Final Idea

Our final idea will start with a victim waking up. This will be a series of CU's at different angles creating a montage effect. The character will look around and motivated cuts disguised as cutaways establish various parts of the basement room. The victim will look down and more motivated cuts will show flash cutaways of his hands and feet chained up. This will be followed by some establishing shots of the victim in the chair chained up and the camera will arc the chair 360 degrees in fast motion. This will cut to POV shot looking through a gap in some shelves at this victim. Parallel editing between the victims face and the killers feet/shadows etc will build up tension as the killer comes towards the victim, picks up one of the weapons lined up on the floor (ip dip doo...) and raising it. We will not see the killers face yet, just the back of his head, but instead of killing the victim he cuts or rips off his gag and begins to speak normally. He is reasurring and charming in this shot/reverse shot conversational continuity sequence but much of what he says has hidden tones of twisted irony revealing he is treating his victims as "guests" hoping they have a "comfortable stay". Suddenly, he is more forceful showing his strength and power by forcing the victim to sleep using a drug. Then a long POV tracking shot will show the killer leaving the room as he murmers to himself creepily showing he is psychotic. He will pass other victims pleeing for freedom and eventually shots the door on a victim. We end on a shot of the victims blood smeared hand bang on the glass window of the door with a horrible scream. We will focus on this shot as the hand falls steadily down the glass and the killer says something ironic revealing more of the situation before we hear the killer footsteps leave. We will fade to black revealing the film title. Throughout the whole sequence random cutaway shots of basement objects such as a dripping pipe, flickering light, stacks of weapons and shadows will be accompanied by credits (director, producers, cast and company names).

Character Ideas

Victim 1
Possible Names: Mike, Pete, Jack, Matt, Tim, Tom.
Role: Victim, tied up in chair, struggles, uncertain conclusion.
Appearance: Bruised, battered, fake cuts, black eye, messy hair, sweating, tears?
Clothes: Suit or shirt/tie, ragged trousers or smart trousers, shoes or trainers.
Needed Acting Traits: male, fairly well built, can act really scared/confused/dazed, can produce fake tears.

Victim 2
Possible Names: Mark, Mike, Dan, Pete, Joe, Jack, Nick, Matt, Tim, Tom, Chris.
Role: Friend of victim 1, has been lead to victims location, find location to find noone there, is killed by killer.
Appearance: Bruised and battered, sweating, fake cuts, ripped clothes, out of breath.
Clothes: Plain white t splattered in blood, jeans (ripped), trainers.
Needed Acting Traits: Male, athletic, can act scared/confused/angry.

Killer
Possible Names: Unnamed or has a nickname to do with the title.
Role: Walks about victim 1 possibly assembling torture tools, follows victim 2 into basement, kills victim 2. Very childish, he never grew up. So murder ways are very strange and have child-like signifiers.
Appearance: Ambiguous, tall, in the shadows, masked or face shadowed, threatening/menacing.
Clothes: Black boots, black hoodie/jacket/cloak, black fingerless gloves, mask?
Needed Acting Traits: Can look powerful/menacing, tall, physical, well-built, can speek in deep/threatening voice.

My Idea

The sequence will be set in a basement-like room. It will open with shots of a victim in a suit, beaten up, bruised, gagged and tied up to a chair. He will struggle and look terrified, moaning out of desperation. Shots will be cut up by cutaway shots establishing features of the room such as a puddle with dripping water, a broken pipe, a flickering light and a brick wall with the mans shadow. Credits will appear alongside these objects. The sequence will begin alternating between 2 scenes using parallel editing - one of the victim as a figure appears and begins assembling some torture weapons and one of a mystery person running. We will see features of this person without seeing their face and will see them run down some stairs into a dark cellar (the basement). The audience believe the 2 scenes are happening at the same time, with the person running towards the victim. As the person enters into the cellar, we will cut away to a third scene following slower more sinister footsteps down the stairway. As the person moves around the corner towards where the victim should be, a dark shape moves across the screen quickly. The tension will build up towards this climax as we follow the person around the corner to find an empty chair and words along the lines of 'too late' scrawled across the wall in blood (or red paint). This will confuse the audience who expect to find the victim in the chair. At this point the camera faces the person who we see full on for the first time, as he begins shouting for what appears to be his friend (the audience finds this out now). As he moves towards a dark corner, a figure appears from out the darkness and grabs the persons neck from behind at knife point. There is some kind of brief significant conversation between the 2 before the killer slashes the persons throat. We do not see the point of penetration but just a quick action assuming the murder happens as we cut to a shot of the empty chair with flickering lights. The lights go out and the film title appears. The rest of the film will trace back what happened before the victim was caught, establishing the characters, and will then follow what happened and why. It will contain aspects of murder, suspence and gore, focusing on a modern combination of horror and thriller.

