Feedback: Target Audience and Conventions

 

During our lesson on 18th October we also asked Mr Leach to help us answer some questions, the conversation is shown in the audio recording which I have included in this post. 

When asked about our target audience he said that we should aim at adults, which I agree with, as although we do not show anything during the rape scene, it is not going to be suitable for younger audiences. When discussing this, Mr Hood raised an interesting point that we are also going to have to be careful when picking our actors/actresses because we do not know their background, and the issues in our film may cause them some upset. This is something important for us to consider.

Reading of Treatment and Feedback

During our lesson on Tuesday 18th October, we presented our treatment to our teacher, Mr Hood and our headteacher, Mr Leach. We chose to present our idea to these because Mr Hood is our media teacher so has the knowledge to determine whether or not our idea will work, he can also offer us any advise needed when it comes to the technicalities of producing our film. We chose to present to Mr Leach because he is a Catholic and is also a step father. We wanted to present to him because we wanted to make sure that as a Catholic, he would not feel that we were being too stereotypical and make sure that were not going to cause offence to anyone.

When giving us feedback, Mr Leach said that he felt that although we perhaps were conforming to stereotypes, he himself did not feel offended by anything that we included. We were pleased with this because it means that we have included the sensetivity needed in order to tackle the issues in our film.

Nursery Rhyme

The nursery rhyme which we are going to include in our film is something important which we have all been thinking about. We have been looking into the meanings behind them. When looking, we stumbled across a couple of nursery rhymes which we think may be suitable for our film. The first being Hush, Little Baby, which I have included the words to below:

Hush, little baby, don't say a word, Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird don't sing, Papa's gonna buy you a diamond ring.
And if that diamond ring turn brass, Papa's gonna buy you a looking glass.
And if that looking glass gets broke, Papa's gonna buy you a billy goat.
And if that billy goat don't pull, Papa's gonna buy you a cart and bull.
And if that cart and bull turn over, Papa's gonna buy you a dog named Rover.
And if that dog named Rover won't bark. Papa's gonna to buy you a horse and cart.
And if that horse and cart fall down, Well you'll still be the sweetest little baby in town.

This would be a good choice as according to Wikipedia 'the lyrics promise all kinds of rewards to the child if he or she is quiet', which links with the plot at the time when the nursery rhyme would be playing.

The second choice would need to be changed as it was originally written for the film Nightmare On Elm Street so if we used this one there would be copyright issues. However, I don't think there would be any problem with us writing our own version, taking inspiration from the version I have included below:

One, two, Freddy's coming for you.
Three, four, better lock your door.
Five, six, grab your crucifix.
Seven, eight, gotta stay up late.
Nine, ten, never sleep again.

I have also included a video of this version, because this is the kind of route we would like to go down when including it in our own film. We have discussed transposing the nursery rhyme into a minor key to make it more eery, and having it sung by either a young girl or a number of young people. 

To Sin No More; Treatment First Draft

To Sin No More

Research Into Specific Areas

Whilst writing our treatment I have been carrying out a lot of research along the way in order to make sure that what is being written is accurate and to make sure that any symbols which are being included, are being used for the right reasons.

The first thing I researched was names. This is because we wanted our character's names to be a symbol and represent something about the character. I found a baby name site via Google and used this to look at some names, I then found a secone website which had names commonly used by Catholics and then matched up some names. Finally I found a site which gave me the meaning of the name. It was this which helped us to decide whether or not we used the name. The meanings and the names of our characters are:

• Samantha - Listener of God
• Daniel - God Is My Judge
• Anthony - Worthy of Praise
• Ray - Wise Protector

The next thing which I wanted to research was the symbols which can be carried by Catholics in order for them to show their faith. To do this I asked my form tutor because she is an RE teacher; she advised me to make sure that my characters are first of all dressed in a way which would be seen as acceptable as Catholics believe that they should keep theirselves covered to a certain extent. She then told me that rosary beads and a crucifix can be worn as a physical symbol to show their faith. I wanted to know why a crucifix is so important and a cross is not really enough, so I once again went to Google to find this out. I found that a crucifix is worn because it has Jesus on the cross, which reminds Catholics of the suffering that he went through in order to save others.

I also researched what happens when a Catholic goes to confession, to do this I typed my question into Google and found an answer on Yahoo, I found that the answer helped me to better understand what would happen, the bit which I found most useful was the inclusion of the prayer which is said. I have copied and pasted it below:

My God,
I am sorry for my sins with all my heart.
In choosing to do wrong
And failing to do good,
I have sinned against you
whom I should love above all things.
I firmly intend, with your help,
to do penance,
to sin no more,
and to avoid whatever leads me to sin.
Amen.

The prayer helped to come up with a title for our film. 'To Sin No More' felt like a good choice because it has meaning and our film is about a woman who regains her faith.

As pregnancy and abortion feature in our film, I felt that this should be researched, particularly because this part was going to be included in the flashback. I researched 'the history of the pregnancy test' on Google to find out what they were like, or even if they existed during the 1970's because if they didn't, we would need to show this in our film via a different symbol. I found a very useful website, which can be found here: http://history.nih.gov/exhibits/thinblueline/timeline.html.

I also decided to look at when abortion was legalised in the UK, I found on Google that this was 1967, so we were ok to include this in our film if we decided that Daniel, the child conceived as a result of rape, was actually aborted. Next, I looked at whether a Catholic would be forgiven for aborting their child: this is a bit of a grey area as it depends on how religious the person and their family is. However, I feel that in our film, if the young girl, Samantha, who is pregnant is the only one who knows about it then the only person who needs to forgive her, is herself, and of course God, but this could be another reason for her losing her faith.

Finally, the 1970's flashback is something which I have also looked into briefly, for descriptive purposes I have looked at the styles and trends of the 70's. This caused me to come across certain hairstyles such as that of Farrah Fawcett, I think that stereotypical things like this hairstyle and fashion trends will guide the viewer straight into the idea that the film is set in the 1970's.

Treatment Development

As a group we have discussed our film idea and decided that we would like our film to be about two brothers, one which is treated a lot better than the other one. As a last minute thing we decided that perhaps the brother which is not treated as well, doesn't actually exist because he is a ghost; this is where the sixth sense element comes into it. However, if this idea doesn't work, then we will also record and alternative ending, whereby the second brother does exist, however he is just treated differently.

We have decided that the eldest brother is going to be treated differently, and he is going to be the result of a rape which happened to his mother when she was 17 years old. She will have been raped by her 'Uncle' (mom's boyfriend/husband), and will have been a sexual abuse case which had been happening for a number of years. The rape will have happened when she and her Uncle were on their way to the church service on a Sunday morning.

The abuse which she has suffered for many years will result in her becoming pregnant, but as she is a Catholic, she struggles with her religion and her conscience and ends up losing her faith when she decides she is going to abort the child, which is looked down upon in highly religious Catholic families/communities.

When watching the news, the mother of the two boys will be forced into a flashback by seeing a report on sexual abuse. She will also be forced into a flashback when looking at a box of baby items which she is looking back at as it is her son's 17th birthday and she is feeling sentimental.

There are a lot of things in our film, such as Catholicism, which I feel I do no know enough about, for this reason I am going to make sure I carry out enough research when writing our treatment, to make sure that we create a film which is correct.