Short Film Treatment Relating to Amelie! (title tbd)

Logline: After a bully picks on a girl’s only potential friend, she finds out his secret and makes sure he’ll never bully again.

A hand is sketching a random cartoon character on an otherwise blank piece of paper. A clock ticks. A girl is staring lazily at her work. Students in a classroom are bent over their papers, writing furiously. The girl glances up at the clock. It ticks three times and the bell rings.

Students put their papers on a table at the front of the classroom. The girl, alone, is last to leave. She puts her sketch on the top of the other papers. As she goes toward the door, she sees a boy waiting at the door. He tells her goodbye and says he’ll see her later. The girl smiles.

She girl walks down the hallway and stops at the end. She stares at the other students, laughing and chattering. She stares longingly, but instead changes directions to go a less-populated way to class.

As she turns a corner, she sees a bully picking on the boy that said bye to her. She stops to look and then continues toward them, asking the bully what he is doing. The bully says they're just messing around and tells her to clear out. She squints her eyes very tightly and turns on her heel to leave the scene.

Once again she is doodling in class, but it is a picture of herself kicking the boy. The teacher is rambling on indistinctly in the background. The clock ticks several times. She notices that the bully is sitting in front of her. The girl accidentally drops her pencil, so she goes down to get it. As she does this the bully gets up to sharpen his pencil. She sees his planner on the floor. It says at the bottom “Ballet Recital: 4:00”. She smiles evilly. She gets up again with her pencil. The bully returns to his seat, completely unaware that the girl was snooping. The bell rings.

The girl walks into the office to turn in a paper. She notices an empty administrator’s desk with the PA machine on it. An idea strikes, and she smiles toward the ceiling. She looks around her cautiously to see if anyone is around. The room is empty. She sneaks over to the PA machine on tip-toes, and sits down in the administrator’s chair. She presses the button on the PA and says, “[Bully’s Name] please come to the office immediately. Your mommy is here to pick you up. The time of your ballet recital has been changed to 1:00.” The bully is approaching the boy again, but stops when he hears this on the PA. The boy laughs at the bully, who’s face is frozen in terror. He runs away.

The girl walks out and finds the boy standing there, laughing. The girl laughs, too, and they walk off together.
THE END.

by Jen, Jen, and Isabella

Amelie- 4 Stylistic Devices

1. When introducing Amelie (and the credits), we find that she is an unusual and imaginative girl. This is displayed with close-ups of things she does without having establishing shots.

The framing is tight because we don't expect Amelie to need to move around. Instead, we expect her to be in a following shot doing something equally childish. These shots are "close to the action" because if she did move, we want to move with her and be close to her. Otherwise, we are just on the outside looking in. We aren't supposed to care about what's around her because the focus on her makes anything an establishing shot would provide unnecessary. This reflects the film as a whole because we feel like we know her by the time she is grown up and going about her adventures. The viewer has a connection with her because of these several shots shown before the story really begins.

2. Another interesting thing is how Amelie "breaks the 4th wall". She looks at the camera to communicate with the audience.

The camera is at a neutral level so it seems like we're right there with her. There is tight framing because it's like (especially with the second picture) she's telling us a secret that only her viewer can know. People don't tell other people secrets from afar, but instead lean in so that we are close to them. I think this communication between her and her audience contributes to her peculiarity because one doesn't expect and actress who isn't even supposed to know they're watching them to suddenly talk or look at them. Although there is a voice-over narrator to tell the story, Amelie is also the one telling the story because of these little hints that she knows we're watching her. It reflects the film in a similar way to that of the first stylistic device, which is that the viewer can understand Amelie better by forming a connection with her.

3. Another thing that makes this film so unique is that when Amelie is watching the television, she imagines that the people on the screen are talking about her.

There is a black and white filter that makes it appear old. This make her seem like a long forgotten person who did much good in her life. She is trying to imagine a different life where she helped all of these people she met, such as the blind man and the old man with brittle bones. It is like an epiphany because she then tries to help those people because she wants to be remembered. This specific shot shows solitude because of the filter, the downward direction her eyes are looking, and all of the empty space in the shot. Amelie wants to change her lonely life so she doesn't have to die alone as well. this reflects the entire film because it gives her motivation to reach a different "destiny".

4. There is an odd special effect seen throughout the film of glowing orange at important moments. Sometimes there is an x-ray of something accompanied by it.

The dominant color in both shots is orange because it is such a bright color. I think it represents the warmth Amelie feels at doing good. Even though in the first shot she is being mischievous, she is doing it with good intent because the produce man needs to get what's coming to him for being so mean. It also just highlights the key so the viewer understands what she did with the keys. The second one more directly shows warmth because Amelie made it as though the blind man could see. He only needed to imagine everything she told him about his surroundings, and the orange glow effect make sit obvious that this was a miracle for him. The orange glow reflects the entire film because it supports the quirkiness of it.