VIGIL Script Treatment
This is our script-treatment that we have made for our movie film trailer project - Vigil, it was created by my peers and I as we plan out our trailer and its creation process.
Working Title – Vigil
Genre – Action-mix of Mystery,Crime and Thriller
Duration – 1m30s
Target Audience – Our film will be targeted at Males between the ages of 16-30 years old.
Outline –
Beginning: A guy tries to live a normal life.
Middle: Triggered by a catalyst, he starts to regain lost memories that he shouldn’t have remembered, the government decide he has to be dealt with.
Ending: Guy tries to evade the government and learns from his various experiences.
Character Breakdown –
Male protagonist:
Name: Mason
Age: 19
Race: Asian
Gender : Male
Profession : Student
Backstory: Is an orphan who lost his parents at a young age and was implemented into a secret government program used to train young children into ‘special agents’ he ends up finding about a government secret from the inside and has his memories wiped. Now he is being monitored by the government to ensure his memories do not return.
Side characters:
Classmates, random pedestrians, Mason mostly keeps to himself.
Antagonists:
Government agents, spies etc.
Primary Antagonist: Cade
Age: 23
Race: ?
Gender: Male
Profession: Government officer
Backstory: Was in the same program as the main character and graduated, now tasked to kill his former companion.
Visual Elements –
Lighting - low-key, natural, chiaroscuro
Camera Movement - Handheld, tilts, tracking, POV, pans
Editing - montage, sped up, cross cutting, fades, slow motion, pull focus, fast pace, CGI, jump cuts
Setting - City, underground, office, School, appartment
Actors - unrecognised actors (non famous)
Props - guns, knives, money, cars, drugs, bags, ID’s, stationary
Costume - masks, gloves, hoodies, suit and ties, dark casual clothing
Audio Elements –
Soundtrack - Non-diegetic orchestral music.
Effects (Foley) - Footsteps, gunshots, squeaky doors, glass-breaking.. etc.
Music - non- diegetic hip-hop, orchestral, rock
sound - ambient, contrapuntal, synchronous, non-diegetic and diegetic
Rationale – We chose this idea as we needed to relate to the social-realistic genre but wanted to add our own spin on the genre by implementing some sort of governmental conspiracy background, that would allow us to add more action elements.
Primary and Secondary Research – We will be constructing questionnaires that will help us understand what sort of film trailer we need to make but also make use of the case studies that we have done to help us develop our trailer so that it matches up perfectly with the action genre.
Requirements & Resources – List your cast and crew. List all the technical equipment you will use. Outline some locations that you have considered and why they would be suitable alongside any issues with access or permissions
Louis : Cameraman
Russell : Scriptwriter
Jonash : Director/Cameraman/Editor
Joshua : Editor
Constraints and Contingency – The problems that we may encounter is: location - making sure that we have permission to film if not we may have to find a different location to shoot
Props - When using a prop especially a toy gun, making sure it has a orange tip so that it can be seen that it is not a real gun when used in public.
Actors - Making sure that when filming with the actors, we film every scene that involves that particular person so that later on down the line we wouldn’t have to rely on them to shoot another scene when they’re not available which could then possibly lead to us not finishing on time.
Legal and Ethical Considerations – We have to make sure that that the music we use is copyright free as we may get into trouble if we use music from artists without their permission.
Budget – The budget of our film would be less than £100 because we already have majority of our props and costume but we may have to spend a little on camera equipment e.g. Steadicam so that when filming it would look reasonably professional despite not spending that much.
Proposed Schedule – We plan to start filming by mid October and through the course of 6 weeks film and finish by November whilst beginning post production during or just towards the end of half term. We have contingency time involved if we tend to encounter problems and that be by adding an additional two weeks for safety. Overall the whole project would be finished by end of November to early December.
