Risk Assessment

Storyboard

Location Scouting

Focus Group Interview

1. Do you enjoy thriller films? Explain why.

We asked our focus group this question to gain a specific understanding of why our target audience enjoys this genre. This will help our generalised understanding of what makes a good thriller film, and so we would implement these qualities into our own film to make it more entertaining and appealing to our audience.

2. What do you think makes a good villain?

We asked our focus group this question to understand what makes a good villain for a film, more specifically a thriller film. The answers received will hopefully give us as an idea of traits and qualities of good villains and implement them into making our villain just as effective as the ones that our focus group preferred. Some of the answers we received involve the backstory and how the character develops as the film goes on.

3. If you had to choose your favourite movie, that revolves around a thriller, what would it be?

We chose to ask this question to our focus group as we thought that the answers given by them would help us understand what people like to see in thriller films. Using that knowledge, we could take what ever aspects of those films made those films so enjoyable for our target audience and try to implement those things into our own films in a way that would make them enjoy our film too.

Shot List

Scene	Shot	Type	Description	Done?
1	1.1	ES	Shot of the setting from the outside, with antagonist standing by the opening before walking in.	o
2	2.1	TS	The antagonist walks into the shop and goes over to a section with back facing the shopkeeper	o
2	2.2	MCU	Shot of the shopkeeper going about his business	o
2	2.3	OSS	Shot of the antagonist  with shopkeeper over the shoulder as they converse	o
3	3.1	MCU	Shot of shopkeeper’s reply	o
3	3.2	CU	Shot of antagonist as he takes off his baseball cap, revealing himself more to camera.	o
3	3.3	MS	Shopkeeper turns around and continued with his work, finally noticing the wanted poster within the background	o
3	3.4	ECU	Shopkeepers reaction towards noticing the poster	o
3	3.5	POV	Shows the wanted poster that the shopkeeper sees from his point of view	o
4	4.1	MS	Shows the shopkeeper slowly reach for the phone on the counter	o
4	4.2	OSS	Shows the antagonist as well as the shopkeeper.	o
4	4.3	TS	Shows both the characters in one shot, nearly as opposing figures perhaps.	o
4	4.4	POV	Shopkeepers hand slowly moves away from the phone	o
5	5.1	MS	Shows the antagonist walk towards the counter	o
5	5.2	RS	Shopkeepers reply	o
5	5.3	TS	The antagonist and the shopkeeper are face to face as he reaches the counter	o
6	6.1	CI	Shows the coin being flipped in the air	o
6	6.2	MCU	Shows the antagonist as he continues his dialogue	o
6	6.3	RS	Shows the shopkeepers reaction and reply	o
6	6.4	RS	Shows the antagonist once again with his reply	o
6	6.5	ECU	Shopkeepers reaction as he replies slowly	o
6	6.6	CI	Antagonist moves his hand away from the coin
7	7.1	MS	The antagonist puts away his coin as he walks out the shop
7	7.2	ES	Shows the shop as antagonist walks away

Screenplay

Screenplay

FADE IN:

1.       EXT. NEWSAGENTS – DAY

In the busy streets of London, a man wears casual clothing as well as a baseball cap that conceals his face. He stands outside the shop as he cautiously looks around before entering the newsagents.

                                                                  CUT TO:

2.       INT. NEWSAGENTS – DAY

The man browses through the shop and stays in one place with his back towards the shopkeeper.

The Butcher

How’s business?

An Asian man, aged 20 looks towards The Butcher and has a smile on his face as he shuts his newspaper and places it to the side.

SHOPKEEPER

A bit empty today but business will pick up

The Butcher simply just smiles as he takes off his baseball cap, revealing his face. He is a young oriental man that usually looks calm. The shopkeeper looks up at the mirror and sees K’s face. The shopkeeper narrows his eyes as he slowly recognises him. The shopkeeper turns back and sees the wanted poster with a description of The Butcher. The shopkeeper reaches for the phone as he notices this from the mirror.

The Butcher

Who are you calling?

The shopkeeper freezes as he hesitates, hand hovering over the phone. The Butcher lifts his head up, showing grimace, which turns into a smile

SHOPKEEPER

F-family

The Butcher

Calling family while on the job? A bit disrespectful don’t you think?

SHOPKEEPER

What’s it to you?

The Butcher

What’s it to me?

The Butcher laughs a bit as he turns around to face the Shopkeeper, with a little smile on his face that the Shopkeeper finds a bit unnerving.

