Synopsis

The film starts with a small montage of the protagonist (James) which ends up with him holding the antagonist (Ethan) at gunpoint threating to kill him if he doesn’t explain why he killed a group of soldiers, which included his brother a few years ago back in Afghanistan. He explains he was mentally ill after an encounter with the Taliban and the other soldiers were aware of this. James then mentions how he intends to do what’s right, and avenge his fallen brothers and what he’s been through to end up at Ethan’s house. It then flashes back to when James and his brother Matt were younger playing ‘army’. When James, the older of the two mentions how he’ll always be there to look out for Mat.

We then see a small montage of the two brothers growing up and going through several situations with each other and signing up and then training for the army. Then shows them once they get into the army, performing a few training exercises. Whilst doing this they’re put into a group with the antagonist (Ethan) and from that point onwards, Matt and Ethan become very close friends. Matt trusted Ethan very much but James was never very fond of him. Then shows a group from the camp go out on a mission were Ethan gets captured by what looks like the Taliban but were actually the American government. They told Ethan to take out the English camp where the brothers are based as they were close to finding a secret base were the Americans carryout illegal weapons testing on Taliban civilians.

Ethan makes it look like he escaped and tells the camp he was tortured by Taliban to give important information about the armies’ tactics and where the base was. Ethan decides to start small and take out a small group of the camp first but wants to make sure James is included as he was starting to get suspicious. Ethan takes the necessary precautions when setting up a timed explosive near the gas supply to make it look like an accident but something went wrong and Mat was killed instead. However, no questions were asked as Ethan made it look like an accident but leaving soon after made James’ suspicion grow even more. James goes to the captain and asks for his permission to do what’s right and avenge our fallen brothers.

As James prepares to leave he asks around the camp to see if there’s any word on Ethan’s where abouts but doesn’t find anything, so decides to get on the next plane home. Little did he know the plane was filled with Ethan’s men and started to attack soon after the plane takes off. James manages to survive so questions one of the men for answers. With new information James is lead to several false locations, each one leading to the next. Until at one point Ethan slips up and is seen leaving, he gets into a car and James follows. He follows Ethan to his house and after Ethan enters the building, James waits for him to leave.

Once Ethan left, James had the chance to sneak in. He then finds the truth about what really happened when he was captured. Later, Ethan returns to find James at his table holding him at gunpoint. This is now the point just after the scene at the start where James has explained the past events. Ethan then tells James he dropped out of the mission that was set to him by the American government as he was forced to take it in the first place. For once we think James believes him so he leaves the house to return to his car, only to find out Ethan was lying. He then pulls out a remote from his desk which set to some explosives in James’ car put there whilst James was looking for Ethan at the last location. Instead, James managed to re-route them to a set in Ethan’s house. Ethan pulls the trigger and James drives away.

Locations

For my location(s) i want to to use my house as I felt like I could change and manipulate in the way i wanted to achieve the desired location for one of the characters. However due to the fact it's my house and i have a lot of ornaments and decorations i had to move them either out of the shot or completely from the location, otherwise the location wouldn't have the effect I'd wanted. I wanted the mise-en scene of the house to have a fairly masculine feel to it so i had to remove some of the more feminine elements. I chose these location within the house as they're very small and enclosed with helps to create a very intense tone and mood for the text. The fact that I've tried to make the house look more masculine helps add to the codes/convention of the typical thriller as most of the time main character is male.                                                                                                                

Survey

 

These screen shots show the results of my survey. I asked four people, all of them male, i asked them all the questions that i thought would help best shape the design of my text. I have gone into more detail and analysed them in the Audience section.

Audience/Target Audience

I have decided that I will try to aim my product at mainly a male audience, possibly mid-teens (15) to mid thirty year olds (45). In comparison to real texts, this is the normal age range thats selected for a thriller film due to the type of content that's usually in these films. For example the film prisoners is very violent, contains graphic scenes and strong language that wouldn't be suitable for younger viewers. The narrative for my text is fairly simple to understand, it follows a typical revenge style film. However, could possibly quite violent and therefore unsuitable for younger viewers. People who liked prisoners, taken, Leon, shutter island and law abiding citizen will like my film as it will have some of the same elements. Like each of the past films mine will also have a main central protagonist who is very focused on what it is he wants to achieve.

After carrying out the questionnaire I can see many different trends, such as the key traits of elements people expect to see in a thriller text. 75% of the people asked said they expect to see tension or tense scenes. When people named their favourite films, most of the ones that were named were one word and very punchy. Other trend I noticed is many people said when they watch thrillers they were gripped to their seat and anxious to see what happens next.

