Title Sequence synopsis (finally)

ollie here

The opening of the thriller will see the main character climbing out of a ditch in the twilight. He throws up a dirty and bloody shovel before ascending out himself. we then see the character filling the ditch in and casually turning away with his ipod headphones in, he begins to walk toward the camera with the noise of his ipod's music growing ever louder. He continues his walk toward the camera and up the road until his image fills the screen. The camera then cuts to the view of garage doors. the camera begins moving towards them and then proceeding through the house in a POV shot. as the character visits the different rooms, the names of actors and production titles appear on houshould objects such as newspapers. all the while strange images and cult symbols are flashing on screen for split seconds. The character then visits a small room with a bible resting open on a piano, one of the symbols that had previously flashed on screen has been etched onto the paper. the character then proceeds to enter a room and stare at a mirror, when he leaves the room his reflection stays behind in the mirror eerily looking on with a depressed expression. The character leaves to go up the stair, the camera doesn't follow him, instead time speeds up showing the light of dawn and morning creeping in. The character then leaves the house but it is not revealed where he is going and what his intentions are.

Title Sequence Draft

Ive Drawn a story board for the title sequence which needs a few tweaks but so far we have the camera tracking through chris's house (in the movie), it will slowly move from one room to another going in each room to see it in more detail almost like a virtual tour. The camera will be facing down the hall way as if it was someone walking backwards.
As the camera goes through the door ways, random images will flash up like memory flashbacks these images will consist of childhood memories, images of chris, the sacred book with the symbol and such.
They will be quite quick but long enough for you to see what the image is.
As the camera moves from room to room you will also see the producers names either spelt out across the tables and walls or as ollie suggested spelt out in house hold objects such as magnets on the fridge.
For the main title i think it would look really effective if the last bit of the tracking could end up in front of the front door as if looking in with the title being in the room and as we walk backwards the door closes so we can no longer see the title and is just a shot of the front door.
The house will just be a normal house where chris lives with his parents but could hold significant clues for later in the plot hence why we see it in so much detail.
Once ive re-story boarded it i will scan it an upload so we can see it properly.

The movie plot draft

I finished writing this a few minutes ago, it didn't take too long, incorporates our main plot ideas, but I had to be creative with making the rest of the story after Chris finding the strange bible (Note-this is not the final draft, probably, and names, content, ideas etc are subject to change over the next few meetings)

Here is my draft plot summary:
The movie is about an autistic teenager with strong obsessive tendencies, who discovers a strange insignia in an old and strange bible, filled with annotations, and on each page is this strange symbol. Chris becomes obsessed with the symbol and sets out to find out what it means. By studying the book closely and following the clues he wrestles from the anonymous annotator’s scrawlings, he is led to a dingy crypt beneath an old, abandoned church. Here he finds a small cult dedicated to cleansing the world of sin. With his search finally complete Chris is happily drawn into their rituals, led by an obsession about the strange symbol, and becomes obsessed with the cult’s cause as well. Seeing how impressionable and innocent he is, the cult leader manipulates Chris and sends him off to carry out his bidding. Under the impression that he is pleasing God, Chris carries out his master’s wishes without a second thought, burning certain buildings down, trashing a church, and assaulting a priest. Until Chris is sent on more evil missions, and murdering ‘sinners’. These select targets are ones who will go unnoticed, and he makes the killings seem self inflicted, until the cult leader orders his to physically murder the most hateful sinner (in their eyes) and absolve the planet of his presence, thus pleasing God greatly (theoretically). Whilst all the while the police are investigating and an intrepid young detective believes the attacks and killings to be connected, and sets out to track down the young protagonist. Until an attack on his own life is made and Chris is captured. He then coerces Chris (without use of force, Chris is co-operative as he has lost faith in the cause, and wants to make amends to God) into disclosing the location of the cult and their leader. Chris then leads them to the crypt, the cult members are arrested, but then seeing the destruction of his very cause the cult leader stabs Chris, who then seeing his chance to absolve the world of the very evil he believed to be good, takes the knife from his chest and stabs the cult leader in return. The cult leader dies, all willing to live gone from him, whilst Chris lays in the detectives arms and smiles, confident that he has earned his place in heaven.

Any corrections or adaptations shall be posted forthwidth. I state again, this is just a draft.

Out of class meetings

We have decided today that to complete our pre-production piece quickly, and to a good degree, as we have the ideas, but havn't got them set in stone, we are going to be meeting up to complete our preproduction work during our following study periods this week:
Tuesday 4th period
Wednesday 5th period
Thursday 2nd period

This is because most of our work either requires, or we would like to carry out together, so we will complete the work during this time. Expect notes on our progress during these periods.

