Storyboard (first idea)

Orphan

·        Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga) and her husband John (Peter Sarsgaard) are experiencing strains in their marriage after their third child was stillborn. The loss is particularly hard on Kate, who is also recovering from alcoholism. The couple decides to adopt a 9-year-old Estonian girl, Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), from the local orphanage. While Kate and John's deaf-mute daughter Max (Aryana Engineer) embraces Esther almost immediately, their son Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) is less welcoming.

 

·         Kate becomes suspicious that there might be problems in Esther's background when Esther expresses far more knowledge of sex than expected of a child her age. Her suspicions deepen when Esther seriously injures another girl who had bullied Esther at school at a local park. While she initially believes Esther's claim that it was an accident, Kate is further alarmed when Sister Abigail (C. C. H. Pounder), the head of the orphanage, warns her and John that bad things always seem to happen when Esther is around. Esther overhears this and, as Sister Abigail is leaving in her car, Esther pushes Max into its path, forcing her to swerve off the road. Sister Abigail rushes to see if Max is hurt, but Esther kills her with a hammer, then convinces Max to help her hide the weapon in their tree house. Kate is convinced that something is very wrong with Esther, but John does not believe her. Attempting to find out more about Esther, Kate finds the girl's hidden Bible and discovers that it came from the Saarne Institute in Estonia, which she eventually learns is a mental hospital. She e-mails a picture of Esther to them and asks for more information.

 

·         When Daniel learns about Sister Abigail's death from Max, he tells her of his plan to retrieve the hammer to prove Esther's guilt. However, Esther overhears their conversation and confronts Daniel as he searches the treehouse, setting it ablaze and locking Daniel inside in an attempt to kill him and destroy the evidence. Daniel falls to the ground trying to escape, and is knocked unconscious. Esther attempts to finish him off with a rock, but Max stops her. While Daniel is hospitalized from his fall, Esther slips into his room and smothers him with a pillow, stopping his heart, but doctors quickly revive him. Kate, realizing what happened, attacks Esther, but orderlies help John restrain her. As John takes Esther and Max home, doctors sedate Kate.

 

·         That night, a provocatively-dressed Esther tries to seduce a drunken John. Realizing Kate was right, John threatens to send Esther back to the orphanage. Meanwhile, as Kate is coming out of sedation, she receives a call from a doctor at the Saarne Institute, who reveals that Esther is actually a 33-year-old woman named Leena Klammer. She has hypopituitarism, a hormone disorder that stunted her physical growth, and has spent most of her life posing as a little girl. The doctor tells Kate that Leena is extremely violent and has murdered at least seven people, and that she bears scars on her neck and wrists, which Esther always kept covered, received while trying to escape her straitjacket. Among her victims were a family that adopted her in Estonia, whom she killed because the father rejected her sexual advances.

 

·         Leena flies into a rage after being spurned by John, and ransacks her room. Then, after removing the makeup, false teeth, and body wrappings that enhanced her illusion as youthful "Esther", Leena kills him with a knife. Max witnesses this, and hides. Kate, unable to get John on the phone, rushes home and finds him dead. Leena gets a gun from John's safe and shoots Kate in the arm, then goes searching for Max, finding her in the greenhouse. While Leena shoots at Max, Kate crawls onto the greenhouse roof, breaks through the glass above Leena, and lands on her, knocking her out. Kate takes the gun and leaves the greenhouse with Max.

 

·         Leena regains consciousness and finds Kate and Max outside near a frozen pond. Leena lunges at Kate, knocking the gun out of her hand and hurling them both onto the ice. As Max watches from a hill above, she picks up the gun and tries to shoot Leena, but hits and shatters the ice instead, causing Kate and Leena to drop into the water. After a brief struggle, Kate climbs partially out of the pond with Leena desperately clinging to her legs. Leena, pretending to revert to her little-girl persona, begs Kate not to let her die while hiding a knife behind her back. Kate angrily responds that she is not her mother, and kicks Leena in the face, breaking her neck and sending her sinking back into the pond. Max and Kate are met by the police moments after.

 

Orphan was recommended to me to watch by another group member, I watched this to give me some ideas on setting, lighting and as we wanted to add some injuries we took a few ideas from the film to put in our own opening.

The Lovely Bones

The lovely bones

·         In 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon takes her usual shortcut home from her school through a cornfield in Norristown, Pennsylvania. George Harvey, a 36-year-old neighbour who lives alone and builds doll houses for a living, persuades her to have a look at an underground den he has recently dug in the field. Once she enters, he rapes and murders her and dismembers her body, putting her remains in a safe that he dumps in a sinkhole. Susie's spirit flees toward her personal heaven.

 

·         The Salmon family at first refuses to believe that Susie is dead, until Susie's elbow is found by a neighbour’s dog. The police talk to Harvey, finding him strange but seeing no reason to suspect him. Susie's father, Jack, begins to suspect Harvey, a sentiment his surviving daughter Lindsey comes to share. Jack takes an extended leave from work.

