PLANNING: Treatment

 Treatment for the film Suspect

Suspect starts off with a Detective receiving an envelope from his assistant followed by the assistant telling the Detective that someone is on the line regarding what’s inside this envelope. The detective picks up the phone and looks concerned when he hears that a girl called Lottie Wilson had died. This cuts to a flashback of the detective leaning over a man’s hospital bed saying “As long as I’m alive, nothing will happen to Lottie”. There is then a cut back to the detective looking sad, determined and angry. It's as if at the moment he heard what was said on the phone, he was determined to put the man behind this, in prison or worse.

The next scene shows Alan Cook fishing by a riverside, talking to an imaginary person next to him, showing his insanity, whilst laughing to himself about how he thought he caught a fish but it was actually an orange peel. 

As he is fishing, Herbert Crafts is walking by and bumps into him. Alan Cook gets angered by this and shouts “watch yourself lad”. Herbert retorts under his breath with “calm down you prat”. He is on the phone to a colleague, evidently running late, asking if a meeting can be delayed for his purpose. While he is walking in a hurry, he passes by a house with blaring music coming from the top window and says “Jesus” in a disgusted manner. 

The next scene goes from the street where Herbert was walking to where Kieran Tucker is waking up with a can of beer and possibly a cigarette in his hand. 

After this, there is a hard cut back to The Detective, where he picks up the phone and says that he will take the case. After this, he opens the envelope in front of him, showing the three men’s profiles. 

Semiotics

 

Semiotics

Barthes' semiotic theory broke down the process of reading signs and focused on their interpretation by different cultures or societies. According to him, signs were a signifier, physical form of the sign as we perceive it, and the interpreted. 

A sign is a symbol, colour, camera angle. Something a viewer can infer meaning from. Two types of meaning; denotation and connotation. Denotation is the literal meaning of the sign, connotation is the meaning the sign could be interpreted as. For example, the Apple logo could be denoted as a literal white Apple with a bite taken out of the right hand side of it, whereas, looking at it from a connotation point of view, the Apple logo could mean mass consumerism, the takeover of the world by large Corporations. Connotations depend on culture, opinion and background of a person, as different people may look at different signs, with different perspectives. For example, some may see Apple as sweat shops, unfair labour depending on those listed factors. 

In film language, there are 4 signs that are encoded. This is Mise-En-Scene, sound, camera work and editing. 

I watched Tales of Terror from Tokyo and found out how much someone can understand from signs in the text and how different people interpret the video. For example, there was a large feeling of terror because of how innocent the child is, the claustrophobia of the room, the cold colour; all part of the Mise-En-Scene of the film. With the sound, there is this eerie chiming noise, followed by dead silence. This contrast in sound is a perfect example of how a jump from noise to silence is effective in creating tension. The camera work always shows where the girl is, creating this safe feeling, as the viewer can see where the girl is at all times. On the contrary the viewer is not given a wide angle view, creating this feeling that the culprit could be anywhere near the girl, creating and holding tension. 

                                                               The Rhetoric of the Image

Distribution notes

Slide 1 - research into a distribution campaign by a Hollywood major - https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blog/post/edit/8146833456752376871/630321656159173604

Slide 2 - How would an independent film company - Social media; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, creating a sub Reddit for the film to create a community-like discussion forum, creating hype for the movie.

Slide 3 - Posters; put the poster onto the slide and give a short description

Slide 4 - film website; give example and description - Bait has website

Slide 5 - Sorry We Missed You film website - show screenshots of features

Slide 5 - film festivals; Cannes and other ones where small producers can showcase their films on a wide scale, appealing to the hip, indie market

Slide 6 - FDA presentation Mark Batey; have to identify what genre my film is and what the USP is. Could do individual slides in what, why and when on the FDA mark batey website

- Considerations from the video made by Entertainment One UK, Kezia Williams who is theatrical distribution:

Hooks, genre, characters, USP: Whats different about my film that gives it a sense of uniqueness.

Need to include target audience

Look at films similar to the one I am making - draw differences, similarities, USP's etc