On being told that our 5 minute film should revolve around the idea of 'crisis' we brainstormed all the different types of crisis there are, and emotions associated with them. In doing this we produced a range of ideas to base our films on, from a family crisis to an indentity one. Emotions that we associated with crises included panic, upset, shock and nostalgia. Because we had been studying post-modernism prior to coming up with ideas for our film, we were also keen to develop some of Baudrillards or Barthes' theories into our film, such as the importance of signs and symbols in society or the reliance on audience interpretation through the use of 'Action' and 'Enigma' codes. From our completed brainstorm we then chose a couple of ideas to develop further into short plots, in order to see which idea would be best suited for a short film.
The first idea we decided to develop was that of dealing with the loss of a child. This idea involved following a mother on her daily routine acting as though her child is still alive. It was not until the end of the film that it was revealed to the audience that in fact the child had died. However we decided not to pursue this idea after considering the practical issues of finding a small child to 'act' in the film and dragging the plot out to last 5 minutes.
Therefore we went with the idea of showing two peoples lives, living either side of the poverty line. We came across the theme of poverty after considering types of financial crises. We thought of all the situations that could be linked to this crisis, such as the current recession and job losses etc, but after watching a short documentary style film on gun crime in america, we thought that showing the effects of material and social deprivation on young people in society would be a good basis for our film, as it evoked many different storylines from us. Other issue that we then decided to touch on in our film was those of lone-parent families, and conflict between parent and child, in order to emphasise the difference between the middle and working class characters in our piece of media.
In our film we plan on showing how similar people can look on the surface, but how their lives can be completely different when you delve deeper. The film will follow a typical day of 2 young girls from their jouney home from school, with one being shown as very luxurious and spoiled, and the other shown as having a very deprived life. The film centres around the idea of a family crisis, with the richer of the two girls having a very close relationship with her mum and dad, and the poorer girl belonging to a lone parent family, in which her dad lacks basic parenting skills. We chose this idea as there aren't many practical issues to face in terms of getting actors and filming locations, and because its an issue that can, if filmed the right way, affect the viewer of the film.