The Butcher

It’s my business because you’re trying to contact the local authorities aren’t you?

The Shopkeeper trembles a bit as he moves his hand away from his phone. The shopkeeper starts to sweat from nervousness as he starts to stutter when speaking.

SHOPKEEPER

N-No I’m not. I swear.

The Butcher

You’re trembling. You’re perspiring at an uncontrollable rate. My assumption is that your heart rate is going faster and faster at this very moment.

The Butcher ominously walks towards the Shopkeeper

K

Oh imagine how much faster your heart beats when I cut it out of your chest.

THE COUNTER

The Butcher now reaches the counter where he takes out a coin and flips it. The Butcher does not show the result of the coin yet.

The Butcher
Call it

The Shopkeeper
I don’t know what I’m calling for.

The Butcher
Don’t play dumb with me, you know full well who I am and what I’m capable of. Everything you’ve done in your life has been leading you up to this moment. The biggest gamble of your life. Everything to gain and everything to lose now call it.

The Shopkeeper
Tails

The Butcher moves his hands, showing the coin. The coin shows tails as The Butcher smirks and the Shopkeeper breaths out a sigh of relief.

The Butcher
You win

The Butcher then leaves the shop. As the door closes the screen goes black as the TITLES appear on the screen.

Survey Analysis

Why we Asked these Questions

What is your Gender?

- This was asked in order to for us to be able to get an idea of whether more males or females were giving us the answers to our other questions. We could then use this knowledge to find trends or patterns in our results, for example, if there could be more males saying they liked action  or spy films and more females saying that they liked romance and comedy films, conforming to each of their gender stereotypes.

What age group are you in?

- We asked this in order to get an understanding of what ages were giving us our answers,this allowed us to see if our intended key demographic was actually answering our questions, if not, then we knew we'd be able to expand it and perhaps attract a wider audience than we had planned.

What is your favourite thriller film?

- In order to analyse other relevant opening sequences we needed to find out which thrillers our key demographic thought were best, then we would be able to take key elements from those opening sequences, then alter or develop our original ideas to conform to some conventions and break others - so that our thriller wasn't the same as any other generic thriller movie.

What is your favourite film genre?

- To get an idea of the genres our demographic thought were best, we would be able to make a decision as to whether we would create our opening sequence by conforming to the conventions of the thriller genre or if we would push the boundaries of the genre.

What do you think makes a good thriller film?

- By asking an open question, we allowed people to expand on their answers, if thrillers were their favourite films, then they could elaborate as to why they were, if not then they were able to talk about a different genre than the one they picked in the previous question.

What is your favourite Thriller sub-genre?

- We asked this question to separate our initial ideas and choose one that would best suit our target audience. We were then able to narrow down our options to a psychological thriller or crime thriller ; we then decided to collaborate both of them to create our final idea for our film, mixing conventions of both the crime and psychological thriller sub-genres.

What weapons do you expect to see in thriller movies?
- To get an inclination of how brutal of an antagonist to portray in our narrative, we asked this question to see what kinds of weapons people prefer to see. Usually guns end things too quickly and it's difficult to build up tension and suspense in a scene without using a lot of filler dialogue - which can bore viewers - so we added a rope and other manual weapons such as knives, axes and also a crowbar for our serial killer to use - but we also kept the option of a gun for people to choose as it provided them with a bit more variety. 

What do you think makes a good Villain?
- We asked this question to get an idea of what factors people liked to see in our villains, as this question could bring a wide range of answers, we left people with a blank text box to be as vague or as specific as they liked. Also, people's knowledge of films varies from person to person, so people will probably have different opinions about how to create a good villain - whether it be the actor portraying them (i.e Heath Ledger's performance as the joker in The Dark Knight) or the actual qualities of the character, like how cunning and ruthless the antagonist is in the movie 'Phone Booth'.

What kind of music do you think builds suspense in a thriller?
- For the non-diegetic sound in our film, we wanted to use it only to create suspense and intrigue our audience, so we gave conventional ideas for our audience to choose from, such as violin music and a music box - which is very common in psychological thrillers, but we also left and 'Other' option because we thought other people may have good ideas which we didn't think of.

"Movies are scarier during the day than the night" - Agree or Disagree
- This question refers to the setting of the film and how people perceive the events of the film. We believed that films in the thriller genre were scarier when set at night and in the dark, and that it can be used to create suspense and an eerie effect. For this question we expected to see most people disagree rather than agree, however some films such as Se7en manage to create tension and suspense without the help of the environment and only due to the narrative.