First Opening

Sequence Idea Pitch-

Psychological Thriller

Paige James, Nellie Stevenson &

Hannah France.

the narrative.The first idea‟s for our opening of a thriller movie, was to be based on a

„psychological thriller‟. We decided we wanted to do something that was

controversial and slightly confusing as that is a main convention in

psychological thrillers.

Here is just our opening sequence narrative. We want to open our thriller

movie with a middle age man sitting on a bench, looking on to a park with children

playing. We see the man looking into the park in a robotic trace like way, like he‟s

mesmerised with the children in the park. This sets the mood immediately for the

opening sequence as the audience will be able to guess what the mans intention is. We

also see a mother and daughter in the park with there pet dog, the dog runs off making

the mother leave her child unattended as she goes to get the dog. The mother tells her

child to wait in the park as she goes off the retrieve the pet. In that instance the man

on the bench notices the child unattended and drifts towards her. He walks slowly into

the park ignoring all other children and focuses on this one girl we then see the man

grab the girl, this then leaves the audience thinking they know what it going to happen.

But it then it cuts to a close up of the mans face, still sitting there watching the mother

with the child and dog. The concept is that he was imagining doing this to the child

but it never really happened and leaves the man contemplating whether he should

actually do it…

the narrative continued.This is our continued storyline that we wont actually film but would

be our potential storyline if we were to make a movie.

After we see the man contemplating whether he should take the child, the action

goes back on to the mother who has retrieved the dog and realises that her child is

missing and the man did take her child. This leads a tangled web with her telling the

police and having a big investigation going on to find her daughter and the man

that took her. The police team later find out there is no person on data that

matches the takers description or the daughter for that matter, no DNA matches

from evidence taken from the park bench, nothing. The mother refuses to let the

police tell her that and thinks that they just cannot be bothered to help her, this

leads her to go and hunt for her child herself which leads to confusion and almost

death as she gets intertwined with the wrong kind of people along the way. We

later find out towards the end of the movie that the police had been doing

background searches on her and found it out to be a big lie. she never even had a

child. There was never a man at the park and she created this big lie and a scenario

she was living that she was doing to get over a death of her a son who died 5yr

prior.

psychological thriller conventions.

Our Sub Genre is a „Psychological Thriller‟- serious, confusing and leaves

the audience thinking they have sussed out the storyline

In a our psychological thriller there will be a lot of close up camera angles

as it shows many different emotion in facial expressions, a lot of the camera

work will be handheld as if it is from someone's POV, this will help the

audience feel more involved hence making them try and figure out the

remaining storyline. In terms of editing, shots will be short duration, to add

pace and add to the tension building. The Mise-en-scene is simple as its

based on real life. We want this opening sequence to be very naturalistic so

people can relate to it. The only props would be a dog. We would play non-

diagetic music, depending on the pace of the editing the music will match.

Ambient diagetic sounds such as children laughing and dogs barking would

be quite effective here to especially because we want them to be echoed as

if its an empty space in the mans head and that‟s all he can think about.

character types.There are only 3 characters that exist in our opening sequence which are:

The Middle-aged Man

The Mother

And The Daughter.

As for knowing who the Protagonist and the Antagonist is, as we are only

making the opening sequence, the audience instantly think the man on the

bench is the antagonist but that is not the case. There is no real Protagonist

in our opening sequence but there is a victim.

To help understand our own characters more we looked into other

movies, that hold the same concept and genre as ours, and created a

Character profile for each character based on other movies like this one.

middle-aged man.After looking into many movies that have the same concept as ours we got

around to generalising an age, activities and appearance for each

character, in this case the Middle aged man.

This character will be around 35-45 and is nearly always a man.

He participates in normal everyday activities in an attempt to seem

normal such as gardening, model making and being a general

“family man”

He will have probably had a wife and family, but they left him in

one way or another.

Dresses in jumpers, sweater-vests, pea-coats, chinos and brogues-

again in an attempt to blend in.

Some of the examples we based this character on are:

“Mr Harvey” from “The Lovely Bones” (2009)

“Lester Burnham” from “American Beauty” (1999)

“Frank Hallet” from “The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane”

(1976)

Unfortunately we had to base this character on a paedophile, which is what all the

characters mentioned above are portrayed as in there movies.

the mother.After looking into many movies that have the same concept as ours we got

around to generalising an age, activities and appearance for each

character, in this case the Mother.

This character will be around 30-35

She is a big family women and her family are her whole life. Has a

fairly stable family life but has been rocked previously with

adversary and/or loss.

Dresses in dresses, cardigans, jeans and long sleeve tops. Hair is

usually up and messy with minimal makeup.

Is usually very protective of children but can be oblivious to some

things and has a scattered mind.

Some of the examples we based this character on are:

“Kyle Pratt” from “Flightplan” (2005)

“Abigail Salmon” from “The Lovely Bones” (2009)

“Sarah Pierce” from “Little Children” (2006)

the young child.After looking into many movies that have the same concept as ours we got

around to generalising an age, activities and appearance for each

character, in this case the Young Child

This character will be around 3-9 yrs. old and is nearly always a girl.

She is obviously childish and very involved in “playtime”. Can be

quite independent despite her young age.

Dresses in dresses, cute cardigans/jumpers, jeans, t-shirts and

trainers, hair is either neatly up or left naturally down.

She is extremely innocent and relies on her family a lot, mainly

because she is so young. Oblivious to the world and doesn‟t think

any harm of anyone.

Some of the examples we based this character on are:

“Max Coleman” from “Orphan” (2009)

“Susie Salmon” from “The Lovely Bones” (2009)

“Lucy Pierce” from “Little Children” (2006)

„Susie Salmon‟ from “The Lovely Bones” is actually portrayed as a 14 yr. old but is

nevertheless a victim in the film of the same concept as ours.

location.The location for our opening sequence is a park that has a bench facing on towards the

children's park. Preferably one were the bench is not quite in the park but looks onto the

park. It also needs to be able to accommodate dogs as some parks don‟t allow that. It‟s a

reliable location and will always be there for us to film. Depending on time we will need

to have a mostly free park as we not be able to get consent to film the surroundings, in

which there child might be, from all the children's parents at the park. The location fits

in with the concept of our narrative and genre. Slight problems we may face will be the

noise surrounding the park, such as cars, aeroplanes and any other outside noises we do

not wish to be there. As for lighting we were only planning on using ambient lighting as

it will be bright enough and fit in with the look we want for our production, depending

on the time and day we film, if means be we will look into hopefully reflecting the

lighting off a bright white board to capture the light needed.

Area also has to be open otherwise

the middle age man would look

extremely suspicious… even more

than he already does.

BBFC rating.Our movie would be an estimated 15 by the guidelines of the

BBFC. This is because people younger than 15 would not be able

to understand the themes or enjoy it as much as someone 15 or

over would. There is also the issue that I could potentially scare

someone of a younger age, plus people 15 and over will be able to

get the storyline quicker and appreciate that it is made up.

The reasoning for it possibly being rated a 15 is that threats and

strong language may be used. There is also the controversial

theme of paedophilia and preying in the opening sequence that

people may find offensive or disturbing. There is also the issue

that if we were to make the whole movie it would have probably

contained violence and possible imitable behaviour.

individual roles.We decided in our group that all roles of production would be shared out equally and

that we will all be able to use the equipment.

We will each get a chance to use the camera to film.

We will all be editing together to ensure that we all agree on the correct shots.

We will all be using Garageband together to create our own score/soundtrack for the

opening sequence, to ensure we all agree on it.

thank you for

watching…