In order to see what people thought of our idea and to see what we could do to make it better, we interviewed some people of different genders and ages to get a wide range of responses.
The questions we asked were:
1)What genre of film do you normally watch? Why?
2)What is your favourite film (especially thrillers)? Why?
3)What makes you want to watch the film (especically thrillers)?
4) Would you watch our thriller? Why/Why not?
5)What could we change that would make it better?
6) If the characters are more attractive, would this change your opinion?
From these interviews, it seems that our idea is appealing and that people would like to watch it. However, some said that they like the tension and mystery created in thrillers, making me look back at our opening sequence to see if there is enough tension or not.
In our thriller, the main characters are the girl who has gone missing and was killed, the murderer and kidnapper as well as a detective who has to solve the case. I decided to look at thrillers that feature similar characters that are in similar situations to the ones in our thriller. 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' features two characters that are similar to the characters in ours. There is a journalist turned detective, Mikael Blomkvist who plays a similar role to the role of our detective. In this film, Blomkvist has to help solve the disappearance of a girl who has been missing for 40 years. The girl in this film is also similar to that in ours because both have been missing for a long amount time. This picture shows what Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) wears in the film, signifying that he is important as he is dressed smartly and looks official. This is similar to how the detective in our film should look. Daniel Craig is also a well-known, attractive actor and therefore this makes women want to watch the film. In order to get people to watch our thriller, we would have to take a similar approach and have a good looking detective. In the film 'Gone', both the Jill and Molly are similar to the girl in the opening sequence of our thriller. Jill has previously been kidnapped and in the film, there are several flashbacks showing the audience what happened. Molly is also kidnapped in the film and Jill believes it was the same person who took her. These characters are similar to the girl in our film as she too will have been kidnapped. Moreover, Jill is also similar to the detective in our thriller as in 'Gone', Jill helps to solve what has happened to her sister and this is the role of the detective in our thriller. Amanda Seyfried is an attractive actress, making the film more enticing for young men, and in our thriller, we will also use a pretty girl to make boys want to watch the film.
We looked at our plot and decided that there are some more things we could add to make the film more interesting.
'A young girl named Hannah Williams was a young girl who moved to the UK in the hope for a better life than the one she leads back at home in Romania. When she arrived at the airport, she was kidnapped and held hostage for about 3 years in a normal looking neighbourhood, with nobody noticing. She had not been seen since the day she went missing, leading to the police presuming she was dead. One night, she manages to escape from where she was being held hostage, however, unfortunately her kidnapper saw her running away while he was driving home from being out, following her without her realising and kills her. Bradley Johnson, is a detective who happens to live next door to where Hannah was being held hostage and was visiting his neighbour (who happens to be the killer/kidnapper). He leaves the house and coincidentally follow the same route Hannah did the previous night before she was murdered. He walks into the park planning on watching his son play in a football match when he sees a black bag near the bushes. Unfortunately, he was seen standing around with the bag by some passers by and is accused of the murder of Hannah Williams. Bradley is determined to prove his innocence, calling in favours from friends in the police department in the hope that this will uncover the mystery of who truly took Hannah and killed her. Bradley tries to gather enough evidence to put the real criminal behind bars once and for all, but, is Hannah the only victim? Will Bradley discover there is more going on than he realises?'
Since filming the run through we have made a series of changes to our storyboard as well as the characters involved.
We have decided to use one detective rather than two as this will be more effective in creating a mystery about the character and it will be easier to give directions, however, what this character will do is more or less the same as before. It is also easier to cast one detective rather than two as not as many people will be needed.
Instead of the girl falling over when she is running, she will have her hands tied up and she will drop the rope where she would have fallen over. We have decided to do this because it is much safer as we do not want the girl to hurt herself on the pavement when we are filming as she could end up with a serious injury that will effect our ability to complete the shoot.
We have also added some shots to our storyboard. The establishing shot now incorporates a pan of the houses around it to illustrate the fact that this is a normal neighbour hood and that the girl was being held in a house near people who didn't have a clue.
We decided that our original plot for our thriller wasn't clear or simple enough, so we decided to modify it, making it easier to understand whilst keeping it as similar as possible to our original idea.
