chosen location updated

 Our thriller will be filmed mainly at Mollae’s house. We hope to produce a variety of interesting shots with our chosen location adding to the thriller genre in addition to successfully establishing location.

Our first location is the pavement outside of Mollae’s house. The houses in the area are nice and well organised, this implies our character comes from a good background. Hopefully this will make the audience more sympathetic towards "Eva" as it provides an innocent sense to her character. We plan to shoot here when it begins to get dark. In addition, it would be ideal to film when it’s been raining to create a reflective pavement against the dark contrast. This shall hopefully create a kind of pathetic fallacy with the weather representing the bad events that occur. The darkness with the streetlights will allow for some interesting shadows providing an ominous element to this scene. Furthermore, the darkness will carry negative connotations giving the scene a foreshadowing element.

Our next location is a living room that’s being redecorated in Mollae’s house. We feel this would be an excellent location to display the kidnappers preparation shots. The room is covered in plastic sheets and contains things such as paint pots and tools like screwdrivers and saws. This provides a professional sense to the kidnappers. Ideally, this will make them appear more to be feared adding the element of suspense to their preparation. The location also has a heavy door so we plan to have a shot of it slamming shut. The interesting ensemble of windows should also allow for some interesting eerie shadows.

Our next location will be Mollae’s room. It’s a nice room, therefore it should create a heavy contrast to when she’s trapped in the shed which will be an extreme opposite. She has a full length mirror so we hope to create some interesting shots using that. The room should connote innocence in her character making her seem small and innocent which leads to her hopelessness later on in the dark shed.

Leading on, there is a shed in Mollae’s garden. This is an ideal  location in which we plan to withhold our kidnapped character. It’s dark representing the metaphorical darkness and the fact there’s no windows represents a struggle for life by literally and metaphorically removing the light, therefore carrying dark connotations. There’s a singular lightbulb swinging from the ceiling so we hope to create some interesting shots with this, it should provide an ominous sense to the peace giving the audience a sense of disorientation. the floors and walls are all hard and wooden making them seem unpleasant suggesting this harsh reality the character faces.

sound updated

In the opening of many thrillers, they include non-diegetic sounds or a background piece in-keeping with the thriller genre. This adds effect in regards to building tension and hooking the audience in addition to successfully establishing the tone the thriller wishes to outlay.

Our thriller is influenced by “The Disappearance Of Alice Creed”. In their opening, they use a droning sound encompassed by higher notes adding rather scary elements displaying the metaphorical darkness. This occurs around this shot-
This sound remains throughout the entire opening representing the consistency of the kidnappers actions, the lack of change makes their movements seem smoother emphasising to the audience that they are to be feared.

Following on, it also uses some amplified diegetic sounds over this background sound which appear rather ominous. An example of this would be the squeaky wheel-
The sound is almost hellish yet everything except this wheel runs smoothly such as their professional actions, so the amplification may suggest a downfall in the kidnappers perfect seeming set up.

 These loud sheet sounds convey a professional sense, suggesting the kidnappers are organised, furthermore, the plastic sheet carries horrid sounds. This may make the audience cringe which would be very effective in representing the power the kidnappers hold.

The final element of sound in "The disappearance of Alice Creed" would be the lack of dialogue, in-fact, there is no speech in the entire opening. This comes across to be extremely effective as it means the audience doesn't know what the characters are thinking. This almost dehumanises them into these mechanical robots making them all the more terrifying.
In our thriller opening, I feel a long, building drone sound would provide ominous connotations in addition to, hopefully, building tension for our audience. I'll most likely select from one of the following sounds on 

 http://www.freesfx.co.uk/sfx/drone

Finally, we will be using diegetic sounds from our main character "Eva" whimpering in the shed scene after her kidnapping. We also feel the shots used by Alice Creed with the amplified diegetic sounds come across extremely effective so we plan to use some heavy breathing shots to display the weakness obtained by our kidnapped character and contrast it by using strong, powerful noises to convey the power the kidnappers hold.

treatment

Treatment

What do we see/hear?

The first shot will fade in from a black screen to Eva standing on the corner of a miserably dull, wet road with the weather almost foreshadowing the horrors to come. She smokes a cigarette to calm her stress and walks home. When she arrives she gets “unready” as such, removing her makeup etc, becoming more relaxed after her day. The kidnapper’s preparation shots will cut in to Eva’s shots displaying the heavy contrast between the two as they gradually come to one. We then see the victim figure trapped in a shed to finish the opening.

Describe the opening

The opening should start at a slow pace building up through the tension and anticipation into a faster paced scene. The edits should become more frequent along the way along with following the 180 degree rule with appropriate fades and jump cuts.

shooting schedules

moodboard

location

font

For our thriller opening, we plan to use fonts effectively to establish tone in the scene. However, although our font choice is important, it mustn’t distract the audience from our, more important, filming on the screen. Therefore, the font should be suitable yet subtle.

Personally, I wanted to keep all of our fonts sans serif as I feel it creates a more modern atmosphere, in-keeping with the tone of our thriller which is modern day. A slab serif font could've provided a grunge tone to our title yet we decided the one below. We definitely avoided any cursive and script styles as they have a much more delicate tone which would be unsuited to our thriller. We also avoided display fonts as I feel they carry a more childlike, fun connotation unlike the tone we aim to establish in our thriller.

We've decided to name our film company "High Juice Productions". For this font, I wanted it to appear clean and slightly thinner and taller as, to me, it seems in-keeping with the word and isn't distracting.

 An idea for the name of our thriller is “Desaparecido” which is Spanish for “missing”, suitable for a kidnap style film. For the font, our ideas contained a bolder, more grungy style.

 

There are many thrillers that successfully use font in order to develop meaning and tone to the opening. Se7en and Layer Cake both have examples of this.

In this shot, the text isn’t central yet it’s not entirely kept to a corner, it’s visible yet doesn’t take away from the main focus, the actors on screen.  The font is rather simple which works well as it emphasises the clinical elements presented by the protagonist. The tone provided is professional and well organised and the font incorporates this.

Moving on to Se7en, the entire vision of this shot is done to make the audience uncomfortable and it succeeds. The scratches alone carry very dark violent connotations and when mixed with the scratched in “wrong”, it represents direct violence that’s intentional, perhaps a foreshadowing of the film. The font for the three names is kept small and all slanted and off balance presenting this uneasy feeling of disorientation.