Proposal

Thriller Proposal

Brief

Our target audience was 15-35 year olds therefore we were asked to create a 2 minute opening sequence to our own thriller movie for this age range.

Research findings

In our research we found out that the key to a good thriller is the use of music and sound effects. Most people said that music is what makes the ‘’thrill’’ in the thriller as it creeps in unexpectedly and induldges the audience. Low key lighting is essential as it doesn’t reveal too much as to what is happening and leaves an element of surprise. The genre we have decided on is a horror thriller as we can come up with more advanced and in depth scripts based on our experiances watching horror movies. We also think that they appeal more to our age range and target audience 15- 35 year olds as they will be allowed to view some aspects of violence. For our subject we concentrated on the element of suspicion as we wanted to make our child actress as spooky and twisted as possible. Costume is important as it reveals a lot such as if the girl is wealthy, what era they are living in and the characteristic of the kid. Although we would like out thriller to be a big Hollywood box office film due to our production being set in a British location with unknown British actors we feel that it would be a British independent film.

Initial Ideas

Irfaat

In my idea the overall plot would involve Jack,12 year old boy who is guilt stricken after his younger sister recently passed away. His mother is neglecting him as she assumes it is his fault. Jack claims to see her but no one believes him. Mary (the dead sister) keeps pestering jack to do bad things like their mum or she will be forced to kill him. If he succeeds then he will be rewarded with something in a mysterious box. He tries to tell his mother but she won’t listen so he is left with a terrible decision.

For the opening sequence, we fade up an extreme close-up of bright blue eyes which slowly fade to bright red. The camera tracks backwards revealing an empty house with a boy sitting in a corner covered in blood, a dead woman's body lying lifeless in front of him.  The camera pans down to a photo of a little girl on the floor nearby. It then cuts to a flash back of a close up of the little girl’s feet standing  on the ledge. Voice over of little boys voice saying '' jump Mary , go on you won’t fall and hurt yourself go on , if you do I'll show you what's in my box , just jump'' while camera pans up revealing girl looking worried fade to blackness voice over  of screams then zooms into the moon which then graphic matches to mother's eye. Cut to close up of hands laying down a flower on a gravestone pan up to the name on the gravestone. Cut to medium shot of mum hunched on the floor crying and the ghost of the little girl holding mums shoulder. Cut to little boy standing at the train station with mother. Little girl’s stands on the other platform while people walking past. Boy says to mother '' mom i can see Mary, mom she's pm the other platform'' mother says to boy '' don't be stupid Mary's dead'' medium close up of Mary waving. Train goes past and Mary disappears. Over the shoulder shot of jack in the bathroom looking in the mirror suddenly Mary appears '' you have to do it, look in the box you will find it, go and kill mom'' Mary says '' i can’t, Mary tell me what's going on tell me why you’re doing this'' jack says jack turns around ( eye line match and shot reverse shot while dialogue is going on also following the 180 degree rule.) Mary is gone. extreme close up of box hands opening box  camera pans up revealing the boys worried face then cuts backs to the box slowly opening suddenly the door is opened. The camera quick cuts from door to box being suddenly closed. cut to the word jack engraved on the tree.

Courtney

Overall in the film, the main characters are a mother, father and two children, a girl aged 8 and a boy aged 11. They are on a camping trip in a quaint little forest. It is autumn time and the forest is covered in leaves and becoming more dark and cold each day. They plan to stay there for a long weekend and participate in traditional things like toasting marshmallows on a campfire and going for long walks. After their happy first night they awake in the morning to find their car drowned in the middle of the lake as if somebody has pushed it into there. They think it is another group of young campers trying to pull a prank on them. As they try to use their phones to call out to friends and family they soon find that they have no signal and the only way to get out of the forest is by foot. The camera keeps flashing back and forth from the families dilemma to someone spying on the family from behind the tree’s and they are breathing in a un-humanly way. As night dawns they have to set up their tent as the children are getting tired.  The little girl is spooked by shadows she can see through the tent and the noise of tree’s swishing in the wind. They wake up the next morning to find the girl missing. As they run around the area looking for her the mother comes across her body on the cold damp floor. She is lying face down. The mother runs to her and screams for the little girl to respond as she turns her body around, a half bitten face is revealed. Dripping with blood you wouldn’t even be able to identify that it is the same girl as half her face is missing. Suddenly it dawns on the family that there is something big and evil lurking around the forest.

