Saturday, 28 February 2009
Narrative opening of The Missing Suspects
The film begins in a police station,where three police officers are investigating the murder of two victims and the missing of one victim which is the protagonist Rachel Brooke a seventeen year old college student. Rachel has been missing since February with her family worrying sick the police are determined to catch the suspects that haven't been seen for quite some time whereas there are 3 suspects and two unidentified. One sergeant is explaining the investigation to the other two police officers, within this we see images of two very attractive victims that had been stabbed to death, having the murders occur so close within each other its clear that it is a case is on going and fellow females could be in danger, from the heartless suspects. However this cuts to a fearful man who is yet to be unidentified dragging a bag aggressively across the gritty floor in a garage towards a car boot desperately getting rid of the evidence. He introduces suspense as audiences don't know what is in the bag, and keeps the audience guessing throughout the opening sequence. With a face so frightening and a body so composed he shows no nerves and emotions as he lifts the bag in the car boot, relaxed and calm he then zips the bag down, and we then see it is the protagonist Rachel Brooke. Her face being as white as a ghost we discover that that the police are too slow and have another dead victim, as the man leaves, he makes a call to his boss quoting ''its done''. Revealing the job is done and he has taken care of it. With the thrilling soft non- diegetic score music being played throughout the the film it lifts the film up by raising the enigmas for the audience and creating empathy for Rachel Brooke as she is dead, not knowing what she has done wrong.
Friday, 27 February 2009
The Missing Suspects Synopsis
This multi-strand narrative follows the hunt for Ben Bullhorn, a cold-blooded killer whose methodical style of murder, immaculate practices and corrupt preparation of precision conflicting with mercilessness becomes an unidentified and untraceable criminal.
It’s Essex in the late 1990’s and the cold breeze of winter blows outside the local police station in Hornchurch, a sergeant delivers a presentation on recent victims found and potential suspects. With the scarce amount of evidence and the frequent murders of females in the last five years, the already identified suspects are less than likely to be the convict due to their careless tactics. Oblivious to the fact that the first unidentified suspect was murdered a week earlier by stab wounds to the chest and neck, Ben Bullhorn is the only unidentified suspect of this crime.
Sergeant Smith has been working on the force for fifteen years and pays close attention to detail when investigating a crime scene. He also has a talent in thinking in the way of a killer in order to solve a crime. Him and trainee officers, Andy Brown and Sarah Appleby, have been assigned to this case and believe they have a time limit against this criminal since their informant Bob Jones went missing.
Ben Bullhorn has mistaken Sergeant Smith for a lazy investigator. Bullhorn begins to panic when he reads the newspaper and finds that Smith has found pollen residue at the scene of his latest crime. Bullhorn is sure he can get away with this crime and many more however he knows Smith won’t stop hunting him until he’s got him, therefore, Sergeant Smith is Bullhorns next target. Bullhorn sits for days planning his sin carefully as his techniques have to be changed due to an adjustment in his victim. Little does he know Smith has won awards in the past for the way he thinks, he knows that he is a threat to Bullhorn, the still unidentified suspect, and is aware that killing him is his objective.
As the killing of a young man occurs a week later, the disturbance in the pattern of killings alerts Sergeant Smith causing him to lead the investigation, heading to the crime scene alone. When he gets there, he comes face to face with Bullhorn who is ready with a knife to kill him. As they brawl, a gunshot his heard, the struggling slows down and Bullhorn pulls away with a gunshot wound to the chest.
Bullhorn dies and the young man killed was found in the boot of his car. Sergeant Smith wins an award for bravery and takes a well earned break to Hawaii.
(Alex Christian)
It’s Essex in the late 1990’s and the cold breeze of winter blows outside the local police station in Hornchurch, a sergeant delivers a presentation on recent victims found and potential suspects. With the scarce amount of evidence and the frequent murders of females in the last five years, the already identified suspects are less than likely to be the convict due to their careless tactics. Oblivious to the fact that the first unidentified suspect was murdered a week earlier by stab wounds to the chest and neck, Ben Bullhorn is the only unidentified suspect of this crime.
Sergeant Smith has been working on the force for fifteen years and pays close attention to detail when investigating a crime scene. He also has a talent in thinking in the way of a killer in order to solve a crime. Him and trainee officers, Andy Brown and Sarah Appleby, have been assigned to this case and believe they have a time limit against this criminal since their informant Bob Jones went missing.