Also today we assigned each other a task to complete tonight in time for our meeting tommorow. Nikki is completing the title sequence/montage section in whatever way she see's fit, although we all have the main idea the group wants for our task, and if nany amendments to our work need to be made, then we shall make them tommorow when we are together and can evaluate each others work. Ollie is writing out the plot of the opening sequence in detail, we know what we want to include here, but we just need to write a synopsis for the opening sequence in story format to appease the pre-production requirements. I am writing the plot for the film in its entirety, which is less detailed than the opening sequence plot, but requires a broader picture. I have the basic idea for our plot, but the rest has been left up to me to come up with, so I shall run that past them tommorow. I think we have split the workload fairly and that the extra work on top of our individual plans for tonight (homework etc) should'nt effect our evenings by much. Also this should set us well on our way for completing our pre-production segment. More information on this later.

synopsis's of todays lesson

The aim of today's lesson will be to produce a synopsis of the plot of the movie as a whole, then a more detailed synopsis of the actual opening sequence.

some idea's i've had are, the main character (me) is being accused of murder, but he actually hasn't done anything wrong, and when he found the actual murderers victim, he buried the body due to religious beliefs (for example a soul can't find peace until it rests or something), the other idea the group had was involving a cult, which we may develop next lesson so keep your ear to the ground, and we will finalize the opening sequence plot .

Film ideas

We have produced a complete storyboard for our first scene, and also developed some very interesting ideas. I (Chris) think that a sequence before the main action starts would look really effective, and after we finish storyboarding we will see how well it might work and fit in. We have also developed a symbol which we are going to feature a couple of times in the opening sequence, the first time it will be for the observant viewers, and the second it will flash onto the screen to make viewers think what is this? here is an example of the symbol we might use (final design may vary)

this was created on Adobe Photoshop by us and is supposed to represent some sinister cult that is maybe responsible for the murders that take place in our opening sequences.

Intro outline

Hey guys All of us here

Scene One is essentially set in stone for us now we have a detailed understanding for what we want to do for it. a few minor details such as specific location still need to be addressed but other than that we are sure of what we are going to do.

Sound - will be diagetic and will be a piano scale by In Fear & Faith (used with permission)
Weather - most probably overcast as we are filming in Jan/Feb time
Time - Twilight/ Dusk possibly slightly later depending on lighting availability
Location - still a bit hazy...either ind. estate, private road or bridleway.

Main plotline will be Chris coming out of a ditch and walking along a road towards a camera whilst dragging a dirty spade that will be slightly out of focus. the camera will track him until a certain point and will then stop tracking to allow chris' image to fill the screen at which point he will bring the shovel around into full view, the lighting should show mud and blood on the spade. we could then have the next scene coming in from a fade to black.

We were thinking of mixing the title sequence in with a montage of quick cuts showing small clips of possible progression of the killers resolution to commit the alluded murder, we were then thinking of possibly incorporating some minor credits into scenery e.g, like on cartoons when a character opens a fridge and a producer's name is spelled on the fridge magnets. we may not do the exact same thing but that is a fair example of what we were thinking of doing.

We've got a vague idea of what we want to do in the next scene the opening shot will be of a family happily sitting down to a meal most probably breakfast a complete contrast to the scene we previously saw of chris with the shovel. we were thinking of having diagetic music coming from a radio. We will elaborate on this idea later when we are all together .

Group time

We are finally getting to grips with our intended plot (as discussed in an earlier post) with the three seperate clips. Locations are being worked on, and ollie has found some good potential locations, whilst me and nikki are going to follow suit and check out some other locations. So we are going to start taking photos whilst out and about of good locations that would work for our thriller. Storyboarding will begin soon so we can have a concrete idea laid out. More posts coming soon.

Musings

Ollie Here

I Just read nikki's idea about showing the next scene after the titles. I really like this idea, i think it would allow people to either make thier own assumptions whilst alos leaving them on a cliffhanger so they want more. i think if we were to do this we should completely juxtapose the image that the family give off, i.e we should make the scenery/location look really bright and happy to contrast with the previous scenes. This would be effective because it would surprise the audience and gain their attention t oa greater degree

also maybe in the background for diagetic noise we could have a radio playing the in fear and faith song that Chris posted earlier. If we made it so that it came on all of a sudden, like in a random radio playlist, and then quick-cut to chris looking all of a sudden very creepy (we may need to play with your face chris ;). this could link the assumed murder to tie in with that song as previously we would have seen chris listening to it on his ipod whilst drawing the knife. this would effectively give us a cliffhanger whilst further allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions.

let me know what you think guys :)

Semi-Group meeting

Ollie & Chris Here

Nikki isn't here so as this is a fairly crucial point of the course me and chris are going to be discussing our plot ideas and hopefully getting some storyboarding done which i will scan and upload later this evening technology permitting.

