LOCATION PICTURES

CHARACTER PROFILING

This is a mid shot of my actor Ibrahim, a mid shot is taken when a conversation is shot between two people showing there body movement and in my film a mid shot will be required as a want to show my characters body language during the time when he is getting irritated by the events that are happening.

This is a long shot that describes the entire look of my actor. long shots are mostly used whens you have to show the surrounding and show the source from where the character established.

close ups are used when facial expressions are shown which describe what the character is feeling at that particular moment. They are taken to record the reaction of the character mostly emotional feelings are shown where the character either shows its sorrow or happiness or fear.

This is an over the shoulder shot which goes along with point of view shots to show that the character is looking at an object.

TREATMENT

The working title: WHO I AM!

“Having no clue of where his life is heading, Arham a young adventurous boy being trapped in shrine for 6 long endless years is taking a step towards a new life with the help his loving yet dominating mother – but will it be that easy”

Arham is a boy who recently turned eighteen and is mentally ill. He has been kept under house arrest for the past 6 years of his life as his treatment program. However, now the doctors have suggested that he should go out and explore the world and slowly try to build a new life for himself. His mother out of excitement takes him along with her for grocery shopping to a highly crowded place in Karachi that is the empress market not realizing his mental state. The incidents that will take place over there will leave an important mark on Arham and will come as a challenge in the process of rejuvenating himself. It will teach him about the harsh world and its reality.

Arham is the protagonist of the film and his mom Saira is the supporting actor. The story is set in modern times but due to a financial constraint Saira still goes to empress market to shop for groceries as fruits and vegetables and other house hold items are available at a cheaper price there. The film will start with the voice of a woman singing a lullaby with a black background and then the first scene begins with the image of an old house.

It will start with a voice over that would be Arham telling his story. Then with an establishing shot I would show a house that Arham will describe as it is his house. The description of the house is divided into two phases, one 6 years back and the other would be the current feelings Arham has towards the house. In the first phase he will describe it as a place where happiness was and that it was his personal peaceful place. The house would be very ancient as they have been living in the same house for years and his mom does not have enough money to renovate the old 250 yards house. It will be covered with a lot of big over grown trees that have leaves which have dried out as no one takes care of them. The car porch will be filled with such dried leaves scattered here and there because Saira does not have a maid and is the only one that takes care of the house as well as her son. The wide shot of the house would zoom out and then slowly fade out with the same lullaby playing in the background.

No artificial lighting will be used as it will be shot in day light with the natural shadows coming from trees and crows. During the entire process when Arham is speaking there will be two diegetic sounds apart from his voice, one would be the screaming of crows and the other would be the voice of the movement of leaves. However this will not be shown but just heard. The crows and the dried leaves in this scene would symbolize how devastated the house and the people living inside are. 

The next scene would jump cut and start again with the voice over along with a pan movement. It will show empress market from left to right and will stop at the front gate where Arham and Saira will be standing. Saira will be shown busy fighting and negotiating with the vegetable man and Arham on the other hand would start feeling suffocated in the heavily crowded market. The constant argument his mom is having with the seller will irritate him and he would move away from his mom trying to explore the place himself. There will be an eye line match to where ever he would look as all this would be new to him just like it is for an outsider who has never seen such a scenario.  Confused and agitated from the horrifying view Arham will get lost and lose track of where his mother was. Then start the series of events that will be a turning point for his reaction.  

The scenes would jump cut from one to another and again to Arham, the events will start with the fisher man who is a fat man with extremely dirty clothes eating a pan and brutally chopping fish and peeling off its skin. This entire scene will be shown with an extreme close up of the fisherman’s knife and the fish he is cutting. 

The next shot would be of a clothes dyer who would be dying a duppatta in red color and then drying it, with two men holding it and swinging it hard making a thudding noise which will startle Arham. This will further aggravate the fear in Arham and he would panic and start running. Every time he would look to his left or right something would frighten him. He will have an encounter with the old women, who would be begging for some money despite his ignorance she will still follow him until she finally losses track of him. Her dark color and thick wrinkles that make her look like a witch will make him run faster not realizing in which position he is running.

And then finally Arham will stop running, still heavily panting, he would glance here and there but will fail to recognize the overcrowded ancient building. His feeling would be as if the whole world collapsed on him and he is fighting with all his will to stand straight.

