Actual Finalised Storyline

Title: Live To Tell
Genre: Crime, Drama, and Mystery Thriller
Rating: 15

Storyline: College student Mandy is attacked by a mysterious figure while on her way home from school. A week later when Mandy recovers from her attack she receives a letter in the post and opens it to find a note covered in soil which had a picture of a heart which read "its no fun if your hearts not in it"...


This is the full plot of what will happen throughout the whole film :

Following from when Mandy receives the letter, a series of events unfold which lead to the audience finding out that the antagonist( stalker/attacker) is the good guy but he’s out for revenge because of what Mandy (the protagonist) done in the past which involved him. This is why he wants to make her pay for what she did in the past by stalking, attacking and leaving notes...

The note covered in soil is symbolising death. Because of the location that he will attack her is in a forest area which is muddy and dirty, he's basically trying to say she deserves to be 6 feet underground or under dirt because that's where people are put when they die, and he wants her dead. (This is for the people that may not understand the plot entirely)

We finally came up with a title which Lynette came up with, reason she chose this title is because she had taken it from Madonna’s song 'Live To Tell' which we were going to use in our final product as a backing track. We did not end up using her song although we kept the name because it goes well with the plot.

Costume

The Dectectives (Myself & Kelechi Asika)

• Trench Jacket
• Shirt (White) & Tie (Navy & Red)
• Pin Suit Trousers (Grey)
• Trousers (Black)
• Shirt (Light Blue Shirt)
• Glasses

The Attacker

• Dark Tracksuit (Black & Grey)
• Trainers

The Girl

• Pink Jumper (Connotes innocence)
• Headphones
• Trainers

Codes & Conventions Of A Crime Thriller

Crime Thrillers often highlight the life of a crime figure or a crime's victim(s). Or the rise and fall of a particular criminal(s), gang, bank robber, murderer or lawbreakers in personal power struggles or conflict with law and order figures, an underling or competitive colleague, or a rival gang.  Headline-grabbing situations, real-life gangsters, or crime reports are often been used in crime films.
Doing a Crime thriller is one of my groups possible choices for our opening sequence, so these are some of the things we need to take into account when putting our storyline/storyboard together.

Codes

• Camera work (close ups of the characters to show their emotion).
•   Long shots (establish the location as well as what the characters are doing).
•  Body language (see how the character is feeling). 
•  Fast paced music (create suspense). 

Conventions of a thriller

The characters might range from being:

• Materialistic
• Street-smart
•  Immoral
•  Meglo-maniacal 
•  Self-destructive. 
• Rivalry with other criminals in gangster warfare is often a significant plot characteristic.
• They rise to power showing an ambitious desire for success and recognition, but underneath they can express sensitivity and gentleness.

Settings of a Crime thriller

Gangster/crime films are usually set in large, crowded cities to provide a view of the secret world of the criminal e.g. Dark nightclubs or streets with lurid neon signs, fast cars, piles of cash, sleazy bars and contraband. Crime plots also include questions such as how the criminal will be apprehended by police, private eyes, special agents or lawful authorities, or mysteries such as who stole the valued object. 

Features of protagonist

Often from poor immigrant families, gangster characters often fall prey to crime in the pursuit of wealth, status, and material possessions (clothes and cars), because all other "normal" avenues to the top are unavailable to them. Although they are doomed to failure and inevitable death (usually violent), criminals are sometimes portrayed as the victims of circumstance, because the stories are told from their point of view.

Codes & Conventions Of A Psychological Thriller

Psychological Thrillers

Is a popular sub-genre of thrillers with heavy focus on characters. It often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre genre along with the typical traits of the thriller genre. In addition, psychological thrillers contain elements of and often overlap with the horror genre, especially seen in psychological thrillers.

Characters are no longer reliant on physical strength to overcome their enemies but are reliant on their mental resources by battling for equilibrium in the characters own mind. The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying on one another's mind. E.g. Playing deceptive games.

Themes

Psychological thrillers tend to follow certain themes which is the centre of the story. Some of them as follows are:

• Death
• Reality
• Identity
• Existence
• Purpose

Conventions of a psychological thriller

The conventions of psychological thrillers will include things like:

• Low level lighting- shadows to create fear/tension.
• Quick edits & changes in camera angle- increase the feeling of fear and shock. Often used during significant scenes.
• Music- high tension, eerie, silence.
• Flashbacks- time disorientation confusing the audience or showing the past to give an insight into why the characters are the way they are.
• Black and white colouring- increase effectiveness of shadows.
• Claustrophobic spaces- entrapment of the mind, planes or house.
• Font/colour of title- may be written in a certain way to emphasise the theme of the film.

