Deciding on a Brief as a Group

We have now been put into groups! Our group is made up of Alex Griffin, Georgie Barker and myself! We are all really excited about starting the project and began to discuss which film brief we would most like to focus on. 

As a group we finally decided to focus on brief 4, as it seemed both interesting and challenging. Seeing as we needed to base our film opening on an event that has happened around or within the last two years, each of us began researching events. A really good way of doing this was looking at a timeline, which included many notable events over the past few years. There were many that were very important, but that we wouldn't be able to make a film about with the equipment we have. So we were limited to either smaller events or very loosely basing our film on them. Here are a few we all agreed were potential ideas:

• 2009 Swine Flu pandemic
• Haiti disaster
• Local murder/suicide case in Fordingbridge
• Northumbria Raoul Moat case
• Austrian Fritzl case

After a lot of discussion, we all wanted to look more into the Fritzl case. In April 2008, in a small town called Amstetten in Austria, it was discovered that a man had been keeping his daughter, Elisabeth, captive in a basement for 24 years, impregnating her 9 times and bringing up 3 of their 6 living children with his unsuspecting wife as their own.

At the time of discovery the world was completely shocked to learn of Elisabeth and her children's story, which is why we thought it would be a good event to base our film on. We wanted to make sure we knew as much as we could about the event, so began searching it in-depth. I found a documentary that we were all able to watch about Elisabeth's whole life, and how the events unfolded. Although it's such a horrible case to look at, we all found it really interesting and are enthusiastic about how we can use it as our film opening. As a starting point and for inspiration, we thought of a few very rough ideas for a name of our film opening:

• Beneath (shows the fact that Elisabeth was kept right under her family home, without being discovered for 24 years)
• The Unknown (No one knew about Elisabeth and her children, not even her own mother)
• Secure (signifies the large number of doors that Fritzl had to go through before entering Elisabeth's quarters)
• Hostage (obvious, but is already the name of a film)
• Lock and Key (signifies the family's captivity)
• 7 (Elisabeth had seven children fathered by Fritzl)
• Father (has two meanings, Fritzl was both Elizabeth's father and her childrens' father)
• Amstetten (The name of the town the family lived in)

Then we began to come up with ideas for openings and credits. We watched a few art house film openings to give us an idea of the kinds of shots used. Here are our very first initial ideas of shots and concepts:

1. Architect's drawings of the house Elisabeth was held captive in. The idea is that Josef Fritzl had to apply for planning permission for his cellar to be expanded. We thought about seeing a hand drawing a large plan of the cellar design whilst credits appear in various points on the paper.
2. A young girl playing in a garden alone, possibly with a toy such as a doll or teddy, with the intention that it would be a re-occuring object throughout the film. This opening could signify Elisabeth's lost childhood.
3. Lullaby song tune/spooky could be played during the credits at the beginning. This, again would signify childhood, but would also add a more sinister aspect the the beggining of the film, so the audience are aware from the start that the storyline is not a happy one.
4. Time lapse of some sort of scene, we haven't come up with an idea of what yet! We got this general idea from the opening scene of Elephant though, as we thought it was really effective.
5. Opening a safe as if it's a door, signifying the 5 reinforced concrete doors Elisabeth and her children were kept behind.
6. A man luring a young woman into a room by asking her help, this is supposedly how Fritzl was able to capture his daughter in the cellar.

All of our ideas need a lot more development and discussion before we can decide on one to storyboard. We will be working on this next lesson.