Veronica - Characterisation

Veronica is the only main character included in our film opening. We purposely did this so we could concentrate the audiences attention on her character and put them in her perspective, emitting a feeling of the isolation and abandonment. We introduce Veronica with sad non-diagetic music, which helps portray how she is feeling. Moreover we replicate this 'sad' portrayal in our mise en scene;  dark, eerie and urban scenery. We also added diagetic sirens to lead the viewer to believe she was in a dangerous place, this highlights her vulnerability. We then pivoted the camera around Veronica to give a close-up of her face, which shows her sighing. Due to this the audience may begin to sympathise with her. As well as this, during the close-up there's a blurring editing effect (done by Bruno) to reflect Veronica's confusion.

    

    (The dim, dark and eerie mise en scene)

(The blurring effect) 

Film Proposal - Land of the Free

Out of the members of our group, Bruno elected himself to write the film proposal, here it is....

Film Proposal

Veronica is a young teenage girl from a refugee family living in Chicago, USA. She been abandoned by her family at the age of 13, the state do nothing to help her and she spent alot of her life all alone and isolated. Unable to work or find a job as she was too young, Veronica turned to prostitution to survive until she was 15 until where one of her clients kidnapped her and brought her to his boss, Rodney. Rodney is a london born and bred crimelord who came to America to get away from people who wanted to escape from his enemys, and begin a new crime syndicate based on mass import and export of drugs and prostitution. Veronica was taken to Rodney and was offered protection and a place to stay in return for being pimped out by Rodney. Due to Veronicas desperation she accepted. Veronica spent two years under the thumb of Rodneys criminal organisation, having no one to turn to and nowhere to go she was virtually alone. Over the two years her anger and resentment grew towards Rodneys organisation for what they had done to her. She discovered where the money from rodneys criminal misdemeanours was kept before it was laundered. She had always managed to take a couple of notes when they werent fully focused on the duffle bag filled with money. Her emotions got the better of her and she struck out at the men watching the bag, grabbed it and made a run for it narrowly escaping by jumping out of a second story window. Thanks to this she essentially painted a bullseye on her head and subsequently Rodney sent his hired 'Goons' to go after her, kill her and get the money back. Veronica hidden her money in a place of great emotional sentiment to her as she knew it would be safer there than carrying it around with her. Veronica begins to spend her money on alcohol and drug fuelled night when she has a sad moment of clarity on a comedown from her Methodrone high at the end of the weekend. She realised how alone she was and how empty her life is. She realised she now had the means to make something of herself and do something valuable. She spent the remaining money she had on her on various bus tickets to get her to Los Angeles in California. In the early hours of the morning she made a dash to get the duffle bag of cash and to begin her new life. When in California she met a social worker who was the first person she opened upto for the first time in her life and who she begged for to help. She was directed to some people who ran a charity called 'Children of the night' which helped child prostitutes be taken away from that lifestyle and dominating pimps. After having been helped by the charity, Veronica realised that the money she had stolen would be better put to use donated to the charity. The Charity was so grateful for the donation they wrote an article about her on their website http://www.childrenofthenight.org/index.html, It was through this became getting famous on national television, telling her story to the millions who watched and being a source of inspiration by the fact that she overcame her hardship. One night when Veronica was coming back from a fundraising event to her apartment. She hear the click of a pistol being cocked directly behind her head, and she died that night.

Length of film:
We want to keep it to be a shortish film as we want to have a sense of constant intensity through out the film without having any scenes which are unnecessarily elongated, and also due to the fact that we are a small and independent production company we simply do not have the budget to afford the extra time of camera equipment rentals and actors wages.

Budget:
We are working with a relatively low budget of £300,000 due to the fact we are a small production company but also because the style of movie we are using is relatively inexpensive to make as it is done mainly with handheld cameras in urban environments to give the narrative a sense of gritty realism like you are right there with the main actor Veronica throughout her journey. We will apply to Film4 commissioning department to look for funding as they tend to try and support upcoming British directors and production companies.

Genre: 
The genre of our film is a gritty drama which encompasses characteristics and narrative conventions of other films and genres. The text of our film will fulfil some generic expectations of the genre, for example life or death situations, urban scenery, portrayal of a journey of a character development and the dramatic storyline that is supposed to move the audience emotionally. 

Target Audience:
We are aiming to target young adults, as there will be aspects of the youth subculture, but the narrative of the film makes it accessible to people of all ages and social classes.
Our film will most likely be rated and 18 by the British Board of Film Classification. This is due to the fact our film contains alot of senstive topic, themes and graphic scenes. Our film contains: Discriminatory language and behaviour, Very strong violence, frequent strong language, strong portrayal of sexual activity, discriminatory and offensive themes.


