Film Treatment: High School Loser

Overview

After one of the high school students goes missing, the last four people to talk to him are taken away by the police to try and figure out what happened to him. When they panic and escape everyone forgets about them, but the search for Edwardo, still continues...

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Detailed treatment

Hidden in what looks like a forest, we can see a small tent being flung from side to side by the strong force of the wind. We can also see a light flickering from inside. We then move inside the tent and see a young boy sat all alone writing in a pink fluffy style diary. A voice over then starts and introduces himself as the main character Edwardo, us that he has run away. As he introduces himself, a wet pair of pants which are hung up next to his head keep hitting him in the face.

We cut to the morning of that day and see him walking alone to school, in the back of the shot we can see two girls walking behind him pointing and laughing. the voice over continues and explains to us that he has a dark secret from his past which has haunted him since he was five. As he continues to walk down the street, other students beginning to point at him; as he walks up the school steps we can see that he has a sign on his back which reads ‘loser.’

The scene cuts and it is now lunch time we can see Edwardo standing in front of his locker looking for someone, a big group of people walk past and start mocking him for his appearance, one of girls who was stood in the group walk over and hit the boy who was saying "your such a loser!" The rest of the group walks away but she stays and comforts Edwardo, the voice over starts again and he introduces her as Hannah the girl he has had a crush on ever since she punched a fat girl in the face who was beating him up in 4^th grade. After he has embarrassed himself in front of her, his best friend walks over to them. The voice over again introduces him as Alfred who moved over from England two months ago and knows nothing about his secret, Hannah leaves and Alfred starts to ask Edwardo why everyone is laughing at him, Edwardo then punches the wall and shouts at him.

He runs down the corridor but falls head first into the most popular girl in school, the voice over introduces her as Candy and that he and everyone else in the school is in love with her. They both get up when her boyfriend (Jason, the football team captain) comes over and pushes him into a wall threatening to beat him up, just before he gets hit the head teacher walks past pulling Jason off Edwardo by the ear. The voice over tells us that the head teacher is his mum, and she then asks him "are you ok my little prince?" he tells her he is ok, and as his mum walks away we can hear Candy shouting "oh my god I cant believe you let your mum take Jason away! You are such a loser Edwardo!" We can also hear everyone around him shouting things like "My little prince!"

We then cut to a close up of him running away from school, the voice over says "I had to make the laughing stop, I just couldn't take it anymore!" he then jumps into a bush just round the corner from the school, he rolls over and talks to himself but from a distance it looks like her is talking to a worm which is crawling past him whilst he starts to talk, for Hannah and a group of her friends who are there smoking. Hannah walks over to him and asks what is he doing? He tells her and she convinces him to stay at least until the end of the day, they hear the bell and walk off to class together.

This is then cut back to the scene from the opening, we can see him talking to a stuffed bear which he is holding in his arms, from nowhere we can hear an old lady's voice saying "Eddie, its time for tea!" we cut to see the outside of his tent, and we can see a small house with all its lights on and a old women standing on what looks like the back porch. The tent then shakes as Edwardo shouts "I'm busy grandma!"

We then cut to early the next morning, and see a school room including the last 4 people (Jason, Candy, Alfred and Hannah) to talk to Edwardo, all sitting waiting for class to start; in every shot taken we can see the same empty chair with loser written across the back of the chair. The head teacher walks into the room crying with a police officer at her side, under the police officers arm is an over head projector. He officer asks the class if they have seen Edwardo, and flicks a picture of him up onto the screen, he starts to question the last four people to see Edwardo, and clicks the projector onto the next image and we see him standing in a filed in a bikini.

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We then cut the police officer taking the four students into a small classroom and telling them to figure out what happened to Edwardo, or else! They are all confused and start to panic because they have no idea where he has gone. The police officer returns with a water pistol, Jason shouts “where’s your mankini?” get ya tits out officer!” from the mention of the word ‘mankini’ the officer does a shoulder/neck nervous twitch and points the pistol at Jason. Jason shouts “mankini” again and the officer does the twitch again, everyone in the room starts shouting mankini at him and he runs out of the room screaming.