'A young girl named Hannah Williams was kidnapped and held hostage for about 3 years in a normal looking neighbourhood, with nobody noticing. She had not been seen since the day she went missing, leading to the police presuming she was dead. One night, she manages to escape from where she was being held hostage, however, unfortunately her kidnapper saw her running away while he was driving home from being out, following her without her realising and kills her.
Bradley Johnson, is a detective who happens to live next door to where Hannah was being held hostage and was visiting his neighbour (who happens to be the killer/kidnapper). He leaves the house and coincidentally follow the same route Hannah did the previous night before she was murdered. He walks into the park planning on watching his son play in a football match when he sees a black bag near the bushes.
Unfortunately, he was seen standing around with the bag by some passers by and is accused of the murder of Hannah Williams. Bradley is determined to prove his innocence, calling in favours from friends in the police department in the hope that this will uncover the mystery of who truly took Hannah and killed her. Bradley tries to gather enough evidence to put the real criminal behind bars once and for all.'
Drawing the storyboard for our thriller was a difficult task because of just how specific you have to be, however, there are many benefits to creating one.
From doing this, I have been able to visualize what I want my opening sequence to be like. It has enabled me to put the idea that we can up with in words onto paper but in a way that we could see exactly what was happening.
I have also been able to see that it is difficult to choose what camera angles we wanted to use and when we would use them. This was hard because we had to think about what would best illustrate to an audience what was happening in each cut.
By creating a storyboard, we could organize the opening sequence into the right order. This was difficult to do because we want to cross-cut between the girl running and the police investigation. Making a storyboard allowed us to order the events into a suitable order.
This is the list of shots and the order that we want them to appear:
Shot 1: Establishing long shot of the house Shot 2: Medium close up of the door Shot 3: Close up of feet running Shot 4: Close up of different person's feet walking slowly Shot 5: Mid shot of girl running - initially need to be front on and then move round to behind her Shot 6: Over the shoulder shot as girl falls to floor Shot 7: Mid shot of detective walking towards where girl fell Shot 8: Point of view as detective gets closer to the stop Shot 9: Close up as hand reaches out to touch blood Shot 10: Close up of girls face as running Shot 11: Close up of detectives face as walking Shot 12: Mid shot of girl as runs into park Shot 13: Mid shot of detective walking into park Shot 14: Close up of detectives hands pulling away cover on body
This is the storyboard for our thriller. We broke down each individual shot and attempted to draw out what we want to see as well as writing underneath what should be seen. We did this so that we could sequence the opening sequence for our thriller and see if what we wanted to do would work.
Initially, we drew out each individual shot and put them out on a piece of paper so that we could see what we wanted. We put the shots into categories (the shots of the house, the girl and the detective and police). This enabled us to see what we wanted to do with each character. By doing this, we were able to move around parts of the opening sequence until we were happy with the order and could finalize what we wanted. We then drew out the storyboard in the order that we wanted the events to occur.
This is the storyboard we created after finalising our ideas:
The opening sequence to 'Sherlock' is similar to what we want to do because it involves someone running away from something at night and we want to have a girl running away from a house at night. Although the concept for the film is not identical to what we aim to do, it is enough to compare the two ideas.
The close ups of the paving stones sets the scene, connoting that this film starts on a dark, dingy street. It sets the tone because the dark colours create a sense of mystery and tense atmosphere.
The non-diegetic music playing has a an eerie effect adding the to mystery. It also helps set the tone for the film because it builds up in tempo and in volume signifying that the events throughout the film will all lead up to one big reveal. Additionally, the diegetic sound of the horses hooves as they gallop along the road also get faster as the opening sequence goes on symbolising that there is a chase taking place.
The cross-cutting between the horse and carriage and the man running signifies that the man is running away from the people in the carriage. The close-ups of the men in the carriage shows them holding guns , getting ready to catch someone which further implies that the man is running away from them.
This sequence is set on a normal street and so anyone could have seen what was going on. This film steers clear of the cliche 'running through a woods' and makes the audience intrigued to know what is going on as instead of running away from the house and down the street, the man is running away from what seems to be the police into a house.
The opening sequence of this film is similar to what we want to create because the both centre around the idea of a girl running from something and show the girl running through the streets rather than a forest.
The use of the street for the girl to be running through is effective because it has the same, if not more thrilling an effect as a girl running through a forest. It creates a sense of mystery as it is unclear why she is running and if she is trying to run away, the audience may ask why she is running away in broad day light down a normal street.
