Planning: I.O.U

This film is going to be about a young teenage boy who is extremely talented at basketball and has been offered a scholarship to play basketball over in America. All is well until his friend gets himself into a situation that he feels he is obliged to help him through even though he does not want to pass up the opportunity of going to play in America. We have linked our film to Shank, Bullet Boy, Kidulthood, Save the last Dance and 4.3.2.1. All five of these films link specifically to our film in different ways and the content for each film enables us to work on a film that we feel showcasing the topic of Urban Youth that we decided on.

The reason that we chose urban youth is because as young individuals ourselves, we felt that this topic would showcase what we can do and how we can relate our ideas of real-life concepts to a fictional film. The different locations that we decided we wanted to film are: the school, in a kitchen and bedroom at a house, in a park, on the bus and possibly through City Centre. These different locations all serve relevance to the different scenes and subjects in our film.

What is the name of the film? What does the name of the film suggest about the film?
We decided to name our film I.O.U (I owe you) and the reason for this is because Lewis (the best friend) in the film feels that Marcus (the main character) owes it to him as a friend to help him out because he owes someone else as well. We decided this would be the perfect play on words because it shows how Lewis is trying to take advantage of his friendship with Marcus because he knows that Marcus is loyal to him and helps him through everything but this time around Marcus is conflicted with his loyalty to Lewis and following his dream - something Lewis is trying to dissuade him from. The title of the film also seems to suit the film because it gives the indication how these two friends face conflict both personally and morally so the I.O.U gives this idea to the audience.

What pace of editing is used? Does the pace increase/decrease at any time?
During editing we are likely to decrease the dramatic scenes to add more effect to the scene and make it more realistic to the theme of our movie. It also adds to the effect that these friends face conflict with each other so the pace shows the intensity and the seriousness of the situation.
We chose to have Sam (Rebecca - the girlfriend), Hezzron (Lewis - the best friend) and Jason (Marcus - the main character) as the main characters in our film because we felt that they were people who would suit the personas these characters would portray. Another reason that we chose them is because they are also people that we know so we knew that they would be able to do the work to the best of their abilities. With our filming schedule we need to work around it because I am always busy at the weekend and Jordan is always busy during the week so we need to make sure that we can work around this as well as Sam, Hezzron and Jason's schedules. We also have Shaqeel playing as accomplice of Hezzron's character Lewis and he is shown at the park scene where the confrontation between Marcus and Lewis takes place.

We have chosen the following settings to shoot some of the scenes:
George Park
House - Hallway, Bedroom
College
Bus
City Centre
The Streets

All of these different locations are relevant to all of the scenes in our short film and we feel that they will all showcase the topic of urban youth that we are showing through the characters in our film.