Teacher Assessed Research

Planning Assessment

Casting

Who we chose for casting, and why we chose them:

For our victim, we chose to use a female character.  This is because stereotypically women are presented as being weaker and more vulnerable then men, therefore she has a low status.  Also, our female character is small and has a light hair colour which suggests that she is innocent.  The innocence of this character is effective because it makes the audience sympathize for her, and want her to overcome what she is going through or about to go through.

Our murderer is a male character, with dark hair and tall.  This is because men are stereotypically stronger, and more powerful then women so have a higher status over them and control them.  As this character is more powerful and aggressive the audience feel less sympathy towards this character, and concentrate on what they think the character is doing, who they are, and why they are doing it.

Credit To: Becka Thompson

These are all quite stereotypical representations of males and females however this will be quite affective as audiences are comfortable with these stereotypes, our piece has conformed with many other Thriller films.

Titles

The name of 'A Childs Nightmare' may be a temporary or permanent name, were not sure yet. Yet in the theme of a child we used the handwriting style font and each font looks like the kidnapper is writing in a diary about his victims or killings, and he is hunting down his childhood friends to punish them links with 'A Childs Nightmare'.


On Screen Titles:

The Wire (All Due Respect, 26/09/04, US)

This is how we want our titles to look. We think that having the text over the shots looks better than having it over black. It allows the audience to ask more questions and want to know more, rather then the 'fake world' they are seeing to be interrupted. This example from The Wire is perfect as the font they use is very similar to the font we want to use and the positioning of the titles too.

Over Black Titles:

The Sixth Sense (Shyamalan, 1999, US)

Although this works for The Sixth Sense, I don't think it would work with our opening sequence.

The use of Titles over black would be very effective for the building of tension in an opening however there will not be enough time in our 2 minute opening to have a title over black unless they are extremely quick frames.

Credit To: Matthew Moore

Props, Costume, Location

Here are two models to wear the costume ideas for the characters in the opening sequence. The final idea  of our costume will be presented.

Mysterious Killer Costume

- Dark Clothes
- Lack of Colour --> Cold Character?
- Not much of his body is revealed (Mystery)
- We have not given this character much detail in their costume, he would wear dark clothing as many of these kinds of characters you see in Thriller films do not wear bright clothes but instead dark clothing.

Victim Costume

- Bright Clothes with Colour (Gives some emotion, suggests a bright personality? The character likes to express themselves
- This model is showing the possible clothing that the character 'Jennifer' would wear (will be portrayed by Nicole Benyon) and it gives us the idea that Jennifer is an expressive character and this way she will now appear out of place in this dark, cramped location

The Props

These are images of all the different props that we will be using in our piece.


Chair - Where the victim is tied down
Rope - To hold victim down
          - To be used by killer to connect images.
Pin Board - For our Killer's 'Hit List'
Pins - For killer to place into board.

Location

The dark room which the killer will hold his victim in the opening of our film. It is a cold room that looks cramped so it is definitely going to be an uncomfortable environment for viewers to see.


Credit To: Nathan Wyatt

Character Description

Animatic of our Opening Sequence

Storyboards

The above image shows all the shots in our storyboard as we planned them. In the .gif above I have set each frame to have an equal duration to how we want it to be in our Opening Sequence.

The majority of shots appear to be at least two seconds long so there is not such a long screen time for each of our shots. This means that in filming our Opening sequence we will probably stick to using the faster shots accompanied by some quite fast tempo yet still eerie backing tracks and accompanying sound effects.

As you can tell from the shots we have drawn out many of them are Extra Close Up to Close Up so it is clear we want to do that which many Thriller films we have analysed does, provide an audience with clues and make them ask QUESTIONS!


In our notes next to a shot we have notewd the sounds and the editing that will be used too. A musical score will be running throughout the Opening and in some points diegetic sound is heard. As for editing we will use cuts as well as Pans along different shots and Crabs.

This is a short video showing myself and my group as we discuss and work on storyboarding the opening of our film. It is good that we work together and discuss ideas with each other so we know what we will do and so that everyone gets an input in.

Sound Ideas

For our opening sequence we need to think about possible sounds to use, what emotions we want to create with them and if they fit in with our piece. To find some background music we used the website http://www.freesounds.org/ in order to find some good and Copyright Free tracks that we may incorporate into our opening.

The kind of music I find first was a suitable and eerie backing track and I found this:

This music set a kind of eerie feeling that I was thinking in my mind, it is not however going to work on its own. I believe that some non-diegetic tones can play with it in certain places with some diegetic ones.

A diegetic sound that can go with the sound above is this:

The heavy breathing can go with shots of the killer in our opening as they sound like a male breathing as it is a deep sound. The breaths become faster which also works well because it builds the tension and suspense as the opening goes along. Based on his breaths an audience feels a build up to something happening.

Another good sound to use is that of a swing:

The swing makes a squeaky and creepy sound and it goes with the shots that may be added to our piece of kids playing and images of different characters created for our media piece in a sort of flashback.

Shot Ideas