Film Treatment

Film Treatment is basically an overview of a film and complete details of it. A film treatment covers the following aspects:

1.       an outline of the story

2.       our intent

3.       the tone of the film; the look and feel;color palette etc

4.       character outline

5.       the type of editing to be used

Title: Mera Lahore

Duration:5-6 minutes

Character:

The writer

Our shot film ‘mera Lahore’ is based on Lahore and its culture portrayed by an old man. The film shows how he expressed his love for his city through writing articles and poems. Our film also aims on showing the effect dictatorial regime has on a country and its people.

The old man used to write about freedom and about love and peace. He had always opposed any sort of action that restricted this freedom. He was amongst those people who stood up against Zia-ul-Haq when he imposed marshal law due to which he got arrested. The later part of the film would show the effects this had on the writer and how it all ended up.

Opening: the film will start with an establishing shot which would basically be an introduction to Lahore. The scene would slowly and gradually turn into black and white and the screen would fade out and the title of the film would appear.

                         

Scene # 1: the first scene  also gives the introduction of the protagonist. The writer would be shown bent and working on something.

Sound: background music

Light: low key lighting, the only source of light would be the natural sunlight.

Costume: nicely dressed wearing clean white suit.

Scene # 2: the next few scenes would be the flashback scenes that would show the basic day to day activities of Lahore. Though each of these flashback would have a hidden meaning in it.

Sound: Dialogues and background music

Light: natural day light and artificial light in the night scenes.

Scene # 3: imposition of the dictatorial regime .

(this would be a clip downloaded from you tube where general Zia would be shown imposing marshal law as it would be impossible to shoot this scene in actual.)

Scene # 4: the next few scenes would be about the hardships and the torture the man had to go through and as a result of which he loses his sanity.

Light: low key lighting

Costume: dirty clothes.

The film would end at the point where the man would lose his sanity. The end would show that if somebody snatches something that is regarded as very valuable by one, then this can have very adverse effects on one’s life.

The ending titles would roll up the screen.

Both fast and slow editing would be used to achieve the desired effect. Apart from this fade in and fade out would be used frequently throughout the film.

Title Formation- MERA LAHORE

'Mera' is an Urdu word which means 'MY'. We decided to name our short film Mera lahore as it is purely based on lahore and its culture.
Making the title was not that easy as i thought it would be. Our basic idea was not just simple text but something that would look different as well as appealing. We therefore decided that we would add a simple figure to it to make it look better.
To have a better understanding of how international film makers work on the title of their film we went through several titles. There were things that we liked in them which really inspired us. Such as

The font choosen gives it a very bold look and confirms the fact that the film is based on a serious topic. Another good point about this title is that it somewhat relates to our story as well.

The Second title that we liked.

The best thing about this title is the font style. The cracks in the font indicates destruction(which is a part of the film.)The image used is supporting the genre as well.

Third Title:

Our rough sketch:

Based on this research we decided that we would add the 'Minar-e-Pakistan' which is a historical monument in lahore. It holds great significance in history. The font we selected was Brush Grunge. The reason we selected this font was that the font gives a feel of distruction and this is somewhat related to our story. We had been clear with what we wanted to make but the placement of font and the image was an issue we therefore made 2-3 options.

MAKING THE TITLE IN PHOTOSHOP:

Production house logo formation

In the planning session, my partner and I started of establishing a production house that would produce our media product.

We had two options:

1. either go with an existing production house
2. create our own production house

The second option seemed more interesting to us and we therefore decided to make up our own production house.

We went through several local and international film logos that really helped us in creating our own logo.

eg

(international)

(local)

(local)

(international)

The first step was to come up with a name for the production house. My partner and I agreed on the following:

1. RZ Productions
2. Watermelon Productions

Sketches:

Initially we finalized RZ productions, but there was nothing much which we could do with the logo.

The following were our attempts but we were not satisfied and therefore decided to go with our second option which was ‘watermelon productions’.

OUR FINAL LOGO

Deconstructing shortfilms-3

) CONCEPT:The next film that i selected is an award winning short film based on the topic: A Day Without Light.the reason i choose this film is to find variations that i can include in my own short film.

This short film is comedy based and is a story about how three boys pass their time when there is no electricity. the opening and ending is similar to any film with just the title in the opening and the ending credits in the last.

Opening of the short film

Ending of the short film

The film starts with different shots of different appliances and then shifts to showing the characters playing games. The camera neither pans or tilts. these shots are transactional.this gives the audience a general idea and an introduction to what the movie is about.

General lighting is being used through out the video. The props and the characters are such that compliment the script. for example all main props are electronic products such as laptops, television, games and mobile phones.

The movie has both stationary camera movements as well as traveling camera movement.

For example:

The first image is the zoom in of the boy. The second image is a bit zoomed out of the same boy.(helps us read the expression of the character and the overall environment.)

The third image is a tilt down.

Whereas the image above is a still from the a following shot. The camera follows the boy as he enters the room.

Also, this short film has used all the possible angles. these include high angle, low angle,birds eye view.

the first picture is a birds eye view, the second a worms eye view, third is a low angle and the last is a high angle.

Similarly, talking of the continuity shots, they have used match on action and shot reverse shot.

Shot reverse shot

 1

In this scene the boy calls an officer(picture 1) from the electricity office(picture 2) complaining about the electricity breakout. Frustrated by the response he throws his phone.(picture 3) These continuity shots were important to

Match on Action

1

The first picture shows that the boys are pushing one of their friend and this is later matched in the next shot when the boy is found fallen on the ground.

The video represents a specific social class and specific age group.

On one hand they address the upper class whereas on the other hand the represent the general youth population.

SEMIOTICS:  in this film all appliances used such as the air conditioner and the laptop etc can be denotated as electronics however they connotate luxury and comfort.