Planning

PLOT

The genre of my film opening is drama and subgenre is melodrama. The main character is a 17-year-old young guy with an unconventional mindset and appearance, who lives with a quite difficult father who is an alcoholic brawler and works as a security guard. After the death of his best friend and the only close person of the protagonist, he closes himself in, falls into depression and faces various psychological problems, he expresses himself through his appearance and his poems, where he puts his whole soul, spills out emotions. Every day at the same time, the main character comes to the place where he last saw his friend, stands in the middle of the street and reads his poems aloud, despite public opinion and bewilderment, he sincerely believes that this will help him get rid of obsessive thoughts and get rid of inner emptiness and depression.

Script

The film begins with the fact that the main character, Tom, goes to the same place, along the way he is having a flashbacks of his meetings with a dead friend. He has an empty look, there are no emotions, complete indifference and pain. He comes to this place, removes the bag from his shoulder, takes out his poems, stands up and reads them aloud. He is surrounded by a gray mass of a crowd of people, they pass by, someone turns around and looks accusingly, someone just passes by. After a while, he collects his things and goes home, obsessive memories return.

Tom returns home, he is met by his father with another bruise, after which he begins to run over him and tears up his poems. Tom waves him off, goes to his room, locks himself in and lies down on the bed.

The next morning, Tom wakes up, picks up his stuff, goes to the same place with the same emotions. He takes his place and begins to read poetry. After some time, he sees a girl a few meters away from him and catches her mesmerized gaze. She stands out from the gray mass of people as they pass by, she stands and looks at him. Next, Mira gets a phone call, gets distracted and leaves, he follows her with his eyes. By evening, Tom gathers his things again and leaves. On the way home, he walks pensive, with emotions completely new to him, and does not even notice that obsessive thoughts about his dead friend have left him. he returns home, not paying any attention to the next brawl of his father, he enters the room, lies down on the bed, memories flash in his head, this is a girl’s face, he smiles passively and falls asleep.

Characters – M.E.S

Tom – Protagonist, main character

Mise-En-Scene: Clothes – ordinary black jacket, black hoodie, basic jeans, ordinary black shoes, basic scarf
Make-up – light tonal base for giving the skin a pale color, bruises and bags under the eyes
Hairstyle – slightly disheveled hair
Props – bag-folder black for poems, sheets with poems

Mira – second main character

Mise-En-Scene: Clothes – black skinny jeans, black shirt under a gray sweater, beige extraordinary shoes, a voluminous beige jacket
Makeup – black eyeliner around the whole eye, bright red lipstick, light tonal basis, contouring, eyelashes painted
Hairstyle – loose, wavy hair
Props – phone, a cup of coffee from a stall, small fashionable bag, black beret

Dad – antagonist

Mise-En-Scene: Clothes – dirty and torn voluminous tank top, old jeans
Makeup – concealer, pale foundation, black eye, bags under the eyes, overgrown eyebrows
Hairstyle – bald
Props – whiskey bottle, transfer tattoos, band-aid on nose

Jimmy(dead friend)
Mise-En-Scene: Clothes – dark blue bomber jacket, beige jeans, basic sneakers
Makeup – blush, concealer
Hairstyle – as usual, a little shabby
Props – no

As a visual of the main character, I chose the most basic look, so that he created the impression of a person from a poor family, but at the same time looked neat and basic, and did not stand out much from the crowd. The main character wears classic blue jeans, ordinary shoes, a hoodie and a coat that makes him visually deeper and more mysterious. As makeup, I used the effect of pallor of the face and bruises under the eyes to show the physical and moral exhaustion and condition of the character.

As a reference for “Mira” I used these kind of looks, I decided to make a contrast between shoes and a jacket, nails and lipstick, jeans and a hat, so that everything looked as bright as possible, but restrained and attention-grabbing. I decided to make the girl’s character brighter so that she would stand out among the crowd and give the impression of a well-groomed, bright and extraordinary character who manifests himself through appearance, which contributed to their connection, since they both aim to express themselves and their emotions in different ways. Small details like a mini-handbag, a beret and a cup of cocoa in winter give her image a certain femininity, mystery and cosiness.

Location/Setting

As a main and key location of the film opening I’ve chose “Park Pobedi” in Moscow, where the protagonist and his dead friend met last time before his death. I chose this place for filming because it is quite spacious and not so many people go there, so it is very convenient to shoot a film there. It also conveys an atmosphere of both loneliness and pleasant atmospheric. This place is very multifunctional for filming drama as it can convey different moods and emotions depending on the situation, weather or music.

Sound

I chose three tracks made by the composer “Yulia Monastyrenko” and assembled them into one sound according to the hierarchy of the mood of the plot: the beginning, the climax and the end. The first track is called “dive in september”, it conveys the primary atmosphere of the film: passive, sad and slightly pessimistic. Then follows the track “revelation”, it dominates the moment associated with negative emotions, aggression and pressure and vividly conveys the moment of climax. The closing track is called “way to myself”, it calms down the situation and smoothes it a little, and perfectly conveys the emotions of the main character during his memories about the girl and closes the film’s intro. I took three tracks by the same composer because they are quite monotonous, do not distract the viewer from watching and fit well into the film and situations. It is a non-diegetic sound which is mainly aimed at conveying the atmosphere and emotions of the main character and his inner world.

Arts(props, colour & lightning)

A very important element of my beginning of the film are the papers with poems that the character brings with him to the main location and reads them. This is a prop that helps the viewer to understand exactly what the character is doing in this place, therefore expressing his feelings about his life, inner world and dead friend, and trying to throw out all his emotions into society by reading poetry in a public place. At the first part there is some shots, concentrating the attention on how he writes those poems at home, and then later, shots in the park shows him taking them out of a folder and reading them aloud.