Development of Ideas

Development of Ideas

My groups's initial idea was to make a psychological thriller which incorporated elements of crim thrillers into it, such as car chases and murders. We were inspired by the film 'No Country for Old Men' and the way that the main character is cunning and has no remorse when it comes to killing people. For our opening sequence, we had planned to adapt a scene for No Country for Old Men, in which our main character would be pulled over by a police officer, he would cooperate with them, but kill him before being arrested. Following this, he would go into a nearby shop, pay for some items, but then kill the cashier. We believe that this scene would help introduce our character as a psychopath, but also as somebody who's intelligent (he would be using a home-made weapon to kill these people) - an idea we got from the film 'Se7en'.

The film would be set in the present and so it wouldn't be hard for  us to find an area to shoot our opening sequence in  - as there is no shortage of shops in London. Also, as it wouldn't be set in a different world or time, there would be no specific type of setting that we would be restricted to, so as long as we could find a quiet road with a shop on it, we'd have no trouble finding a location to film. On the other hand, guaranteeing that the road would be quiet would be a problem as most places in London are very busy. From the data we got back from our questionnaire, we gathered that people would most likely enjoy it, this is because the favorite thriller sub-genre was 'Psychological' and the characteristics of a good villain we got from people were 'cunning', 'decency' and 'dark' which we felt worked perfectly with our character.

Another idea that i thought of was an action - thriller. The idea for my narrative was that a city in a 1st world country was taken over by a private military company and that and is being held under occupation - and idea which i got from Christopher Nolan's 'The Dark Knight Rises' - which isn't a thriller, but has a gritty, dark atmosphere to it which i felt was a good foundation for to create a story on. A group of 7 ex-army soldiers take it upon themselves to try and take down the organisation and liberate the city, the number of them taken from 'The Magnificent Seven'.

To produce and opening sequence for this film, I feel would be difficult, this is due to having to begin developing my characters in the same way as trying to portray a city as under control and needing liberation. One way I found to do this that could work was to have my opening sequence a montage of establishing shots of city, panoramas of event leading to the city's takeover; this could be people being killed or captured, firing squads moving in, or a clip of a breach being conducted.

when filming for this idea, we'd use a mixture of high-key and low-key lighting, but mostly low key for high contrast and to connote a gritty atmosphere and high tension in the film's plot. For effect, some of the shot we'll use in our opening sequence will consist of high-angle panoramas to establish the setting of a city, slow motion shots of people (a firing squad aiming rifles and moving through a dark hallway, which has only a red flare in it to connote danger; and build tension to keep people watching and keep them interested in the story.

Although, I feel that this idea has much more depth to it, I feel it'll be much harder for us to execute, this is due to props (guns, grenades, military / SWAT gear) needing to be provided and also a lack of people - our protagonists alone require 7 people - we have 4. In comparison to our other idea, data has less relevance when looking at it in relation to other thrillers, however this may be seen as pushing the boundaries of the genre. That being said, from the results of our questionnaire, we saw that action was the most popular genre, with thriller at a close second, I feel that this means that it'll be accepted well be our audience of ages 12 and up.

BBFC Rating

BBFC Rating

To be able to give our film a rating we had to assess it's content on these factors: 

Discrimination

Drugs

Horror

Imitable behaviour

Language

Nudity 

Sex

Theme 

Violence

We decided to rate our film as 15. This is due to the type of content we display in the film - as we think that it's unsuitable for a 12 or 12A since it could cause worry in parents that their children might imitate the behaviour. We chose not to rate it as an 18 as this would narrow our target audience and cause us to lose out on a large part of the demographic who would be interested in this type of film.

most of the violence in the film is implied, so the audience won't see exactly what happens, but the events leading up to it and those after it, but it still shows a lot of the blood and gore of a horror film and there isn't very much swearing, sex or nudity in the film, so it, we feel that the best idea is to aim the film at a slightly younger audience, but not too young so that we can maintain the tone of the film and keep it as planned.

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