Taken from BDC on Vimeo.

Shot Lists

Shot 1 - In our first shot we want the car to be driving onto the driveway. The car is nice, typical of a middle-class family with money.

Shot 2 - Our second shot is a shot of the car from behind which includes the outside of the house in the shot. Again the house is reasonably big typical of a middle-class family.

Shot 3 - Next we need a shot of the Father stepping out of the car. We don not see his face to create tension and suspense.

Shot 4 - Our next shot is of the Father opening the front door. His face is still concealed to uphold the suspense.

Shot 5 - Shot 5 is of the Father inside the house shutting the front door. Face is still not shown.

Shot 6 - Behind shot of daughter doing her homework.

Shot 7 - Shot of Father telling daughter he is going out.

Shot 8 - In this shot the daughter gets up from doing her homework and shouts out to her Father. Using a variety of shots from different angles to show different implications. For example shot from a high angle on the stairs makes the girl feel small, like a victim.

Shot 9 - Daughter gets up from doing her homework. Panning shot from living room to hallway.

Shot 10 - Daughter walks upstairs. Low angle shot to show her going into the dark. Implies something sinister is about to happen.

Shot 11 - Daughter turns on light upstairs and goes into Father's bedroom.

Shot 12 -  Daughter is in bedroom, begins searching through Father's cupboards. Panning shot from door to cupboards.

Shot 13 - Zoomed in shot of Daughter searching in cupboard. Box falls down.

Shot 14 - Zoomed out shot of Daughter picking up box and photos.

Shot 15 - Zoomed in on photos so we can see they are disturbing of stalked women.

Shot 16 - Zoomed in on computer where Daughter searches for the women in the photos.

Shot 17 - Zoomed out shot from behind Daughter, it leaves us wondering what she has found. Shot fades out.

Brad

Storyboard for Thriller Opening 2

1. Visual - Daughter goes upstairs to look for birth certificate.

    Audio - Going upstairs. Thriller music.

2. Visual - Daughter opens Father's bedroom.

    Audio - Sound of door opening. Thriller music.

3. Visual - Daughter knocks a box off of her Father's shelf.

    Audio - Thriller music fades out and we hear the box fall.

4. Visual - Daughter picks up photos and sees they are disturbing photos of women.

    Audio - Sound of daughter looking through photos. Music slowly increases in volume again.

5. Visual - Daughter types one of the girl's names on the picture into a search engine.

    Audio - Sound of typing and Thriller music.

6. Visual - Shot from behind the girl and computer, leaving us wondering what she has found. Scene fades to black.

    Audio - Thriller music fades out.

Brad

Storyboard for Thriller Opening

1. Visual - Car drives onto the driveway. (Father coming home from work.)

    Audio - Sound of the car driving onto the drive. Background thriller music.

2. Visual - Father steps out of car. We do not see his face only his foot step out the car.

    Audio - Sound of foot stepping out of car. Background thriller music.

3. Visual - Father opens door.

    Audio - Sound of keys opening the door. Background thriller music.

4. Visual - Father shuts door behind him.

    Audio - Sound of door shutting. Background thriller music.

5. Visual - Father walks in and daughter is doing homework.

    Audio - No thriller music so we can hear conversation. Father tells daughter he is going out.

6. Visual - Daughter rushes to catch her Father before he leaves.

    Audio - Daughter asks Father where her birth certificate is. Thriller music creeps in again.

Brad

Locations

Locations:

• Outside House on the drive as the car pulls up to the house
  
• Living room where daughter completes homework
  
• Hallway and staircase where daughter goes upstairs
  
• Father's bedroom for daughter to be searching in
  
• Daughter's bedroom where daughter types the girls names in the photographs into the computer.

Brad

Prop Lists

Prop Lists:

• Box to hold photographs
  
• Polaroid photographs of women with their names and addresses on them
  
• Homework for girl to be completing at the table
  
• Stationary for girl to be doing her homework with
• Lamp for the table where daughter is doing her homework
• Car for father to drive onto driveway with
• Keys for father
  
• Computer with internet for daughter to search for information about the girls in the photographs
  

Brad

Costume

Costume:

Father dressed in a smart black suit typical of someone who works in an office, complete with white shirt, black blazer, black tie, black trousers, black sock and black shoes. His clothes need to be sophisticated so that it is a shock when the photos that are amongst his things have been revealed. The use of black also suggests he is sinister.