The close ups of the girl's face signify to the audience that the girl has been abused because she has a lot of scars and bruising on her face. This makes the audience wonder if she is running away because she has been through this and can't take it any more.
At the end of the sequence, there is a long shot of the girl standing on the bridge and then a close up of her face as she contemplates jumping. This is effective because it makes the audience aware of how unhappy she is and how she doesn't want to live like this any more.
The difference between this opening sequence and the one we want to create is that although both characters will die, ours will be murdered by another person, whereas in this opening sequence the girl kills herself.
In the opening of 'The Silence of the Lambs,' a woman is seen running through a forest. Close-ups of her face connote that she is tired and the initial long shot enables the audience to see the clothes she is wearing. The woman is wearing a scruffy tracksuit, making it look like she doesn't care about how she looks or that she hasn't had the ability to do this, The woman has her hair tied back, however, bits of her hair are falling out and she is dripping with sweat, which signifies that she has been running for a while.
The fast pace, close up, tracking shots of the woman's face and shoes create a sense that she is running extremely fast as her face and feet become blurred. This symbolises that she could be running away from something or someone due to the speed at which she is running.
In this film, the woman is not running away from anything, instead, she is an FBI agent training. This is both similar and different to our opening sequence. It is similar because we want to have a detective walking, following the clues left at the crime scene, but different because in this, the agent is running and training, but in our, they will be working on the crime scene.
In the news recently there has been the story of a 13-year-old boy who managed to contact his mother after being held in a house behind a fake wall for the past 4 years. This relates to our thriller because the girl who had been kidnapped had been held in a house yet none of the neighbours knew anything about this until she had escaped.
Madeline McCann went missing in the summer of 2007 whilst on holiday with her family. The young child was taken from her room while her parents were at dinner. The police case has been going on ever since and the police have unfortunately not been able to identify who took Madeline, why they did it or whether she is still alive or not. This can link to the plot for our thriller because like in this case, our thriller will involve the police investigation surrounding the characters disappearance and murder.
Jeffery Dahmer was an American serial killer who was later was killed himself. One of his victims who had been kidnapped managed to escape and ran up to a man asking for help. Dahmer followed the boy out and told that man that this boy was his just his boyfriend and that they had just had a fight. Dahmer later killed this boy after taking him back into captivity. This relates to our thriller because the girl in our thriller will also be escaping from having been held hostage and she will also end up being killed by the kidnapper.
Shannon Matthews was reported missing, by her mother, after not having returned from school. There was £3.2 million hunt for Shannon, however, about a month after the investigation was opened, it was discovered that the girl was in her mother's boyfriend's house, drugged but otherwise fine. Karen Matthews (Shannon's mother) was later sentenced to jail. This can link to our idea because in this case, not everything was as it seemed. We want the opening sequence of our thriller to simply make it look as though a girl had been kidnapped and was escaping, but in reality, there is more to the case than this.
'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' features two characters that are similar to the characters in ours. There is a journalist turned detective, Mikael Blomkvist who plays a similar role to the role of our detective. In this film, Blomkvist has to help solve the disappearance of a girl who has been missing for 40 years. The girl in this film is also similar to that in ours because both have been missing for a long amount time. This picture shows what Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) wears in the film, signifying that he is important as he is dressed smartly and looks official. This is similar to how the detective in our film should look. Daniel Craig is also a well-known, attractive actor and therefore this makes women want to watch the film. In order to get people to watch our thriller, we would have to take a similar approach and have a good looking detective.
In the film 'Gone', both the Jill and Molly are similar to the girl in the opening sequence of our thriller. Jill has previously been kidnapped and in the film, there are several flashbacks showing the audience what happened. Molly is also kidnapped in the film and Jill believes it was the same person who took her. These characters are similar to the girl in our film as she too will have been kidnapped. Moreover, Jill is also similar to the detective in our thriller as in 'Gone', Jill helps to solve what has happened to her sister and this is the role of the detective in our thriller. Amanda Seyfried is an attractive actress, making the film more enticing for young men, and in our thriller, we will also use a pretty girl to make boys want to watch the film.
This is the storyboard for our thriller. We broke down each individual shot and attempted to draw out what we want to see as well as writing underneath what should be seen. We did this so that we could sequence the opening sequence for our thriller and see if what we wanted to do would work.
