Notes: Watched the films, Brainstormed ideas, Aaron scouted locations (look at Aarons blog)

In this meeting we established and finalised our roles (noted on meeting 1 blog post) and started brainstorming genres and story ideas for our short film.

Smart Targets: Watch project X and Knives Out to get idea of themes and style we are planning to do (by next week) note down key tropes and elements.

Aaron’s going to scout for location ideas.

Working title: ???

Genre: Mystery, found footage

I worked in a pair with Noah.

I found this task quite difficult as it was my first time trying to write a screenplay, therefore I wasn’t very familiar with the formatting of the screenplay, so it took longer to write as we had to juggle using the prompt (1984) and the template within the 15 minute time limit. However, I think in the future having better knowledge of the formatting of the screenplay, maybe a visual of a published screenplay for inspiration of the format, will make it quicker and easier to write. Also prior knowledge/research of the book 1984 to help with the description.

Screenplay- written (script) work for a film, television show, or other moving media, that expresses the movement, actions and dialogue of characters.

A film I think has a good screenplay:

Editing – Iona

Sound – Noah

Cinematographer – George

Director – Aaron

Screenwriter – Collaborative

Truffaut’s 1959 film The 400 Blows and Gerwig’s 2017 film Ladybird are distinctive coming of age films, with both narratives centring around a singular protagonist as they navigate growing up and authentically “come of age”.  Despite sharing similarities within the narrative storyline, such as rebellious teens longing to break free from the confinements and rules of society, the context of production, and evolution in the genre cycle, creates an interesting element of difference. The 400 Blows takes place during post WW2 era of Paris, depicting the realistic story of a troubled teen, Antoine Doinel, who’s unhappy at home and resistant to the rules of society, evident through his acts of rebellion leading to his incarceration before ultimately escaping during the movies closing sequence. Gerwig’s solo, 2017, directorial debut Ladybird, however, is set in Sacramento, California in the early 2000’s, following a teenage girl Christine or Ladybird, navigating her senior year of high school with the clear goal of going to out-of-state colleges into cities with “culture”. However, Ladybirds dilemmas are clearly portrayed through her disillusionment with California, struggle with her social class and relationship with her mother. 

Key narrative and technical conventions of the French New Wave approach to film making

• Shot on location (authentic backgrounds and natural lighting)
• Non-professional actors
• Innovative camera techniques e.g. hand-held camera for intimate shots
• Jump cuts/fast paced editing
• Close ups on face
• Often focused on topics such as: religion, class struggle, sexuality, and youth culture.
• Improvisations
• Improvisation during shooting
• Breaking the forth wall
• Broke traditional narrative structures/reject “Old Hollywood” style
• Auteur theory

What’s the difference between the Left and Right Bank approach?

“Left bank” older and less tightly linked one of the major left bank film makers was Agnes Varda and Chris Marker, arguable the most experimentative with his 1962 film La Jetée consisting of only still images. Whereas, the “Right Bank”/Cahiers du cinéma consisted of directors such as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. However the groups were not in opposition and instead praised one another.

Alexandre Astruc, noted the significance of directors in filmmaking, finding that directors shared their own perspective through use of lighting, camerawork, staging, editing, and the story. Calling this concept “auteurism,” deriving largely from Astruc’s explanation of the concept of caméra-stylo (“camera-pen”), where the director, who oversees all audio and visual elements of the motion picture, is more to be considered the “author” of the movie than is the writer of the screenplay.