 

·         Later, Len Fenerman, the detective assigned to the case, tells the Salmons that the police have exhausted all leads and are dropping the investigation. That night in his study, Jack looks out the window and sees a flashlight in the cornfield. Thinking that it is Harvey returning to destroy more evidence, he runs out to confront him, armed with a baseball bat. The figure is not Harvey, but Clarissa, Susie's best friend who is dating Brian, one of Susie's classmates. As Susie watches in horror from heaven, Brian—who was going to meet Clarissa in the cornfield—nearly beats Jack to death, and Clarissa breaks Jack's knee. While he recovers from knee replacement surgery, Susie's mother, Abigail, begins cheating on Jack with the widowed Fenerman.

 

·         Trying to help her father prove his suspicions, Lindsey sneaks into Harvey's house and finds a diagram of the underground den, but is forced to leave when Harvey returns unexpectedly. The police do not arrest him, however, which enables him to flee from Norristown. Later, evidence is discovered linking Harvey to Susie's murder, as well as to those of several other girls. Meanwhile, Susie meets Harvey's other victims in heaven and sees into his traumatic childhood.

 

·         Abigail leaves Jack, and eventually takes a job at a winery in California. Her mother, Grandma Lynn, moves into the Salmons' home to care for Buckley (Suzie's younger brother) and Lindsey. Eight years later, Lindsey and her boyfriend, Samuel Heckler, become engaged after finishing college, find an old house in the woods owned by a classmate's father, and decide to fix it up and live there. Sometime after the celebration, while arguing with his son Buckley, Jack suffers a heart attack. The emergency prompts Abigail to return from California, but the reunion is tempered by Buckley's lingering bitterness for her abandoning the family for most of his childhood.

 

·         Meanwhile, Harvey returns to Norristown, which has become more developed. He explores his old neighbourhood and notices the school is being expanded into the cornfield where he murdered Susie. He drives by the sinkhole where Susie's body rests and where Ruth Connors and Ray Singh are standing. Ruth, Susie's former classmate who had felt Susie's spirit rush past her immediately after she was murdered, senses the women Harvey has killed and is physically overcome. Susie, watching from heaven, is also overwhelmed with emotion and feels how she and Ruth transcend their present existence, and the two girls exchange positions: Susie, her spirit now in Ruth's body, connects with Ray, who had a crush on Susie in school, and had made plans to go out with her a few days before the murder. Ray senses Susie's presence, and is stunned by the fact that Susie is briefly back with him. The two make love as Susie has longed to do after witnessing her sister and Samuel. Afterwards, Susie returns to heaven.

 

·         Susie moves on into another, larger part of heaven, occasionally watching earthbound events. Lindsey and Samuel have a daughter together named Abigail Suzanne. While stalking a young woman in New Hampshire, Harvey is hit on the shoulder by an icicle and falls to his death down a snow-covered slope. At the end of the novel, Susie's charm bracelet is found by a Norristown couple who don't realize its significance, and Susie closes the story by wishing the reader "a long and happy life".

 

We decided to look at the lovely bones because again it had the idea of something bad happening in the woods but also it left you with many questions about the film, which is what we want to do when we come to film our opening as we feel that if you leave the audience asking question, they are more likely to want to watch more of your film.

The Blair Witch Project

I have looked at 3 different films to get inspiration for my opening, these films are:

·         The Blair witch project

·         The lovely bones

·         Orphan

The Blair witch project

·         In October 1994 three filmmaking students disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary. A year later, their footage was found by police.

 

·         Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams and Joshua Leonard set out to produce a documentary about the fabled Blair Witch. They travel to Burkittsville, Maryland, formerly Blair, and interview locals about the legend of the Blair Witch. The locals tell them of Rustin Parr, a hermit who kidnapped seven children in the 1940s and brought them to his house in the woods where he tortured and murdered them. Parr brought the children into his house's basement in pairs, forcing the first child to face the corner and listen to their companion's screams as he murdered the second child. Parr would then murder the first child. Eventually turning himself in to the police, Parr later pleaded insanity, saying that the spirit of Elly Kedward, a witch hanged in the 18th century, had been terrorizing him for some time and promised to leave him alone if he murdered the children. He was later hanged.  

 

 

·         The second day, the students begin to explore the woods in north Burkittsville to look for evidence to prove that the Blair Witch exists. Along the way, two fishermen warn them that the woods are haunted. The students hike to Coffin Rock, where five men were found ritualistically murdered in the 19th century, and then camp for the night. The next day they move deeper into the woods despite being uncertain of their exact location on the map. They eventually locate what appears to be an old cemetery with seven small cairns. They set up camp nearby and then return to the cemetery after dark. Josh accidentally disturbs a cairn and Heather hastily repairs it. Later they hear crackling sounds in the darkness that seems to be coming from all directions, but they assume the noises are from animals or locals.

