Original/First Draft of Screenplay

Here is our first draft of the screenplay for our piece. Next lesson we will be re-revising and editing it.

LEAP YEAR

SETTING: PARK

Close up of cello tape rolls, one is bare and the other still has some cello tape coming off onto the grassy turf.

Extreme close of LOUIS’S hand twitching.

Close up of LOUIS’S foot in the tree.

Close up of BARRY’S arm taped to a tree.

Close up of LOUIS’S phone in his pocket as it begins to ring, we hear an extract of Macho man by the Village people as his ring tone.

Low angle long shot of LOUIS looking startled in a tree and then proceeds to fall out of the tree.

Mid shot of a dazed LOUIS on the floor realizing his phone is going off.

Extreme close up of phone in the grass still ringing.

Long shot of LOUIS fumbling for the phone.

Close up of LOUIS answering the phone.

LOUIS
Errr? Hello?

(Mid-shot of BONNIE talking on the phone)

BONNIE
Where the hell are you two? It’s eleven o’clock, you’re meant to be in work, but neither of you came back last night! Why didn’t you come back last night? I am going to kill you! I’ve been calling all over the place trying to find you, and you finally answer your phone!

LOUIS
What?

(Close up of LOUIS recoiling from his phone as BONNIE shrieks)

(Mid-shot of BONNIE)

BONNIE
Where. Are. You?!

(Close up of a terrified LOUIS)

(Long shot of LOUIS looking around)

(Pan out shot)

LOUIS
Well, there’s trees and grass and I think I see a lake. I might go and feed the ducks actually.

(Long shot of BONNIE grabbing a bag)

BONNIE
So, you’re in the park. Is Barry with you?

(Long shot of LOUIS looking around the park)

LOUIS
Nah, wanna come and feed the ducks?

(Mid-shot of BONNIE as she freezes)

BONNIE
You lost Barry! You blithering idiot! Of all things to lose, why’d you lose him? Go and find him now, before he does something stupid! I really am going to kill you now! I’ll see you soon

(Close up shot of BONNIE as she slams down the phone)

(Long shot of LOUIS as he begins stumbling around)

(Long shot of a sleeping BARRY taped to a tree)

(Close up shot of LOUIS in shock)

(Mid-shot of LOUIS dialling BONNIE’s number and putting the phone to his ear)

LOUIS
Hey, good news, I found Barry

BONNIE
Brilliant, where is he?

LOUIS
Cello taped to a tree! Fast asleep bless him!

BONNIE
Asleep tied to a tree?

LOUIS
Taped

BONNIE
Does it matter? Get him out

LOUIS
Cant, too much tape

BONNIE
You’re useless. I’ll be there now, with scissors I will not let you touch

LOUIS
Yeah, okay, I’m going to feed the ducks now that I’ve found him

(Long shot of LOUIS staring at the ducks and getting his phone out)

LOUIS
Sorry, can you get some bread? For some reason I have no money or bread. Mad right?

(Back to long shot as he looks back at ducks)

(Long shot of BONNIE walking up to him, a bag in one hand and loaf of bread in the other hand)

(Mid shot as LOUIS runs and takes the bread from BONNIE and rips it open to feed to the ducks)

LOUIS
Thank you!

(Begins to walk off)

BONNIE
Woah, woah, get back here! Where the hell is Barry?

LOUIS
Over there (points)

BONNIE
Oh my god! What is he wearing? And why is he taped to that tree?

LOUIS
And my clothes are irrelevant?

BONNIE
Yes, because you got yourself dressed, he didn’t!

LOUIS
How do you know?

BONNIE
This is Barry! He doesn’t put himself in tights, you do!

LOUIS
What are you trying to imply?

BONNIE
I’m just saying, it’s clear it was you who convinced him to wear them, not the other way around

LOUIS
It’s a good one, you gotta admit

BONNIE
No, it’s mean. He knows no better. Now, lets get him out of that tape

LOUIS
How?

