Group Thriller Ideas

Today I had been grouped up with 3 other students from the class; Lauren, Genny and Jonty; to work together for the next few weeks to produce our own thriller opening sequence. First we discussed on whose idea to use as it is very vital to choose something we will enjoy editing and filming in the future and that it is something that is actually good. We couldn't choose between anyone's idea so we decided to kind of merge all of our ideas together where the opening sequence contains bits and pieces of each of the ideas in it. The plot that we came up with is basically a mentally unstable boy who lives in a boarding house with a roommate whose kind of a popular and cool kid. The room will be half decorated as being very childish for the mentally unstable boy and the other half will be decorated as the typical teenage boy room, with poster of girls and cars and those sort of stuff. The plot is just basically the mentally unstable boy is trying to find various different ways to kill his roommate. We thought of the ideas of having flashes and shutters between the mental state of the boy plotting to kill his roommate and the reality state of him just doing normal daily routine. This means that we could combine scene from inside the dorm room with the scene outside the dorm room, for example, there could be a wide shot of the mentally unstable boy casually walking down the corridor with books in his arms- this could flash to the same boy carrying the dead body of his roommate in the woods in the same scene. We have many different ideas for this type of editing, here are some of the ideas we came up with: Close-up shot of the boy scooping cereal from a bowl with a spoon- flashes to the boy digging the shovel into the mud, close-up shot of the milk splattered on the lens flashes to the mud filling up the lens as the boy started burying the body, Close-up shot of roommate's face sleeping in the dorm room flashes to the close-up shot of the roommate's face covered in blood while being buried and finally a wide-shot of the boy dancing to the song 'September' alone in his room flashes to the boy dancing to the same song around the dead body to create contrapuntal sound effects. The opening sequence would end with the lens being totally covered in mud and the sequence blacks out, showing the title of the sequence afterwards.

Feedback for Thriller Ideas

Today we shared our own individual's thriller opening idea with the class. I presented my idea and got some really useful feedback from Katie and my classmates. Firstly I wont be able to use a clown mask because its way too mainstream and our main producer, Matt, isn't particularly a fan of clowns either. The shot may not be able to shoot realistically as we need a dead body which is pretty hard to find a prop that will look super realistic. However, there were also some positive feedback such as the camera angle i decided to use in the car's trunk as it works nicely to create tension. Also the idea was quite simple and straightforward which will be an advantage when it comes down to shooting the actual opening sequence and editing them.