 

·         The following day they attempt to return to their vehicle but can't find their way. They try until nightfall, when they are forced to set camp. That night, they again hear crackling noises but can't see anything. The next morning they find three cairns have been built around their tent during the night. As they continue trying to find their way out of the woods Heather realizes that her map is missing and Mike later reveals that he kicked it into a creek out of frustration the previous day. Josh and Heather attack Mike in a fit of intense rage. They realize they are now hopelessly lost and decide to simply "head south". They discover a multitude of humanoid stick figures suspended from trees. That night they hear more strange noises, including the sounds of children and bizarre "morphing" sounds. When an unknown force shakes the tent they flee in a panic and hide in the woods until dawn. Upon returning to their tent they find that their possessions have been rifled through and Josh's equipment is covered with slime, causing them to question why only his belongings were affected. As the day wears on they pass a log over a stream that was identical to the one they had passed earlier despite having travelled directly south all day and again set camp, completely demoralized at having wasted the entire day seemingly going in circles.

 

·         The next morning Josh has disappeared. After trying in vain to find him Mike and Heather eventually break camp and slowly move on. That night, they hear Josh screaming in the darkness but are not able to find him. The next morning Heather finds a bundle of sticks and fabric outside their tent. Later inspection reveals it contains blood-soaked scraps of Josh's shirt, as well as teeth and hair, but she does not mention this to Mike.

 

·         That day Heather films herself apologizing to the co-producers of her project as well as her family and breaks down crying and hyperventilating, understanding that something terrible is hunting her and Mike. Later, they again hear Josh's agonized cries for help, but this time they follow them and discover a derelict abandoned house in the woods. Mike races upstairs, following what sounds like Josh's voice, while Heather tries to follow. Mike then claims he hears Josh in the basement. He runs downstairs and after what seems to be a quick struggle goes silent and drops the camera. Heather shouts for Mike but gets no answer. She enters the basement screaming in fear while her camera catches a glimpse of Mike facing the corner, just as Parr's victims had been made to do. Heather then utters a final scream as she and her camera violently drop to the floor. There is only silence as the footage ends.

 

The reasons why I chose to look at this film was because it was set in a woods, which is a similar place to where we want to film our opening, another reason why we looked at this film is because it had the idea of possession which was one of our first ideas

Shot list (plan)

Shot number	Description	Shot type
1	Shot of the landscape	Establishing shot
2	Girl walking down the road	Long shot
3	Girl on her phone	Shot from the side
4	Girl texting on her phone	Over shoulder shot
5	Girl hitting send	Close up shot
6	Clothing on the floor	P.O.V shot
7	Girl following the clothing	Long shot
8	Sports the shack	Long shot
9	Shot of the shack	Long/mid shot
10	Girl walking over to the shack	Close up
11	Girl opening the door	Shot reverse shot
12	Hand falls out	Long shot
13	Girl notices a body	Close up
14	Notices a board with photos	Long shot
15	She walks over to the bored	Shot from behind
16	Her face as she notices it’s her	Close up
17	Shot slowly backing out of the shed	Waling backwards
18	Over shoulder, door slams shut	P.O.V shot
19	Girl get the phone out	Mid shot
20	No battery	Close up
21	Shot of the girl looking worried	Close up
22	Eyes appear behind her	Mis shot

Props

 

Some of the prop that we are going to be using are clothes preferably old clothes as they are going to belong to the girl in the shed, we decided to use these clothes as we needed away to lead her up to the shed, another reason why she is going to the shed is because she received a text message from her friend and she decided to take a short cut.

The phone is going to be another prop that we will be using, as I said in the paragraph above she receives a text from her friend to take a short cut, but another reason why she has her phones is because at the end of the film she tries to call for help but realises she has no battery left

Costume

In our group we have discussed what costumes would work accordingly to our thriller opening. We decided to go with casual wear (for the male character)- perhaps a black hoody and jeans for our mysterious hooded figure, and an innocent white dress for our victim. By choosing these outfits we are setting the scene for the unknowing audience.
for the main girl in the film we dicided to dress her in casual clothing as she is meeting a friend, some of the clothing we thought she could wear could be jeans and a jumper with a scarf and a coat.

Thriller Questionnaire

 

How old are you?

10-19    20-29   30-39   40+

What is your gender?

Male      Female

What is your job title?  

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Do you read a lot of books?

Yes            No

If so, what kind?

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Do you watch a lot of films, if so what genre? 

Yes       No

Thriller      Sci-fi      Romantic comedy      Action      Adventure

 

Do you like thriller films?

Yes           No

What your favourite type of thriller?

Psychological thriller         Action thriller           Religious thriller     Crime thriller

 (Black swan)                      (Taken)                         (Da Vinci code)           (se7en)

Medical thrillers                dystopian thriller

(Contagion)                         (Hunger games)

 

 

What makes a good thriller?

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What do you expect from a thriller?

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In what way would the opening to a film make you want to watch more?

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What things should we NOT include in our opening?

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Do you think two minutes for an opening is enough to persuade you to watch the rest of the film?

Yes                            No

If yes why?

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What music would you typically link to a thriller film?

Dramatic/tension building             slow and calming                upbeat           other

If other suggest what kind

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