Initial Title Ideas

The Follower

The Followed

Hunted

Trick of the Mind

The Time Trick

Twisted Irony

The Timekeeper

Too Late

Saving Seconds

Death Count

The Counting Game

Count to 3

Overdue

A Lesson in Punctuality

The Trail

The Race

Traceless

Clueless

Tracing Time

Wasting Time

The Appointment

Follow Me

Title Ideas

- Too Late
- Out of Time
- The Follower
- The Followed
- Hunted
- Murder Trail
- Torture Trail
- Clueless
- Twisted Irony
- The Prankster
- Trick of the Mind
- The Trick
- The Time Trick

Group Meeting 1 - Notes

Genres

- horror (slasher or supernatural)

- thriller (gangster or crime)

Possible Locations

- school (latymer great hall or basement)

- graveyard (chingford cemetary)

- woods (epping forest, pole hill, high beach or ponds near butlers retreat)

- canal (waterhouse by 'halfords' at outer chingford retail or 'boat club' by chingford resevoirs)

- abandoned house (unused house next door to a friends)

- lonely bar (Jack's dads bar or a bar near to latymer school)

- old fashioned historic buildings (tudor museum, 'the harvester', a pub or 'butlers retreat' - all leading onto chingford plains)

- alleyway covered in forest (organ lane near Kris/Jack's house)

- car park and backstreet alleyways (sainsburys car park at chingford mount)

- abandoned littered streets and warehouses (near lea valley odeon and picketts lock)

- church (st peters and chingford green)

Possible Characters

- a female teenage victim (with loud scream)

- a small friendship group of either girls or mixed gender from a posh public school

- a couple of hard-looking italian or cockney gangsters

- a confident teenage boy who can run fast

- a teenage male or grown up to act as the villain (not necessarily ever seen in shot)

- a group of youngsters our age who can sing!

Available Actors

- ourselves and other media students

- sixth formers who do drama, are past media students or are willing to make themselves available to act

- Jack's cousin and his friends

Ideas

- a murder

- a past event (either a murder or supernatural happening in the 1950's or tudor times)

- a secret gangster meeting or confrontation (leading to a murder, shooting or bust-up)

- a monster/unseen creature attack

- a vampire musical (probably not going to happen!)

Group Meeting 2 - Notes

Idea 1

Location: Latymer School Basement

A victim wakes up tied up in a chair and gagged. With only the sound of dripping water and faint echoes, he begins to hear footsteps. The scene will cross cut between shots of the man in the chair and shots suggesting someone is walking down towards the basement where he is. The sequence will provide some sort of twist, with one idea being that a climax to the scene will quickly switch to a friendlier scene from 24 hours earlier via a graphic match. A link maybe shown between the killer in the present scene and a friend the victim is with in the past (possibly showing the victim who is his friend the same knife used in the present scene, or an item of clothing, tattoo or accessory seen in the same way). This will lead to the audience already suspecting the killer in the opening sequence, but the film will lead on to reveal a different killer in a surprising twist. Another idea is that the two scenes using parallel editing (of the victim and of footsteps etc) are at different points in time, with either the footsteps being a few hours before the victim scene, or a few hours after. The first of these would make the audience think the victim was about to be attacked but would be surprised to see the killer simply setting up his trap (possibly using a knife to cut a rope or something, instead of killing the victim). The second would reveal what you think as a killer to be a friend of the victim who has apparently been lead to believe he will find his friend here (through what he says as he enters and his shocked reaction to find his friend not there). With the audience confused, the friend would face an empty chair and a wall marked with blood saying something along the lines of 'too late'. Then out of the darkness a figure would suddenly appear and grab the friend before presumably killing him. The audience would then want to know what happened to the victim in the chair but will not know until later on in the film. Themes or genres involved in this film would probably include aspects of murder, slasher horror, revenge and suspence thriller.

