Our Thriller

Preliminary Task

Better late than never! :) Sorry for taking so long in uploading this. But here is our Preliminary task. I think i will try and upload this again as the quality is extreamly poor!!
We got some American drama exchange students to act in it for us. The very basic storyline is that a girl is on her way to detention.

Filming...at the car park

Tonight we finally managed to do the flashback scenes in the multi-story car park. After hearing nothing back, when asking for permission, dispite constantly emailing and phoning, we decided to turn up and ask for permission there and then. Its a shame we didn't just do this in the first place as when we went and asked this evening- everything was fine and they let us.

So we decided, once there, to be able to use some high angle and low angle shots, to shoot some parts in the stairwell of the car park. This is when Emily (Sarah Hall) and Tom (Louis Perry) are looking for there car keys. This relates back to the desk at the beginning of the film where Toms car keys are. We also made sure that Sarah was wearing the exact same outfit and had her hair and make up the same as it was previously in the police station scenes. This is for continuity and to show that within the film, this has all happened on the same night. We also made sure Louis wore a red cardigan. This is connote danger which will be coming his way.

We timed some of the bits we were filming as to how long the voice clips (already edited on the macs from the shoot at the police station) are, that go over the top. We also had the hand, holding the gun, to have the same watch on that is used in both the office and in the police station.

I feel it went really well and we even managed to use the fake blood on Louis in order for it to look realistic like his character had just been shot. So hopefully when we upload it on Monday it will look good!

Production logo

To go along with our thriller opening we have been looking at a number of different fonts and shapes which might work along with our thriller and our production name.

These are the first couple of fonts which I had been experimenting with. Some of them we really like and worked well but do not feel that they fitted as well as we wanted.

After this Danni had a look at a different style for the title which we all feels fit better, we asked some people what they thought of it and we had all positive feedback saying that it works better than some of the others. There is still some changes which need to be made towards it but most of the final design has been done.

These our other pictures of the different stages of the building the logo.

Pictures from Police Station filming

Sorry for the belated picture uploading. But from our friday evening of filming at the police station we asked if it would be alright to take some pictures of our location and as you can see everything was fine and we took some pictures. We also have a picture of the tap recorder we used. This was provided by the police station and we were very greatful for them to let us use their recorder. They also let us use some tapes which came very useful to us.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 :)

Storyboards

This is our storyboard, where you can see when our main character "Emily" is having flashbacks and when she is actually being interviewed.

Inspiration: The Usual Suspects

We were greatly influenced by this film due to the last few shots at the end of the film when The main police officer looks at the noticeboard and realises the murdered has been sat in front of him and the noticeboard all this time.
We were influenced by this because it had been very cleverly thought out. It also helped us look at the way we would like to shoot our opening for out credit titles where we also look over a noticeboard.
When looking at the clip (posted below) this is the type of shot we would like to portray in our opening of our Thriller.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_6SenP4DDg

In the Cut

After a class task on researching different sub thriller genres, we came about finding "In The Cut".
"In the Cut" is actually an erotic thriller film. Dispite our intentions to be more towards the "Psychological" sub genre of thriller, after reading this synopsis of "In the Cut" it seems to resemble and influence our ideas for our own thriller.

"In the Cut" is written and directed by Jane Campion, starring Meg Ryan, Mark Ruffalo and Jenniser Jason Leigh. Frannie (Meg Ryan) is a lonely New York City high school English teacher, who is compiling a dictionary of urban slang with the help of one of her students. Frannie discovers the darker side of passion after becoming involved with a tough homicide detective investigating a series of murders in her neighborhood. As the plot develops, she begins to wonder if the detective (Mark Ruffalo) might be the murderer, but remains curious and passionately interested in him. When Frannie's younger half-sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is decapitated by the murderer, her doubts about the detective increase, despite her inability to distance herself from him. Finally convinced of his guilt, Frannie runs away from the detective, only to fall deeper into the web of the murderer.

The two major similarities from only having read about "In the Cut" and not having watched it (yet!) shows, firstly that perhaps the detective is actually the murderer. Which is also what we hope to portray in our Thriller. Secondly it seems that Frannie's younger half sister may in fact have been killed also by the detective. We plan on having our characters boyfriend killed. This shows how both "In the Cut" and our Thriller will be involving a murder of a character that is close to the main character.

changing of script and cast list.

A last minute change to parts of the script during today's media lesson to help finalise the details of the plot and future events within the story, as not very part was as clear as it needed to be. As of this the cast list on which we had intended to use has now had to change to fit this problem that we had.

The part which has changed is the witnesses best friend to her boy friend.

cast list.

Witness - Sarah Hall.

Boy friend - Louis Perry.

Police/detective - Colin Frost.

Script

The script has finally been finished. :) Sarah is typing it up for the two leading parts which that now means we can start filming soon :)

Location Shots - The Office

These are some pictures of the office were we intend to film the opening credits.

Test Camera Shots

Here we have taken some pictures to test some camera shots we might/ would like to use.

Props List

Here is our Props list for our Thriller. We are pretty sure its complete so here it is. :)

-Watch
-Gun
-Tapecorder
-Map
-Pictures (progressing age)
-Plain Cards
-Letters (Hand Written)
-Fake Blood ?
-Shoulder Bag 2x
-Office items (Staples, Pens, Phone, etc.)
-Keys (Car keys)

Blog Created

Blogspot page has been created for Sarah, Danni and Louis and now we can get to work on keeping you updated on our Thriller opening. :)