Character List

In terms of mine, Kingsley and Tyler's character list we require only one or two different characters. At the moment, the only person we want in our Thriller is a man aged between 30 and 40, which is a very easy age range to find. We have a choice of plenty of teachers at Hurtwood House.

The three of us also contemplated using two policeman to arrive in the drive way of our location, but we feel that we can create more suspense and cause the audience to ask more questions by simply putting in the sound of the policeman knocking on the door, instead of showing the audience who is doing the knocking.

This picture shows two armed British policeman

After effect on opening credits

The idea's on what after effects to put in place on our opening credits are endless, however I have looked into Youtube to find some ideas for inspiration.

This clip uses an unusual style of after effects, which I do not personally like but it gives me an idea of the options available to us.

The clip below is from the James Bond movie, 'Skyfall' and by watching it, it shows me that we do not have to directly involve camera shots, but we could use special effects to a heavy level.

Opening title sequence research- Idea's for our bag full of money

To begin with, we always wanted to have one of our first shots to show money in a bag as feel that it will show the audience that this is something big, and to therefore help to increase the tension in our thriller. As to how we would present this, we were not entirely sure, but with two out of three people in our group being big Breaking Bad fans we are able to use this as inspiration. For example, we both remembered a scene in which a colleague of Walter White is picking up money from a safety deposit box.                                                                        
 Futhermore, as to what type of bag to use to pack the money into and from the start I was fairly confident that a duffle bag would fit in nicely for our thriller. I then further researched into possible idea's and I found this picture that confirmed my ideas that a duffle bag will be the perfect route to take.

Thriller opening title sequence and chase scene research

To begin with, when it came to deciding our main story board we decided upon our actor to run through the forest and for me personally I was reminded of the first chase scene in SALT (2010) staring Angelina Jolie in which she is chased by government  personnel in cars while she runs on foot, jumping onto lorry's on the highway etc..

Now obviously we cannot do something as complex as that but I think that re-watching the scene has inspired me and helped me to form a clear vision of what our scene should look like. As you can see in the top left hand corner, the clip I mentioned is there, as is the movie poster for SALT.

Flaws, changed details in Thriller idea

When Tyler first suggested that we use fake money in our video we looked online to research prices, different currency's and the amount that we would need to which we decided on using fake euro's due to the amount of countries that use the euro, creating a more legitimate feel to it. We considered using the U.S dollar, however we decided against this due to wishing to avoid a clichè. The pound was also a deffinite potential but the euro has the edge over this due to its more 'proffessional' look.

In our current thriller idea, I wrote about having fake drugs in the safe, but thinking on this we felt it would be dull, unoriginal and very clichèd to use them. To overcome this we decided to use a memory stick/hard drive as that would force the audience to ask so many more question and it creates a feeling of mystery and would certainly create tension.

Thriller idea to date - 24th November 2014

Our idea to date begins with a man opening a safe. The safe is full of stacks of money, pills and white powder. Our actor would then proceed to pack the contents of the safe into a duffel bag. The man then hears a knock on the door, and from the actors reaction we would show that this is an expected, however unwelcome visitor. The man would then run down the stairs to storm out of the back door. He would run through the garden and into the forest with music building up steadily, increasing the intensity and tension in our Thriller. We would then suddenly cut the music as the man abruptly stops running. Our camera work would next include a close-up reaction shot of the actor before we hear a loud and clear twig snap behind, where the screen would go black in time with a dark sinister, single beat. 

As you can see below, the story board compiled so far is incomplete and unsubstantial in detail, however we intend to use the remaining 4 weeks to prepare, think through and uncover flaws in our idea to create the desired thriller for our target audience.

Shot 1 : Safe opening, memory stick.

Shot 2 : Picks up stuff from safe, carries it to bed

Shot 3 : Hands putting stuff into bag

Shot 4 : Back to safe

Shot 5 : Hands into safe (hear a car coming up drive, door slams)

Shot 6 : reaction shot close up

Shot 7 : hurried actions, packs bag

Shot 8 : close up of him zipping and picking up the bag

Shot 9 : follow shot of him running down stairs

Shot 10 : over shoulder shot of door (hearing the knock)

Shot 11: Runs to back door

Shot 12: over shoulder shot of back door open  (stops running and pauses to stare) (hears crash as door is forced open) (music starts to build up)

Shot 13: Him running out of the door.

Shot 14: Running into forest, music building up massively then music stops

Shot 15: Close up, breath curling in front of face. (hear twig snap)

Shot 16: black

Thriller developments

As my self, Tyler and Kingsley spoke further about our potential thriller ideas we have frequently changed our minds. To start with we wanted to go with Tyler's idea of a man sitting on his laptop only to hear repeated, and unexplained knocking. However, as we discussed this we decided to adapt it and as this took place the idea got changed completely. Furthermore, on friday we spoke with Matt about our idea, which he essentially liked but he felt that we needed to accelerate the formation of tension to prevent it from becoming boring.