             Veronica (The Protagonist)
Main characters:

Veronica: A teenage girl who has had a tough upbringing which began with her family fleeing from Poland due to political tensions in her neighbourhood of 'Ursynow' between her father who was head of the local communist party, and the local Neo-Nazi political group who chronically vandalised her family home, they finally fled when her house was petrol bombed and her father was brutally beaten. After this her family fled to Miami in America as they had family living and working there. As Veronica entered her teenage years she began to experiment with drugs and alcohol, once her parents discovered she had developed an addiction to Methodrone, Her family spent their life savings sending her to a top treatment clinic in Chicago, which she escaped from in a desperate state to score some more Methadrone. She from then on severed connections with her family and spent the last few years of her life alone and fending for herself by living in abandoned houses and industrial estates, being left no other option to make money Veronica reluctantly turned to prostitution as her only means to fund her addiction.

iLL Manors was a huge inspiration in the construction of the character of Veronica, The story of a teenager getting an addiction to Hardcore drugs and becoming destitute is not an uncommon one, which we felt was well portrayed in iLL Manors as the character Michelle was portrayed as a stereotypical drugs addict in the form of most of her behaviour (eg, prostitution, petty burglary, etc) but also shows a different side to her which is unexpected and widens our views on her due to breaking the typical behavioural conventions of a drug addict. Below is a short clip of the actor who plays Michelle explaining the fundamental factors of her

 

 

 

 

Rodney (Crime Lord): The leader of the crime syndicate that has main control of the criminal underworld of Chicago. He was born and raised in the East-end of London where he became a notorious drug kingpin who was responsible for most of all the cocaine, cannabis and firearms in London. He is third generation Ghanaian and he started his criminal life when his uncle used to send him on little 'jobs' around his area (delivering pay as you go phones to his uncles contacts). As Rodney grew up he started taking bigger jobs and climbing up the criminal hierarchy until his uncle was kidnapped from his home by a rival gang and executed. Rodney then started taking over his uncles position when he reached twenty five and became the notorious man to fear by the time he was twenty eight. He expanded the business from drugs to firearms which he was arranging to be brought in from the west indies and Latin America, but while inspecting a shipment of automatic weapons from Peru a rival gang stormed his warehouse headquarters and killed most of his men and left Rodney with bullet wounds to the leg, arm and a punctured lung. The rival gang soon took over his business killing all Rodney's associates, and putting a price on his head. Being too dangerous to stay in London he fled to the United States and settled on Chicago as he had associates who were controlling the synthetic drugs trade in from the Canada to the north of the United States. He started recruiting within the Chicago crime syndicate and he and his new crew executed the Bosses much like the rival gang had back in London and took control of the operation. He started to branch out into pimping prostitutes to bring in more money and expand his drugs market. He has remained anonymous by  bribing Political figures within the Chicago sector of the government, police officials, DEA agents and executives who control the press. He is rarely seen by anyone except his second in command, he never directly handles anything in his business unless absolutely necessary to prevent what happened in London happening again. He has built a small army of hired thugs, who wear the black suit and with no tie as an inconspicuous uniform to make his presence know in the criminal underworld.

The film iLL Manors shares many of the same narrative characteristics and the character 'Kirby' has also had a great influence on the construction of the character Rodney. They share a lot of the same personality characteristics and desires.

Applying the concept of Genre to our film

After much consultation with my group, we decided we would make the genre of our film, 'Gritty Drama'. This entails a number of different topics such as isolation, crime, abandonment, violence and sexual abuse etc. As a result of this, our film will raise much empathy and concern among the audience due to Veronica's compelling story. Furthermore, we wanted realism to be a huge aspect of our film, as we wanted to depict some parts of our society accurately. This is so we could embed a social message within our film, which eludes to the fact that many people are forgotten and abandoned in our society.

In our film opening we tried to include much of the above (topics) as possible. The text includes a dim and urban setting with life and death situations and compelling characterisation. We also included a chase which would fulfil much of our criteria (abuse, violence, crime, isolation etc.) and raise nerves, tension and engagement in the audience. As I have already stated, the mise en scene is dark, eerie and dim scenery which will help to reflect Veronica's emotions and gage sympathy from the spectator. To include an aspect of crime in our piece, when editing we added in sirens (diagetic).

