Idea 4 - Jake Owen

Treatment

For this project I would like to take my audience on the greatest journey we, as humans, can experience; the journey of life. We would portray childbirth through to death, and all of the key experiences that would happen along the way. For instance, first day at school, first date or any other memorable scenarios that occur throughout life. This will be shot entirely in the first-person to get the film more in touch with the human experience. In terms of audio we would record sound sound that reflects the various emotions that occur throughout our lifetime; this would be mixed with other sounds of life such as babies crying, crowds of people, nature etc.

The film would begin with the miracle of childbirth; a first person view of a baby being born. In the background would be various doctors and nurses, taking the baby and wrapping it up. This would be accompanied by screams of agony and baby cries, with doctors encouragment in the background. We would then fade into a shot of an encouraging parent, trying to teach her child how to walk. The scene would then cut to a playground full of playing childen, the child is playing playground games. Here we would hear the hustle and bustle of the playground, childeren laughing etc. Then we would see the first day of middle school, and our character having a run in with the head teacher. We would then cut to our characters first date, and the awkwardness and embarressment that goes along with it. This is when our character would begin to develop into adolescence, and we would see him taking his driving test and making a complete mess of it. the audience would then see scenes of the character getting robbed, getting drunk for the first time, his first sexual encounter and playing computer games. A fade would then occur, and we would see our character turing to his new bride. We would then see our character at a job interview, going through the nerves and other emotions that follow. Our piece will then come to one of its pivitol scenes; our character looking upon his new born baby. This scene will reveal the circle of life aspect of the piece. We would then see scene two from the other side of the camera; the parent goading his child towards him. We then see our character attempt to cope with death, and place him at a funeral. Cracks in our characters marrage begin to show, and the two are engaged in argument. Our character throws out his wife, tossing her clothes and belongings out of the door. The transition from middle to old age begins and our character is visited by his son and his girlfriend. The lonliness of old age is then shown as our character is doing boring, mundane activities. He is then moved into a home, and we see nurses comforting him. The camera then staggers, and hits the floor. This represents our character suffering a heart attack. We see feet running around, then a sudden flash. We will then show our entire film from start to finish again, but speeded up to represent flashbacks of our characters life. The sound in this scene will be of particular importance, as we plan to have many different voices saying random phrases from throughout our characters life, until it climaxes into silence. The camera then slowly fades out to white.

Our piece will (hopefully) take the audience on our characters journey through life. We would like to show our audience that life itself is the greatest journey of all. It can take us through unbelieveable highs and unbelieveable lows. We plan to portray this idea by showing the audience key events in his life that helped to shape his character, and to show the various highs and lows of life.

This piece would be shot entirely in the first person. This would create the effect of the human experience as seen through a humans eyes. This will play a key part in the overall meaning of the piece as we see the film unfold through the eyes of a human being, rather than in third person which would just be a depiction of events, and we as the audience would be the observer. Rather than have a vast array of different actors, we would use group members to act as various different characters. Costume would play a key part in this, as a character would be identified through his or her clothing. I dont think that in doing this we will confuse the audience or break the illusion that we are trying to create. Aurally our piece will literally be full of life, as throughout our piece the audience will hear sounds of life (and death). We will try to create each of the different tones of the piece through our use of sound. For each different scene we would be attempting to create the different moods through our use of sound. For example, during the opening scenes, and the birth of our character, our ears would be flooded with various sounds of life and activity. This would progress throughout the piece, until finally at the end, when our character passes away, we hear nothing but silence. Some say our idea is over-ambitous, but I believe that it is percieveable to achieve all of the goals we have set ourselves for this project.

We want the tone and mood throughout the piece to change as the film progresses. During the openening scenes we would try to create a sense of joy and happiness with the birth of the new baby. Then as the film develops into our characters school days we would set a humerous tone as we see our character getting into mischief at school and being a typical teenager. As our character becomes a young adult and gets married we would set a serious tone, that our character now has responsabilities and has to provide for his family. The mood would still remain joyful as these are happy times during our characters life. As our character grows into old age the mood and tone would take a sudden shift. Our character goes through divorce and throws his wife out onto the streets. This scene would set a very bitter mood, and we would then see our character moved into a home and eventually die of a heart attrack. During these final scenes the audience will get a sense of lonliness, and be left with a very bitter taste in their mouth. The message that we will hopefully be getting across will tell the audience that the journey of life is a great one, and we must appreciate what we have before our jouney ends, as it could end at any time.I think that our audience for this film would be a very broad one. This is because of the nature of the story, as many can relate to the events that happen throughout our characters life. Overall I think that our piece would be suitable to be viewed by anyone, as we all experience the jouney of life and therefore should all be able to relate to the message we are trying to portray.