Planning- Props

Garage Props:

The garage contains several specific props in order to create verisimilitude. We are trying to create a mysterious atmosphere and to make the shots look gritty and dirty to reinforce the reality and hardship of having to live as an abductee. 

A wooden chair has the second girl tied to it. This kind of chair is used to show that it is improvised as it seems like a very average but old fashioned chair. It also helps because the ropes can be tied through and around the chair. 

 

 

 

This also leads to another important prop. Some simple rope that is tied around the chair to restrict the girl when she is being tortured. Any kind of rope will do as long as there is enough to tie the girl's arms and legs.

Scarlett's bed is meant to look improvised and uncomfortable. It consists of a few blankets on the floor which are dirty and untidy. This photo is representative of the kind of thing i would like to create. 

There is a bucket in the garage. It is not explicitly said but assumed that it is used for the girls to do their business. This reinforces the grittiness and realistic tribulence of the girls experience in the garage. 

The garage will be filled with tools which are grimy and used. This implies that the captor is torturing them and also proves that he is sadistic because he is torturing her in a surgical and precise manner. 

Interrogation room props

The most important prop in the interrogation scene is the table and chairs which the detective and Scarlett use. They need to look simple and similar to that of a police interrogation room in order to reinforce the verisimilitude of the set. This photo is an example of a simple table and two chairs which would be viable as a prop option. 

 The lamp is also an important prop because it creates a specific type of lighting that me and Oliver wanted for the scene. 

These are two examples of lamps which would fit into our piece. They are black and simply designed which would blend well with the subtle tones we will include to reflect numbness and isolation.

Planning - Makeup

For our thriller opening sequence, we require make up to use on some of the cast to give the characters features such as bruises/cuts and tattoos. Elliot and myself have decided to do the make up ourselves on the characters. To give us a better idea of how to do the make up, we have been researching on the internet by watching make up tutorials and have practised doing some of these so that we can complete them to a high quality for our final sequence.

 The black eye 

 For our opening scene, the protagonist, Scarlett Joyce will have a black eye in the police questionning room. Elliot and myself are going to be using make up to create the look of a black eye on her face. We have watched tutorial videos on Youtube to help us learn how to make the bruised eye look realistic. The Youtube video that we watched is visible below:

 





The tattoo 
The antagonist in our thriller opening sequence (the Detective/Kidnapper) will have a tattoo on his right hand. We haven't made a final decision on the tattoo just yet but we have been looking on the internet for simple tattoo designs that we can use on the antagonists hand and we have been looking at tutorial videos to teach us how to make a realistic looking temporary tattoo. These are a few ideas that we may use for the tattoo:

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.

 

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:

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: