Proposal Re-presentation

Genre
Our film’s genre is psychological thriller, examples from this genre include Se7en, Rear Window and Silence Of The Lambs which focus on creating fear through tension as opposed to blood and gore.

Opening Sequence

It is dawn. There is a girl with blood on her in the middle of the room on a chair with a dead body at her feet. She is rocking slightly to show that she is thinking hard. We would introduce this scene with slow close up tilts and tracks along the body, her hands, the chair, her face etc whilst showing the titles in the area of space (e.g. first title of the back of the head of the dead body). About half way through the mood will suddenly change and she will get up suddenly. She will become very ‘matter of fact’ about how she is going to dispose of the body (kick the body to see if its dead get bin bags etc). The sequence could end with a phone call to a friend, on the line "I need your help."

Outline of the film
The dead body is a character who she knows but isn’t really connected to, he gets drunk and violent at her home, and she kills him in self defence. She’s up all night trying to figure out what to do. OPENING SEQUENCE. The rest of the film is about how trying to hide the body and the secret leads to her killing others.

After some clarification of what lead up to the event (in the sequence) this proposal was signed off - which is good as we are now able to start working out practicalities of shooting and start composing a storyboard for our upcoming test shoot.

Proposal and Feedback

 Using our blog as a visual aid, we proposed our idea to the group and gave out the following handout to summarise:

Feedback:

+ Arty elements

+ Idea of the morning after

Character Issues:

- What was her motive - is she crazy?

- Who is the antagonist?

- Idea of her doing normal things didn't go down well - as it seemed like she had no reaction

Narrative issues:

- Unclear on the rest of the film and the sequence of events

- Will there be an investigation?

- When is the body revealed?

Practical issues:

- Room issues

- Rethink choice of male actor

We're re-presenting on Friday, periods 4 and 5!!! This is because our idea seemed to vague and whilst they liked the general idea/style of it - the plot details and action codes needed to be more specfic.

Conventions and signifiers of the Thriller Genre

Character Profile

Dawn
-18 years old
-Lives with 3 housemates in London
-Is a studying English at university
-Is quite a structured logical person
-Enjoys socialising and going out
-Hopes to be a teacher
-Is quite naive and optimistic (begins to change in film)
-This killing starts the ball rolling on a bad sequence of events - which is the rest of the film

Shots of Potential location

Target Audience

Our target audience for this film would be:

- People who enjoy and watch psychological thrillers (and other  thrillers)

- Students who are a similar age to the main protagonist

- Young women

- British film fans

- Slightly alternative audiences (who like something local, new and innovative as an antidote to high budget blockbusters)

Typical murderers/villains in Thrillers

Some typical traits or conventions of a killer in the thriller genre include:

-Older white male

-Very clever but not very strong

-Bit psychotic making them scary and creepy

-Pre-meditate murder with every, detail planning, extremely carefully - taking everything into account

-Identity not fully exposed (shadows, enigma, sometimes revealed near the end)

-Kill for pleasure, revenge or other motives

-Cut off from society or isolated

We would like to break these stereotypes by having a murderer who is:

-Young female student

-Spur of the moment murder, without thinking about consequences or what to do with the body

-Quite a normal everyday member of society (friends, flat, job)

-Introduced like any other character, with information about lifestyle (not shadows or hidden faces)

Psychological Thriller: Genre Research

Soundtrack Research and Ideas

Music is an important part of a thriller; it makes the genre clear and anchors the mood of a sequence. Although we haven't considered any specific music for our opening sequence, we think that something similar to the following would be appropiate:

Seeing as our visuals will be quite unconventional to the thriller genre the music will be important in anchoring the genre of our sequence. Here is an example of how music and a voiceover can effectively change the 'mood' of a film:

25/01 - Group Meeting 2

Decisions made:

- The idea of the party wasn't too necessary to the plot so we scrapped it, it was only to make it more contemporary which could also be done by including modern technology, up-to-date costume, etc.

- We could keep the scene looking messy due to a fight between the girl and boyfriend. This would indicate something is wrong to the audience.

- We decided that the body should remain in the same room as the room where the girl wakes up (in the living room) and possibly make him in the sequence from the very beginning. The camera could focus on the girl for the sequence which would make the audience wonder why we don't get to find out who he is (until the blood makes it obvious that he is dead).

- Alternatively, he could be partially hidden by a prop, e.g. underneath a table, lying behind a sofa, etc. Shots would have to be constructed carefully to keep him hidden. The body doesn't have to be in every shot, he could be completely out of shot for most of the sequence until the end.

- We don't think the girl would do anything too different in terms of behaviour, she could still be cleaning up and generally denying the body's existence.

