I found a solution!

My mind is a little more at ease after viewing more drama openings that have to do with war and action. One of the examples is the opening of Saving Private Ryan (1998) which present me with an example of how a war film should begin. After watching the opening of this film (which was a lot to take in), I did not get any inspiration for my opening per-se because everything in the opening scenes is way out of my budget range, and ability. However, I was able to view a realistic version of war in which these children will have to face when they get sent off. Therefore, this opening scene will help me with my script writing for the film opening.

One thing that I must do before starting a film like this is research current world relations and the psychological tendencies of children when placed in a life or death situation, which obviously differs from adults who are currently in combat. In this article, I discovered that children choose to repress their emotion after facing trauma, and those who do act upon their grief are just seen as misbehaved children. This information helps me because I plan on there being a reason as to why children are fighting now instead of adults. One of my reasons may be that if the children choose to repress their emotions and follow orders at a young age, there will be a significant reduction in crime, which may have been at an all time high at some point in the dystopian society.

I am also going to be using various news reports (that I will create myself) and a voiceover in order to simultaneously introduce the audience to the main character, and the world they are living in.

My 12 year old cousin Azul will play Madison, the 11 year old girl who is one month away from deployment. The film will center around Madison and her family struggling with letting her go, and take a peek at the social movements made to stop the wars, as well as the reason for why they started in the first place. Overall, I believe a dystopian society does not correspond to the genre characteristics of a drama, however since the war is not the focus and I do not plan on showing the massive fighting scenes, that this idea will work.

I found this article that shows the manners in which child soldiers are made to become emotionless and ready to fulfill any command. Moreover, this other source also gave me reasons as to why children make better soldiers than adults. As sick and twisted as this was to read, I need this research in order to delve deeper into my fictional world and to give enough backstory in my opening.

I plan on showing my storyboard in the next post to give a clearer picture of my vision for this opening. One thing that I do need to be cautious of is not to overwhelm myself and make a choppy and awkward film opening. My goal for this film opening is to intrigue the audience with the idea of a dystopian society, and introduce them to Madison.

Townsend, M. (2016, March 05). How Islamic State is training child killers in doctrine of hate. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/05/islamic-state-trains-purer-child-killers-in-doctrine-of-hate

Children as soldiers. (n.d.). Retrieved March 16, 2017, from https://www.unicef.org/sowc96/2csoldrs.htm

Institute of Medicine (US) Committee for the Study of Health Consequences of the Stress of Bereavement. (1984, January 01). Bereavement During Childhood and Adolescence. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK217849/

(2016, May 03). Retrieved March 16, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5p5j_K0CsY