Daughter is dressed casually in her tracksuit, typical of a school girl who has changed into something more comfortable after school, complete with grey jumper and grey tracksuit bottoms. She looks like the typical teenager, again which fools the audience into a false sense of security, because when she finds the photos in her father's things she realises they are not a normal father and daughter.

Brad

Actors

Talent:

Adult Black Male aged between 35 & 50. 

The person who plays the father needs to seem friendly at first, but could also suggest a sinister side. He needs to appear to the audience as a disturbing character who would stalk and photograph various women.

Teenage Black Female aged between 13 & 18

The person who plays the daughter should seem innocent and naive. She is an innocent schoolgirl who is having a normal night at home doing her homework, and has a casual relationship with her father as a normal, uninterested teenager would. However she needs to be vulnerable when she sees the photos as she becomes scared of her father.

Both characters should look like a standard father and daughter (therefore the father cannot look too young or the daughter too old). They also need to look somewhat similar to make the thriller opening seem as convincing as possible.

Brad

Budget, Staff & Equipment

Budget:

N/A

Production Staff:

4 Camera Operators

Equipment:

1 HD Camera

1 Tripod

1 External Battery

1 Battery Charger

1 Extension Cable

1 Video Tape

Brad

Script

Outline Script: 

There will be a few lines of dialogue shared between the father and daughter when he comes in and then exits again.

Father: Hello, darling doing your homework?

Daughter: (Unenthusiastically) Yeah.

Father: Alright, I've just got to pop out Ok?

Daughter: Yeah fine. (Father exits.) (Shouting) Dad! Where's my birth certificate I need it for school! (Door Slams.)

We chose to have a few lines of dialogue as they are key to the plot. We ensured the lines sounded natural rather than put on like in the student thriller opening 'Breathless'. We chose to keep the number of lines to a minimum as we wanted to focus on our visuals as they are most important. In addition sound can be added in afterwards therefore it is not key at this stage.

Brad

Contingency Plan

• Weather conditions - We will be filming most of our thriller inside the house therefore we had little concern regarding weather conditions. However we film our first few shots outside, when the car is pulling into the drive, therefore if it rains on the Saturday, when we are due to film, we will have to reschedule these scenes for either Sunday or Monday afternoon.
• Power - Again as we are filming inside we have no need to worry about an external power source if the battery runs out. However if the shots outside the house are too far away we can use an extension cable so that we can continue filming.
• Location - The house we have booked is one of our production teams and can be used on Saturday, Sunday and Monday therefore we don't need to worry about alternate locations. The house has been viewed and the layout is perfect for our thriller filming. There is a lot of space to work so we will not be restricted.
• Illness - If any of the production crew are ill on the day we are due to film we will either film on Sunday instead of Saturday or work with just 3 members of our team until they feel well enough to work. If any actors are ill again we can reschedule to the following day or in an emergency incident we have back-up actors.

Brad

Production Schedule

We were giving a week to film our thriller opening and we needed to create a production schedule to decide what days were to be filming.

We decided to film on a Saturday as this was a day when all members of the production team and our actors were free. It gave us the whole day for filming so we focus solely on the project at hand. Also if anything went wrong or any errors occured we had another full day on Sunday to film anything we may have got wrong or missed. As the cameras had to be returned Tuesday, we had Monday to recap our film with our teachers to ensure we hadn't filmed anything poorly or missed anything essential so that if we had, we could re-shoot that afternoon to make sure we had enough good footage to edit with. Using this production schedule we would keep to our deadline of handing the cameras in on Tuesday.

Brad

Synopsis of Final Idea

So after much deliberation here is our final idea!

Programme Title: 'Taken'

Client: AS Media Studies

The thriller opening will begin with a car pulling into a drive. The scene outside will be grey and dark to reflect a solum mood. A man will step out from the car although we will not be able to see his face, leaving him unidentified and mysterious which will create tension. 

The scene switches to one of a teenage girl doing her homework in the living room. We realise the mysterious character is her father and he needs to leave to run some errands. However the girl needs something for a school project and shouts out to him as he is about to leave, however she is too late and must search the house herself to find what she needs.

She goes upstairs where it is dark and a sense of tension is created as we do not know what could be in the dark. 

