Genre and Film Idea

Below is information our film, story-line and genre. We get to this stage by researching films with similar films and genres to ours. This post was made in part to present a proposal to teachers and classmates to get feedback on our work so far. 

Genre

Our film will be a teenage drama and a black comedy. Originally it was planned to be just a teenage drama, but after research we found a very limited number of films that were sole dramas and without an aspect of comedy. There were plenty that were comedies and black comedies; and we decided that it would be a good idea to do this as it would widen our audience, and judging by film history, was more likely to be successful. We chose the black comedy genre as opposed to pure comedy because it worked better to our groups strengths' as well as with our planned opening. 

The among the dramas we researched were Thirteen, The Virgin Suicides and American Beauty. The Virgin Suicides had elements of romance and American Beauty those of comedy. We also looked at Skins, as although it is a TV drama, it has lots of relevance to our proposal. All of these dramas helped us learn more and make decisions about characterisation, representation, narrative and realism. 

A black comedy that particularly influenced us was Heathers. We felt its comedy was very effective and something that we could aim to achieve. The characters have similar ages to ours, and we thought the characterisation was unique and complex; we also do not want two-dimensional characters. Other black comedies that we researched included Girl, Interrupted and Donnie Darko - which we thought had a particularly interesting opening. 

We looked at Project X because it has a party scene similar to what we envisage for our opening. This helped us decide on the scale of the party and the representations of teenagers, ethnicity and drugs that we would put forward. 

Film Opening
The opening begins with a series long of POV shots, from the POV of the girl that we will later reveal to be our protagonist, Mandy. It will be set in an underground room, and the lighting will be low key. The editing and nature of the shots will connote that she is under the influence of drugs; the shots will be laggy, and movement will be unnatural. This will set the scene of the party; it will be clear that the teenagers are on drugs and introduce the culture of collective drug-taking. The teenagers will however be enjoying themselves and having a good time, and it will be quite light-hearted (in comparison to some of our inspirations; we will not directly show drug consumption. 

We will use similar effects to portray the effect of drugs as used here in this still taken from Skins. 

Suddenly the tone will completely change; shots will be short and cut together quickly, with close ups of everyone rushing confusedly and a loud commotion. The light will become high key (as if someone has turned on the lights) creating a juxtaposition between the previous style. As this continues it will become clear to the audience that someone has overdosed. We will then show close-ups of the overdosed teenager: a frothing mouth, dilated pupils and uncontrollable jaw movements. 
The shots will start to become wider as we see a girl (now revealed to be our protagonist  slowly leaving the room, paying absolutely no attention to what is going on around her. She will not be entirely visible because she will be walking through the darkness of the shadows.   As she exits the cellar she will finally be in the light, and the scene will end with a shot of the girl smiling eerily directly at the camera, creating enigma and unanswered questions in the audiences' minds.