Week 6: Fiction Film Story

 A fiction film treatment should include:

1. Main character — name, age, a bit of demographic information: 
2. Main character goal — what does this person want? What is driving the film?: 
3. Supporting character(s) — name, age, a bit of demographic information, relationship to main character: 
4. Setting — Where the film takes place, what is the “world of the film”. How does the character live? What environmental forces are at work on this person? (For example, if the person works on Wall Street an is an intern trying to get ahead, there is significant environmental/job pressure. If they live at home with a sick baby and absentee partner, they have significant environmental/home pressure. If they live at home with parents who pay for all their expenses, and tell the main character they can figure out life when they are ready, there is an very different level of environmental pressure, as in much less. However, if in this same scenario, the same person had, say, lost a job at age 24 and moved back in with their supportive parents, but in the process their boyfriend/girlfriend broke up with them and their friends stopped talking to them, then you have a different kind of environmental pressure, like peer or social pressure. 
5. Inciting Incident — where does the story start? Does one incident set off the character in pursuit of his/her dramatic goal: 
6. Story setup — introducer the characters, the setup, and what the person wants: 
7. Plot Point 1 / Conflict — ending of Act 1: 
8. Obstacle(s): 
9. Rising Action/Progress: 
10. Obstacle(s): 
11. Complications and higher stakes: 
12. Obstacle(s): 
13. Plot Point 2 — ending of Act 2. The character gets what he/she wants or not, or there is a further complication. Usually the ending of the A-Story: 
14. Ending/Resolution — tying up all story threads. Usually the ending of the B-story: 

My Fiction Film:
ACT 1

Brooke, a blonde haired beauty with big brown eyes is buried in the hot sand, as the ocean wind creates chaos in her hair. She closes her eyes, lifts her head to the bright blue sky and allows her long hair to flow behind her.  She opens her eyes and a flashback appears right in front of her on the same exact beach with her mother, father, and older brother. Her dad is running around with her on his shoulders, while her mother is building a sandcastle with her brother Cody. Screaming coming from behind her interrupts her flashback. Brooke turns around and looks up and the big white house in Cape Cod that she had spent every summer in since she could remember. Her eyes fixate on the top left window where two figures can be seen. Realizing it is just her mom and dad fighting, she dismisses them instantly and turns back to the ocean. She doesn’t return to her flashback but is gravitated to the ocean. With her feet in the ocean, something catches her eye. As she picks up this object, her arm that she uses is visible where fresh cut marks make up her wrist and old needle marks are shown. She goes to throw the bottle into the ocean when she notices something inside. She sticks her fingers in the opening to try to grab whatever is inside, but she cannot reach. She runs over to a bunch of rocks where she holds the bottle by the skinny part and without looking, smashes the bottle over the rocks. She takes the paper out of the bottle and reads it: “Looking for meaning in your life? Then come here: Vassilissis Sofias Av No. 3 Athens, Greece.” Brooke runs inside to show her parents what she had found. Then she raises the question if she could go. Her parents, finally agreeing tell her they will not let her go just because she found some note. They go into detail about what she has done and why she is not allowed to go. This is where it is revealed that she is a recovering drug addict. She hurt her back cheerleading and was using oxycodone and soon turned to heroine. She is now in recovery but she cuts herself in place of the drugs. She tells them she is 20 and she doesn’t need to listen to them. They reassure her that she will not, especially since they control her bank account until she is 21.

ACT 2

Brooke runs upstairs; she is about to go in her room when she sees her brother’s door is opened slightly. He is away at a baseball camp right now. She goes into the room and goes to where he keeps his money; there she sees stacks and stacks of cash he has been saving up. She lives his room empty-handed and goes into her room where she is seen looking up flight tickets to Greece. After looking up flights and hotels she makes the decision to go. Now she needs to figure out the money part. Her brother has cash, but she needs a credit card. She calls up her friend, Ashley, who she hasn’t spoken to in months. She was her friend before the drugs. Her and Ashley were popular best friends who cheered together. She asks to use her credit card and Ashley denies her, thinking it is to buy drugs. Brooke reassures her that it is not and that she has the money to pay her back right now. After some convincing, Ashley gives in. After purchasing the hotel and plane tickets, she devises a plan on how to get past her parents, which isn’t that hard since they barely pay attention to her. She knows she’ll get in so much trouble and her parents will trust her even less than they do now, but this is something she has to do. She waits for the next day when her mom is out at “tennis lessons,” and her dad is meeting with a client. She gets to the airport, gets on the plane. Skip to she is now in Greece. She gives the cab driver the address and ends up in front of a building. The building is labeled “Fates.” Fates she recalls from studying Greek Mythology in school, Fates were three sisters who controlled the fates of mortals and gods. Clotho, spins the thread of life, Lachesis, draws the lots and determines how long one lives, measuring the thread and Atropos, chooses how someone dies, cutting the thread. She goes in where she is greeted by a lady at the desk with the name Claudia on her nametag. The lady tells her she’s been expecting her. She asks her if she has come to find meaning in her life and Brooke replies with yes. She then nods and tells her to enter through the door ahead. Here Brooke enters a black room with videos playing all over the room. She sees her mom and dad happy together while her mom is pregnant with her. The last thing she sees is her birth. She then exists the room where a second secretary named Lacy greets her. Lacy tells her the same thing Claudia did, and she enters into the next room. The room is the same, except the images and videos she sees are different. These are now videos and images of her born and getting older. She revisits her life through these videos, the good and the bad. It ends with her lying on the beach, right before she found the bottle. She exists the room and is greeted by a third woman, Atiana. This woman grins as she sends her into her final room. This room is different from the last two. It is white with no images and no doors. After screaming and crying for several minutes, Atiana appears in the room holding a thread and a scissor. Just when she goes to cut the thread Brooke is blinded by the same whiteness of the room she was in. However the whiteness fades and she begins to see faces. She is lying in a hospital bed with her family surrounding her.