Plot line
Me and Ollie agreed that his alternative plot idea was good, but inappropriate for a thriller genre, as it is too closely associated with a horror theme. We've conclusively decided that we are going to use Ollie's original plot idea, with the character walking towards the camera, and the knife, and then the clip will transition into Ollie's montage idea, except using the sound intro that I (Chris) found. This is because we feel that the music would compliment a slow paced montage perfectly. Then the clip would end with my finishing idea, which was as the music builds up to the guitar kicking in, a close up, with the main character will spin around and look directly at the camera (before the guitars come in).

Nikki Has Arrived
I [Nikki] i've read over what ollie and Chris have decided on and think it sounds promising. I'll post again soon with more input.

Right well i [ollie] am happy to host filming outside my house because it's remote and quite creepy with some good locations, ill upload some pictures to the blog in the coming days.

Another Plot idea

Ollie here

Another idea i've had would be of one of us us a field, perhaps Nikki because she is a girl and can maybe better induce sympathy from the audience. my idea is that we could have Nikki standing in a field out of breath (implies she has been running). we could have a POV shot of an unnamed creature glancing at her through the bushes and drawing rasping breaths. we could maybe use a black and white filter for the POV shots as it is traditionally associated with animals or monsters in the horror/thriller genres. this could continue for about ten seconds with the sound of snapping twigs and quick footsteps. I think we should have some quick cuts between the POV shot of the creature and Nikki trying to gain composure. My idea is that the creature slowly creeps out of the bushes and approaches her with the POV shot and the sounds of snapping twigs and footsteps continuing. I'd like to bounce this idea off chris and nikki before adding to it as we would undoubtably need a group discussion on something as integral as the plotline.

this is fairly similar to my idea because it's pretty creepy but not enough to be placed into the horror genre.

Another idea

I thought a different approach to Ollie's plot idea would work well. Instead of using a sound effect such as a police siren, implement some non-diagetic music, I was thinking something classical, yet tension building. Either that or the killer can have visible earphones in, and therefore make the song seem diagetic, whichever will have more effect and incorporate into the rest of the video better. I thought the song, The taste of regret, by In Fear And Faith would be effective for this as the piano, drum and violin mix intro that lasts about 22 seconds would work really well. The drums slowly builds in tempo and volume, and helps to ease the audience into the flow, so that the drums rise with the tension. Also to make the music work well in contrast to the footage, the camera should be following the anonymous killer as he/she walks whilst the intro plays. considering the length of the intro this would probably have to be a part of our footage, as it would only be about 20 seconds long. I have linked the song below, listen to the first piano intro, and the music will cut out just before the guitar kicks in.

Plot ideas

Ollie here

With regards to some (vague) ideas of a storyline/ plot for our thriller introduction I (ollie) think that we should begin with chris walking towards the camera at night whilst being tracked. We could include some diagetic sound such as a police siren with flashing lights in a blurry background. as chris continues to walk away from the lights the camera stops tracking him and as he approaches the camera he slowly draws a knife from his jacket pocket, the knife could be shown to have an ominous red stain on it to create tension. Chris continues to approach the camera until he is obstructing the view of flashing lights behind him. I then thought a 'fade to white' would be appropriate with a chronological change being displayed in the middle of the screen e.g. 20 minutes earlier. after that there could maybe be a montage of events (edited into quick cut's to make it more interesting) that are to show chris' antagonization at the hands of either myself or Nikki. The sound for this part could be considered really creepy perhaps to add to the thrill of the audience it would have to be non-diagetic perhaps in the same style as the music at the start of se7en (see embedded video below). this should last no more than 30 seconds with a piercing scream all of a sudden to signal the end of it. this would hopefully be edited in a way to make it seem scary to the audience i.e. so they didn't expect it. After this short sequence there could be a loud heartbeat noise with short images of key figures flashing on screen in time with the beats, ideally they should fade in from black if editing skills will permit.



Here is an example of a police siren sound effect and a heart beat that me and chris liked: