Obviously Film

Group Members: Sarah, Nora, Ashleigh, Lara

  Our process began with our documentary idea of getting an inside perspective on some recent refugees arrived in Australia. With several debates going on in parliament and everyone having a perspective on the situation, we decided not many people are aware of their side of the story and how this can impact on opinions of the situation.

  Ash pitched the idea, as her neighbours are a family of Sudanese refugees. She was aware of aspects of their story and past and through this we learnt of SCARF, a foundation formed for community assistance to refugees in Wollongong.

  We had some initial problems with equipment hiring and technical difficulties on the day where we opened the Zoom kit after driving all the way to Wollongong, setting up our equipment and preparing for our first interview with Keur, only to find there were no batteries inside. After a quick drive to the nearest shops to replace the batteries, we finally began interviewing running slightly behind schedule for our next interview. We packed up, drove to the SCARF centre and met with Monique, and finding we had left the tripod back at our first location. We drove back and forwards, did the interview in 15 minutes due to Moniques limited availability. Now exhausted, hungry and going slightly insane, we took a break for lunch and headed back to the Bul family home to get an interview and some footage of Penny, a family volunteer and the young children.

  We had some lights go out on us, luckily we had hired an extra kit just incase of some difficulties as we didn’t want to spend a second day shooting because we had no lights for our interviews. A minor heart attack later, after checking the SD card and not seeing any videos towards the end of the days shoot, we found them hidden in a different menu.

Assessment 2 - Documentary

Logline

In a world where drugs are rare, expensive and difficult to get hold of, how far are two young, desperate individuals willing to go?

 Synopsis

 The film “Ongoing Supply” begins in an empty garage, where two characters, Tom and Belle are planning their mission to steal some rare drugs from a large, expansive drug ring. To do this, they have kidnapped a security officer, who is supposed to be taking over a night shift guarding a property where some of the drugs are kept. They extract information from him about how to obtain the drugs without getting caught and devise a plan of action.

The setting takes place at night, where Tom and Belle travel by train to the house where the drugs are kept. They walk through a bushy trail that would be undetectable if unaware of its presence. Timing is crucial and modern technology aids them in planning when to get in and out of the property without getting, as well as having inside information provided by the captured guard.

Once they are successful in stealing the drugs, their overconfidence lowers their guard and they are virtually unaware of being followed back to their safe location. On arrival, careless mistakes lead them to be placed in an unguarded situation, which proves to be catastrophic.

Exegesis

 The brief for this assessment was to write a short film script set in the near future within the framework of a specific genre. The idea for ‘Ongoing Supply’ is stemmed from my interest in criminal law and the legal system, coming from my second major, Criminology. Currently, there is a demand from private legal representative parties to legalise prohibited drugs, under the guise that it will have significant long-term benefits for the community and legal system. With this in mind, I proposed a thought to how this may actually have detrimental effects, using inspiration from Black Mirror, where most technologies and social norms that are in demand today, often tend to end badly. This is why I decided to work with a film noir aesthetic and apply a dystopian element to my script. Film noir elements that I contributed to my script include the crime drama aspect with a femme fatale figure who appears towards the end of the script, a highly sexualised and dangerous character in a fitted black dress and high heels, as well as the average citizen forced or led into a life of criminal activity. Film noir often applies cinematic techniques such as low lighting or even made in black and white according to the 1940’s classical Hollywood film noir, which I tried to adapt by placing the setting in the script at night. 

Expanding on this idea of legalisation, my thoughts developed into the idea that the human race begins to abuse the now legal use of prohibited and prescription medication with no repercussions, and how this has lead to an increased immunity. Most medications no longer have any effect, and the ones that do are rare, expensive, and hard to come by leading to a wider demographic of people committing other offences, such as theft in times of desperation.

Sylvia Harvey’s notion of film noir is based around how social values are expressed, or even the erosion of these values and the relationship between institutions and people. This created a desire for me to accommodate a significant gap between social classes, as evident in the script where the thieves are forced to walk and catch public transport, where the powerful figures are in possession of cars, hiring drivers, security guards and are essentially of “higher” social status.