BONNIE
I have scissors

LOUIS
Well, aren’t you cool

BONNIE
I wouldn’t need them if you watched him for once. I said he could leave when I left but no, you have to insist and he ends up taped to a tree

LOUIS
Nothing wrong with a bit of fun

(BONNIE glares at LOUIS and starts going through her bag for a pair of scissors)

(Long shot of a still sleeping BARRY)

(Mid-shot of an annoyed BONNIE and amused LOUIS)

(Extreme close up of BONNIE’s hands as she cuts the tape)

(Long shot as BARRY falls to the floor still asleep)

(Extreme close up as BARRY wakes up on the floor and screams)

(Close up of LOUIS as he begins to laugh)

LOUIS
What’s wrong?

BARRY
The aliens want to get me! (begins to get distressed)

Treatment Revision

From our audience research, specifically our focus group, we decided we need to revise our treatment. Below is the new, revised treatment based on the feedback we received:

Title:
An original screenplay by Jamie Payne, Ryan Kent, Kayleigh Morris, and Alisha Ward
Dated: 15th December 2011

Together, we present a comedy film, about the adventures of Louis and Barry, two teenagers with an imagination which far exceeds the normal expectations. A third friend, Bonnie, a female as this was what our focus group suggested in a way to challenge the conventions where characters are generally male, plays the voice of reason throughout as the friends try to figure out what actually happened the night before.

As the story unfolds, we discover that their night out turned out to be far more than anyone expected, as they encounter superhero's, aliens, emotional turmoils, and an amazing bromance, although this most likely wont be included within the first two minutes, as to avoid showing the entire movie in the opening sequence. Throughout the opening sequence, several fights and arguments breakout.

The opening sequence of the film would involve Louis and Barry waking up in a park in fancy dress, tied to and asleep in a tree. Louis is woken up when his phone goes off, and panics and falls out of the tree he was in, and answers his phone, just as he see's Barry asleep tied to the same tree. The scene split screens to a conversation between Louis and Bonnie, as she quizzes him on where the pair of them are. Louis gets off the phone and falls back to sleep on the floor. A few 'minutes' later, as in the movie it's seconds but realistically minutes, Bonnie arrives holding two mugs of tea and a bag full of biscuits, scissors, and clean clothes. she then cuts a still sleeping Barry out and he falls to the floor and wakes up, shouting that the aliens want to kill him. Bonnie soothes him and gives him and Louis a mug of tea and a biscuit each, but Barry starts again when realising he's dressed as a superhero, and claims they want to kill him, sparking an argument between Louis and Barry, as they both argue over what happened he night before. Louis shoved Barry to the ground, and the screen switches to tiles of Louis and Barry working, and the title sequence.

We intent to use strange mise-en-scene as we said before. Instead of being dressed messily as we originally planned, the characters are dressed in fancy dress costumes, as our focus group suggested, in order to add comical value to the scene, though as yet, we're unsure of exactly what the costumes will be. The props which we well be using are things such as empty drink cans and bottles, cups of tea, packets of biscuits etc. We intend to have the lighting fairly bright most of the time, however due to the time of the year we're filming, we may end up relying on editing in order to have this lighting. We would use a fair amount of editing and effects on the scenes, for things such as the lighting, sounds and music.

For camera, we will use a lot of reaction and close up shots. Until Louis' phone rings, we will use extreme close ups and close ups, and then we will zoom out and reveal their location, and Louis laying in it, and Barry taped to it. From here, we would use primarily mid-shots and reaction shots.

Our target audience has now changed, as it is now aimed at those between the ages 15-30

Audience Research- Questionnaire Results

We created our survey on survey monkey, and sent it around for people to complete. We got 30 people to participate online, and 10 on paper, leaving us with 40 people to determine our target audience from.

These are our results from the online questionnaire:

 

From our online questionnaire we were able to conclude what our target audience would be.

In question one, the most common age group was 16-20, with 56.7% of those who completed the survey were between this age group, giving us the impression that this will be our target age group, though it is likely to appeal to those of 11-15 or over 25.

 

In question two, there was an equal amount of males and females (50% of each), so we believe that our target audience will be equally male and female.


