Planning - Final Idea - Ms Begum

Final idea

As a group we had three ideas to base our thriller opening on. the first two ideas were based around the theme of a stalker harassing a teenager, and the other idea being based around the theme of bullying and how a teenage girl was constantly getting bullied at her college. finally, we had the idea based on a religious ritual lead by a masked figure which targets a teenager.

The tittle of our thriller opening would be 'The Ritual'

The narrative of our thriller is as follows, the antagonist would target a young blonde victim. The antagonist would be familiar with her beforehand but the victim would not be aware of this. This would be presented by the antagonist having pictures of the victim. This would also convey that the antagonist knows what his victim would look like. The antagonist would then capture the victim by dropping a pill in her drink as she sits at a park bench. She would then later wake up to the shock of being captured and tied up in a dark room.

My thriller follows the idea of Aristotle which is the idea of themes making the narrative, in which the film is based around the themes that are presented. The theme of the narrative would be a religious ritual. Throughout the film there would be references to a religious ritual with the images that would be used, so therefore our thriller relates to Aristotle's narrative structure.

The characters in the thriller would be played by Myself, Kay and Hygerta. Me and Kay would be the antagonist character, whereas Hygerta would play the victim. The antagonist role would be represented as masked figures and would hide our identity throughout the majority of the opening. The victim would be represented as a blonde, teenage innocent looking female which the audience would feel sympathy for.

We took on board the 5 elements of Mise en scene while we came up with our final idea. We started of with looking at iconography and setting. we agreed that we would use conventional iconography such as blood on gloves, large scissors and items that would attract the audience. the setting would be in a dark room when the victim would be captured, but before being captured it would be outside. The lighting we wanted to use was low-key lighting when she was captured in the dark room with the antagonist. However natural lighting would be used when she would be walking in and out of the shop as she would be outside. The costume we decided that our characters would wear was that the victim would wear light clothing such as white to represent purity, on the other hand the antagonist characters would be wearing darker colours. The body language of the antagonist would be firm and upright to represent strength and confidence. whereas the victim would be timid.

The film influences were mainly from the film 'Stigmata.' This was because 'Stigmata' also follows the same theme as the one we decided which was the theme of a religious ritual. The idea of 'Stigmata' having the use of candles was also an idea that we came up to use on our own thriller. Moreover, another film that influenced us was 'Se7en' this was because of the iconography with the needles and large scissors at the beginning of the film which also caused confusion and gave a mysterious impression. Therefore, these two films were the most influential when deciding on our final idea.