Brief - Overview of storyline, Inital Ideas, Characters and Conventions

Our film begins with a point-of-view shot of a man hanging from a tree, and in the distance a figure is sprinting away. This immediately creates enigmas for the audience, as they ask many questions from the very first shot. The scene then cuts to a new setting, inside a very severed house. A man sits up from a bed, covered in sweat and looking beaten down and ill. Following establishing shots of the room and the man, he walks over to a bottle of pills, struggles to open them and they fall to the floor. Various shots will be used here to show the struggle he is having, and how his life seems so scattered. With the pills sprawling across the floor, he panics and shoves them into his mouth. He then leans back against the wall, and slowly passes out. There is then another flash of the opening shot, only this time the person in the distance is not running, but standing still and staring. The shot then cuts back to a point-of-view shot of the man, who slowly wakes and sees a figure standing in the doorway. He then clutches his head and tries to avoid the figure. Another shot of the doorway is shown, this time empty. A quick pan around the room shows him standing in another place, and again the man closes his eyes and tries to forget about him. But as he opens them again, the figure hands him a card.

Our ideas for the opening of our thriller came from a variety of places. The idea to include a bed in a rough looking room came from ‘Trainspotting’ (Dir. Danny Boyle, 1995), where Mark Renton is trying to get off heroin and has many hallucinations from the bed. We thought this was a very freaky scene and grabbed audience attention straight away. The use of camera shots here also influenced us, as many unusual shots are used, something that we wanted to incorporate in our film.

Another film we found influences from was ‘Se7en’ (Dir. David Fincher, 1995). Throughout the film, the settings are plunged into darkness, creating a sense of tension and fear, making the audience wonder what will happen next and what twists will be revealed. We liked this as a group because we felt it created a fearful atmosphere, and made the audience feel on edge, something we want to emulate in our thriller.

One films character we got ideas from was ‘The Machinist’ (Dir. Brad Anderson, 2004) where throughout the film, the main character Trevor Reznik has a state of psychological unease, and his life seems frazzled and uncertain. We believed this state of mind was very interesting, and made the audience question reality and wonder why Trevor is feeling this way. These are the kind of enigmas we want to create in our film, to make the audience wonder and want to find out more as they keep watching.

We decided to use male characters in our film since the settings and themes that we will use are usually associated with male lifestyles, and we believe that using keeping with tradition and using men will appeal to the audience more, and will hopefully make people want to see our film. If we had used female characters, though it would have been an interesting conception, we felt that using female characters did not match the atmosphere we were looking to establish in the opening two minutes of our thriller.

Our main character clothing and features will be of someone that is not doing very well in life, and is struggling to get by. His look will be very scruffy, and he will look very tired and hurt. This will make the audience wonder and worry about him, and make them ask why he is this way. With torn clothes, and things that are too big for him, this character will look weak and vulnerable, a feeling that everyone gets some time. This will allow the audience to connect with him and attach themselves to him. We also took influence from the character Charlie Fineman from the film 'Reign Over Me' (Dir. Mike Binder, 2007). Though not a thriller film, this character is struggling in life and is very alone, with no one to confide in. These issues and mannerisms make the audience feel for this character, and root for him throughout the film. These are similar feeling we would like to convey for our main character in our thriller film.

The other character in the scene, the figure in the doorway will be very different to the other man. He will be almost the opposite, in a very smart suit and looking very elegant. He could almost represent what the other man wishes he was. Most people know someone that is very smart and doing better than they are, so audience members will instantly think that he is someone that cannot be trusted, since he seems very out of place in this particular setting.

There will be a few conventions that we will incorporate into our thriller. Our first shot immediately shows a death, something which is usually expected in thrillers, especially psychological ones, which ours leans towards. Another convention that we will use is the rough looking characters. Many thrillers have unstable main characters, such as’ Donnie Darko’ (Dir. Richard Kelly, 2001) and ‘The Butterfly Effect’ (Dir. Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, 2004) . These characters are ones that the audience expects to see, so having a similar one in our film will hopefully make the audience know they are watching a thriller and know what emotions to feel. Also, many thrillers have a character that is very elegant and smart, like our other character. Thrillers like ‘Collateral’ (Dir. Michael Mann, 2005) and ‘Man On Fire’ (Dir. Tony Scott, 2004) have characters that wear smart clothes in places that usually wouldn’t expect to see such neat clothing. This makes the audience wonder and want to watch more, to find out more about these particular characters. Another convention that we will be using is the use of a very beaten down and rough setting. Many thrillers use settings like this, to create a sense of fear and worry. We believe that using this setting will help the audience recognise that this is a thriller film, and it will then allow us to concentrate on advertising to our target market using these typical thriller conventions.

- Taylor Gladwin