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After 5minutes of sitting in silence, they all decide to escape and hide until this blows over. They garb their backpacks and put on their own style of camouflage example: Candy’s is all pink, with diamonds on it. They put two black lines on each cheek and put on a hat which has written on it ‘hit squad.’ We then see them climbing out of the window and jumping around the car park trying to get away before anyone sees them. At the school gate they turn round to see if anyone had noticed them leaving, and from the room where they were we can see the police officer and the head teacher both looking confused and angry. We then cut to a black screen, with the writing ‘two days later’

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The next scene opens on a picture of Edwardo, with written underneath it ‘have you seen this boy?’ we then hear doors being opened and people gasping and staring at where the light is coming from. Stood in front of double opened doors with a bright light behind the person is Edwardo, he now has short hair and is wearing normal clothes. His mum runs over to him with the police officer by her side shouting ‘oh my little prince!” the officer and his mum both start crying and everyone around the cheers and claps. Edwardo walks past his mum into the middle of the corridor and shouts “my whole life I have been the laugh of the town, and over the past 3 days I have become a man and moved passed the past I hope you all can do the same!” Everyone gathers round them and starts to cheer and clap him.

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We then cut to see the other four characters crawling across the ground, in a bush near a restaurant, they are covered in dirt and leaves and all fighting with each other. They over hear two students from their talking about an amazing party, which is happening tonight at Edwardo’s house. They miss hear the conversation and think that they have found Edwardo’s dead body and this party is his funeral. Hannah starts to cry and confesses her love for him, she convinces them to go and pay their respects, so they walk to Candy’s house to get cleaned up.

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We cut to Edwardo talking to a group of girls trying to impress them by telling how brave he has been over the past 3 days. Everything goes quite when Alfred, Jason, Candy and Hannah walk into the room, Edwardo walks up to them and thanks them for being the ones who made him change into a better man, Hannah tells Edwardo how she feels about him and so does he, they kiss and everyone cheers them on. After that they all start to party the night away, and we see everyone having a great time. the scene ends on a shot of Edwardo and Hannah kissing and the voice over starts again and sums up everything good about the party, well what he remembers. We then flash foreword 10 years and see what happened to all the characters after they had finished high school, whilst the end credits go up.

Strombreaker, Women in Black and Mean Girls

As well as analysing a film of our chosen genre, we also watched other films with different types of genre to gain a better idea of how we could open our film. I watched Strombreaker, Women in Black and Mean Girls and now i am going to comapre each opening to find out which will suite our film the best.

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The opening of Strombreaker, does not give the audience any indication of what genre the film is. Their is a fade from black into the opening scene, this is an enigma code and of this it draws in the audience because they want to know what is happening. the titles are then incorporated into the film. They then use another enigma code to establish the setting and character, the scene opens with a shot of a lot of teenagers sat down. it takes a couple of minutes until the action really kicks in and we get all the normal conventions for the action genre.

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However, when we watch Women in Black, we get a clear idea of what genre the film is. The film opens immediately with the titles, which is accompanied by non-diegetic music with mysterious tone being played in the background. The titles are written in an off-white colour on a black background, we can also see a gray mist/ cloud effect moving across the screen, which draws in the audience because it creates an intense feeling of mystery. The font used on the titles, is the traditional horror writing, they have chunks missing out of them at some places bigger chunks then others, this makes the audience instantly identify that this is a thriller movie. Compared with Strombreaker the opening of Women in Black seems to move faster, since we have to wait to see what the genre is in Strombreaker, with Women in Black getting straight to the point it makes the audience feel more part of the film.

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Mean Girls, is very similar to Women In Black, it opens with the titles, they are very simplistic and written in different colours, this is similar to what is used in the Women in Black, however with this movie we are not entirely sure what the genre of the film is. But the bright colours used on them connotes youth so this does give the audience a hint to what the genre is. They then use an enigma to introduce the main character this is similar to Strombreaker, as the enigma code draws the audience in because they want to know what is going to happen to Cady when she goes to school.

