SCRIPT

MAIN CHARACTERS' PIECE TO CAMERAS


NATHAN and AMY stare dead-pan into the camera simaltaneously in a close-up shot

NATHAN and AMY

(somber)

I didn't know she'd get me into that much trouble, it wasnt my fault.

FINAL DIALOGUE

AMY speaks over the 'Slow Burn' titles, she can be heard but not seen

AMY

I betrayed him

TREATMENT

Art Director’s Treatment

Location

Opening wide shot: This shot allows the audience to view the entire area where the scene is taking place. It is important to get an idea of how open and remote the area is as it creates an increased sense of vulnerability to the main character who can just be seen walking into a wooded area. The path can be seen disappearing into the wooded area which shows he is walking into an area that is likely to be quite dark and secluded even during daylight. This shows he is walking into an area where he is more likely to be pursued and caught than a lighter, more open area where there will be a better chance of escape and less opportunity for the pursuers to catch the character unawares. From a distance the darkness on the entrance to the wooded area can also be seen.

First chase area: The chase begins in a path lined with trees where the two pursuers will eventually jump out of. This creates more of a sense of insecurity because there is less chance to escape and the trees also make the area look darker. The positioning of branches against the sky could also create some noir style high contrast lighting. The bit where the character runs with the steady-cam is shot in a more densely wooded area again to make his face and the background darker.

Before the bridge: Before the character disappears under the bridge where he will eventually be caught the bridge can be seen with the path disappearing underneath it. However with the outside being fairly bright in comparison to the bridge and the positioning of the camera the bridge he is running under comes across as almost pitch black like a tunnel, which therefore gives the idea that he is running into a place with no means of escape which suggests to the audience that he is about to get caught.

Under the bridge: After the character disappears we cut to a shot under the bridge facing the entrance where the character ran into. However the audience don’t know it’s a bridge and the positioning of the camera makes it look like he has just ran into an area with no escape. Around 7 seconds after he runs in his pursuers catch him and the darkness under the bridge combined with the comparative brightness outside means the characters appear only in silouhette.This works especially well for the pursuers as their powerful and threatening stance can clearly be seen.


Flashbacks, piece to camera and titles

Main character’s piece to camera: This part of the sequence is introduced to give the audience a hint about the storyline and involves the main character and the femme-fatale doing an individual piece of dialogue to the camera superimposed over each other with the two taking turns to be shown up with more prominence. A close up of the characters are shown with nothing but blackness as the background. The red screen was put over the spotlight and the positioning of the light allowed only half the character’s faces to be shown in red. This gave both shots a very threatening, unnatural look and feel which helped add to the tone of the rest of the sequence. The appearance of two characters' faces in one shot also help add to this confusing and unnatural appearance.

Flashbacks: Obviously the flashbacks have to be distinguished from the rest of the action and this has been done by editing it in black and white to show it is in the characters memory and adds to the first person perspective of the sequence by appearing to get inside the mind of the character. We also superimposed a close-up of one of the gang members over one of these flashbacks which helped give a hint about the storyline and gave the enemy a  very threatening impression.

Titles: The graphics we used for the titles showed neo-noir and more classic horror elements. The neo noir elements are shown when 'Corruption Productions' first appear and are shown in a dark 'electro' style which makes it look very modern. A haunted house appears in the 'Black House Distributors' logo which gives it a more conventional horror appearcance but is effective all the same in eastablishing the mood and tone. The title of the film, 'Slow Burn' appears towards the end and is shown in a simple, very large roman style font centre-aligned.

Sound Treatment (written by Rhys)

The sequence we shot is fairly non-diegetic. We have focused on overlaying sound, instead of using the sound from the shoots themselves. We have done this to create a sense of motion in the shots, since the concept of the sequence is the chase. The idea which inspired our choice of music was inevitability, as we were trying to create an almost claustrophobic atmosphere, enabling our audience to truly share the protagonist’s experiences.

Editing (written by Rhys)

The editing for our sequence is crucial on several levels. Primarily, the entire rhythm and momentum of our project is based within the cuts we have used. We have several fast cuts in the edit, in order to maintain a sense of motion and urgency, crucial to the feel of the chase sequence. We have also used fades to black to mask small continuity errors, meaning parts of our edit were remedial. The final cut switches from a shot in a tunnel to a close-up of the protagonist in low-key red lighting. We decided to use this shot as we felt it presented the urgency of the scenario to the audience as immediately as possible. The shot was inspired by the film ‘Bronson’, in which several sudden close-ups are used to present the titular character as a stark contrast from his surroundings and others within his environment.

