Animatic.

Finding the Location: Part Two.

The next location that we needed was the house/bathroom. We all considered our own houses, however none of them were right as we are quite specific on how we want the setting to be. We wanted the bathroom to be the perfect size with quite an old fashioned bathroom.


Rachel came up with the idea to use her friends bathroom as it fits the brief, however the location of it was inconvenient as it was in Harrow, which was very far away from our school and and all of our houses. We then asked Rachel's boyfriend Tom who is also in our year at school; his house was the most convenient location as it is 5 minutes away from school.
His bathroom was not exactly what we wanted however we certainly thought we could make it work and the rest of his house was perfect for our opening.  

Finding the Location: Part One.

We need two locations for our opening. The first location need to be a park where we begin with the protagonist smoking a cigarette. Our group decided to go out during a free period to check out a few possible locations in the area.

Golders Hill Park

Golders hill park is the nearest park to out school. The park is mostly a hill with lots of trees and sculptures, there is also a zoo there. We liked this park, however we thought the vibe wasn't quite right as it is usually quite busy and we wanted it to be more of an open space for a more eerie feel, whereas this park has a lot going on.

Heath Extension
The Heath Extension is a much more quiet part of Hamstead heath. It has big open empty spaces which gives that Eerie feel that we are looking for.

We decided that the heath extension was the perfect location. We found a bench which is perfect for what we were looking for also it is easily accessible as it is near to school and all of our houses. We will aim to shoot it on a cold frosty day which will be the perfect atmosphere for our opening, hopefully there will also be some mist.

Fonts for our opening.

Thriller Fonts

We have been trying to find the right font for out thriller and have been looking at slightly more edgy fonts to fit the genre of thriller, we narrowed it down to 4 options. We all thought that option number 1 and number 4 are too artsy for what we want. We then had to decide between option number 2 and 3, which both fit the genre but aren't too extreme. Eventually we chose number 3, the font immediately tells the viewer what genre of film they are about to watch, without overdoing it.

1)

2)

3)

4)

Story Board.

Opening Shot List

Opening Shot list –

Scene 1:

-Far away shot of Alice on the bench alone smoking a cigarette amongst the frost and fog.  (TITLE)

-Jumps to close up off face (SOUND EFFECT NELL BREAHTING) looking slightly on edge and then she suddenly looks down.

- Semi close up shot of her hand holding her cigarette with her wrist exposed.

-Quick flicker to a shot with different lighting where someone is stubbing out the cigarette on her hand. (Flashback)

- Next shot of Alice filmed from below where she quickly drops her cigarette, going from her confused and distressed expressions to her rubbing her wrist.

 

Scene 2:

-shot from end of road of Alice walking towards the camera, so there is some distance between her and the camera.

- Cuts to shot shoulder up, Alice look on edge and there is a figure of women blurry behind her. Faded  (title over the blurred figure)

 

Scene 3:

-Alice walking home across a road.

- shot of the scene without her in it, title appearing in her absence.

 

Scene 4:

-shot of Alice walking through her front door from outside.

-close up of the door slamming from the outside (title)

 

 

Scene 5:

-shot of Alice putting her keys on the side

-close up of her hand and the keys as she walks off (title)

- cuts to Alices feet walking upstairs (title appearing in her absence)

 

Scene 6:

-Shot of bath taps being turned and the water jutting out.

- Alice walks to the mirror and starts to take off her makeup.

- close up of her putting down the makeup wipe on the side (title)

-shot of her looking in the mirror blankly

-shot of her washing her face in hands, eyes closed

- Suddenly looks up to see a broken mirror with a blurred figure in the background using the different lighting.

- shot of Alice knocking over the stuff on the bathroom side. Then turning around to see nothing there.

-turns back to see the mirror completely normal again.

-Alice looks disturbed but emotionless. Slightly underreacting to the situation as if shes excepting the fact she’s going a bit crazy.

 

Scene7:

 -Shot from knees  down of clothes dropping to the floor indicating Alice is getting into the bath.

-cuts to  Shot of her in the bath, lying back with her eyes closes.

-everything goes silent as you hear the dripping of the tap

- it drips a few more times before she opens her eyes so see the dripping is blood

- Alice screams jumping up.

- cuts to knock at the door

-looks at the door then back to the bath to see it back to normal.

CUTS TO BLACK – TITLE APPEARS.

Casting Our Thriller: Part Two.

We had to think carefully when casting our thriller as we wanted to find someone who's appearance fit the role but who is also up to the task of acting in the role. The possible choices for the role of 'Alice' was Nell in our year and Lola in the year above.

