Homework

Link between Wreck-It Ralph and the MACRO Wall

Wreck-It Ralph breaks down the MACRO wall because the story break the 'rules' of CHN, Genre conventions and stock characters and Stereotypes. It breaks the rules of the Classic Hollywood Narrative because the supposed antagonist is sympathised with and he becomes heroic. The Genres of this animation show that it's not the classic Disney movie as it features Sci-Fi and an element of a Dystopian future in their world. Ralph rebels against his role and dreams of becoming a hero. He travels between games in the arcade, and ultimately must eliminate a dire threat that could affect the entire arcade, and one that Ralph himself inadvertently started.

The main character Ralph doesn't display the typical heroic stock character that you see in most Disney films as he the Vigilante that we sympathise with. They also break the stereotype as instead of sympathising with the supposed protagonist (Felix) with sympathise with the supposed antagonist which is Ralph. Also they highlight messages that Vanellope von Schweetz and Ralph shouldn't be treated like an outsider.

Film Pitch

Sundance Film Festival 2014

The 2014 Sundance Film Festival kicked off on Jan. 16, once again bringing dozens of new and innovative films to Park City, Utah. The 11 day event, which runs through Jan. 26, featured stars such as actor and festival founder Robert Redford.

WHIPLASH

The film Whiplash was premiered is about a drama about an aspiring drummer (Miles Teller) who is criticized by his art college professor (J.K. Simmons) has received one of the warmest receptions for an opening film in recent memory at the Sundance festival. Miles Teller — who can be seen on screen later this month with Zac Efron in That Awkward Moment — took four-hour drum lessons three times a week to play the lead in Whiplash, shown below in the movie scenes.

CAMP X-RAY

Camp X-Ray is about a young woman who joins the military to be part of something bigger than herself and her small-town roots. Instead, she ends up as a new guard at Guantanamo Bay, where her mission is far from black and white. Surrounded by hostile jihadists and aggressive squadmates, she strikes up an unusual friendship with one of the detainees. As two people on opposite sides of a war, they struggle to find their way through the ethical quagmire of Guantanamo Bay. In the process, they form an unlikely bond that changes them both.

INFINITELY POLAR BEAR

The year is 1978, and the Stuart family is struggling to hold it together. Cameron (played by Mark Ruffalo), is a bipolar father, and has had a nervous breakdown that leaves him unemployable, and Maggie, a hardworking mother, can’t quite make ends meet. Despite Cameron’s aristocratic genes and the couple’s top-notch education, they’re broke. When Maggie decides to accept a scholarship to pursue her MBA in New York, she must leave her daughters, Faith and Amelia, in Boston with their now-somewhat-convalesced father. So begins an untamed, unpredictable, 18-month experiment as eccentric, exuberant Cameron takes over primary parenting of his precocious, sensitive little girls. 

Inspired by writer/director Maya Forbes’s childhood, Infinitely Polar Bear lovingly and honestly portrays the pain and frustration of being raised by a father incapable of managing adult responsibilities and explores the gifts inherent in not being sheltered from that reality.

Pitch for Broken Soul

When a troubled young boy is adopted by a suburban couple, he struggles to adapt to his new life and finds that his past still haunts. In order to cope with his past he takes his anger out on them but becomes more and more violent. Will they be able to escape from him or will he continue to torture them?

The film will be set outside London where he kidnaps and tortures his adoptive parents. the film will appeal to viewers aged between 18 and 30. It is a psychological thriller based on the film We Need To Talk About Kevin and has aspects of the film Juno. The setup will begin with a brief backstory of the boy and the adoptive parents then the confrontation would be when the now older boy has a flashback of his past that haunts him and causes him to kidnap and torture his adoptive parents in their basement. The resolution is not clear as we do not know whether he kills them or leaves them in the basement.

Jack Reacher Spoiler

At the beginning of the film a man drives a van into a parking garage across the Allegheny River from PNC Park and, after dropping a quarter into the meter, readies a sniper rifle. He takes aim and kills five people on the river’s North Shore Trail from long range before fleeing in the van. The police soon arrive at the scene of the murder, headed by Detective Emerson (David Oyelowo), and discover a shell casing as well as the quarter used to pay for parking. A fingerprint taken from the coin points to James Barr, a former U.S. Army sniper. When the police raid his house, they find the van, equipment for making bullets, the rifle in question, and Barr, fast asleep in his bed.

