Thriller Opening - Storyboard

Our first shot, a close-up, shows two sets of polaroids featuring the faces of numerous people. Although both sets of photographs feature the same people, one set has green writing and the other red. The green writing will be revealed to the polaroids belonging to the police and the red writing belonging to the killer. We will have several cuts panning over the photographs forming the beginning to our film and also allowing us the opportunity to add the title credits.

From the set with green writing we move the camera in an upwards motion to reveal a whiteboard featuring the faces of subjects. This establishing scene of sorts should make it clear to the audience that the location of the green writing polaroids is a police investigation room.

This shot is used as a link between the shot between this scene and the next. We zoom into one of the suspects photos and fade out ending the scene before fading into the next scene.

We fade in from the photograph in the last scene to reveal the subject of the photograph in real life - the killer. We see him talking to the voices in his head for the first time in a close-up shot allowing us to portray his facial expressions as he struggles with the voices.

Here we see the antagonist talking to the voice in the mirror, using the mirror to reflect the two sides of his personality i.e. good side shot in the flesh, bad side shot reflected in the mirror. This will begin as a medium shot before changing to a close shot showing the killer washing his hands - revealing his obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Here we will have a series of cuts ranging from long shots to close ups as the killer walks down to the stairs. The front door should also be in frame to ensure continuity.

We will then use a mid shot as he exits through the front door, the scene ending as the door slams. The voices will continue right up until the front door closes symbolising that he has made his decision.

Here we are introduced to the two detectives for the first time, cutting between their faces as they discuss the case. We will cut between close-ups of their faces and medium two-shots. This dialogue will provide us with a great chance to give the audience more insight into certain aspects of the case such as them being in the same year at school etc.

This shot shows the third detective entering the room and the two detectives explaining to him the case so far. In this case, the third detective acts as the audience as he is brought up to speed with the case much like Watson in the Sherlock Holmes novels whose questions help the audience to understand Holmes.





Here we see the initial two initial police officers discussing the third detective outside the police station. This shot was later cut out of the final edit.

We now see one of the faces of the polaroids walking past, the police officers unaware of him. We later added a quick cut of the polaroid on which the man is featured acting as a flash back of sorts and helping the audience to remember.

We see the man from the polaroids walk past the window of a coffee shop with the killer sitting inside. The killer gets up to follow him outside. This will be a long shot to show not only the location but also both characters.






The film ends with the camera framing the now empty seat in which the killer was sitting.

Thriller Opening - The Script

The film begins with the killer alone in his room, talking to voices in his head revealing at once that not only has he commited murders and is likely to do so again, but also that he is schizoprenic.

The next scene takes place in a police investigation room. We discover that a series of murders have taken place and all the victims were in the same year at school. The police have narrowed it down to suspects, all of whom are on the board behind them, and have just discovered that one of the suspects was in the same year as the victims.

We then had a third police officer being introduced to the initial two by a secretary but this was later removed to decrease the longevity of the scene.

The third and final scene is the killer sitting outside a coffee shop when he notices a prospective victim. The scene ends with the killer standing up and following the victim out of site. Orginally this scene also featured the police officers as seen in the script although this was later changed to just the killer and victim.

Thriller Opening - Planning

As a group, we discussed initial ideas for our thriller opening based on our genre research. We began to string together possible genres, actors and locations which would for the basis for our final desicion regarding our final piece.






































After much discussion we settled on the crime thriller genre. As one of the most popularised thriller genres we felt it was the one we were all most accustomed to and therefore one of the simplest for us to do succesfully. We quickly ruled out the idea of psychological thriller due to the complexity required for its storylines which would have been difficult to convey in the short time period given. We later ruled out horror and action due to the costumes and special effects etc. which would probably be required.

We decided upon using a member of our groups bathroom for the bathroom idea after toying with the idea of using a real hotel. However, that was ruled out due to the costs involved. For the police investigation room scene we used a room in our school due to the bare white walls and multiple tables in it - perfect for the investigation room. We used an actual coffee shop in town for the scene in which the killer observes his next victim, after gaining permission from the manager.

We decided upon three members of our group (although two were later cut out to reduce the longevity of a scene) and three friends from outside our class - Ellis, Joe and Sam.