Cinematography (written by Rhys)

We are trying to make the cinematography interesting, and varied we are going to use a lot of straight cuts. And a couple of fade outs, we will be using this to show a passage of time, whether this is short or long will be shown in the next shot. We are going to use a straight cut to a different scene showing a deadpan shot to the camera, where the main protagonist does a short speech to the audience. This is the final shot in our sequence, but we do have plans to put titles in between shots, these are going to be either clean cuts used to show a transition between two shots. Or they will be fade cuts into a title sequence, these will be used to show a transition, these could also be used to slow down the sequence if we run into difficulties, these can be used to cover up continuity errors, we have used this to cover up some of a sloppy shot, this is an effective method of “damage control”.

SYNOPSIS (written by Rhys)

Nathan, a small-time drug dealer, is found by a couple of rival dealers. He has been seeing Amy, the girlfriend of Jamie, Nathan’s rival. Jamie and his friend catch Nathan in the park, and chase him down. As Jamie runs from his pursuers, he reflects on recent events, largely involving drugs and Amy. Jamie realises that Amy has betrayed him, and decides that he needs to confront her, in order to clarify the situation.



ANOTHER UPDATE...

We have now shot, captured and edited just about everything we need for the opening to our noir thriller titled 'Slow Burn' and after viewing it we are fairly satisfied. What we had planned was fairly ambitious when you consider the number of locations we had to use and this meant we fell behind shedule abit, we also had to do a couple of re-shoots which didn't help. However we enjoyed a fairly productive session on tuesday as we were able to do all the reshoots and the shots still to be completed, including the flashbacks (which will be mentioned in the treatment) in the first half and then in the second half were able to edit them in to what we already had saved. The final piece is not fully complete as yet as we need to distinguish the flashbacks quite effectively and dramatically from the rest of the sequence by editing them in black & white to add to the noir feel. As for the re-shoots we have eliminated the continuity error found in the shots just before the start of the chase. The weather unfortunately caused us some problems as the Sun which had been missing for the original shoots came out for the re-shoots. We have tried our best to cover this up as much as we can and without the continuity problem the scene does now look smoother and more polished than before.

In Tuesdays lesson we also managed to find a piece of music with a tempo and a tone suitable enough for the chase scene. We also managed to find a seperate track which provided a build-up to the chase which was especially useful as it allowed for a smooth transition between the slow pace and melancholy feel of the opening shots and music compared with the much urgent and dramatic feel of the chase itself.

Overall I feel our group have made alot of progress in the last week and with a brief 10-15 minute polish of the final piece at the beginning or just before next tuesdays lesson our project should be ready for viewing.

UPDATE...

We are now well underway with our main production entitled 'Slow Burn' but i'll admit, this is turning out to be rather harder than I thought it would be. We have our idea fully in place (the final synopsis, detailed treatment, storyboard etc will appear on this blog shortly), done most of our shoots and have a near complete rough edit. We have spotted some continuity problems along the way though that need to be addressed, but one of our group members has lost the shirt he wore in the original shoot so either we wait for his mate to hopefully give it back or in case we run out of time he wares something similar and we only shoot him from a distance, either way we'll manage it somehow. We also need to re-shoot a jump-down shot involving me and Aiden because we've spotted a continuity error although if we watch our continuity second time round this should be fairly straight forward. Finally we've encountered a problem with an artistic piece-to-camera shot for late in the scene which looks great visually but after capturing it we found some background interference which appears to have come from the machinery rather than the backgroun, basically it sounds like a badly tuned television on the wrong channel. The worst thing about this is we haven't got a clue how this happened as we were all being vigilant about any sound problems at the time. Unless we can find a way to get round this by maybe putting some subtle music over it we may have to re-shoot this aswell which is incredibly frustrating.

There are only a couple of shots we haven't done yet and these are flashbacks we have been advised to put in before the chase starts to give the audience a better idea of our plot and to give some more variety and creativity to the piece. In the sound department we have some music for the slow movement scenes but we are struggling a bit to find anything decent for the chase. If only we didn't have the copyright issues to deal with!

Nevertheless if we can overcome all the obsticles and get this all together there is no reason why we can't make this work.