Storyboard

 This is Elliot and Myself's storyboard that we made during the planning stage of this task. The writing isn't as clear as I would have liked in this since we overlapped the drawings with tracing paper that had the actual writing on but we felt that it looked better in real life with the tracing paper overlap. We also have now changed the title of our movie from 'Left Behind' to 'Stockholm Syndrome'. The storyboard is visible below in chronological order:

Costume Planning

Costume Planning   

For our thriller opening sequence, Elliot and myself have decided to have a mixed variety of different costumes for each individual character to suit their individual roles in the scene. The two main characters in the opening scene are two completely different people so they will not be dressed in a similar way and will have costumes that are representative of their characters.

Protagonist: Scarlett Joyce   

Scarlett Joyce will appear in two shots in the opening scene of our thriller movie, she will be in the shot where she is tied to a chair in the unknown location where she is held captive by the kidnapper and in the shot where she is in the interogation room being asked questions by the detective. She will be wearing a grey sweatshirt and grey jogging bottoms with white socks and plimsolls when she is in the interogation room. This is because she will be wearing the clothes that she has been given by the police since the clothes she was found in were dirty and ripped. When she is in the unknown location, she will be wearing ripped jeans, a t-shirt, and  which are stained with blood, dirt and sweat.

 Secondary Character: Sally Roberts
Sally Roberts will only be in the shot that is located in the unknown location where the kidnapper is keeping her, she will be dressed in a similar way to Scarlett, she will also be wearing dirty jeans, and a t-shirt that is covered in stains. They will both be dressed in dirty clothes to show how long they have been kept by the kidnapper and to express how awful the living conditions are in the place they are being kept.
Tertiary Character: The Detective
The Detective will be dressed in a formal way for the shot where he is questioning Scarlett. He will be dressed in a black pea coat, black trousers and black shoes, he will also be wearing a white shirt with a tie. He will be dressed like this so that his costume suits the role of a detective and he doesn't look out of place in the scene.

The Antagonist: The Kidnapper   

The Kidnapper will be wearing all black in the opening scene, this costume will be made up of Black Dr Marten boots, black denim jeans, a black hoodie and a black balaclava to cover his face. This costume will be used to add mystery to the kidnappers identity because the entire plot of the movie would be less interesting if the antagonist's identity was revealed from the beginning.

 

Filming Schedule

Analysis of another student's thriller opening sequence

Candidate: Emma Snow
Date uploaded: 21st January 2016

This project is titled 'Unorthodox' and was produced by Emma Snow for her A level thriller opening. In my opinion, this is the sort of quality that I will hope to be achieving in my final piece for my thriller opening. I know that this piece of work was awarded an A grade which means that I am able to use this as inspiration for my own thriller as I hope to achieve a high grade for my final piece.

The candidate has created her own production company logo by recording a close up of a girl opening her eye on the right hand side of the screen, which goes alongside the title 'Vision Productions'. I believe that the fact that she has made a production company logo that is animated really sets it apart from the rest and makes it look extremely professional and raises the expectations of how the film will be before it has even begun.
The setting for this opening sequence is immediately revealed as a suburban household which is a good location to use for a low budget thriller movie since any household can hold all sorts of mystery. A black and white filter is used throughout the opening scene which reels in the viewer since this is a filter that is rarely used nowadays in modern movies which gives the viewer the feeling that this movie is going to be very unusual.

The main character is then shown in his bathroom as he gets out of the shower, he isn't depicted negatively in a ny sort of way but when he opens the cupboard a shelf full of medicine is revealed that contains fluoxetine. This drug is used by people who suffer from mental illnesses such as Depression, Obsessive-compulsive disorder and Panic disorder. This shows that the character clearly has some serious problems with his mental health. It is a huge detail that can easily go unnoticed since the majority of viewers will not know what Fluoxetine is, this detail does add a lot of mystery around the character though since he is revealed to suffer from some sort of mental illness but that illness he has is never revealed.

Between 0:46 and 0:50 there are three short flashbacks of this same shot each time, this shot depicts three different pictures of girls side by side with one of them being a missing poster, a hand is crossing out the face of the girl in the centre photo. This gives the audience the impression that this character shown in the opening scene is some sort of murderer or kidnapper who is insane, it also reveals a huge piece of information for the plot of the movie.

As the character enters his bedroom, the camera pans across to face a wall which is the same as the wasll shown in the flashbacks previously, this assures the audience that this character is some sort of sociopath. Every picture on the wall shows a different female and there isn't a single male featured on this wall, this could be showing that the main character is either a sexist who dislikes the female gender or he could be someone who commits many crimes of a sexual nature. In the next shot this character is shown caressing a photograph of the girl who is located in the centre of the wall. The direct focus put on this girl confuses the audience because her identity isn't revealed and there are no answers as to why she is in the centre of the wall and why the antagonist puts so much focus on her.

This character then sits at his desk and opens up a notebook that has the name 'Daisy' written multiple times on the first page, he then looks up into the mirror and repeats the word 'Daisy' multiple times. This gives the impression that the girl shown in the photopreviously is 'Daisy' and that the antagonist clearly has some sort of obsession with her.

A girl's hand is then shown ringing the doorbell in the next shot, as this happens different radio broadcasts are heard that are reporting many different cases of missing girls, it is also mentioned that they are being murdered and suffering from crimes of a sexual nature. This clearly indicates that the character who is shown in this opening scene is an evil sociopath suffering from some sort of mental illness.