The sun shining with all its power like it was sipping in all the energy from people, making them dizzy and irritated by the heat, will finally get to Arham. He will get pushed and squeezed by the anonymous people who instead of helping him will walk past by minding their own business.  And then suddenly he will faint as his brain could not register these incidents so quickly and failed to help him.

This will be a low shot just showing Arham’s face expression in relation to the shining sun. Voices in the background will be of the crowd talking and car horns. And the scene will end as a mid shot showing Arham fallen on the floor and a crowd of people gathering around. Then comes the title of the film.

Both the characters will be in ordinary clothes, Saira in a normal lawn shalwar kameez and Arham in a thin t-shirt with a pair of jeans.  Along with this he would have messy hair which hasn’t been cut properly neither have been brushed for a long time. 

The day to day chores of the people who have set up their businesses in Empress Market will be enlarged and shown with the prospect of a mentally ill child.

FILM SYNOPSIS

Synopsis
The story is about a boy named Arham who is mentally ill since the past 6 years. It starts with a scene where Arham steps out of his house and into a market for the first time after 6 years and faints after seeing the things happening around him. Then the scene will shift to a flashback in which the story will be told why Arham turned this way. Arham has a happy family but one day he goes to the northern areas of karachi the gets kidnapped by some people who misunderstood them as under cover terrorists. They torture both Arham and his dad, and with all this torture Arhams dad dies and Arham is left helpless on snow. Recognized by some people they take Arham to his mother and from since then Arham has locked himself in his house and does not gets pass his past. After 6 years he finally recovers and continues to live a happy life with his mother.

FILM CONCEPT

MEDIA STUDIES As LEVEL

Film pre production stage:

Duration: 3 to 5 minutes

CONCEPT: The story revolves around a boy who has been mentally ill since the past 6 years. His mom realizes that he has recovered from the illness so one day she takes him to buy their daily groceries in a market. The boy reacts abruptly towards the happening events as he does not register it properly in his mind and faints.

Working title: BOXED IN

Suggestions:

1. Let me out

2. If only things went my way

REFERENCE FILMS

This is the genre analysis of the film references I chose for my film. My film is based on a child who steps out of his house after 6 years and was kept inside due to his mental sickness. Now after 6 years the doctors want him to step out of the house as his recovery program and the movie revolves around the incidents that take place in empress market. It is an Art movie, which is its genre and my sub-genre is thriller. The films I chose as a reference to my film are:

·        Ramchand Pakistani 

·       Run Lola Run

·       Dhobi Ghat

RAMCHAND PAKISTANI:

Ramchand Pakistani is a film by Mehreen Jabbar which was released in October 2008. Ramchand Pakistani is a film that tells you the story of a boy who mistakenly crosses the border between Pakistan and India. The film starts with the focus on the 8 year old boy Ramchand and the entire place is deserted, in drought which shows it’s a desert. It shows that Ramchand has skipped school and is hiding from his father who is the teacher at their school. We can tell that Ramchand is the protagonist as he is given the most screen space and the director wants us to know about his character, which is that he is like any other young boy who does not want to study and is rebellious. However my film is also based on a young kid who’s childhood is spent locked up in his house. This movie is set in the times when there was no proper borderline dividing Pakistan and India. It is shot in Tharparker near the border. Apart from Ramchand his father and mother are the important characters of the film as later it shows the love of a father for hiss kid as he crosses the border for his son and the desperation of Ramchands mother to get them both back.  The women wear typical rajistani clothes with white bangles and houses are made of clay where as the men where dhoti shalwar which is a very stereotype look for a villager. The style of the film is very unique as the director is trying to give a message and showing the feeling of the protagonist in a very natural way. The inspiration I got from the beginning is the boy’s behavior, I would like to put some of his characteristics in my character such as being rebellious. In the start there is someone who is narrating this story and even in the end there is narration to what happens to Ramchand and his family but it is not shown. The narration carries on for the rest of the film from the beginning to end, the narration in the beginning is giving a background of the incidents that will take place and the narration at the end shows what happened in the future. This can be a form to make people sit through the end credits. The theme of the film is eastern as a lot of traditional and cultural activities are shown and the characters speak in a specific accent like villagers do. The iconography of the film is the re occurring of jail as the protagonist is shown behind the bars. They have used yellow filters in day and night because at day the sun is shining at its peak as it is a desert and at night they use candles as a source of light, so the lighting shows a very sepia effect.

