Brief

The storyline for our 2minute film clip is that the camera opens with a shot of a dead girl, it’s a crime scene, as the clip goes on we start to see flashbacks of how the girl ended up dead. This is known as starting the film off at the disequilibrium. The problem has already occurred now the characters need to unfold what happened. This is a typical feature in a thriller movie. As inspiration we included some techniques and ideas from other films, this is called intertextuality. Some of our inspiration came from the ‘SAW’ movies. There is a particular scene, where we can see a wall of images from where ‘Jigsaw’ has stalked his victims, and has pictures of them from everyday life. We have interpreted this and adapted it to our context because the two situations are entirely different. There are also a lot of high angle shots looking down at the victims, this gives the perfect connotation that the girl in our clip is as vulnerable and is in as much danger. We also used a technique most commonly seen in the hit US TV series, ‘Crime Scene Investigation’ (‘CSI’), it’s where the camera focus’s in on a specific detail and then the frame freezes as if it is a picture that has just been taken. It is a good technique and fits in well with the context of the scene being a crime scene.

In our clip we are trying to use as many conventions that would be associated with thrillers. For one we have a mysterious death, and a police investigation. We also tried to keep the lighting low key so there was a more intense and mysterious atmosphere. When choosing a setting for our clip we picked the woods at the rear end of our school grounds. It has lots of leaves and twigs, this will add to the sound affects when we shoot the clip of the girl walking through the woods. It also has low key lighting because all the trees block out the sunlight so it creates an eerie atmosphere, this fits in with the ‘thriller’ genre.

We haven’t selected specific actors, we have starred in the clip ourselves, this is because we wouldn’t have to wait around for the other people to film, and also it’s possible to convey the characters in the way we want them to be seen by the audience. The ages of our actors range from 16-17. We’ve kept the actors young intentionally; this is because it fits in with the story line and context. Also the young man who murders our innocent victim is portrayed as a typical ‘hoodie teenager’, these are portrayed in the media to be a threat to society and they are considered dangerous and likely to commit crimes.
Our target audience is mainly young adults/adults. This is a thriller therefore not recommended for young children. We want our movie to appeal to teenagers aged 15 and over. We want it to appeal to the right audience so it will sell and will be recommended by friends to other friends.

To be continued…

Maria Rostkowska