The girl begins to rummage through her father's things trying to find what she needs for her school project. As she searches, fast-paced, intense music plays to create suspense. She knocks a box off of a shelf whilst searching and photos are scattered all over the floor. She picks them up and there is a close-up of her hand on the photos, revealing stalker-like pictures taken of various girls. The photos are accompanied by names and addresses. 

The girl is in a panic after finding these disturbing photos amongst her father's things and goes to a computer to find out more about the girls in the photos. The scene cuts just as she presses enter so we are left wondering what she has found out.

We decided to incorporate the photographs from our first idea and the use of panic and searching through her father's things from our second idea to produce this final result. I feel that it will be effective as it uses the key features of a thriller and is different from things we have seen before. We discarded ideas like the chase through the woods and the murder video on the TV as we felt these were too cliche and copied other thrillers/horrors.

Brad

Idea Development

We had many ideas for a our thriller opening and we needed to refine them, and join our individual ideas together to come up with the best final outcome. Here are some of our initial ideas:

• Opens with a girl in a dream but we don't know it.
• Girl sees a box of photos on her bed and goes to put them away but then she sees the content of the photos inside.
• There is a close-up of her hand on the photos, they are of her as seen by a stalker.
• At this point her boyfriend comes in and she hides the photos from him.
• She runs out but he sees she's been looking through the photos and chases after her.
• She runs through the park into the woods. There is fast paced music.
• After being chased through the woods she comes into a clearing and there is a full circle shot of her. She has nowhere to hide.
• She suddenly wakes up with her boyfriend next to her asking her what's wrong. She sees the photos out of the corner of her eye.
• Dream in black and white and real-life in colour.

This was one of or first ideas. We liked it however we wanted to steer clear of the typical stalker and chase thrillers. Also the idea of having black an white for a dream and colour for real-life was slightly cliche. However the idea of using photos in a sinister way was good we incorporated that into our final idea.

Our idea then progressed:

• The thriller opening will feature a young girl who is home alone watching a video tape of when she was younger.
• Set at home at night to create suspense, only light is the blue light from the TV.
• After about 30 secs of the childhood video, it cuts to a murder scene, however it is not vivid and the camera angle is awkward and distorted although you can hear the screams from what is going on.
• The video suddenly ends and the girl searches for more clues.
• However as she is searching someone comes home and we hear them drive up to the house.
• The girl panics as she has to put everything back how it was before the person comes in and sees that she has watched the video tape.
• The person comes in and the girl acts oblivious although she is scared.

This was a good idea and we liked the idea of the girl searching for clues to solve something mysterious. However the idea of a videotape seems to similar to horror movie 'The Ring' therefore we are going to incorporate the photos from the previous idea instead.

Stay posted for our final thriller idea!

Brad

"Breathless"

The beginning of Breathless opens with titles that flicker in and out. The title is in black and white which gives a dark and eerie feel as there are no colours used to provide any sense of light. I felt the title was effective as it appeared on  the screen as if being typed on a type-writer like a police report which again gave a sense of suspense which is something I wish to re-create in our thriller opening.

There is a quick shot of someones eyes which is mysterious as their identity is concealed. Again this is a technique I could use in our thriller to create suspense about a mysterious or dangerous character. Another effective technique used is that there are also shots of objects on their own, which shows to an audience they are significant to the story. 

'Breathless', a detective thriller had an effective transition between shots to keep continuity throughout the opening. In addition the sound had good continuity. It was set in a dark setting, in a dark room where you never saw the detective's face. This created suspense and tension as I was waiting for his identity, and the room to be unveiled.

The use of a torch to light the room was effective as it allowed the showing of only certain objects that the director wanted you to see. . The candles looked eerie as the light created by them was flickering against the dark walls which looked very effective.

However the dialogue used in this film sounded unnatural and very staged. Also the speaking through a walkie-talkie was firstly overused, and secondly was off putting and sounded comical rather than scary. Therefore I have learnt in my Thriller to use little or no dialogue as firstly it can be distracting to the visuals and secondly if I do use dialogue, it will need to be natural.

Overall, 'Breathless' was a great thriller opening as it used some of the key features of thrillers such as dark lighting, concealed and mysterious characters and dark and spooky settings. However the issue which distracted from the great visuals was the unnecessary use of dialogue through the walkie-talkies.

Brad