Finalised Storyline

Here is my group’s brief summary after making a few changes again to the storyline. By using a few of the old ideas we came up with in the planning stages, we now believe this is what we are going to try and stick with.

Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery Thriller

Rating: 15

Tagline: Its all or nothing

Storyline: A college student called Mandy is attacked whiles she’s on her way home from college and left for dead BUT the plan of the attacker did not happen(Mandy did not die). A week later Mandy recovers from her attack and she receives an envelope from the post, the envelope has a note which is covered in soil. The note had a picture of a heart and read “its no fun if your heart's not in it”  

Planning Ideas

First Idea 

Planning I believe was very difficult at first, this was because we first came up with a psychological idea. The film 'Muholland Drive' inspired us as it was very interesting and had a twist adding suspense throughout the film. The down fall to this was that we would have taken a long time trying to make this work right because if it did not work right it could mess up the filming big time. The idea involved a girl who has an encounter with a man she has never meet before whiles walking down a road, she then notices his shoes (symbolic) which she had believed she'd seen in once before. Immediately after she notices the specific shoes it makes her have a flashback of her being attacked and the last thing she sees is those shoes ..........

 

Second Idea


This idea is very similar to the first, but this time the girl would have had a dream about her being attacked. The next day she would have seen the attacker from her dream walking in the city, which then triggers her flashback ......

Third Idea

My group thought about flipping the stereotype and instead of having a the man as a villain we would have a women instead, that way the audience would not expect this and it would add to the suspense .....

  

Storyboard For Our Film

After a fair amount of planning and researching my group have finally completed our storyboard. We can improve on it, things such as the camera angles and the background features is something we have to look at carefully; but the members of the group and I believe that we have tried our best. We are now very confident about starting our opening sequence, it's just a matter of waiting for the cameras so that we can continue.

Frame 1

Camera angle: An establishing shot of the police station.

Duration: 3 to 5 secs

Audio: No Audio

Dialogue/action: No dialogue or Action

Frame 2

Camera angle: Rotational shot/ mid shot

Duration: 8 to 10 secs

Audio: No Audio

Dialogue/action: Detective looking at the articles and a rotational shot of the room

Frame 3

Camera angle: ECU (extreme close up)

Duration: 10 secs

Audio: No Audio

Dialogue/action: Extreme close up of the articles

Frame 4

Camera angels: Zoom shot of ‘3days later’

Duration: 3 secs

Audio: No Audio

Dialogue/action: No dialogue or Action

Frame 5

Camera angels: Establishing shot and Long shot

Duration: 6 to 10 secs

Audio: No audio

Dialogue/action: Establishing shot of the park area, girl is walking down the path listening to music with a distant figure behind her (Long shot)

Frame 6

Camera angels: High angled shot and Medium close up

Duration: 6 to 10 secs

Audio: No audio

Dialogue/action: Man following girl (high angle shot), man behind girl (medium close up)

Frame 7

Camera angels: Handheld shot

Duration: 5 secs

Audio: No audio

Dialogue/action: Girl running would be done with the Handheld technique as it adds realism.

Frame 8

Camera angels: Handheld shot

Duration:  5 secs

Audio:  No audio

Dialogue/action:  Attacker running would be done with the Handheld technique as it adds realism.

Frame 9

Camera angels: Long shot           

Duration: 6 secs

Audio: No audio

Dialogue/action: Long shot of girl lying on the floor and attacker standing over her.

Frame 10

Camera angels: Low angle shot

Duration: 2 to 4 secs

Audio: No audio

Dialogue/action: Low angle shot of attacker standing over girl to show he has power.

Frame 11

Camera angels: Medium close up and High angled shot

Duration: 8 to10 secs

Audio: No audio

Dialogue/action: Attacker standing over girl whiles she is on the floor to show that she is vulnerable (High angled shot), then girl looking up at the attacker but we only see the legs of the attacker to keep the identity hidden (medium close up)

Frame 12

Camera angels: No camera angle (Title and credits)

Duration: 6 secs

Audio: No audio

Dialogue/action: No dialogue or action