of sound and this was only two years after strike was released and this shows how films are shaped by technoogical developments.

Moving on , the scenes where the strikers are being killed by the soldiers is a prime exaple of rythmic montage because it combines the dynamics of the action with the need to tell a continuous story and this  also enables the film to tell the stories of multiple characters at once and this gives the audience a sense of the scope of the story  and it helps them to empathise with the characters that you see on screen.

 

Image result for strike eisenstein the soldiers attack the workers

I belive that Eisentsien uses all of the editing techniques that were availible to him at the time in order to make us empathise with a wide range of characters and it gives the audience understanding of the events that are happpening on screen and it aids them in making sense of what occured on screen. Additionally , I was shocked about how modern the film looked due to its use of techniques that are commonplace today and I fond myself being absorbed by the story that was being told.

The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari

In the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920 , directed by Robert Wiene ) there were many innovations that helped to change the medium of film.

Firstly , the mise en scene is used to create a distorted reality – all of the sets are distorted , for example , the protagonists home town is tilted at an impossible angle and all of the buildings are twisted -this sends a clear message to the audience that things are not as they seem and it may unnerve them and make them uncomfortable . In addition, the characters costumes and makeup reflects  the broken mentality that was the norm in  Germany in the early 1920’s  and this is particularly evident when it comes to Cesare  , his dark makeup reflects the dark mood that was present at the time and in the narrative , the costumes and the makeup can signify the morality of the characters and this is a helpful shorthand for the audience as it tells them who to oppose and who to root for. Everything around the characters is distorted and this all makes sense at the end when it is revealed that the main character is insane and that he made everything up.

 

Image result for the cabinet of doctor caligari holstenwallImage result for the cabinet of doctor caligari cesare

The cinematography in the film is innovative because the cinematographer , Willy Hameister , was able to make the film visually interesting without using color and the  cinematography helps to build the verisimilitude and makes the film seem like it could happen in reality.  The cinematography in this film can be regarded as innovative because it helps to reinforce the theme of mental deterioration and it communicates this to the audience in a tasteful and subtle manner so when they discover that the narrator is actually insane , the audience will not be that surprised because they would have been visually primed  to expect that everything is not as it seems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_Pk1bIiCaI

Finally, the editing in this film is innovative because it makes the audience uncomfortable in a subtle manner and it makes them excited for what will come next. For example , this film famously uses iris shots when there is a transition between different scenes and this makes the film slightly disjointed and the audience  feels anticipation for what comes next because they won’t know what to expect. In addition , when Cesare awakens , the camera focuses on  Caesar’s face and it then cuts to the amazed audience – this tells the audience that Cesare is considered to be a spectacle for their amusement  and this is an example of the Kuleshov effect and it tells the audience what is happening without the need for sound and this film helps to develop cinema as a storytelling medium that is distinct from all other forms of visual media.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEEOEnAmGl8

 

 

Why I think that Citizen Kane is the greatest film of all time – task 3

Firstly , I think Citizen Kane (1941 , directed by orson Welles) is one of the greatest films of all time because the story is about an ordinary man , Charles Foster Kane , who has lived an extraordinary life and it is a story of his life and and it is quit candid and realistic and it is the realism of this film that drew me to it because , despite the fact that Kane was wealthier than I could ever imagine , !  could actually feel empathy for his man and his wealth and behaviour did not isolate me from him and that allows me to begin to understand him because Kane’s desire for love and admiration is a very human desire that we all have and Kane’s desires touch so many people because we all have them and it creates a universal experience between the audience and the characters.

Secondly , the film was a scathing indictment of the newspaper magnates who controlled the American media in 1941 and, although  the film was scathing , the film is subtle in it’s critiques and it is not a heavy – handed morality tale , it just points out the faults in America’s media at the time by examining the life of Charles Foster Kane and the film depicted how powerful the newspaper magnates really were , and from the point of view of a modern audience  , the power that they held was shocking , especially when you remember the fact that  Citizen Kane was released less than a century ago and the audience can look at the current media landscape and realise that , although a lot of things have changed for the better , there is still  a long way to go in terms of a few people having control over the media but things are steadily improving.

Thirdly , the film effectively shows how wealth can isolate people and this aspect of the story makes the film seem more like a cautionary tale against the allure  of wealth , although , money itself is not the problem in this film , the problem is with how people with money acts and how easy it is for money to turn someone into a terrible person , in the film we see Kane make this transition from a respectable newspaper owner , to someone who is concerned with power and little else and parallels can be drawn to real – life figures and this is true in both 1941 and 2018 and this helps to make the film , a timeless classic.

To conclude , I think that Citizen Kane is one of the best films of all time because it helps us to empathise with a person who we wouldn’t usually invest our time and energy into getting to know and as we learn about his life , we begin to see him less as a repulsive human being and more as a flawed person who only wants love and he unfortunately never gets the love that he was seeking.

My favorite scene from Citizen Kane task 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svu5YR-4xYo

My favourite scene in Citizen Kane (1941, directed by Orson Welles) is when Charles Foster Kane dies at the beginning. I like this scene because it provides some exposition without giving away the plot of the entire film. Furthermore , the scene creatively uses panted backgrounds and actual sets to create an atmosphere that is somewhat realistic and this adds to the verisimilitude and it makes the audience think that Citizen Kane could possibly happen in the real world and that helps the audience to feel an immediate connection to Kane and his struggle.

The beginning of the film creates a mystery that causes the rest of the plot to come to fruition  and it helps to frame the rest of the film and to put it into a reasonable  context because the the newsreel reporters  are trying to find out the meaning of Kane’s last words which was “Rosebud” and it helps to drive the narrative forward without spoiling the plot and it immediately makes Kane seem like an enigmatic figure to the audience and they spend the entire film trying to figure out who he was in his life and the opening allows us to go in this journey with the newsreel reporters in order to figure out who Kane was.

 

Furthermore , the word “rosebud” has connotations of innocence and the fact that “rosebud” was Kane’s last word suggests that when he was dying , he was longing for the childhood innocence that had been ripped from him at a young age  and once we learn the context of Kane’s last word , it immediately makes the audience feel pity for him as the audience values childhood immensely and it would sadden them to see the childhood being ripped away from Kane. In addition , roses are associated with love and “rosebud ” may also be a reference to how all Kane really wanted was love and this desire for love is what drove all of his actions in the film.

The snow globe could symbolise Kane’s life – when it breaks it symbolises that Kane’s life is over and that he is no longer present. Additionally , the snow globe could be another symbol of Kane’s lost child hood , in this case , the symbolism of the glass shattering is more blatant than the word “rosebud” and this could indicate that Kane’s childhood was ripped away from him quickly and abruptly and that it left lasting scars on Kane’s mind and that it was the underlying motivation for all of his actions that we see.