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Treatment

Title: Complicated Love
Duration: Full Film
Audience: The audience of our film is people aged between 12 and 35 and predominately females however males may also watch the film and people under the age of 12. The film certificate for our film is PG.

Distributor: C.H.E.H Productions

Synopsis:

Complicated Love

Nothing's easy in Complicated Love.

The story revolves around an unbeknown love triangle between three college students: main character Harry, his best friend Callum, and the new girl at college Emily. Emily is the love interest of Harry, but he is a hopeless romantic who has no experience in talking to girls; he doesn't know how to approach her in any way. He develops a list of different ways to get in contact with Emily to ask her out, all of which are ridiculous and are bound to fail. The first way is to add her on Facebook and phone the number on her profile, but discovers it to be an old number and leads to the wrong person. Once this clearly hasn't worked he asks his best friend Callum about her and receives advice on what he should do in the situation, to which Callum gladly helps his friend out by trying to get her number. Little does he know that Emily is actually interested in Callum and she believes he is asking for her number for himself. Dropping the sheet with the number on losing it, he fails with this idea and moves onto another. Another couple of failed attempts later of Harry trying to ask Emily out, one involving a pizza, he just gives up. On his way to Callum's house after college to see if he still has a copy of the number, he discovers an open door and makes his way upstairs to find Callum. As he enters the room he discovers his best friend sat on the settee with the new girl.
 

Similar Films

The genre of our film is Romantic-Comedy, here is a list of similar films to ours, involved with the 'Rom-Com' genre:

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Romance film about Pat who after a mental holdback is trying to get his life back together, particularly with his ex-wife. However, he meets a mysterious new girl called Tiffany who has problems of her own - but they both take a denying interest in each other. This film falls particularly under the Romance genre but has many comedic elements throughout the film as the characters have funny and sarcastic personalities.

Silver Linings Playbook Trailer:

This is similar to our film as one (or more) of the characters portray personalities that are funny which add to the comedic elements of the film.

Scene from Silver Linings Playbook (below)

Legally Blonde (2001)
Elle Woods follows her boyfriend to Law School in order to keep him but has to overcome many prejudice problems about her personality, particularly demonstrated. As Elle Woods is trying to keep her boyfriend it is of the Romance genre, and particularly the prejudice involving her personality gives it the comedy elements.

Legally Blonde Trailer:

This is similar to our film as the protagonist overcomes various different problems in order to make their way to their goal - which is love.

Scene from Legally Blonde (below)

 

The Holiday (2006)
Iris and Amanda both have men in their lives of whom they want to forget. Through a house-exchange website, they both swap houses over Christmas. Iris meets an old man (Amanda's neighbour) and helps him to find his self-esteem - which, in some ways, helps her to find her own - and also meets Miles (Amanda's film composer) of who she falls in love with. Amanda, in Iris' cottage in Surrey, meets Iris' brother (and book editor) and they unintentionally fall in love.

The Holiday Trailer:

This is similar to our film because it involves someone who seemingly goes on a 'quest' for love.

Scene from The Holiday (below)

 

These films are similar to our film (Complicated Love) because they feature a protagonist, prone to falling in love, who has to overcome many different scenarios to get to where they want to be. However, our Rom-Com film features more of a comedic 'twist' as the protagonist, who is portrayed as unlucky and muddled, doesn't get the girl he's after - someone else does.

Risk Assessment

Risk Assessment

Film Audience Profile Questionnaire: Analysis

From this questionnaire we can see that the audience (who completed the questionnaire) understood our film, could categorise it appropriately and most of the participants were male - which was surprising. Although our target audience is predominately females, most of those involved in the survey were male (over 61%). However, the males did recognise the film's intent which supports it.

The majority of people which answered our questionnaire were male 61.2 % and female 38.7%. This will make it difficult to analyse as we feel our target audience is females due to the romantic side of the storyline.

The majority of people which answered our questionnaire were ages 15-18, 77.42% which is around our target audience which will give us valuable feedback on our storyline and whether people around our target audience would watch our film.