ACT 3

She finds out she was found on the beach earlier that day with a needle in her arm, she had overdosed. They had finally been able to revive her. The whole experience changes Brooke for good, including her “trip to Greece,” which she realizes was not real. Through the experience she realized she was ruining her life. A year goes by and Brooke is not only clean, but she has gotten her life back together. She now travels around the world speaking out about the abuse of drugs. Right now she is in Athens, Greece.

Week 5: Podcast Story

Week 4: Audio Story

A podcast is a digital audio file made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or portable media player, typically available as a series, new installments of which can be received by subscribers automatically.

This is a podcast series about relationships. This particular podcast focuses on cheating, more specifically catching your significant other in the act. The podcast will start off with the actual audio from the video of a man catching his girlfriend in the act of cheating. It will be the first 15 seconds of the video where the guy is explaining that he is about to catch his girlfriend cheating: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/man-catches-cheating-girlfriend-bed-5527408. Right after that the question will be raised “What would you do if you found your partner in bed with another person?” Throughout the podcast signs of cheating will be discussed as well as incorporating the guy who videotaped his girlfriend in bed with another guy. We will finish play the rest of the audio as well as interviewing the guy for the entire story. Although we hear his reaction, we want to know what was going on in his head the whole time it was actually happening.

Week 3: News Story- Numbers

Hard news is different than viral news. Hard news stories are based on a statistic. The statistic should be the core of the news story, not incidental. The rest of the story should revolve around the number, and show context, how this number affects other people, how it might affect an industry, and if there is a negative or positve impact what that impact is. 

The news story will be about a 67 year old woman who was hit by a car on Queens Boulevard. The woman, identified as Maria Smith, was walking across Queens Boulevard at the intersection of 65^th place at approximately 9 am Monday morning. The light had turned green before the woman, who needs a walker, had successfully made it across the boulevard. A white pick-up truck had noticed the light turned green, but had not noticed the woman crossing. The woman died immediately from the impact. Title: Boulevard of Death Strikes Again! This particular boulevard is known as the Boulevard of Death, due to the amount of deaths of pedestrians on this particular boulevard in Queens. The core statistic will be included in the story: The DOT looked at years of crash data and found there were 22 deaths along a 2.5 mile length of the street over a 4 year period.  Nearly all of the victims of the boulevard were at least 60 years old. The group affected the most are those 60 years and older. It seems that the lights turn too quickly, not giving enough time for people, specifically elderly people, enough time to get across the street.

Process of Blogging

At first I was scared learning how to blog. I am not the best when it comes to computers, so I always try to do the minimum if I can. In this case I couldn't. However, the process was not as hard as I thought. Instead, once I began to get the hang of it and I wanted to continue posting! I love reading blogs, but I never imagined of being able to have my own blog. I learned different techniques in blogging. For example instead of posting just words, I learned to post videos and pictures as well, which are very helpful when blogging. People love visuals, it grabs their attention. I will continue with my blog week by week posting new story idea developments.

Do you speak English?

Week 2: Photo Story

This is a photo story which uses no words, just pictures but still tells the story. We can tell from the story that the woman in the picture was surprising someone, probably a lover, and was later rejected.

Week 1: News Pitch- Viral

A viral news story pitch: A viral news story is a story with "viral news" meaning something catchy, a bit provocative or possibly controversial, or something that is likely to get people's opinions and emotions stirred up. It should be a feature type story, not hard news but not necessarily soft news either. Things go viral because there is (usually) something deeper behind what might seem like a lighter story. This is a video so the use of visual description is very important when pitching the story.

My viral news story pitch: This is a viral news story pitch with the concept of controversy of legalizing marijuana.
To start the video, a man will exit his office building wearing a suit with his briefcase in his left hand and a joint in the other. As he walks from his job to his apartment, which is 4 blocks away, he goes about smoking his joint, which contains marijuana. When the camera is on him, upbeat happy music will play as he cheerfully makes his way home from work. At one point he helps an old man cross the street. The more he walks, the more good he does, all still smoking his joint. He helps a woman carry bags from a grocery store to her car. He helps haul a cab for a person who isn’t having any luck flagging down one. However, with each block comes a person who disapproves of him smoking marijuana. The first disapproval comes from a pregnant woman smoking a cigarette. On the next block, a man exiting a pharmacy, who is popping two oxycontin pills into his mouth, gives the man a look of disgust. A man stumbling out of a bar, obviously inebriated, manages to shake his head sadly at the man. At the final block, a man standing in front of a newsstand mumbles “loser” under his breath at the man, as he crumbles his food-shopping list containing formula, baby food, and diapers while purchasing lotto tickets. It ends with the cheerful man putting out his joint while entering his apartment building, but first holding the door open for his wheelchair bound neighbor. This is directed to those who believe legalizing marijuana would be a danger to society.