After carrying out the research, it has outlined many different and useful trends that people expect to see in a thriller text. This will affect what traits and or elements I will add to my opening text and by doing so will hopefully mean that my sequence will have the key conventions that make a thriller successful. Therefore, I may need to add or remove a few elements to make sure the text is definitely a thriller and doesn’t have a sub-genre that could lead the text to be or have a different genre. The audience expect to see a text which keeps them ‘on edge’, a central protagonist who is ‘outgoing and strong’, and antagonist. My idea contains many of the typical traits, such as tense scenes, action, suspense, and chase scenes. It follows a somewhat typical revenge story, I want it to be gripping but at the same time very exciting. A typical trait of a thriller text I think is an element of chase, whether that’s a car chase for a short scene or one character on the hunt for another throughout the whole film. Also there should be a point when the audience start to question whether the ending will really be the one they expect; this is possible through the use of ‘suspense and tension’.

Preliminary Task

Film ideas

1. The film would start with flashbacks/dreams from past events, cuts to a man asleep, the flashbacks and dreams are his. As he is asleep we're able to see what's going through his had as a shot shows the scenarios happening above him. One of of the scenarios takes centre stage as this is the most important, in the flashback it looks like he's being held hostage by someone, he gets shot which results in him waking up. As he gets up and out of bed he walks past a shelf which shows his medals, badges, certificates (one of them revealing his name, Peter) and pictures showing images from old attacks, meeting people such as the queen and family members. These then reveal the he's an old MI6 agent. The next shot shows the inside of the MI6 base and the occupants rushing around, talking about a current case. There's rumours going around that the head of the agency had the leave the country for a couple of months due to personal reasons. There is then a picture of who we believe to be the head (the person holding him hostage), Peter and a group of people in suits.

It cuts back to Peters house where we can see a set of pictures of people and key locations all linking to each other. Through more flashbacks we find out that Peter was selected to undergo a special procedure to give him an edge and make him a new bread of agent. However Peter didn't want to go through with it, even though his family did. MI6 chose to get rid of his family and make it look like an accident, with his family out of the way, the agency manage to manipulate Peter to accept the option and go through with the surgery. The surgery happens and goes as planned but during the surgery instead of being put to sleep, Peter was just given anaesthetic and over heard a conversation between the head of the agency and several other members talking about how he would have never gone through with it if we hadn't taken out his family. Staying calm Peter waits until after the surgery and waits to see if the affects have taken place. After going through a number of training exercises and tests, he's set for field work. The flash back ends and Peter sets out, travelling to different places and locations around the world to fins the people who took after his family, in doing so he meets someone who was selected for a similar option for the CIA but it back fired and the people involved were no longer heard of for reasons that are unknown. Together they take down the people responseable with twists and turns without.

2.

Production company

For my production company logo i wanted it to look simple but at the same time very different and unique. I wanted the wording/font to stand out from the background picture to make it easy to read and understand. I didn't want the name to be complicated or for it to necessarily relate to my chosen genre (thriller). The logo does'nt give much away about the plot of the story, opening two minutes or the genre.

Props

For my props i wanted to do several things, incorporate the names, have a realistic looking document and gun. In the picture below you can see my props before I adapted them to suit the required needs. In the picture below i have a bb gun, two different sized evnvolopes, paper with the actors names, folder divider and organistion paper.

 

   

        To include something that would allow me to incorporate the actors name into the text as if they were meant to be there was difficult to think of as i didn't want the names to look out of place and just put in a random place just for the sake of it. I wanted them to look like letters or post that had been left there and the protagonist (James) would move around in order to try and find what he's looking for but as they audience we're unsure of what that is until later on in the text.

 

For the important document i wanted it to look very sleek the words to stand out from the background of the folder. As by step dad works for the British transport police he was able to get some stickers for me with the words 'top secret' and 'restricted'. By using these along with a yellow folder divider i was able to give the document the edge it needed and be easily read from the audiences point of view.

     

 Finally for the gun i used my old bb gun and bought some glossy black spray paint and sprayed the gun to make it look realistic. I thought about getting different colours for the gun like dark blue or grey but for the best results I thought I should go with the black.



Sound for my opening

When it came to choosing the sound for my opening I wanted to set the tone for the rest of the text so to do this I tryed to find 

Script

James: why?

Ethan: I had a mission and I always finish my missions and you were the only one standing in my way.

James: a mission? No. that’s murder. (James starts to get agitated) What you were trying to protect and what you did to do so. You took Mat, my brother away from me, you took our brothers away. Our brothers of war.