Nell

We think that Nell would be good to play Alice as she is up to the task of acting, she is currently doing a course in performing arts and I have seen her act in a play and she portrayed the role perfectly. However we were unsure whether her appearance was exactly what we had in mind for Alice.

Lola

We thought that Lola's appearance really fitted the role of Alice, she has piercing blue eyes and dark hair which is exactly how we imagined Alice to look. However we were worried that she is less qualified for the role than Nell is. We were reassured however when we watched Benji, Bliss and Harold's opening from last year that starred Lola, we thought her acting was definitely of the standard that we want for our opening.

Here's the link to their opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jiq3gP8iYo

Casting our thriller: Part One.

When writing our groups thriller treatment, we were particularly inspired by the character 'Effy' from the British television programme 'Skins'. 

Skins is a British teen drama that followed the lives of a group of teenagers in Bristol, South West England, through the two years of sixth form. It was a very popular TV drama for teenagers, and Effy was a character that was idolised by many teen girls. Skins tackled teen issues such as substance abuse, mental illness and disfunctional families. 

The character Effy was a mystery even to herself. Simular to our protagonist, she struggles with her mental health, smokes and has a cool dress sense. When casting our thriller we certainly had Effy in mind, we wanted our character to have a sense of mystery about her and therefore the actress would have to be able to portray that perfectly. We also liked Effy's dark hair and light eyes, so we also had that in mind. 

As the character Effy was a very popular with young adults, which is our target audience, we thought that if we based our character around the character Effy we could attract that audience to our film. 

Organising our group though Facebook.

After forming our group, we decided the best was to organise ourselves was through Facebook, as we all check it frequently and we all know how to use it week. I made a group chat on Facebook which had me Millie and Rachel in it, in this chat we can organise dates and other formalities about filming and editing our thriller. When we know who our actors are going to be, I intend to make another group chat with them in it so we can tell them the details.

Logline.

This is the logline that our group wrote together for our thriller, we have decided to name our film after we have filmed it, so we really have a feel of what to call it.

Logline: Alice, a sixteen year old girl, living a reasonably normal life with her foster parents, is completely unaware of the horrible past she once lived. Her life starts to take a horrible turn as the memories of her abusive mother flood back in, eventually taking over her mind and driving her to insanity. No one can help. No one would understand. Her mind is slowly killing her and there is nothing she can do to stop it.

Our Groups Thriller Treatment.

Today we were put into groups which included me, Millie and Rachel.

When we were put into our groups, we all had our separate ideas so we wanted to find a way to combine all the best aspects of each idea. All of our thriller ideas fitted into the genre of psychological thriller and we all really liked the idea of a visualisation of a mental breakdown. We all thought the protagonist should be female and a teenager, we wanted to play with the idea of portraying a decent into madness (simular to Black Swan) and we came up with ideas of how we can show this using different mediums.

Our final thriller treatment is as follows:

Final Thriller Treatment 

The scene begins with the girl experiencing disturbing flashbacks and past events that have previously been buried and are starting to be unearthed. The shots are filmed like a flicker between past and present; illusions in her mind which start to make her believe things that aren’t there suddenly are.

As the film progresses she continues to experience these memories that appear to come to life for her.  She talks to her family and they suggest she goes to see a therapist to discuss the possible root of her issues as it is starting to affect her daily life and mental state.

While visiting the therapist troubling realisations come to mind such as the fact that her parents, who she believed were her birth parents, are soon discovered to be her adopted guardians. She slowly starts to unpick her past which makes the flashbacks stronger in her mind; she starts to lose touch of what’s real and what’s not.

Finally the suppressed memories, with help of the therapist, start making more and more sense to both audience and protagonist and matching up with her visual flashbacks. She discovers her past with her birth mum and her sinister childhood, and ultimately why she ended up in an orphanage with adopted parents and was never told about it.

The tragic end to her mum, killing herself in the bath, and the young girl finding her lifeless body at a very young age becomes too much for the girl. She believes she is going insane, living a lie her whole life and having these highly disturbing ‘visions’ which won’t go away.

Driving the girl down a mental downwards spiral it becomes too much and she wishes to end her life, like her mother, by overdosing. As she lies down on her bed awaiting the end she has one last vision of her mum handing her a letter, as she reads the letter she begins to cry as it is the explanation she has been awaiting the whole time. She starts to panic as she no longer wants to end her life, but as she picks up the phone to call the ambulance she is taken over by crippling pains and convulsions. The drugs take control of her system and her life comes to a devastating end, mirroring her mother’s perverse suicide.