Mood board:
Key conventions:
high school, lockers, romantic relationship, parodic acting
Examples films:
Ferris Bueller's day off, The breakfast club, Rushmore
Basic idea of the opening:
• The opening is set to a delightful and upbeat feel, perhaps with some implicit parody and satire.
• It maintains a high level of verisimilitude but with dramatic acting.
• There is a low level of deep meaning.
• The "genre" is primarily a buddy comedy, with some romantic elements as plot catalysts.
• The target audience consists of students to young adults, specifically those in the C1, E, D psychographic segmentation. Their psychographic profiles include aspirations, explorations, and struggles.
Main story:
Our protagonist is a 'problem' boy in high school who struggles to make friends and encounters 'romantic situations'. However, instead of succeeding in the aforementioned aspects, he meets another boy who has an absolutely opposite personality. He initially believes they would never come into contact but through a few absurd and puerile incidents, they begin to get to know each other and their lives are about to be completely changed.
• The first few minutes will focus on introducing the main character's current condition and describing how the main characters met.
Main plots:
1:
• J-Cut, the voice of the protagonist enters.
• The front face of our protagonist is shown in an eye-level shot, looking right at the camera (breaking the fourth wall).
• Non-diegetic narration comes in to introduce our protagonist.
• Is it unreliable narration - aiming to deceive the audience and create unexpected actions (Todorov).
2:
• The camera pans, now focusing on our narrator who is sitting at a distance and looking at the protagonist.
• It transforms into a Diegetic Narrative.
• There are shots of him messing around in the six-form area.
• Additionally, there are four or five shots of other students reacting to the actions of our protagonist, stereotyping him as an autistic and 'problem' boy. Symbolic codes such as untidy clothing, undone top button, no tie, and sneakers are used for this portrayal.
• Names of the (Main producers)
3:
Scene of the protagonist delivering a flower to his adoring girl, where females are passive and sexualized according to Liesbet van Zoonen.
The protagonist and the girl stand facing each other with two meters between them.
This scene is repeated with different girls and places (theatre, dining hall, on the street) in the same position every time, edited together by straight cuts. The sequence ends with a single shot of our protagonist sitting lonely on a bench (indicating he failed all times and is mentally isolated from others), or a graphic cut to a long shot of him standing by himself in the same composition as he walks from right to left (Barthes: failure). The weather may be raining (pathetic fallacy), low-key lighting, closed frame (entrapment). This atmosphere articulates and invokes desire, making the audience want him to have a better life according to Todrov.
• His constantly failing (equilibrium) is a character-driven motif for an immature high school student. (Steve Neale)
A victim hero-overcome weakness to complete auest (Propo)
4:
The shots change and focus on the girls (like an interview, asking about what they think about our protagonist), with aggressive filming using a hand-held camera to maintain a high level of realism.
We edit their words together to create a speech praising the main character, but it is evident to the viewer that it has been intentionally edited to achieve a fake and sarcastic effect.
Perhaps we can incorporate cross editing here to depict our protagonist's terrible behavior while the girls "praise" him in the soundtrack.
5:
Our antagonist enters the frame from a distant view, and the protagonist is attracted by their voice and turns his head. With rapid focus, the camera zooms in on our antagonist (who possesses contrasting characteristics, such as dramatic acting and radical personalities), immediately creating conflict that is about to completely change our protagonist.
The characters represent binary opposition (according to Levi-Strauss).
The life of our protagonist is interrupted, causing disequilibrium.
The representation of the antagonist goes against typical norms, as they are portrayed as the opposite of our protagonist (as described by Stuart Hall). • Could multi-perspective narratives be used to create a conversation between these two characters? (as suggested by Todorov)
Should we adopt a two-line narrative structure so that the contrast between them is direct and they meet at the end of the opening?
As soon as there's a blackout, we hear the sound of a school bell ringing. • Now enter the title of the film.
Story board
Feedback:
The concept of floating text is a simple special effect and it functions quite effectively. The depiction of the 'met' scene is pivotal and should be more meticulous in terms of its details.
Presentation video:
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