During an interrogation by Emerson and the District Attorney, Alex Rodin (Richard Jenkins), Barr is offered a choice between life in prison in exchange for a full confession or guaranteed death row, as Rodin has never failed to convict. Thinking Barr is going to confess when he takes the notepad, they are bewildered when he instead writes "Get Jack Reacher". Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) is a drifter and former U.S. Army Military Police Corps officer. Reacher later arrives in Pittsburgh after seeing a news report about Barr and the shooting. Emerson and Rodin deny Reacher’s request to view the evidence but agree to let him see the suspect. Barr, as it turns out, was brutally attacked by fellow inmates while in police custody and is now in a coma. Reacher meets Barr’s defense attorney, counselor Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike), the District Attorney’s daughter, who's been saddled with the apparently hopeless task of saving Barr from the death penalty.

Helen says she can arrange for Reacher to see the evidence if he will become her lead investigator. Reacher retorts that he is not interested in clearing Barr. He reveals that Barr had gone on a killing spree during his tour in Iraq but was not prosecuted because his victims were under investigation for major crimes — and the U.S. Army wants them forgotten. Reacher vowed that if Barr tried anything like this again, he would take him down.

Reacher agrees to investigate if Helen visits the victims’ families to learn about the people murdered that day. Reacher goes to the crime scene and finds inconsistencies about this location, thinking that a trained shooter would have done the killings from the cover of the van on the nearby Fort Duquesne Bridge. After Helen reports her findings about the victims to Reacher, he suggests that the owner of a local construction company was the intended victim, with the killing of the other victims intended as a cover-up.

After an apparently spurious bar fight, Reacher realizes that someone is attempting to strong-arm him into dropping his investigation. Reacher is later framed for the murder of the young woman who was paid to instigate the bar-room brawl, but this only motivates him further. Reacher eventually follows up a lead at a shooting range in the neighboring state of Ohio, owned by former U.S. Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Martin Cash, who will talk only if Reacher will demonstrate his U.S. Army sniping skills.

The real perpetrators are the members of a Russian gang, who are masquerading as legitimate businessmen. The gang's elderly leader spent much of his life in a Soviet Gulag and is known only as the Zec (prisoner). The gang kidnaps Helen with the aid of Detective Emerson and holds her hostage at a quarry. Reacher outwits the mob guards, killing them with Cash's help, before confronting the Zec about the conspiracy. Reacher kills the Zec to prevent him from eluding justice.

Reacher and Cash flee the scene with confidence that Helen will clear Reacher's name. When Barr awakens from his coma, he tells Helen that he has no recent memory but believes that he must be guilty of the shootings. Barr's mental reconstruction of how he would have committed the shootings confirms that Reacher's theory was correct from the beginning. Still unaware of all these developments, Barr is willing to confess and accept his punishment, fearing that Reacher will mete out justice if the law does not.

Inspiration Moodboard

Both of the films that I am analysing play on the idea of relationship between a mother and child, however, the film Juno plays on the struggles during pregnancy, and the film We Need To Talk About Kevin talks about the struggles after pregnancy. The two mothers in the films Juno and Evie both show that their bond with their child is unexplainable because it is unique between them and their child. For my short clip based on these two films I will show  the bond of not just the mother but the father too. However the love between the parents and son will be unexplainable too because even though the son is no their biological son, they still try to love him unconditionally. My short film would play with the idea of a troubled relationship between a parent and a child.

My film idea is about a troubled boy who is adopted by a couple in a suburban neighbourhood. The boy struggles to bond with his adoptive parents which results in releasing his anger by bullying his adoptive parents when he's older. This results in him kidnapping and torturing his parents. The film ends in a cliffhanger because we dont know whether he's killed his parents or not.

Representation of Parenthood film extract

IDEA: A young boy is adopted by two suburban parents. The boys struggles to bond with his adoptive parents and finds that his acts of violence help to release his built-up anger that has been created ever since he suffered a long time ago with his biological parents.

ELEMENTS: I will take the idea from We Need To Talk About Kevin and how Kevin and his mother struggle to find the bond which eventually results in the one disastrous event that Kevin has created.

GENRE & LOCATION: My extract will be about a psychological thriller that is set in the present day in set in rural Kent.

CHARACTER (PROTAGONIST) Vs CHARACTER (ANTAGONIST): There is no obvious antagonist at the beginning of the film as the boy plays the innocent one as he has to deal with a devastating change. However as the film progresses and his acts towards his parents become more volatile and unreasonable we see that the parents are the protagonists as they are the victims of his outbreaks and the boy is the antagonist as he grows older so he should be old enough to know better than to bully the adoptive parents that tried to care for him and bond with him.

CHARACTER (ANTAGONIST) CREATES CONFLICT: The boy damages or kills something of value to the parents which arises when his past haunts him and causes psychological damage. He could kidnap and torture his parents because he is mimicking what his biological parents did to him.

CHARACTER (PROTAGONIST) RESOLVES THE SITUATION: There is no obvious resolution because the parents are seen before the scene ends but I will end it on a cliffhanger to not actually show if the boy kills the parents but I will show him holding a knife and heading towards the parents.