News Article

We choose this news article about a teenager who suffered from amnesia to base our film opening on. 

Teenager who suffered amnesia and forgot her entire life regains her memory - after hug from little brother

Chloe Inman suffered total memory loss nearly two years ago after suffering serious side effects from a lumbar puncture to remove fluid from her spine. A teenager who suffered amnesia and forgot her entire life regained her memory - after a hug from her little brother. Chloe Inman, 16, suffered total memory loss nearly two years ago after suffering serious side effects from a lumbar puncture to remove fluid from her spine. Doctors had tried everything but devastated Chloe was still not able to recognize her family, friends or understand who she was. But one day at home her brother Caleb, then six, walked into her room and gave her a cuddle - and miraculously her memories came flooding back.

 Chloe said: "I had forgotten my entire life, which was absolutely devastating. I literally lost everything. "Mum and dad would get very upset as I didn't recognise them and it was hard for them to deal with it. "We had tried everything. I would look at family photographs and I knew it was me in them but I just couldn't remember anything about why I was there. "It totally ruined me. I could not go back to school and I lost my family and friends and did not know who I was. It was dreadful. "It sounds weird and is hard to explain but the first thing I remember was my little brother Caleb.

"After that hug all my family memories came back - every last one of them. "Chloe had always suffered bad headaches but it was not until just before her 15th birthday that medical staff diagnosed her with Idiopathic intracranial hypertension. She suffered the severe memory loss after doctors performed a lumbar puncture and found she had twice as much fluid in her spine than usual. Chloe, who lives in Plymouth, Devon with parents Julie, 41, Daryl, 42, sister Ellie, nine and Caleb, now seven, said she was awake throughout the procedure.

She said: "It was like a switch was flicked and all my memories just disappeared.

"I did not recognise my mum or my family. It was a weird feeling in my stomach as I felt like I knew them from somewhere but I couldn't think where.

"I immediately thought my mum must have been important as she did not leave my side through the whole ordeal."

Chloe was sent home from hospital to try to jog her memories before the hug from her brother brought all her family memories back. Now she studies performing arts at City College in Plymouth, Devon, and also volunteers at St John Ambulance. Her dream is to work as an army medic. She said: "It's quite scary looking back on it now. It did ruin my year and really my whole entire secondary school life.

"My pain was ignored for so many years. My consultant tested me for quite a lot of things and ran out of what to give me to help."

Chloe is now on a drug called acetazolamide to help reduce the fluid in her back. Fortunately she hasn't suffered from any headaches now for a year. She explained: "My condition hasn't been properly diagnosed or treated yet because they don't really know what causes it.

"But they know that if it comes back to perform a lumbar puncture as a quick solution so this could all happen again. I am worried that I could lose all memory again."

Ideas

In our group we had three main ideas, these included: agrophobia, OCD and amnesia. Each of these ideas were quite similar. We dissucssed each idea and brainstorms some ways we would create each idea. In the end we decided to choose the amnesia idea as we were most passinate about it and we thought it would be the easiest to create.

Main task

For our task breif we were told to based our opening on a news article of our choice.

Main task:

The titles and opening to a film, to last a maximum of two minutes. All video and audio must be students own work. Audio may be obtained from a copyright free source.

Draft 1

Media skills

During this task I have developed many new media skills. I learnt how to use the camera and make different parts of the frame in and out of focus. Also I learnt which lense to use to create different types of depth within the scene. As filming was my main role during the task, I feel this was the main skill I developed during the task.
Aside from using e cameras, I also learnt how to use the editing software: Final Cut Pro. This was pretty easy to get used, although I feel there is still a lot more to learn.

Shot, Reverse shot

Shot, reverse shot is a technique used in film making to show the perspective from a character then from the opposite characters perspective. This helps create the 180 degree rule.
We created this shot type in our own sequence by filming the entire scene from one characters perspective and then filmed the whole scene again from the other side. We also filmed a master shot in the middle of the scene. This ensured that while editing we had all the material we needed, if we choose to change the perspective at any time. We inserted the master as the main shot of the scene and then edited the other shots on top of this. This made editing very time effective, as it took so much less time to edit scenes on top.

By the use of the shot, reverse shot helps the audience to feel as if they are in the scene with the characters.

Preliminary task analysis

The main representation in our sequence is power. This is portrayed using camera angles, mise en scene and composition.
The setting of the scene is established through a long shot of the corridor. We are then introduced to the character Anna through the use of a panning shot from a low angle. This instantly informs the audience that she has some sort of authority and power, as the low angle makes Anna appear bigger. The use of the tape creates suspense into the sequence, by making the audience think that there's something not quite right about Anna.
We are then introduced to the second character in the scene; Baz. He is first shown in an over the shoulder shot, to make it seem as the audience is watching from behind Anna. Also the fact that Baz does not fill the whole frame, shows that he is of a less importance than Anna. This could be seen as a switch of gender stereotypes, as it is usually the man who has the greater power and significance.
We then see a power switch between the to characters when the camera pans Baz as he stands up to instantly give him more power over Anna. This could be seen as Baz trying to use his gender to intimidate Anna.
Overall the sequence's main representation is power and how in is switched between characters. Gender also helps portray power through the use of gender stereotypes.


In our next task I'm going to make sure we make a storyboard of what camera angles we are going to use before we shot our sequence. As I believe this worked well and made filming more efficient. Although next time I'm going to make sure we film our sequence in  a place which is not so busy so we don't have loud background noise. Also I'll make sure we do practice shots so we can work out which angle is best for lighting.