Sunday 27 November 2011

Thriller Planning

Basic plot:
When me and Alice sat down to plan the thriller we first had to first decide upon the basic format for our thriller. We decided that we would not use dialogue due to the fact that it would sound rough if we plan to use the school camera equipment. It would be much smarter for us to use non-diegetic sound throughout the scene. Secondly we decided on what we thought would make our thriller stand out, gender and social status were our first ideas, but after much consideration we decided that it would be much better to have a middle aged woman as the centre of attention. The image I had in my head was a far more deviant version of 'Jackie Brown'.
We then had to start work on the shot list. Without dialogue there would be very little point in using the 180 degree rule, however, to contrast victim and killer we may have used some form of the rule with extreme close ups.
The shot list is as follows:
1) The camera is facing from some distance away at the second story front windows of a house. The camera does not need to be parallel, it can be a high or low angle... The shot will be taken at night time and the lighting will come entirely from the room that the camera is focused on. There will be a woman in this room and she will be walking around in a hurry, picking items up etc. The camera will slowly zoom into the top left hand corner of the window, where the production company's name will appear. I took actually spent a lot of time deciding which corner of the window to zoom into, I decided on the top left corner mainly because we right from left to right, so if we were to zoom into any corner we would feel more comfortable with the right hand side.... I decided that if we are already reversing gender roles then why not build up to this by reversing the shots as well.
2) The previous shot has faded to white and now a new shot fades in. This shot is of a car park, the camera is facing down a hill looking into the car park. The shot is an over the shoulder shot, we see the hair of a woman so we know that this is the character from before. She is looking down at two men in the car park. I want to trick the audience by reversing the shot so that we see the men looking up at the woman but It would be hard to do this without breaking the 180 degree rule, however, I shall try my best to succeed.
3) we shoot from the floor for the next shot, it is an extremely low angle, we see one of the men from the car park walking towards the camera, as he comes closer and closer he covers more and more of the shot, finally he walks through the shot, revealing the woman from before to be walking behind him at some distance.

4) the final shot shows an elevator, the man presses the button and waits for the lift to reach him, when it does the woman is there, the camera moves slowly to the left to show a blank wall. We hear the diegetic sound of fighting and the film title suddenly appears on the wall along. The title will be in the classic Quentin Tarantino font and colour (yellow).
The idea of the first 3 scenes is to quickly show that there are two characters, both equally deviant, one a man one a woman, in the fourth scene we know that they have a fight but we do not know who started or won the fight. After the forth scene fades out the words '4 Weeks earlier will appear upon a black screen'. This shows the audience that this is in fact the end of the film, and to understand the history behind the characters and what happened at the lift they must watch the events of the previous weeks. The idea that this film is non linear not only helps create suspense straight away but it also insures that the audience stay to watch the rest of the film.

3 comments:

  1. You say.....Without dialogue there would be very little point in using the 180 degree rule....
    Robin the 180 degree rule has nothing to do with dialogue (you re thinking about shot reverse shot which again does not rely on dialogue) but that two characters or other elements in the same scene should have the same left/right axis!!!

    You need to thing your ideas through with a shot list. A fight in a lift may be difficult to shoot authentically, but instead two people swapping bags in a lift as Jackie Brown does in the scene in the chanaging room in Jackie Brown!!!

    How are you going to film through a 2nd floor window unless you have a balcony..
    Locations: Living room, car park, lift.

    Cliffhanger has to be dramatic...cliffhanger, woman or man back in living room (shot from outside window to indicate voyeurism and nice tribute to Hitchcok's Rear Window) about to open bag when man comes in and holds a gun to her throat.....cliff hanger woman being put in car boot.....!! Will discuss in class!

    Target: Shot list please - think visually..

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  2. I meant that within the shot list I have that there is no use of the 180 degree rule and that without dialogue there is still no reason to include it.
    I also stated that the shot of the window will be a high or low angle depending on the house in question. I would make this clearer on my blog but I would rather explain myself here instead of editing my post and making your post invalid.

    This was only the basic plot, hence the title, I merely wanted to write up the original ideas that we had so that the next posts make more sense.

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  3. I'm pleased you've written up your ideas but the 180 degree rule applies to all film making.
    I've seen your story boards and they're very good. We did discuss revising your ideas and you all came up with some promising developments. Writing a quick shot list is very helpful because it is quick and efficient and makes you think how you cut from one scene to the next.

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