Synopsis

 

                Our film will open with a ballerina dancing. We will have lots of slow motion shots of her dancing and a few tracking shots . We will have non-diegetic music.

 The song we have chosen is called raindrops. This is graceful classical music but it has a dark edge to it at times which fits into the genre (thriller).

 The lighting will be soft and dim to fit in with the graceful movements.

 While this scene is going on the titles will appear over the top.

We will then have a thirty second opening to the film. It will be an everyday day and we will have a long shot of a street. The main girl (the ballerina from the opening) will walk down the street and grab a flyer. The flyer will be advertising for roommates.     

 

I have looked at "Cabin in the Woods" and I can see that after the title sequence it cuts to the film which is a very different feel from the opening titles.Nothing happens in the first few minutes therefore we have to apply this to our thriller.

Today we had a chat with out teacher about our opening to our thriller. He said he did not like the part about the ballerina hurting herself because it would interrupt the graceful dancing. I was worried that just having a ballerina dancing would not be thriller like but with the music and the titles we can make it very much like a thriller. After the ballerina scene we are going to have some titles then we will have a 30 seconds of the actual film. We are unaware of what this 30 seconds will be so I have been looking at film openings and what comes just after them.

I looked at the film opening to the others. This is picture is of the last bit of the title sequence. The music is very creepy which lets the audience know this film will be scary.

This is what came next. If you had not seen the rest of the film this house would not mean anything to you therefore this house shot is very random. The next shot is of a woman in bed screaming which again is unexpected. I found this was the same with most films. The shot after the titles sequence is completely different to where the titles had been shot.

My group now needs to come up with the 30 second scene. It could be a few simple shots of a town or city- an establishing shot.

Today we have sat down and discussed thriller ideas and we now have two final ideas. Our plot for the film is a man obsessed with ballerinas and he takes them and uses their bones to create his own perfect ballerina.

Our opening sequence is going to be of a ballerina dancing in room which is full of miorrs. Most of the sequence will be beautiful dancing but she will have some kind of accident which will not be major but it signifies something dangerous is going to happen. We thought maybe she could cut heself and all we see is this drop of red blood which makes the audience aware something bad might happen to this girl.

We thought maybe we could cut to a man driving to the studio where the ballerina is practising. We would keep cutting back and forth to the man driving and the dancer. Finally the door to the studio will open and we will see the mans feet. The dancer will look up at theshe will looked shocked.

We thought about the opening to what lies beneath because we thought they were similar. In what lies beneath the film starts with mist and you think you can see something when suddenly it cuts to a women in the bath and she quickly pulls her head out of the bath. We were going to have idea in ours. Maybe as the man opens the door the dancer falls and twists her ankle before looking up at the camera.

After discussing this we thought cutting between the driving and the dancing would take our attention away from the beautiful dancing therefore we thought we will just have the ballerina and keep it simple but effective. We thought about having a montage after this ballerina scene of different ballerinas getting measured and rejecting to show what a tough life it is for a ballerina but we then decided we were overcomplicating therefore we shall just do the ballerina by herself.

 

I thought maybe this was too much like the movie 'Black swan' but Phil our teacher reminded us that all films have similarities for example lots of horror films involve people going into attics or cellars therefore we should not worry and we will make it different from the film.

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We are now having to finalise our thriller idea because soon we will be storyboarding our film opening. A storyboard maps out the different shots we will have.
One of our group members told us their idea which was to have a man stalking a little girl. The film would start in a bowling alley. We liked the bowling idea because we would build up the noises of the bowling alley to build up tension. The shot will open with a ball running along the bowling lane. our names would come up at this time.We then decided to have flashbacks of different moments in the girls life. We would use a handheld camera for the flashbacks to make it seem like we were the man watching all of this.
Our only problem was relating the bowling to the story so our task now is to either come up with a way in which we can link them together or come up with another bowling idea.

Today I looked at the film 'falling down' which is in the same genre as my film idea 'no one runs'. I looked at the title sequence of this film and noted down the order of credits. This will help me and my group for when we make our thriller opening. This was the order I found-

DISTRIBUTOR
PRODUCTION COMPANIES
PRODUCER
A JOEL SCHUMACHER FILM-DIRECTOR
MAIN ACTOR
MAIN ACTOR
TITLE OF FILM
SUPPORTING CAST
COSTUME DESIGNER
MUSIC BY...
CO-PRODUCER
EDITOR
PRODUCTION DESIGNER
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
PRODUCER
WRITER
DIRECTOR

It is important that the credits are in this order because it is in the order of importance.

One thing I loved about this credits was that it was all done in one take. I thought maybe we could do this for our thriller because it is quite effective but it restricts the variety of camera shots we could do and there would not be allot of edtitng involved therefore I do not feel this would work for us.



http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/falling-down/

NEW THRILLER IDEAS

In todays lesson we were coming up with a few more thriller ideas in our groups. Our teacher gave a list of recent stories which were on the news as well as some thriller films. The idea was, was to take three ideas from the list and trace ideas from then. 

For example on the list was a story about a plane which went down in Glasgow. We then put our heads together and thought of a highjacking thriller story. We imagined the beginning of the film would be the high jacker getting ready, maybe changing his identity.
Once we had come up with at least three ideas each person from the group and wrote one idea in detail. BELLOW IS THE IDEA I WROTE UP.

NO ONE RUNS

This idea is based on the 2011 Norway attack. Our thriller will focus mainly on Anders Behring Brevikik who was the man went round shooting everyone. Our film will be the run up to the events as well as a few scenes of the after effect. We will also focus on two families who were affected by these tragic events. We will look at their lives before,during and after the Norway incident.

Opening

It will open with some still wide shots of the inside of Anders house. For example the kitchen, bedroom, dinning etc. This is to set the scene and lets the audience know that this is a normal typical home. We will have a tracking shot down the corridor where we can see the bathroom at the end of the corridor. We will see a shower and an outline of the a body in the shower. There will then be some shots of Anders getting dressed and eating breakfast but he will look a little on edge whilst doing this. We will then see Anders packing a bag full of guns. The camera will then focus on a map next to the bag and on the map will be a route which is drawn on by a red point. He will pick up the map and smile. We will then see him get in his car and drive off.