Idea 2

Location: Path by canal/Bridge

The sequence could be a mysterious continuity-based opening showing a teenage boy walking by a canal. He will look troubled as if in a bad way (messed up life, possibly on drugs). Sinister noises and images disturb his walk in an eery silence. The sequence will either involve someone following the boy and killing him, him witnessing a murder on the other side of the canal only to be murdered in exactly the same way moments later, or his route to be disturbed by the presence of perculiar hooded beings (possibly to look like normal youths, only to be wearing hoodies backwards to mask their faces). Another idea would be to show the boy entering onto a plain bridge to find a dead body lying in the centre. Curious, the boy could move towards the body to find it either dead, a doll or dead but with a sinister and chilling appearance such as a painted face or mask. Then two hooded figures on either side of the bridge he had entered could appear and close in on him, trapping him. They could either kill him or he could jump off the bridge into the canal (which would admittedly be dangerous to film). In each of these ideas it would be hard for the audience to distinguish imagination from reality due to the boys confusion and possibly the sight of him carrying or doing drugs that may make him see halucinations. The end of the opening may show the victim dead with scratch wounds and bruises having supposedly been attacked by the silent hooded figures (zombie-like?) but the last shot could steadily zoom out from the body to show no beings around, suggesting he was seeing things and was attacked by his own mind and ended up killing himself through the horrible images he was seeing (with the bridge scenario ending up in him being drowned in the canal because of images he had seen in his mind). The film could have a moral message against drug use and youth gang crime. I thought the rest of the film could be about a a new drug which is disguised as a standard drug such as LSD, but is actually designed to kill its victims - a possible mass murder or terrorist attack on youths of the western world. Themes or genres involved in this film would probably include aspects of murder, thriller, psycological and creep-out horror.

Idea 3

Location: Abandoned house or 'White House' at Gilwell Park

We do not have a particular idea for these locations but is simply a back up idea in case the other 2 locations are not available. This would probably involve mainly interior filming too, to be safe. One idea we have is a group of teenagers arrive to check out the haunted legends of the abandoned house. One character (a girl) stays outside on look out as she is too scared. Sinister going-ons around her unsettle her and she calls for her friends. The opening sequence could involve her entering the house upon panicing that there is no shout back from inside. She could, to her horror, discover the bodies of her friends inside and either be caught herself, or run away. In running away, the rest of the film could be centered around her trying to escape from the forested area she has entered, entirely from her point of view, or just following her character. The film could be disorientating and end up in her being trapped by her surroundings (unable to leave the park) because of this curse/legend - although this will appear as her lost and apparently going around in circles. She would eventually be killed, possibly in a twist of events. Themes or genres involved in this film would probably include aspects of murder, slasher horror, disorientation and supernatural horror.

My Chosen Genre

This is just a post to alert you of my decision. I thought I would nail down a genre pretty early on in the project so I can focus all my research on one genre, simply because theres so much to do otherwise. I want my blog to be very to the point.

It was an easy decision really. I am going to do horror after having conversations with a couple of people in my class, who I will probably be filming with eventually. We have some good ideas for horror films and we believe it is most practical to film during an amateur project.

I will add some bits and bobs to the right hand side of my blog tonight to get me started on the genre and then maybe a horror montage of TERRIFYING images later on in the week.

Exciting times...