Proposal

Brief

For this project we have been asked to produce a five minute opening sequence for a thriller for OCR. We also have to transfer all of my work and progress onto a blog and we must make sure that my film opening seems authentic and it must also be suited to my target audience. In our project we will produce some research into thrillers in order to create the best opening sequence we can and make my thriller seem genuine. We must submit my two minute opening sequence and blog to my Lecturer by March 14^th.

Research findings

From our research we have come to the conclusion that we will create a Horror thriller, as that is what our target audience enjoys the most. From our groups research into Genre, forms and conventions we found that we should have a Protagonist at the mercy of the antagonist, we should include an easy shock generated by a sudden unexpected action. We also found out that many thrillers shared common aspects for example tension building music was a big part in the different thrillers are group researched also In all our thrillers we also noticed that the characters in all our films equilibrium was disturbed and that is what set up the story.

From our research into Target audience we found that our target age group was the 15+ market and that they enjoyed watching horrors the most out of a variety of different genres. We also found that our target audience like having mystery in the films they watch as it makes it more interesting for them however they do not like it when the story gets too complicated so our group must take this into consideration when coming up with ideas for our film opening sequence. In terms of subject matter in Horror we found that many modern horrors contain a variety of different villains and that there are three types of killers which are found in a vast amount of popular horrors and they are the intelligent type who are usually portrayed as being physically weak but incredibly intelligent and manipulative with strong sadistic tendencies, the crazy type who is usually portrayed as scorned women or sometimes just normal people who have become mentally unstable due to an event in their lives and finally there is the extremely strong and durable type who is a lot of the time linked with the supernatural as they never seem to die, this type of villain is usually shown to lack intelligence or in some cases be mentally challenged and kill with no clear motives. Our group believes that our opening sequence will be of most interest to major film companies because it will share many of the themes and aspects that many hit blockbusters use as they are what attract and appeal to the main target audience of the genre.    

Jasmine’s Initial Idea

I chose this idea based on the questionnaires and interviews we did and the research I received out of them. In the questionnaire most people said that the character is a main influence in a films success and a lot of people found a younger character to be more haunting and thrilling. Therefore my movie is based on a younger killer/murder. As well as that I found out the start of the film builds up whether someone will want to pay attention to the rest of the movie or whether they wouldn’t bother as much, so I used a lot of symbolism  as I find it acts on the build up of the plot. As research showed that the plot holds the whole film in place. Overall I tried to make my idea create tension as the girl is killing people that are close to her. Therefore leaving the audience wanting to know why? And what will happen next? at the end of the sequence.


- Start with a blank screen, hear toilet flush. 

- See toilet close up, water swirling from the flush, with a Barbie doll being held in it.

- Hear someone laughing - cute innocent laugh. 


- Crane up to little girl (Chinese?) (Pale, black/dark hair, big eyes?).



- Door bell rings.


- See her grinning.


- Picks up teddy bear from the floor, the teddy bear head is hanging off in the meantime you 


have heard her Barbie drop in the toilet (plop sound).


- She hops and skips down the stairs you see her feet passing the camera. As you see the 


ground around her feet you see various pieces of toy parts all dismantled, torn or broken. 

- See point of view of her looking around the interior from the bottom of the stairs. 

Looks through letter box - see postman then get postman’s view looking at girls eyes peeping 
through.


 - He says “hi….(name)…. Its just me. Where is your mum.


- Girl recognizes him and opens the door “come on in…mummy is in the kitchen”.

- Turns around as he passes following him.

- Post man enters where your mum…is turns around to look at girl. 

- Girl say there and points opposite him. He is staring at the dead body in disbelief.- “who did this?”

- See close up of knife in her hand with blood trickling from it and dropping the teddy in the other hand.


- Black screen here him screams and acts confused and screeching. - gagging blood coming out.- Mother twitching holding hand out as if to help him only she is on opposite side can’t move- twitching.

- Girl turns to mum grinning “mummy I brought you a friend”…Silence… “Have fun” and she walks out looking grim with a grin rising on her face. Camera follows her as grin starts then fades out as her grin becomes full.

Zamu’s Initial idea

Focusing on our BBFC Guideline research, my idea was to explore a thriller film that met the guidelines of a 15+ certificate film. This entails being able to use strong threat and menace, have the characters display dangerous behaviour like killing, suicide and use strong language however we must not glamorise, dwell or show in strong detail any of these as aspects in our film. Sexual activity and violence is also permitted but again, these aspects should not be showed in detail or promoted in any way.

My idea: Best friends till you die...

