French Version of our screenplay "Éternité"

Éternité redraft SCREENPLAY (French Version)

Redraft of screenplay for Éternité

Éternité redraft SCREENPLAY

Initial Storyboard

Storyboard


Storyboard 2

Screenplay feedback.

It was thought that there was too much dialogue in our film opening and especially that it was a little too blunt. Also it seem our title seemed too obvious, Eternitie (La Vie d'un Vampire) thought gave it away and made it too obvious that our story was about a vampire.
We were advised to have the voice over as the main speech within the film and less emphasis on other dialogue, but making sure there was plenty of narrative enigma in our film to ensure the audience was not quite sure whether or not he was a vampire.
Also we were advised not to swear in our film as there did not seem to be much need to use bad language in our film plus it was likely to restrict our audience and where we could screen our film.

First Draft Screenplay for "Éternité" English version

Éternité First Draft Screenplay

Podcast on Target Audience

Animatic Feedback

Encouraged to make good use of sound and music perhaps a heart beat sound playing with music, possibilty of a voice over by central protagonist.
Signifiers of genre whilst almost trying to keep realism of 21st century and as if our world with a sense of fantasy within it.
Maybe have a newspaper slammed down at the end of our opening with the heading giving anchorage and setting exposition, eg. "Mysterious death thought to be vampire cult attack!"

Convincing action sequences, trying to get as much footage from as many angles as possible to cut from use of match-on-action and maybe not even showing any penetration of the skin like in Psycho.

Also ensuring strong awareness of genre but also keeping narrative enigma- good or bad vampire?

Links with the idea of Clint Eastwood as the anti-hero protagonist and a viscious killer like in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, A Fist Full of Dollars or Dirty Harry.

Suggested viewing:

Blade Runner

Touch of Evil

30 Days of Night
Angel
Sin City
Blade
Being Human

Notional BBFC Rating

From looking at our target audience and the content of our film I think that its notional BBFC rating would be rated 15, due to me looking at the BBFC's website and their classification guidelines over the issues of:
Discrimination, Drugs, Horror, Imitable Behaviour, Language, Nudity, Sex, Theme, Violence.

The BBFC says that frequent bad language is acceptable and strong/vulgar language can be used if justified, we may have our antagonist character using bad language as signifiers of the hoody wearing youth stereotype like poor education and lack of vocabulary. Also may help to emphasise the aggression and horror of the antagonist attacking our victim and also maybe for our protagonist attacking the antagonist.
We do not have any bad language within our film opening now however, so this will not offend a younger audience in this respect but if we were to create the entire film it is likely that there would be bad language used during dialogue later on.

We will in one scene having our protagonist smoking a cigarette under the BBFC's guidelines this is acceptable as long as it is not promoting the taking of drugs, our protagonist will be smoking it as more of a prop than a promotional tool for the intake of tobacco.

For the issues of sex and nudity the BBFC says that nudity and sex are allowed without strong detail.
We would not be having much of this shown on screen but there will be sexual references and signifiers of sexual abuse/rape when the girl is being attacked by our antagonist but as I say we would prefer to imply this than show it as it is not an overly pleasant or essential part of storyline as long as the theme and basic element is there and more left to the imagination. The reference to sexual abuse and rape on screen would definately be inappropriate for a younger audience to view and so I think that by having this classed as a 15 rating is a good idea as it would protect younger innocent viewers from the more adult content.

The BBFC says that strong violence may be shown but not dwelling on infliction of pain, for example sadism, which is not something we would show on screen and much of our violence is more likely to be left to the imagination like in the famous Psycho we may not actually show penetration of the skin but more so lots of angles and match-on-action shots and showing the blood running without being too graphic.

We toned down the violence within our film and made it a lot more psychological than physically on screen, however it is likley that if we were to create the entire film that there would be more graphic violence later on in the film.

Also the BBFC allows strong menace and threat without glorifying the horror on screen so whilst we would have our protagonist killing the antagonist it would not be portraying it in a positive light. The horror is quite crucial to our storyline and so this would not really be appropriate for any younger viewers due to what could be seen as quite horrific and scary content to viewers under fifteen years old.

Target Audience

I think that our film's target audience will be of a youth audience 15-34, as we are comprising two genres horror and especially vampires which is a very popular theme at the moment especially amongst teenage audiences with films like Twilight or Daybreakers and even the BBC TV series Being Human has elements of the vampire genre as well as timeless teen drama's like Angel and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. As we're also incorprating the film-noir or more so neo-noir genre into our film then this will appeal to a more mature audience, modern neo-noir films like Sin City appeal to a youth audience also but classic film-noir will appeal to much more mature audiences who will think of films like Chinatown.

*In doing a slasher film our target audience is a youth audience, 15-34, as our central protagonist and antagonist are both teenagers, like in Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer. However we also have adult actors in our film, so it may also appeal to a more mature audience, also due to the opening of the film beginning with Jazz music may help our film appeal to a more mature audience.

Likely that our cast will all be Caucasian characters and so this will not appeal as greately to a multiethnic audience, also the representation of gender will be stereotypical as our central protagonist is a strong heroic man and our antagonist in the opening scene is a viscious criminal man whilst the victim is an attractive female this will link in with the male gaze theory and so may make our target audience more likely to be male than female.

*Caucasian characters, North of England/Scottish accents, however not displaying an extremely diverse group of people. More anchoring the stereotype of a white middle-class part of England. 

We will be representing our central protagonist and the victim as middle class characters and our antagonist will be represented as lower class so this may effect our target audience being less for the C2DE audience and more for C1's/C2, with it being a neo-noir then the ABC1 audience may be attracted to it also.

*Our Scream Queen is represented as though she is from a middle class family, signifiers given in the opening scene with the bottle of champagne, tuxedo, dinner party setting, jazz music, big house.
She does go out for a cigarette, arguably seen as lower class custom, though that is a minor point.
Our antagonist is arguably representing the lower class, as he is wearing a hood, typical signifier of the "chav" and again this is set in the north of England, also slight hint of humour here as he is wearing the Halloween mask. 

As our film is in French this will give our audience a strong signifier it is set in France and so this may mean it will appeal to a more international audience and be seen as maybe an Art House film for perhaps a high culture audience again appealing perhaps more to the ABC1 audience of the more middle/Upper class.
As our central protagonist is well spoken this is likely to be a stereotype of the French, certainly by the British, as well spoken and quite posh.

*It is likely to appeal mainly to a ABC1 audience, as generally the characters depicted are middle class, however as it is revolving around teenage characters then it may appeal to teenagers from all backgrounds rather than just middle class as the Scream Queen is rebellious and going against what her parents want. Maybe some C1/C2?

Our victim will be a young brunette female which seems a stereotype of the scream queen bimbo often seen in American slashers not as likely in a noir film like ours which is a countertype to the usual Femme Fatale female character which is a strong female lead seen in Film-Noir.
Our antagonist will be violent and not seen to be very educated whilst not being a comical character, again a countertype of villains in Film-Noir as they are often quite cunning and more mentally than physically strong.

No representation of homosexuality in our opening which may restrict that audience however we feel it would change the mood of our film to have perhaps an attractive male being attacked by another male in a sexual way, this would be hinting homosexual rape which would be much more controversial to see or imply on screen than hetrosexual rape. Or if it was a female trying to sexually abuse a male character again this would push boundaries of both gender and sexuality.

*As the antagonist is masked we cannot tell if they are male or female, and clearly in the slasher genre there is a sense of some form of sexual attraction in the killing, even if it is very subtle, whilst likely to be a male attacking a female, it could be connoted as a female attacking a female and a slight aspect of homosexuality.