In question three, the majority of those who completed the survey were students (60%), leading us to believe that our target audience would be some form of student, be it school, sixth form, college, or university students.

When we asked those who completed the survey to rank their favourite genres in order from one to eight, 60% ranked comedy first, and 16.7 ranked it second, leading us to the belief that the comedy genre is popular amongst those who took the survey. The second highest ranked genre was action, with 26.7% ranking it first, and 13.3% ranking it second. The third was drama, because although no one ranked it first, it was the highest ranked for second, with 27.7%. From this, we may need to consider incorporating elements of these genre's into our film.

 

When we asked how often they watched films, 50% of the people who completed the survey said they watched films often, and 43.3% watched them sometimes, meaning we need to aim our film at those who watch films often, and try to appeal to those who watch them sometimes in order to encourage them to watch them more often.

 

When asked how they most often accessed media texts, 86.7% of those who responded to the survey said they tended to access media texts by the internet, and 80% by TV, meaning advertisement needs to revolve mainly around internet and TV in order to appeal to our target audience, however advertisements would still be on other forms of media, such as newspapers, magazines, radio, etc. in order to appeal tp a wider audience.

 

When asked where they most commonly see advertisements for films, 83.3% said they most often see them on TV, which again links to the above question, and means we need to use the TV as a vital tool for advertisement. A following 66.7% said they most often see them on the internet, backing up our above question and use of this media for advertisements.

 

When asked on the survey their favourite music genre, 66.7% said rock, and 46.7% said metal, meaning that we'd use more of this genre of music in order to appeal to our target audience, though other genre's such as pop (40%) in order to widen our target audience.

These results are only from our electronic survey not our ones on paper, meaning the results could change. Also, a problem with these results are that they are too general, and their lack of specific information could affect judgement on our target audience, e.g, the females who took part could have had a preference to the romance genre, but we would not know this, and would generalise that males and females are both equally fans of comedy, when this in fact may not be true.

These are the results of our survey completed on paper:

Focus Group

We sent out our letter and invited a few people to our focus group. We held this at 3:30 on Monday in our media classroom. This is the video from our focus group:





From the focus group we ...

Audience Research - Focus Group

We decided on our target audience, which is quite wide, with the only really target audience being that they are between the ages of 15 and 30 and enjoy comedy films. We then began to draft a list of people to be part of our focus group, wrote our letter to invite them, and began to write some potential questions for the group.

Below is a copy of our letter:

'Dear Sir or Madam,

We are inviting you to take part in a focus group as part of our media coursework on the 5^th December 2011 in Media room 2, Jo Richardson school at 3:30pm. We intend to share with you our film treatment and show you some examples of films within the genre we are working with. We would like to ask you some questions as we believe you would be part of the target audience for our film and we need to find out whether or not the plot/ideas we have for our film would be appealing to you.

We, as part of our coursework, would like to film the focus group as evidence of the discussions we will be having. This is to keep a record of the responses we will have, and if you do not want to be filmed by us then please give us notice.

We would greatly appreciate it if you could attend and look forward to seeing you. Please RSVP to 06rkent@jrcs.bardaglea.org.uk.

Yours Sincerely,

Jamie Payne, Ryan Kent, Alisha Ward, Kayleigh Morris'

After we wrote the letter, we began to come up with questions which we could potentially use whilst we interview the focus group, referring to the genre alone, our opening sequence, and the appeal of the two to our target audience. The potential questions, in the order in which we came up with them, are written below:

From our film treatment, what genre would you say the film is?

What is it about this genre that you enjoy?

Would the opening sequence make you want to watch the rest of the film, and why?

How could we make the film more appealing to our target audience?

What would you judge the target audience to be?

Would the film appeal to you?

What would you like to see in a comedy film?

What would you do in order to challenge the conventions of the genre?

We are now going to revise the questions and put them into the order of how we will ask them, particularly the first few, as after this we hope the discussion will become more natural and flow better than if we just asked the questions in a strict order and had them answer.