Final Storyline- Jack Merren

After many discussions about what the storyline would be we finally come up with a solution that we have so far filmed. Our first idea was that of a kidnap showing different shots of a woman walking home through London. We choose London because it matched with the theme of a gangster thriller with an urban setting. As London was a short train journey away we thought that it would be the best solution for quick and easy filming. Although after further discussion without tutor we discovered that the idea of a kidnap and shots of a stalker would be far too restrictive in the terms of changing anything last minute and also that the idea was to “plain” and “ordinary” which was the complete opposite in what we were looking to film.
We went through ideas of having it set in the local woodland but we were thinking of the setting rather than the storyline which was a bad thing as we could see that we would be thinking up a storyline at the very last minute. After further agreements we came up with a plot that seemed uncommon, mysterious and alluring which was everything we were looking to aim for. The idea was that we had an action before narrative which means we show the end if the story first and then the next scene would be set before that leading up to that event. It started off as a woman at home alone and receiving messages from an outsider asking what she was doing, we had the epiphany that using technology would bring our thriller further into the 21st century. The woman would then receive a message saying “what is your name?” through MSN which brings the ominous sense of an internet stalker. Then she replies “why?” to which the stranger types “because I want to know who I’m looking at”. That idea was strongly inspired by that of scream which to us was a very familiar and popular film. We wanted to grasp the idea of a thriller horror because we were thinking that it would be an easy process to film and also that the genre of the film would be shown better and easy to follow. The idea though of showing online messaging came across on second thoughts as a bad idea, the concept of a computer being in our thriller wouldn’t be scary or help build that tension of a person being alone as like a phone it shows connection to the outside world. Also we had a massive wakeup call that we weren’t making a million dollar budget film as again we had to scrap that idea. The shots of showing a woman on her bed on her laptop could also come across as rather comical if it wasn’t shot properly as we are looking to film a thriller and not film a comical scene of Bridget Jones Diary with a woman on her lazing on her bed. Also again back to the computer scene it could look rather cringe worthy if edited unwell or by using poor camera shots to which we decided that it was taking too much of a risk with our time.
We then came up with the template that evolved into our final product; luckily we had planned well ahead so we could make minimal changes. The idea was that we keep the action before narrative for added affect and also keep the female protagonist, this time however we decided that we would scrap any idea of being stalked or kidnapped and instead take the more Godfather route of a shady deal taking place which ends in deceit and ultimately someone getting murdered. The scene would open with the main female protagonist (Played by Amy Ward) walking home, nothing is known of the character at this point but a ominous feel is present from the sound track but other than that the scene is very ordinary. There are many precise shots of the character showing her formalness and our attention to detail, such as the shot of Amy taking off her shoes. Then a small scene showing the character taking a tablet, the tablet is there to show that something is wrong and it’s not just her feeling unwell, also it shows uneasiness and builds tension. Then suddenly a load bang is heard and the character turns around quickly and a glass is smashed on the floor. The glass is there to show that someone has hit the character leading to her demise, and then the scene fades to black. That was the first half of our thriller and we had much speculation over the second half. There were two routes to which we could take in the storyline, first was that the female protagonist would have no part in the shady deal taking place and switch briefcases without the people knowing and then walk off and then have another shot of her opening the briefcases and taking whatever was inside such as diamonds or drugs. We thought diamonds or drugs because they are both normally used in many gangster thrillers and give that serious feeling of danger. Although one major setback of having this “switchover” was that we had to have a modern setting in a place such as a hotel lobby or a modern cafe. We chose a cafe that Rebecca luckily worked in as we struggled to get permission to film in most hotels. We filmed all of the second half but after editing we found that the footage didn’t have that “thriller feeling” that we were looking for so we decided to scrape it and start again with a our second storyline. We then had a woman (Amy) meeting a shady formally dressed male in a rundown alley way, again we carried on with the shady deal taking place. The two characters then exchange brief cases and the female shows the male what is in hers before the exchange. Then the male character goes back to one of his peons and shows him what’s in the briefcase, which is empty because the female has double crossed them. Then the two characters quickly look for the female character that has disappeared and stolen whatever was in the cases. The scene then fades to black and the film ends which then creates the big question of, “who killed the female character?.