'Land of the Free' incorporates a handful of different genres including the obvious ones such as 'crime and gangster', 'drama' and 'horror'. However, in order to get a greater understanding of our own genre we must look at the less known genres. Our film does not have a happy ending; thus includes aspects of the genre 'a slice of life', a genre which depicts events of everyday life (hence the inclusion of the word 'life'). As a result of this, our film could be compared to the French film 'Cache' (Hidden) which has the most sudden and anti-climactic endings I have ever seen. Nevertheless it is a great film and could be seen as symbolic, as it's sudden and un-conventional ending, reflects the reality of life. Our film could also fall under the biographical genre, as it gives great detail of one persons life. The two above genres are reinforced by the fact we used a handheld camera, an everyday camera used by the masses (nothing special).

As you can see we have developed and integrated genres whilst keeping some level familiarity. This is too ensure we have met the audiences expectations yet included some originality also. We believe that our film is a modern adaption and incorporation of a handful of genres.

First title sequence draft - Feedback

Bruno, Ally and myself had to show the class the first draft of our film, this was their feedback...


- Font? Consider changing to a different iMovie font, or making your own in Photoshop - Positioning of titles- consider alternating between top and bottom corners? Try it and see, as opening might benefit from titles being a little more dynamic. Which corner could be decided on image framing, and where the best 'spaces' for titles are. - Are titles in right order? Convention? Check other openings on Art of the Title to be sure. - Running works in time with the music.- Music atmospheric, complementing moving image - adding to mood of desperation, despair, and slightly dreamlike/out of time/ inner turmoil feel to film (that reflects your central character's state of mind)- Comedy where not intended? - chase doesn't work so we laugh.... Needs variety of shots (facial close ups, side angle of running etc) to be effective and conventional. Close ups of the men's faces looking menacing? Also need more meaning here, to give us a clue to who these men are (they look a little like young undercover policemen or A level students dressed up?! They do not look as menacing as you intend unfortunately- consider reshooting with older actors, and with close ups, side angle shots, over the shoulder shots from the girl's perspective. If we canbe made to believe in them as a serious threat, we will buy in to her need to escape, but if they don't feel threatening enough, we won't care enough or believe in the scenario. I think it is crucial ou have another look at this part and plan a new shoot.- Welcome to hell- Cut more to the beat of the music throughout the opening- Sequence in warehouse needs more to grip us in terms of the story- flashbacks, voice overs that let us into her state of mind, and offer us clues (enigma codes) as to why she is frightened, running scared, losing her grip on reality. - Are you sure you don't want two sound layers during the VoiceOver part? (For example, foley sound effects of heavy door closing, perhaps giving the impression that someone has entered the warehouse, or her mind as she drifts into restless sleep- you could leave this ambiguous for the audience, with both meanings remaining possibilities. The warehouse section basically needs to draw us into her world further, but at the moment we learn very little about her there, and this is a problem in terms of audience attention. - Camera work suits genre gritty realism- Blurs when she's in the warehouse- gives a sense of her perspective- blury, confusing, unsettled, etc- Cutting to the sound-
- Shot of her running when you are shooting her - variety of shots needed for that to have proper impact, audience to feel - her fear, their menace.- Darkness, no bright light, reflects her dark state of mind- Font to reflect something about her- handwritten, text style font? Or design your own? - Welcome to hell, works well to have long shot and then close up alongside titles- Ellipsis could be used in warehouse sequence- to reflect her perspective, like she hasn't realised it's real yet, bad dream,etc.- Montage of head shots of that person giving that message

Day 2 - Mise en scene (costumes)

In our chase scene, we felt it would be very effective if we had two men chasing Veronica, as in this case it would make Veronica the underdog,  meaning the audience would side with and support her, thus absorbing and the viewer into our film. we dressed the two men chasing Veronica in suits. This was to make them look professional. We took inspiration from 'Men in Black' as the suits help emphasise their superiority. We thought that suits would loose the men's sense of individuality thus making them seem robotic and emotionless (fairly appropriate considering their task is to chase/capture someone). Moreover, it makes them seem more professional and important, which we thought would raise fear among the audience as they would realise the seriousness and power of the men. The audience would therefore feel pity and concern for Veronica.

Day 2 - What we used to film it? (flashback scene)

We thought it would be good to adopt the dolly shot for our flashback/chase scene to make the scene as smooth looking as possible; we did not want it to look like we used a handheld camera. Furthermore, we felt that a handheld camera following the chase would not produce a clear enough shot. As we had limited resources, we had to revert to unorthodox methods in order to achieve our goal of producing a dolly shot style. So, we put the cameraman (myself) into a trolley holding the tripod (as seen in the photo) and had people push it on either side whilst I uncomfortably filmed the chase. All in all the process of filming this scene was a lot harder than we had anticipated. Considering the circumstances, I believe we were successful in achieving the desired shot. Our main aim was for a visually smooth outcome, and for all the characters to be seen in the shot - we achieved this.