Research and Planning - Shot List

Research and Planning - Props

Research and Planning - Characters

Characters

The main character is a mature woman, in her very early forties. She will have brown/mousy blonde hair and big brown eyes. She should be quite independent looking to begin with, and like a stylish businesswoman but also having aspects of a mother of two. She should look like she has had a hard days work but content to be at home. She should also be angry about her divorce but not letting it upset her.

Actors who inspired this role include:

Sandra Bullock

- Her mature and independent look is very good for this character.

Julia Roberts

- Her appealing look is good to make audience easily engage with her.

Jodie Foster

- Her slightly troubled but happy and confident look is a good representation of our character. She appeared in a film called Flight Plan, which is similar to our film in that her character gets framed and only she knows and tries to reveal the truth, but no one will believe her.

Research and Planning - Possible Film Producers

Possible Film Producers

Working Title - Working Title is a possibility because they are a British Company that is very involved in the production of international, particularly British-American movies (which is good because we are using an American actress in our starring role), though many of their British movies are comedies, they also have produced several American thrillers, such as State of Play, United 93 and the upcoming Green Zone. They are one of the best producers of internationally popular British films.

Pathé - Pathé is a large producer of films, based in France it produces lots of British films, particularly of young and alternative directors, with the American Blair Witch Project, the British, Adulthood and Slumdog Millionaire. As well as this, they produce really successful mainstream thrillers, like Memento, Apocalypse Now. They are also currently producing a British film called Centurion, with a nearly entirely British cast Dominic West, Noel Clarke and Riz Ahmed. They are quite a major producer of British films.

Research and Planning - Target Audience

The main audience is roughly between 15 and 35. The niche audience will be people older than those ages who are interested in horror. The certificate for the film will be ‘15’ because of the violent content and fear, but younger audiences will also be interested to watch the film when it comes out on DVD, with parental consent.

I believe that this is aimed at a conventional thriller or horror audience, so the main audience will consist of young people going to the cinema/DVD shop to watch a film that will provide them with thrilling plot and scary scenes, thus we need to provide them these thrills. On the other hand, there is a niche audience of perhaps more ‘middle-aged’ people, as a whole there are a wide variation of people who go to watch a thriller, we intend to attract a larger audience by providing an intelligent, deep plot. This will appeal to a widest range of audience.

Research and Planning - Style and Tone

The opening scene should start very unsuspecting; the mood should be very normal. This is to make the climax more surprising. To achieve this we will make the colours quite warm, make the scene homely, and wont add any scary music at the beginning. For the first shot, we want to zoom in on the woman while she is having the phone conversation, this will create tension. Camera shots will remain static or just a slow zoom to intensify the verisimilitude of the scene. When the lights come on in the bedroom, it might be effective to have the shadow of the body cast on to the wall behind the woman, and on her. This would emphasize a sense of mystery and want you to know what she is looking at. To achieve this without making it seem unrealistic the light behind the body would be a bedside lamp. The light in this room will also be quite blue/green to emphasize the change in mood.

The genre of our film is thriller/horror. There are quite graphic images and unexpected and perhaps shocking moments. No guns, or drugs like most thrillers entail. Perhaps the genre is slightly leaning to a psychological thriller also, for example, you do not know what is going on at times, and don’t know who is guilty or innocent.

The titles will be very simple, white on black. As a door opens, and the light enters the room, you realize that the black background was in fact the darkness of the room. The first shot will be a long one; it will start as a long-shot and pan round as the woman walks past. (The titles will continue to show at the bottom-right of the screen.) Then slowly ease in toward a mid-shot during the phone conversation. The easing in will also add a little tension to the scene. The very beginning will start in a quite regular way, it is meant to be like any other day, so no scary sound effects as of yet. As the opening progresses however, small incidents that aren’t every day, instead perhaps once in a while, start to happen to the protagonist, for example the phone cutting out. Very subtle eerie sound effects and also the increasing kettle can accompany these. The shots will also become more unconventional, close-ups on her lips, the clock, etc. The next shot will be in a dark room with a door open, showing the woman at her desk. Perhaps here to create suspense, the accompany of some ghostly droning music will be good, it should be very quiet though, almost subliminal. When the woman turns the light on and sees a dead body the music should have a great impact here and be frightening, showing her fear.

Research and Planning - Influences

The Shining – We want to achieve a similar style for the camera shots, for example long panning and tracking camera shots. We would like our actress to react in a similar way to the character ‘Wendy’ in the bathroom scene of this film. We think her fear and distress is very powerful. Kubrick plays with sound creatively and we want to try and adopting this technique for our opening, for example the sound of the clock ticking, and kettle. Kubrick gradually builds up tension very effectively in his films, and although he does it very slowly and over the course of the whole film, we will try and do the same in the two minutes.

Psycho – We were inspired by Hitchcock’s camera shots. His close-ups, and long shots, and his build up of cuts to develop tension. In Psycho, we like the thrilling quality of someone else being in the house/room. This film appeals to a mainstream audience, which is what we are also trying to achieve. The woman in our film is a similar age to the character in psycho who is murdered. She looks young, yet is a mother of two and is just reaching her 40’s. With this choice of age we are trying to appeal to young and older audience members.

Panic room – The idea of having a woman on her own with the responsibility of her child. The sense of paranoia is very effective in this film. We watched the film trailer to get ideas for building tension and for the story.

Flight Plan – The story is similar to that of ‘Flight Plan’ – a single mother whose child is kidnapped. This relates to part of our theme, ‘destruction of the family’ and to the woman being alone and vulnerable.

News – The case involving Tony Martin partly inspired the story. We were interested in the idea of how far one might go to protect their property and family in a burglary situation. Tony Martain was prosecuted for manslaughter after killing a sixteen-year-old boy because his home was being violently robbed. Our character wont reveal a gun, but we were interested in the frightening aspect that if someone is criminally trespassing in your home, you might not be able to defend yourself properly.

We were also inspired by North by Northwest, the way it didn’t seem like a thriller at first, until a sudden surprise. It showed the character’s normal life and displayed it naturalistically, this emphasized on the idea that it could happen to anyone.