 The majority of people which answered our questionnaire were students which fits in with the storyline and our target audience. 25 out of the 31 responses were students which is 80.85%.

25 out of the 31 people which read the storyline felt they understood the story and 6 out of the 31 slightly understood the storyline. Nobody said that they didn't understand the storyline which shows that people are able to understand the storyline.

13 out of the 31 people which answered our questionnaire thought our storyboard was romance and 3 out of the 31 thought the film was romantic comedy. This shows that the majority of the people who answered the questionnaire got the genre correctly and 12 out of 31 thought it was drama which the film could also be. 

Our film could be a 12/12A or a PG. The majority of people selected both of  those categories, with 11 out of 31 chosoing an age rating of a 12, and 9 out of 31 choosing PG.

The target audience for our film is females 12 to 24 and therefore the majority chose females; 54.84% and 12-18; 67.74. Showing that the target audience which we think is correct.

The majority of people would expect our film to be shown on television, in cinemas and on social networking.

Continuity Editing

Continuity Editing

Continuity Editing is a predominant style of film editing in the post-production process of filmmaking. The purpose of continuity editing is to smooth over the inherent discontinuity of the editing process and to establish a logical coherence between shots. Continuity editing wants to create a smooth flow between all of the clips so that the narrative story will be obvious without unnecessary interruptions and to ensure that there is continuity in the film.  In the film there doesn't want to be any jump cuts of people appearing in different shots and that there is not different lighting or background sounds in different angles of the same scene.

 Here is an example of continuity editing:



This is our example of continuity editing:

Elliptical Editing

Elliptical Editing

Elliptical Editing is a technique which is used in film editing, it allows the duration of an event on screen to be shorter than it's duration in the story. The simplest type of elliptical edit is a cut between two shots both of which are part of the same event. The cut allows filmmakers to remove part of the event which therefore reduces the time the event is shown onscreen. For example a hero of a story might be wandering in a desert for days, therefore elliptical editing will shorten this time so the audience only have to sit through a few minutes. 

 

Here is an example of elliptical editing, it shows how the man has to get from one place to another and the filmmakers have cut out the parts which are not important they have filmed the beginning of his journey and then the end as the audience doesn't want to watch the man walk from one place to another and therefore it is condensed into around 15 seconds.

This is our example of elliptical editing:

Locations

Locations for "Complicated Love"

Barnsley College - St Mary's Place (both Interior and Exterior)

• Opening scene: Harry smiles at Emily and she does not notice - introduction of characters is established in this location

• Callum and Harry arrange to go to Callum's House which familiarises the audience with Callum's House so that they can understand the importance of Emily being there

Harry also sees Hayley here, in order to ask for Emily's mobile number; she gives him the wrong number

Callum's House (both Interior and Exterior)

• (Int.) Plot established - Harry searches Emily on Facebook, to show Callum, and audience understands Harry has great interest in her
• (Ext./Int.) Harry also discovers, when walking into Callum's house, Emily and Callum together (plot twist)
• (Ext.) Used in title sequence to establish important location setting

Harry's Room (Interior)

• Harry thinks up different ways to get Emily's number - looks in Yellow Pages whilst here.

Barnsley Town Hall - The Fountains (Exterior)

• Where Harry again tries to access Emily's number. Looks online and phones the number, but is an incorrect number - an old lady answers - and Harry hangs up the call, frustrated

Library (Interior)

• Harry sees Emily and attempts to slide a note across the bookshelf to her, but, as he doesn't look twice, Emily has left and the note reaches someone else - another guy, who seems interested

Barnsley Town Centre - Bench (Exterior)

• Harry situated here with a pizza, writes on the box for a unique gesture for Emily
• Walks around town to give Emily the pizza but cannot find her
• Ends up going back to bench and has eaten the whole pizza

Battersea Dogs Home

• Harry rings Emily but he has been given the wrong number and it is actually Battersea Dogs Home.

Churchfield Car Park

Harry walks past Callum and asks Callum if he wants to do something.
Harry and Callum drive off in Harry's Car.

Story Board

Complicated Love Script

Complicated Love Script

Complicated Love: Video Audience Questionnaire