When first given the brief in mid-October we were asked to form groups based on the skills strands we were doing. Our group is as follows:
Nicola Quantrill – Director/Scriptwriter
Amy Tuffnell - Cinematographer
Sam Harper - Art Direction
Mark Leeming – Sound Recorder/Editor
Josh Moore – Picture Editor
I was pleased that we were given the opportunity to form our own groups as I felt that it would allow me to work with people with similar interests and ideas to me. Last year when we were put in to groups by the tutors it often took a while to get used to each other’s interests, and there was a lot of time wasted debating about which ideas to use (e.g. somebody who hates sci-fi and loves comedy wouldn’t want to produce a film like 2001: A Space Odyssey, similarly the person interested in sci-fi might not want to produce a comedy).
Anyway, we were given three ideas to choose from for our piece; ‘Making an Entrance’, ‘Refusal is Pointless’, and ‘Watching the Shadow’ (I think it was that). We straight away related the Shadow theme to the horror genre and tried coming up with an idea for a horror film – although we just sat and looked at each other blankly for about half an hour! Another idea which we had was the Shadow being a feeling of regret hanging over a character, but our mind’s went blank when it came to thinking of an event which led to this character’s regret.
As we didn’t get very far thinking of an idea straight away, we started thinking about which genre we would like our film to be. The majority of the group wanted to make a comedy piece, but we were all concerned that it might be a challenge – we weren’t convinced that we could write a script that would make people laugh. However, I don’t know where it came from, but Nicola had a random brainwave and came up with a comedy focusing on a character similar to Gill from The Simpsons. I didn’t have a clue what kind of character Gill was as I don’t like The Simpsons, but Nicola explained that he was a pathetic car salesman whose wife had left him. She went on to explain that we could use a similar sort of character, who is that pathetic that it’s funny.
We all took to this idea right away and started to brainstorm other professions that our character could be in – sales, mechanics, TEACHING! We all agreed that teaching could be a great thing to base a comedy on – a male teacher who didn’t really care about his job and who didn’t really have a clue what he was talking about! From the minute Nicola came up with this idea, we all started throwing in ideas for the script and found ourselves laughing at our own ideas – I think it was this that made us realise that this idea was a ‘go-er’:
1
TEACHER
You look nice sir
TEACHER
Fuck off Simon
2
In Sex-Ed class
TEACHER
Right so you must ALWAYS use protection!
Cut to teacher in the back of a car with a woman
TEACHER
Shit I haven’t got one…ah fuck it, it’s better without!
The character we produced made me think back to an episode of How Not To Live Your Life, a sitcom on BBC3. The sitcom is based on a character named Don, a middle-aged man who lives off his inheritance from his dead Grandmother. He doesn’t work, in fact he doesn’t do anything. He spends his days lounging around in his dead Grandmother’s dressing gown and his cared for by his Grandma’s old carer. The comedy in this sitcom is created through Don’s clueless attitude towards everyday things. For example, In fact, Don reminded me a lot of our character. The following link should sum up Don if you haven’t seen the sitcom before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEC9RqvuVO8&feature=channel
In the episode of How Not To Live Your Life which I feel shows Don most similar to our teacher, Don has volunteered to help out on a school camping trip – it’s probably worth pointing out that he has only done so has he has a massive thing for the school teacher. During the episode he swears in front of the pupils, gets them lost during an orienteering exercise, and takes them to a pub. Here are a couple of clips from this episode. Please look at them guys, it could be a big inspiration for our guy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHfTHEAryNs
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