Thinking about shots we could use to show the body to the audience, we decided to all sketch some ideas:


We discussed some questions:

How do we tell the audience the relationship between the girl and the dead boyfriend? Our best idea was to show a photograph of the boy and girl with the boy wearing a paticular prop (possibly a watch) and then cut to a shot of the boyfriend's prop that has been broken to symbolise the change from his life to death.

We considered where the girl should wake up at the start of the sequence and how it should be shot. On a couch? On the floor? In a chair? We think that if she started on the floor, it would be symbolic of the fact that she can't get any lower (literally and morally) so it would be best. Perhaps, later on in the sequence, there would be a shot of the girl sitting in the chair to make her look eerily calm.

At the start, to create a false sense of equilibrium, we could have a pan of several unbroken photographs of the boy and girl (on a cabinet, shelf, wall, possibly.)

We will keep thinking of ideas for shots and narrative and continue with research into opening sequences.

25/01 -Teacher Feedback

As we explained our idea to our teacher, it became clear that our idea was too complicated. So we considered omitting the party element of the narrative and to reveal the body sooner to the audience. We also decided to discuss what the relationship between the girl and deceased boyfriend would be. We decided to answer the following in our meeting:

• Should the narrative occur after a party?
• Should the body be revealed to the audience sooner than the last shot?
• How much will the girl acknowledge the body?

Extract from criminal justice - good use of camera work, focus, music and space

mood board of inspiration for proposal

images from Hard Candy, Criminal Justice series 1 and 2 and Eternal Sunshine On A Spotless Mind

Researching 'Art-House' Visuals

After we had settled on our idea, we very quickly decided on filming and editing it in an unusual, 'arty' way that would show the main character's mental confusion and emphasise the fact that the idea goes against conventions.

We decided to find examples of media that used a similar style to what we aiming for. Below are some examples that we liked.

Short Depth Of Field - from the TV Drama, Misfits

• Can be used to represent a character's separation from everything else.
• Can be used to hide details in the background (or foreground) 

Fisheye Lens Effect from the film, Hot Shots

• Creates a clear sense of distortion and possibly surveillance 

'Cloning' People from the opening sequence of the film, Se7en

• Creates a sense of time passing
• Clearly distorted and has a dream-like quality to it

Tinted Visuals from the film, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

• Represents that it is the daytime (morning / afternoon)
• Can have a dream-like quality if overused

Extreme Macro Shot from the opening sequence of the film, Insomnia

• Creates a sense of distortion
• Can be used to make normal subjects look unusual / abstract
• Can be used to hide the rest of a subject (or make it hard to work out what the subject is)

Tilt Angle from the opening sequence of the film, Natural Born Killers

• Makes the viewer feel uneasy
• Can signifiy a character's instability

Analysis for the opening sequence of Memento (Nolan, 2000)

+ Iconography - bullet & glasses on the floor, blood, picture of the dead person
+ Character - LA of the main character makes him look dominant and menacing, esp. as the gun flies into his hand
+ Music - enigmatic, sad, tense
+ Enigma: picture developing is played backwards, and we realise the sequence of events is backwards
+ Titles - slow and fading in and out

Analysis to the Opening Sequence of Insomnia

Conventions or Techniques used in this opening:
-Use establishing shot to set the scene (wide pan over icy waters)
-Have simple titles (black and white, simple font) that fade in and out and overlap
-Have blurred focus on some shots and titles
-Have extreme close ups (which are enigmatic and slightly disorientating)
-Simple masculine white, black and blue colour scheme
-Red blood to signify horror/thriller genre
-Music - tense, long notes, threatening, builds up, bass, increasing beat/pace, no dialogue

22/01 - Group Meeting 1

After our first meeting, we made significant progress:

• We discussed our individual original ideas.
• We talked about our film and TV influences for our ideas.
• We chose one idea which we will now develop into our main project.*
• We talked about the plot of the rest of the film.
• We considered whether or not our idea would work with the brief.
• We made some decisions about our opening sequence's style.

We decided to run with Kerry's idea of a young girl killing her boyfriend after a big party and discussed films and TV shows that could influence both the technical and narrative aspects of our sequence such as Criminal Justice, Hard Candy and Insomnia.

We discussed psychological thrillers and thought it may be challenging but we could still use elements of the sub genre in our thriller. We talked about 'The Shining' as an example of seeing things that aren't real.

We wanted to do something different to thrillers that we've seen and agreed that starting the sequence on the morning after the crime had been committed is a good idea and that it's also similar to the opening of 'Se7en'.

We briefly considered the STYLE:  'arty', unconventional to thrillers, out of focus shots.

The rest of the film would be about the girl's struggle to cope with and hide what she has done.
We decided on this idea as its practical (filmed in 1 house/ room where we can experiment with lighting etc) and it works to our strengths.

In our next group meeting we will put forward ideas for the development of the structure and narrative of the opening sequence as well as any shot ideas.