The opening two minutes of the film will feature a mum and son standing on a quiet motorway with a forest far in the distance. The mum has blood on her face and ripped clothes and the boy looks scrubby and dirty and is grasping onto his mum. They are trying to thumb a lift from passing cars. The camera zooms into their faces and then they become blurred as the forest comes into focus. As the camera zooms right up into the forest a loud pitched scream is heard and the screen goes black. Then we see a family un-loading stuff from the car. Laughter can be heard as there is a MCU of two children rolling down a hill.

Detjona

What I had in mind to do was basically have one character and she would be an alcoholic at 23 who was going through a phase in her life where she would be really alone. What happen are her subconscious acts on her and it’s this little girl from her childhood who speaks to her. Thinking the younger girl actually exists the older girl starts to listen to her as she feels they are friends. 

the first thing we see is a close up of the older girls eye it has to be red and look quite tired to show she is drunk so the audience gets an idea of her alcohol problems. Then we cut to her looking in the mirror and saying 'what do I do?' to herself and the younger girl emerges from the dark behind her saying 'you know what you have to do'. This cuts to a clip of her childhood and the older girl if the young girl now and she are being molested by her step-dad which has now led her to be the person she is. We then cut again to her being in an AA meeting at the age of 23 and she doesn’t really want to be there but she’s been sent there by her mum. So we get a close up of her face introducing herself to the group. We then cut again to a side view of her face and her in a car driving and drinking and the little girl next to her. The young girl keeps saying 'you can do it' making her voice gets faster and louder as the car accelerates. Then the older girl starts to cry and says 'I can’t' as we see flashbacks of her childhood. The scene then finishes with a long shot of the car driving off. Titles roll with crew names.

Marcia

My initial idea involves an overall film plot featuring a 12 year old boy who’s an orphan. He lost his parents when he was 2 so he didn’t have any parental love. He was looked after by his grandparents until he was 5. His grandparents sensed that there was something wrong with him so they put him into a care home. He would always lash out at strangers and get into fights with people a lot older than him. He was quite secluded and kept himself to himself. One day, a woman arrives at the care home to start her new job and he finds out that she used to be in the same care home as Jack until her mother died and she became a bit crazy and demented and had to be put into a mental institute. The boy whose name is Jack becomes really attached to the woman named Jeni. She reveals to him that she had a son but he died stillborn. They both stick to each other and enjoy each other’s company. The only downside is that Jeni still hasn’t gotten rid of the crazy part of her mind and she does everything to keep little Jack safe. Jack on the other hand, doesn’t take too kindly to her wanting to keep him safe and decides to take action.

My idea for the opening sequence is to have Jack staring out of a window in the living room. Behind him the curtains are closed, isolating him. He then steps back slightly, moving the curtain to stare down at the floor. Lying there is a body. Who’s the body on the floor? 

There is then a flashback of Jeni and Jack talking about their personal experience with the loss of their parents; Jeni with her mum and Jack with both his mum and dad. Jeni and Jack are outside in the garden on the swings talking when suddenly Jeni seems visibly shaken, telling Jack that she lost her son and wants to care for Jack like her own. Jack doesn’t like this and screams at her telling her that he already has a mum and doesn’t need another one. Jeni tells him that his mum passed away but he refuses to believe it. He then rushes inside.

Back in real time, we now see Jack stroking long, bloody hair and speaking in a hushed tone, “Yes, mother you were right. I will love you forever.”

He then has a flashback. This time he’s in a classroom and everyone’s drawing pictures of their family but Jack isn’t. He’s drawing a picture of a black house and his mum and dad covered in blood, with coffins all in darkness. His teacher see’s the picture, tries to snatch it off him but he refuses. She then sends him to the head teacher.

Jack then comes out of the flashback and you see a tear streaming down his cheek. He turns towards the body and hugs it saying, “Here you go mummy. You won’t throw my picture away. You’ll cherish it forever just like you cherish me.” He takes out the picture from his pocket and places in the body’s hand, kissing it while he does that.

After that he goes into a third flashback of him being surrounded by children in a birthday party being asked to do a dare after losing a competition. The dare was to see who could pull their own tooth out and because he lost he had to do that dare. He eventually pulls it out to the disgust of the children. The parents after seeing him do this send him home embarrassing him in front of the children. He sees a drip of blood fall from his lip and catches it with his tongue. He starts to laugh and you see a glimmer of evil in his eyes. It’s from that moment that the audience realise that he’s different from other young boys.

Jack comes out of the flashback again and pulls out a tooth from his pocket. He then places it in the body’s mouth saying, “Mommy, I think you’re missing a tooth.” He starts to get angry because the tooth isn’t going in. He starts stabbing the tooth into the body’s gums, screaming and laughing while he’s doing it.