As the character opens the front door to let in the girl, the shot cuts to the title screen as he is heard saying 'Daisy', this leaves the opening scene on a crescendo and leaves the audience wondering what will happen next. The title is in a bold white font over a black background which is very effective in my opinion because it is a simple title but the large spaces between the letters and the full stop used at the end add a feel of uncertainty and create a dark atmosphere that sets the tempo for the rest of the movie.

Title Planning

For our title for the Thriller opening sequence we have researched different fonts that we think would be suitable for the title of our movie, this has helped us narrow down the final font that we are going to use for our final title. Credit to Elliot Hall for producing this piece of work:

Thriller opening script

Script

Detective: Scarlett, I’m sorry we have to talk under such circumstances, but we need all the answers we can get if it means finding the man who took you.

Scarlett: *Breathing heavily*

Detective: Can you describe the place that you and your friend were taken?

Flashback

Detective: Scarlett? Scarlett? Scarlett? (Increasing in volume)

                   Your friend, she didn’t make it… Her injuries were too serious

Flashback

Detective: *Clicks finger*

                   How did you come to have these photos in your pocket?

                   *Puts photos on table*

Scarlett: *Briefly looks at photos then slides them off the table* Where did you get these?

Detective: We found them in the back pocket of the clothes you were wearing.

Scarlett: I didn’t take them

Detective: I know, he did. We need your help to find him. What happened when you were first taken?

Scarlett: *Silent*

Detective: You’re going to be instrumental in finding the man who took you, Scarlett, we need 

your—

Scarlett: *Interjecting* I was walking alone, coming back from my friend’s house, and then I saw him

Detective: What did he look like?

Scarlett: He was dressed in all black, with a mask, a balaclava

Detective: *Taking notes*

Scarlett: And then he grabbed me… I tried to fight him but *cries*

                He put a rag over my mouth *continues to cry*

Detective: *with hand on Scarlett’s shoulder* it’s okay

Scarlett: *panicking* no… please *backs away* help!

Detective: Shhhhh

Scarlett wakes up

Kidnapper: Shhhhh

Scarlett: *screams*

Opening titles

 These are the opening credits for our thriller, which will be shown on screen as the introduction develops. When it comes to incorporating these into our thriller opening sequence, we shall experiment to find the perfect font and transitions to show how they appear in the shot.

Tedstar Productions
A film by Elliot Hall
An Oliver Hill production
Katie Garratt
Harry Rigby
Joelle Riley
Casting by Tony Zagrafos
Costume by Michelle Bates
Sound by Steves Green
Written and Directed by Oliver Hill and Elliot Hall

Character Profiles

Protagonists
Name: Scarlett Joyce
Age:14-17
Played By: Katie Garratt
Bio: Teenage girl of a middle class background and a pleasant upbringing. Still in secondary school, small, feeble. In the opening she is emotionally unhinged and shocked because of the trauma she has experienced. 

Name: Sally Roberts
Age: 14-17
Played By: Joelle Riley
Bio: A teenage girl from a middle classs upbringing. At the time of the introduction, little information is known about Sally as many details about her remain ambiguous.

Antagonist
Name: Unknown
Age: Early-Mid 30s
Played By: Harry Rigby
Bio: Deep voice, strong. Motives behind kidnapping are unknown at the time of the introduction. Mysterious character - a lot of narrative enigmas surround this character.

Risk Assessment

Planning for the final task

For this post I have produced a small presentation on Prezi to show how have I been planning for my final task. The presentation is visible below:

Analysis of a another student's blog

For my second analysis of a student's blog, I will be analysing Emma Snow's blog which I believe is a very good example of what I would like my blog to look like by the time I have finished. There are no mistakes visible in the blog as far as I can see and Emma has used many different methods of presenting her work.

As the other blogger has done, this candidate has also used labels to make it easier for the viewer to find their way around the posts.

This candidate has also made changes to the aesthetics of the blog by introducing a different background and editing the look of the labels. Personally I do think the aesthetics are very good in this blog, but I do find the background fairly distracting which makes it slightly difficult to concentrate on the blog. 

In this blog, many different formats have been used to present the candidate's work such as vlogs that have been uploaded and presentations created on websites such as Emaze and Prezi. I will attempt to use as many different formats as possible in my blog so that I have a variety of different ways of presenting my work.

The candidate created a questionnaire to gather different opinions that could help her when it comes to producing her final piece. The questionnaire has been nicely set out which makes it easy to understand and I like that the candidate has written about how the answers received affect the production for her final piece.

Analysis of a student's blog

For my analysis of a student's blog, I will be analysing Daniel Bower's blog, who is the same candidate who's thriller opening 'Young Killer' I analysed earlier in my blog. Like his thriller opening, Dan's blog is not how I would like my blog to look in the end since it is full of spelling mistakes and the presentation very plain and it is clear that no effort has been made to rectify any of his mistakes.

The candidate has made no changes to the overall colour scheme apart from making the titles in his blog purple which I feel isn't a very good use of colour since the brightness of the font is fairly disorientating and distracting to the reader. He has created labels for the blog which makes it easy to navigate around the blog which is a good addition. I am going to use labels in my own blog so that viewers can navigate around my blog with ease, I am going to refrain from using any bright colours because I feel that the bright colours make the post difficult to read.

The size of font varies throughout the blog which in some cases has made it difficult to read due to the small size of the font. I will make sure that in my blog the font is always at a suitable size for someone to be able to read it easily. 

The candidate hasn't used any variety throughout his presentation which has made it look fairly bland, he could have used different methods of presenting things such as using a prezi presentation or uploading videos of himself speaking. I will make sure that I incorporate some variety in my blog so that it is more appealing to the viewers and because the presentation can count towards extra marks.