Wednesday, 18 February 2009

Thriller Opening Planning

In this post you will find all of the Thriller initial Planning and ideas ranging from Location to Costume. Please note due to the shear amount of information and the lack of being able to correctly display it will make it appear in a slight mess..

  1. Brief Synopsis of plot

  2. Shots Outlined

  3. Characters

    1. Victims

    2. Villains

    3. Extras

  4. Casting

  5. Location

  6. Sound

  7. Props / Objects

  8. Equipment List

Brief Synopsis of Plot

The plot entails 2 female characters exchanging a pill, which the audience presumes is a drug, and thereby having the female victim take the drug and being kidnapped and put into a boot of a car. This is then followed with a speedy drive away.

Shots Outlined

You will notice there are more here than on the storyboards, this is to provide more detailed information on how we plan to do the shots due to my lack of ability of drawing anything better than a stick men.

  1. Opening Scene consisting of a blurred long shot of 2 female characters.

  2. Followed with a zooming in shot of the two characters.

  3. We then have a close up of the characters exchanging the drug itself.

  4. We then have a close up of the female victim before she takes the drug, as though thinking about it.

  5. The female victim then takes the drug, and we have a quick following of close ups / extreme closes up along with some fade to black transitions to add to the confusion.

  6. We then have a slow motion of the victim slowly falling to the ground.

  7. This follows with an extreme close up of the other female character crying out for help from her male associate

  8. A quick switch shot to the male character open the boot of his car and walking over to help pick up the victim

  9. We then track the characters carrying the victim and putting her into the boot of the car. All the while with the same music track playing.

  10. We suddenly switch to the victims point of view with her in the car boot looking around in a confused state, this includes some heavy breathing via diagetic sound.

  11. The villains are then shown to be having a conversation before separating to either side of the screen.

  12. The male villain is then shown getting in the car and slamming the door shut.

  13. This then follows with some clever camera work using the car rear view mirror showing the two villains looking at each other.

  14. After shaking his head in disgust the male villain then drives starts to drive away after having an outside of the car shot via a tilt to add to the feeling of confusion.

  15. The car is then tracked and zoomed in upon to get a better view of the license plate along.

  16. Finally the car turns around a corner and we can no longer follow it allowing us to fade to black leaving the audience with the question in their head asking "What happened to Grace?"

Characters

Within the Thriller Opening there are 3 characters, 2 villains and a single victim. The opening is dominated by the 2 female characters and half way through we then see the only male character, also a villain.

Victims

Grace – Leading Female Role – 17 years old – Clothes are a grey hoodie, white trainers and genes

Grace is displayed as a rather unaware girl, not expecting to be kidnapped since she freely takes the drug infront of the other female character. As thought she may be a friend, someone to be trusted.

Villains

Tom – 28 years old – Clothes are a thick coat with linen trousers, dark shoes, displaying money.

Mary 17 years old – Clothes are the same as Grace's, grey hoodie and genes with trainers.

The villains consist of Lauren using her unsuspecting friend as a kidnap victim, she then uses her associate Andy to help take Emily away from prying eyes to do what she wishes.

Casting

Grace – Emily Mullenderr

Tom – Andy Drane

Mary – Lauren Jordan

Location

We have decided to set the thriller opening in a out of the way car park within Norwich during the early hours of a winter evening. This provides the thriller generics such as unglamorous, remote and threatening location mainly influenced by the thriller 'This is England' by Shane Meadows and the gritting feeling it inspires.

Sound

The majority of the sound within the opening scene will consist of a unsigned / uncopyrighted music track called the "Nu Piano Project"


However we also use diagetic sound of Grace's heavy breathing to add to the feeling of entrapment.

Props / Objects

The props include the Car as well as some harmless pills to look like drugs.

Equipment List

Camera, Camera Stand etc. Nothing else was used.

Title

In the end after discussing as a group we settled with the title Snatched against the common names such as Kidnapped, Abdcuted etc.

2 comments:

vmb said...

Matthew you describe costume and props but do not explain the connotations of these aspects of mise-en-scene; also you need to give reasons for names of characters - do the names suggest something about these characters or have a deeper symbolic meaning?
Until you analyse connotations of aspects of mise-en-scene your marks will remain at Level 2 - basic understanding.

vmb said...

"This is England" is NOT a thriller film!!! If you wish to emulate the unglamorous locations in this film then you must say why? For example, do the locations reflect corruption? The moral landscape of the characters?