Planning - Initial Ideas

Brainstorming:

Me and my teammates Samuel and Laila began planning the initial ideas during free time we had during class, we began considering different approaches to a basic plot for our film opening and began by thinking of a title which would help give our plot a topic or theme to base around. 

I thought of a major theme of the psychological thriller genre being the focus on causing anxiety and maintaining tension, this lead us to think of similar emotions or feelings and settled on the title "Paranoia" this for one gave us a title for our film opening and helped guide the rest of our initial ideation. 

We then exchanged ideas on location, props, camera shots, and a skeleton of the plot until we agreed on something that would challenge us and allow us to demonstrate our understanding of genre conventions and of creating a media brief.

General Idea:

With our title "Paranoia" we had a basic outline of a topic we could base a plot around. We expanded paranoia into mental illness, while these two can be closely related sometimes by expanding to a topic relating to mental illness it gave us a greater window to address social issues and represent a group of people.

This lead us to a snowball effect where we began to think of plot ideas quickly and efficiently we ended up settling on an opening about a young adult suffering from mental illness and past trauma who becomes paranoid and storms out of their therapist's office, which leads them to accidentally harming their best friend who attempted to calm them down.

Considering Limitations:

As a team we had big ambitions for our film opening as we are excited and want to create a high quality product but we did run into some issues that we either worked around or are still finding ways to adapt to still create the same feel or achieve our vision in a way we are able to avoid safety hazards or limitations of props.

We decided to add a scene of the main character driving out of their driveway to add context and not have an awkward cut. This may have caused issues as it may have added complications when casting actors as they would have to have a license, to avoid this we changed the scene to only show the bottom half of the car and have Samuel back his car out of the driveway to achieve the same vision but without the complications.

Another limitation we faced is how we would show the main character harming their friend in a safe manner to keep all actors safe, we resolved this by drafting a scene where the camera cuts to a POV shot in the perspective of the friend this allows us to prop up a camera in place of an actor this avoids someone having a blade pointed at them, we also decided to have the shot cut to a title card before any violence is shown this further allows for safety while filming.

Reflection:

Throughout this process, it allowed us as a team to show our creativity and share ideas. This also strengthened the way we work as a team. This will allow us to work efficiently to create a high-quality product. From this planning session, we were able to produce many ideas for film elements apart from just the actual story. This will allow us to tie in these technical elements in a way that have meaning and affect the overall film. From this point we will begin storyboarding, creating fully thought-out characters, and begin preparing to film.