Its night time and a little girl named Emily is sleeping in her bed. The camera pans across her room from left to right showing a bookshelf with a range of books and right in the middle stands a porcelain doll with its eyes closed. The camera continues to pan across the room highlighting Emily sleeping on her bed. The camera then tracks from the bottom of her bed to the top keeping Emily’s sleeping body in frame. Once it reaches her sleeping face, the camera cuts to the porcelain doll whose eyes are now open. Incidental music is heightened at this point. We then get a point of view shot from the porcelain doll showing that the doll is staring directly at Emily. We then hear a child’s voice saying ‘Emily...Emily!’ the camera cuts to a close up of the dolls face and the cuts to Emily’s sleeping face again. We here a voice again calling out for Emily and this time Emily hears the call and immediately, the camera gets an extreme close up of her eyes opening very fast and wide. She then turns immediately to face the porcelain doll and the camera gets a point of view shot of her looking at the porcelain doll. The camera them cuts to the porcelain doll and then a point of view shot of the doll looking at Emily while the doll says ‘it’s time.’ Emily then gets up out of her bed emotionless pulling the white blankets away from her. She then walks towards the book shelf and pulls a chair from her desk and stands on it in order to reach the porcelain doll. She grabs it with both hands and steps off the chair. She then walks towards her bedroom door and opens it. She walks straight towards the stairs and once she reaches down stairs she switches on the corridor lights.  She then walks towards the kitchen door. The camera tracks in front of her while she walks towards the kitchen. The camera then zooms into the dolls face as the doll says ‘now you remember what we planned don’t you? Aahahahahahah.....’ the camera gets a behind shot of Emily walking into the kitchen. The door closes behind her. We see the lights switch on from beneath the door and then hear a draw opening and the rummaging of cutlery. Then we hear the sharpening of a knife. We hear the doll say ‘sharper!’

The screen fades to black and it’s the next scene. The camera pans across the bedroom like before but this times its morning. The light is shining through the curtains. There is no porcelain doll on the book shelf anymore. The camera continues to track from the bottom of Emily’s bed to the to top but no body is in the bed but soon as the camera reaches the top of the bed. We see the porcelain doll in the centre of bed and her eyes slowly open. We then here Emily’s mothers voice calling out for her saying ‘Emily... are you awake darling? It’s time for school.’ she looks through the door and see’s Emily is not there the screen fades to black. We still here Emily’s mother calling out for her saying ‘Emily...You downstairs honey?’ we here footsteps going down stairs ‘Emily...Emily...’ then we here doors opening and then finally the mother screams.  Police sirens are then heard and the porcelain doll’s laughter is heard.

Anthony’s Initial Ideas

Inspired by the fact that our audience liked Horrors my idea involved certain concepts that I found out in my research such tension building and a disturbance in the Equilibrium.

Idea 1

- Close up of women cooking

- Cut to POV shot of someone looking through window at woman 

- Door bell rings

- Extreme close up of knife in woman’s hand being placed on counter

- Cut to woman opening door

- Its police they say that they are looking for someone

- Close door

- Women walks back to kitchen knife is gone

- Woman looks for knife then goes on floor

- Shot of her hands looking in dark area

- Cut to shot of woman on floor with someone standing behind 

- Sinister music starts

- Close up of person hand grabbing woman’s hair

- Close up of knife

I chose to make my opening like this as it includes some points from my research for example the use of tension building music as well as not showing the face of the killer to add a sense of mystery. I also disturbed the equilibrium of the character by introducing an intruder into her house.

Idea 2


- POV shot of someone dazed and confused in a dark dingy room

- Mid shot of teenager tied up in middle of room on chair 

- Teen starts to panic, close up of arms binded by rope wriggling around


- Sound of footsteps

- Door opens 

- Man in nice suit wearing a mask that’s not threatening on the other side

- Mid close up of teen who starts to ask where they are and who the person is and that they want to go home and they start to cry

- Villain starts to walk closer

- Over the shoulder shot of villain silencing teen by gagging them with a cloth 

- Over the shoulder shot of teen as villain reaches into inside jacket pocket and pulls out a big knife and places it on a tray beside person

- Villain then takes out surgical gloves and puts them on 

- Close up of villains face as they start to laugh manically 

- Extreme close up of villain picking up knife 

- Mid close up to extreme close up zoom of teens face as they scream

Inspired by the fact that our audience liked mystery I chose to create this idea for an opening focusing on this. I did this by placing the antagonist in a strange and unfamiliar environment creating mystery from the beginning. Then I increase the mystery by introducing a new character who is wearing a mask to conceal their identity I also incorporated the feel of a modern horror like ‘Saw’ with the torture aspect. 

