Sarah, Danni and Louis

Thriller Opening

Friday, 19 February 2010

Getting Permission

Unfortunately we have still been unable to film the multi-story car park scenes. We had hoped to film them this week, however due to lack of permission it hasn't happened. I went to ask the multi-story car park in Bury St Eadmund's for permission to film one evening. However the outcome was that we would have to fill in a big health and safety form. This would then take a few weeks to come back and even then the answer is still likely to be a no. With this in mind, I then phoned Bury St Edmund's underground Arc car park. I spoke to them on a Saturday and they asked to phone back on a week day. Cutting long story short after speaking to many different people I was then told to email a man who I happened to have spoken to already- as he was in charge of both the multi-story car park and the Arc car park. I then went onto email him - thinking it was better to give it a shot than not at all. However it has been about a week now and I haven't had a reply. Therefore we are currently trying to figure out where else we could film this scene, considering it would be best if we filmed in a multi-story or underground car park as the weather may affect quality if we film in an outside car park and that we are now running out of time to meet the deadline.

Description of our Thriller

It comes to my attention that through our blogging. We haven't once actually explained in detail what our Thriller is actually about and the plot behind it.

So ...

Okay Emily Parker (Played by Sarah Hall) is a 17/18 years old who has just been out for a meal with her boyfriend Tom Hill (Played by Louis Perry). When walking back to Toms car, Tom gets shot. Emily is interviewed about what happened and we see her flashbacks of the event. However what Emily doesn't know is that she is being interviewed by a corrupt police detective (Played by Collin Frost) who is actually the man who shot Tom.

In the opening credits we see a pan of a desk with photos, belongings, ect (see props list blog) of Emily's. This again is the police detectives desk. He has an obsession with her and is going along the lines of "If I can't have her, you can't" and this is why he then kills Tom. The thing that links the 3 scenes (Opening pan of desk, interview room, and the flashbacks of the car park) is the prop of the watch. The watch is on the desk, the watch is worn by the person holding the gun and the watch is worn by the detective switching off the tape recorder in the interview room.

Name

We have finally come up with a name for our Thriller. At first we considered something to do with the watch (the main prop involved). Ideas for names such as "The Watcher" floated around. But we quickly decided that was too 'cheesy' and despite making sense to the watch and the idea that he is 'watching' her, we dismayed it.
However we still needed a name. So we decided that our story was based around an obsession. The plain word "Obsession" or "Obsessed" didn't seem quite right. So we typed "definitions- obsession" into google and found a page that gave us a description and alternative words. This was the page we found: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/obsessed

Then after looking at the alternative words we came across the word "Infatuated". After looking at the definition for it - "Possessed by an unreasoning passion or attraction."
This seemed to perfectly describe Emily's character and the Police officers. Emily is being possessed and the police officer has a passion and attraction for her. We therefore decided that our film is to be called "Infatuated" Or "The Infatuation".

Target Audience

Wikipedia says that a target audience is “the primary group of people that something is aimed at appealing to".
In our thriller film, we feel that our target audience will be aimed at teenagers/young adults. This is because the main character and protagonist, Emily and Tom, played by Sarah Hall and Louis Perry, are teenagers/young adults so the audience will then be able to relate and connect to them. By having both genders means we aren’t restricting different genders in our target audience. Otherwise the Thriller might only appeal to Females, for example, if all characters were female based. We also found from looking at our inspirational films such as ‘Usual Suspects’- by using action and psychological techniques they managed to keep there audience gripped and wanting more thus entertaining them. We hope, despite attempting a psychological thriller, to include and keep the target audience capsulated at the beginning by using some action, like ‘Usual Suspects’. We plan on doing this in the “Flash back” scenes where Tom gets shot by the Police detective.

Sunday, 7 February 2010

Questionnaires







These are a few examples of our questionnaires that we asked people to fill in to help us with our Thriller. The first 3 questions are general thriller type questions to gauge peoples understanding/feeling and opinions on the film genre- thriller.
The 4th question is to help us and hopefully see that we made the right decision on location. Apart from a couple, generally it seems that others seemed to agree with the multi-story car park location.
The 5th question was a general question we needed answering in order to film the "Flash back" scenes. We asked "What time of day would you rather see a thriller be set?" It seems we got an overall answer which was "Evening" and we tend to agree. Therefore we hope to film Wednesday evening.
An interesting outcome which happened to work in our favour was that "Psychological" seemed to often be ticked as a favourite sub genre of thriller. A psychological thriller is what we aim to achieve.

Friday, 5 February 2010

Filming...at the police station

Today (Friday 5th February), after about 3 weeks of me emailing local police stations, we manged to film in Stowmarket Police Station.

Louis Perry a few weeks ago first went and asked Bury Police station about possibly using an interview room to film in. From there I then emailed an inspector who was in charge. We tryed to find a date for us to film in Bury, however both Myself and the Inspector decided it would most probably be easier if we were to film at a smaller police station in Stowmarket as this one gets less busy. The inspector was very helpful and forwarded our details onto a colleague of his at Stowmarket. We then were in touch with a police officer from Stowmarket station. Again he was very kind and we eventually got a date where our actress, actor and location were available.

So today after school we went to Stowmarket police station to film the interview scene in an actual interview room. The police officers there were very generous and left the tape recorder, tapes for the recorder, some labels that go on the tapes and an actual script they have to use when interviewing people for us to use. This was really useful and we appreciated it alot. We got alot of filming done in the time given and we look forward to seeing the results on Monday. Unfortunately the car park scene was unable to be done tonight so we have rescheduled for Wednesday night. Tomorrow I will go to the multi story car park in town and ask permission for Wednesday night.

Filming...at the office

Last Friday we gathered together all the props we would be needing for the office scene.
These included:
  • Pictures, old and new of our actor Sarah Hall
  • A map (circled with a red marker pen and pins with string pointing to different parts)
  • Car Keys
  • Watch
  • Office equipment (Laptop - with Characters facebook page showing, Stapler, Dictation Tapes, ect.)
  • Coffee cup with lip stick prints on
  • Photos houses
  • Pictures of our Male actor Louis Perry
  • Receipts
  • Glove and chewing gum in evidence pouches
  • Letters sent from the Female character but were never received
  • Cinema, bus and train tickets

Then on Saturday I took these to the office (shown in some pictures below.) I set up and layed out all the props on the desk and did many panning shots over it. We have now downloaded these shots to iMovie and are currently editing them. Hopefully they will go with the music we have started to make on garage band.

Thursday, 4 February 2010

Costumes

Here is a costume list which we want to use for each character;

Sarah / Emily
  • Casual, smart clothing
  • Light or white top/ jacket
Collin / Insp. Axston
  • Brown jacket
  • White shirt and black tie (possible)
  • Dark genes
  • Brown shoes
Louis / Tom
  • Casual
  • Red Jacket
  • Covered by another jacket

Wednesday, 3 February 2010

Filming Dates

Filming dates for thriller opening.

Saturday 30th January - Office room

Friday 5th February - Police interview room and car part (flash backs)

and all filming will be finished, just the editing to do :)