The reason why I chose Ramchand Pakistani as my reference film is because of the boy Ramchand. I would want my character to be as adventurous and determined as Ramchand is.

RUN LOLA RUN:

Run lola run is a film by Tom Tyker and it was released in June 1999. This is a german film based on a girl who is the protagonist and sit starts with the girl getting a call from her boyfriend who has lost 100,000 DM of a gangster he works for and he has to return that money to the gangster in 2o minutes. Lola has to raise this amount of money and meet Manny (her boyfriend) otherwise he will rob a super market. The entire movie revolves around lola run in the city desperately searching for ways to get this amount of money which her boyfriend so carelessly lost. This is the exposition of the movie and its theme is suppression from gangsters and the love Lola has for her boyfriend Mani. I chose this film because of its start credits. In the beginning after the names of the production house and the institutes they show pictures of the actors in the film with their fiction and real names. As the genre of the film is crime and thriller these pictures are taken just the way police takes pictures of their criminals with a board in the criminals hand which has their name on it. I really like this concept and one more creative thing they did in the beginning is they have shown the names of the crew members threw animation. The motif of the film is Lola running which is divided into 3 phases and she is shown as a brave women who would do anything for her love. The film is set in Germany and you can see that by the narrow roads and the by the architecture of the buildings. The time of the film is in present that is 1999, the style however is not so usual as crime films have instead of weapons the film goes high paced whenever Lola goes on a run. It is based on Lola who is running in a cropped shirt and a pair of jeans in the entire movie. Gangster movies usually show beautiful women with nice and expensive clothes who are there to accompany the men where as in this movie they have shown women empowerment and the extent to which a woman can go for her loved ones.

The reason why I chose this film is because crime movies usually have weapons involved and this film is a crime movie but has no weapons involved yet it keeps you on the edge due to it being so high paced.

DHOBI GHAT:

Dhobi Ghat is an Indian art movie made by Kiran Rao, it was released in January 2011. This movie is basically a diary of the lives of four people, a washer-man who wants to become an actor, a banker who changes his profession to photographer, a newly married immigrant and a painter looking for inspiration. The movie starts with a song which is later revealed that it is played in a taxi. The camera is shaking the entire time telling you that someone is making a video from there camera capturing Mumbai and the usual happenings in the morning. Like when the taxi stops on a signal a lot children come running towards it to beg and when they see this person, who we cannot see, making a video they get excited and start posing like any other child would do. We know that this character is important as the director is keeping us in suspense by not showing us its face yet we know that it’s a girl the instant we hear her talk and when we hear the kids say “didi” which is an Indian word for sister. I chose this movie because the director has made this film keeping all the basic art movie elements in mind and has not amended the codes and conventions of this genre. The iconography in the movie is a background music that is very repetitive it comes whenever the characters are either in their most inspirational mode or are sad. The genre of the movie is art and drama and the characters of the movie are of the working class people who are struggling and ambitious. The style of the movie is modern yet shows the culture of India. The lighting is very natural and the events of the movie occur in a more subtle way compared to the other 2 films I took as a reference. In the end credits the names of the cast are shown in fade in and fade out style and then the names of the rest of the cast and crew come in the usual ascending form with a black background.

There is no dramatic element in this film as every event descends as if someone is writing a diary of their entire day. It shows the middle class people and how they interact with each other and what difficulties they face in their life.

The films that I have chosen for analysis are very different from each other yet they represent one thing that is a message. Which is also the case in my film, I would want the audience to get the message I am trying to convey in a way in which they can relate it to their lives. In the beginning when I show the Empress market I would want my film to have the same high pace and enigma as Run Lola Run has however still keeping it simple and easy to be understood by people.

The incidents that will take place for example the dyer dyeing clothes, I would like the give the look of the place where the washer-man washes clothes and the place heavily crowded with all types of people. These would be the elements that would scare my character as he has come out of his house after so long and the first things he gets to see is this would probably freak him out and as he is not properly stable and cannot register the incidents very quickly in his mind he will collapse.

SURVEY