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I think that for our film we will be using a mixture of each opening, we want to incorporate an enigma code to draw the audience in and also to introduce the characters and setting in the normal teen comedy way.

Mean Girls

As part of my research i watched the opening of a teen comedy film, to see how it will influence my production. I decided to watch Mean Girls this is what i found out:

The film begins with the titles, they are very simple, used on a black background and are written in bold and bright different colours, this symbolises youth and gives us a hint that this film is a teen comedy. The titles are spread across the screen highlighting the social separation between the school students. when the titles comes up they are in the centre of the screen showing that they are the centre of the social system, everyone wants to be one of them. the letters used are all capitalised, with 'Mean' written in white and is bold compared with 'Girls' which is written skinny and in pink, this is used because most of the girls in this film want to be skinny. pink is used because it is a stereotypical girly colour.

Before the camera shows us that the main character is a 16 year old girl, the representation of Cady, is that she is a young child on her way to her first day of school. This is used for comic effect and is the first time that we know we are watching a teen comedy. When she gets to school the representation of her changes, she is know seen as the shy new girl, compared with the other students she is seen as upper class. This is because she was home schooled and has spent most of her life in Africa. The other school students are represented as middle class, normal public school students.

The film uses the normal teen comedy conventions, they help convey the situations and emotions of the characters in the school. the high school is used to show us the setting is iconic of this genre, it is used because this is where most teenagers are the majority of their time. I will be using this in my production because it is iconic and the audience will expect to see it set in a school. They also show us the different social groups that the school is divided into: 'the loser' 'the jocks' etc... These are used to show how school is very cliche, this has influenced our film because these stereotypes are vital for our story. In addition, the main character is also involved in an embarrassment scene (pouring coffee over the teacher,) these are used a lot in this genre for comic effect. We will be doing the same, they are always a funny way to introduce a character to the school or class. Finally, there is also the use of iconic props: football, books, desks, school bus, blackboards as well as these we also hear the diegetic sound of the school bell. These are the traditional props and sounds you would hear in this genre of films, they have given us an idea of the things to use in our production.

The audience of this film and many other of this genre are teenagers. Male and female teenage audiences can watch it, because they can relate at least one of the characters in the film. Boys will watch the movie because of the hot girls who star in it, and girls will watch because the story is more focused on them and they will be able to relate because they would be able to see people form their school in the role of different characters. we can tell that they are the target audience because of the setting which is used in the opening of the movie, the High School, because it is familiar to the audience. the target audience for our movie is also the teen market, we think by using the setting of the high school, and some of the same character types from mean girls we will also be able to make an excellent movie.

Genre Research

Today, we researched our chosen genre (teen comedy) to find out the Narratives, Settings, Stock characters, Iconography, Audience, Films/Box Office Earnings and Editing Techniques. This is what we found:
The Narratives:
Losing virginity before leaving high school/ just having sex
Finding a date to the prom
Road trips

The Settings:
High school
Parents house
Pub/ Clubs
Motorway stations
Cars

The Stock Characters:
Geeky annoying one/ annoying blond popular character
Jock/ Cheerleader
Chav / Goth/ Emo
Loner/ loser

Iconography:
The school bell
Booze
Mobile phones
Cars
Sex
Computers/ TV / video games

Films/ Box Office Earnings:
American Pie: $102,561,004
Superbad: $121,463,226
Juno: $143,495,265
Mean Girls: $86,058,055

Audience:
teenage boys and girls
young adults

Editing Techniques:
Fade
180°c rule
Match on action
Slow Motion when a hot girl is walking up to a boy/ when something goes wrong with the booze etc.

The research we found out today will influence our film because it shows us what kind of things we need to base our film on, and it also gave us an idea of just how popular teen comedies are with audiences today.