Sagar’s Initial Idea

In my research and questionnaires that i did i found that the most people liked action thriller movies followed closely by horror and sci-fi. Based on this research and what people like to see in a good movie i have included this in my idea,

Overall Plot
The overall plot is of a zoo owner who is telling a story on a tour of the zoo to some children. There have been several unsolved accidents involving children disappearing when over the last month. The police are beginning to suspect the zoo owner, however as the plot progresses, it appears that he is innocent. In the last scene of the film it is revealed that he has an evil twin, that he thought has died at birth, but hadn’t and has come back for revenge.

Opening Sequence

- The first shot is a close up of the name of the zoo and the electronic gates open.

- Then it cuts to a shot of a stingray swimming along the glass.

- Then a wide angle shot of a young boy with his face pressed up against the glass. With the stingray parallel to him.

- An alarm starts going off with an announcement saying “this is an emergency everyone please evacuate the building immediately”.

- Long shot of everyone running to exits looking worried.

- Then a close up shot of mother’s face with a look of despair! Shouting “Where’s my son?”

- She turns, and looks down a corridor, and hears a faint cry for help.

- As she goes to investigate the lights go out. She screams “Daniel”.

- She starts to run towards the noises, and slips over a wet substance.

- She pulls out her Zippo lighter to see what’s happened and finds blood all over her. 

- She slowly lifts the lighter up, hands shaking, looking to see in front of her. Cut back to long shot. Fade to black.

Final idea

Why we chose this idea...
We ended up deciding on our final idea by intertwining all out different initial ideas together as much as we could while making sure it made sense and a thrilling story plot. We used the idea of having a young murder from our ideas yet as some of us ha a different age group as a murder we added that to make the murder have a companion that helped someone older. We found using different ethnicities and having a variety of people with different character backgrounds gives a thriller a more tense and interesting plot. Therefore we have tried to incorporate as many as possible. Using a disabled boy as the murder with his mother as the companion which adds history to the film as a mother is seen as always needing to do what her child wants keeping them happy. We also tried to add symbolism and have an input of everyone’s ideas so that each group member agreed for this to make up our final idea.

Finished Final Idea

Open scene with a young girl aged around 7 playing on the swings in a park all by herself. Someone in a wheel chair is watching her behind the park gates. We only see parts of the person in the wheel chair like their hands and feet. We hear them breathing heavily as they watch the girl play.

The credits then begin to run.

We then see three flashes of three gravestones on the screen. All of them of young girls.

The person in the wheelchair then wheel them selves away from the park down the road. As the person wheels themselves down the road, the cuts at random times to the inside of a house which is dark and dirty looking and the last time it cuts to the house, we see a woman walking down the stairs into the dark n dirty corridor of the house.

The person in the wheelchair then finally reaches the exterior of the house and we get a point of view shot the person in wheelchair looking at the exterior of the house. Person in wheel chair then wheels themselves towards the house until they reach the front of the door to which a woman opens the door and says ‘right on time.’ Also when she opens the door, we immediately hear a muted radio playing in the background, inside the house.

The woman wheels person in wheelchair into interior of house. As she does so, we see torn teddy bears, broken dolls, dirty children’s shoes and even the odd bloody finger laying haphazardly on the corridor and blood hand prints on wall.

The sound of the radio starts to become clearer when blood prints are shown and as the woman open door into a room.  We then get the person in wheelchairs point of view looking at a desk with the radio on it. We can see stuff is on the desk. The camera then cuts to a bird’s eye view shot of stuff on desk. The stuff is newspaper cuttings of articles and pictures of children who are missing. Some are blood stained.

We then get a point of view shot of person in wheelchair slowly looking at the desk and turning their head toward the corner of the room where we see the dead bodies of three children covered up with a blood soaked blanket. We then hear the screaming and squirming of a young girls voice to which the person in the wheelchair then turns their head to see a young tied up on a chair, squirming, crying and bruised. We then see the person in the wheelchairs face. It’s a young boy! He then says ‘won’t you stop crying!? You’re my friend now.’ The boy then looks to the woman beside him saying ‘Mary?’ while nodding his head. Mary then nods back and pick up a dirty looking blood stained hedge trimmer lying beside the wall and walks towards the tied up girl. The screen then fades to black as we hear the hedge trimmer being started and the screams of the girl get louder and louder. We then see blood splattering on the wall and the name of the film appears!  ‘You’re My Friend Now’ in bold, red lettering.

Production Team Roles Jobs:

Jasmine: Producer
Zamu: Director
Sagar: Editor
Anthony: Camera-man