Ben Bullhorn has mistaken Sergeant Smith for a lazy investigator. Bullhorn begins to panic when he reads the newspaper and finds that Smith has found pollen residue at the scene of his latest crime. Bullhorn is sure he can get away with this crime and many more however he knows Smith won’t stop hunting him until he’s got him, therefore, Sergeant Smith is Bullhorns next target. Bullhorn sits for days planning his sin carefully as his techniques have to be changed due to an adjustment in his victim. Little does he know Smith has won awards in the past for the way he thinks, he knows that he is a threat to Bullhorn, the still unidentified suspect, and is aware that killing him is his objective.
As the killing of a young man occurs a week later, the disturbance in the pattern of killings alerts Sergeant Smith causing him to lead the investigation, heading to the crime scene alone. When he gets there, he comes face to face with Bullhorn who is ready with a knife to kill him. As they brawl, a gunshot his heard, the struggling slows down and Bullhorn pulls away with a gunshot wound to the chest.
Bullhorn dies and the young man killed was found in the boot of his car. Sergeant Smith wins an award for bravery and takes a well earned break to Hawaii.
(Alex Christian)
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Mise en scene of The Missing Suspect thriller
Taking mise en scene into consideration of our thriller production, we needed to purchase particular props. Firstly we thought about the costume which the killer should wear. We wanted to the killer to wear simple but memorable clothes; therefore we chose to make him wear a boiler suit. The dark blue of the suit adds to the effect of a thriller as the gloomy colouring creates a mysterious and sinister atmosphere.
To fit the character of cold hearted murderer, the idea of him wearing gloves supports his methodical charcteristics. This connotes his phycotic behaviour as the gloves show precision and caution which creates suspense for the audience as their imagination wonders in thinking of how carries out his crimes.
Also, to show the dark theme, we needed a bag of some kind that the killer would be seen dragging a body in. Therefore, as a sleeping bag is associated comfort and camping, usually an adventurous and memorable experience, it shows the heartlessness of this killer how he as disregarded any emotion that may be related to this familiarity.
The unknown suspect is also seen contacting the 'Boss' on a mobile phone which we included to relate to the audience as this prop in very common in todays society. This makes the sequence more realistic and also, it wasn't hard to purchase.
As we wanted to show the disturbing psychological behaviour of the killer, we decided that an interesting way to do this was for the audience to see him place an arrangement of flowers on the body of the victim. At first we thought a red rose would be effective as the vibrant colour red is easily associated with blood. However, as a red rose also symbolises passion as well as anger, it conflicted with our representation of the killer as we thought that the audience may perceive him to have emotions. To avoid this perception, we changed the idea of a rose to an arrangement of lilies which are commonly seen at funerals representing innocence, purity, and resurrection. They're often associated with the Virgin Mary and resurrection when placed on woman’s grave. When I researched the symbolic meaning of lilies at funerals, I found they also symbolise the restored innocence of a soul at death. This connotes the vindictive characteristics of the antagonist.
As the narrative outline of our thriller includes criminal suspects, we gathered two images of convicted felons from the internet printing them out to look like identity photographs. This involes two images with question marks representing the unidentified suspects. As we were unable to film inside of a real police station, these props make the situation of an investigation more convincing. Along with collecting images of suspects, we needing images of female victims including a photgraph of me (Rachel Brooke) as missing victim number three. Like the potential suspects, below the images are pieces of relevent information that the audience need to know. Also is an image of another criminal found on the internet, however this image takes on the role of missing informant, Bob Jones to fit the opening script.
(Alex Christian)
To fit the character of cold hearted murderer, the idea of him wearing gloves supports his methodical charcteristics. This connotes his phycotic behaviour as the gloves show precision and caution which creates suspense for the audience as their imagination wonders in thinking of how carries out his crimes.
Also, to show the dark theme, we needed a bag of some kind that the killer would be seen dragging a body in. Therefore, as a sleeping bag is associated comfort and camping, usually an adventurous and memorable experience, it shows the heartlessness of this killer how he as disregarded any emotion that may be related to this familiarity.
The unknown suspect is also seen contacting the 'Boss' on a mobile phone which we included to relate to the audience as this prop in very common in todays society. This makes the sequence more realistic and also, it wasn't hard to purchase.
As we wanted to show the disturbing psychological behaviour of the killer, we decided that an interesting way to do this was for the audience to see him place an arrangement of flowers on the body of the victim. At first we thought a red rose would be effective as the vibrant colour red is easily associated with blood. However, as a red rose also symbolises passion as well as anger, it conflicted with our representation of the killer as we thought that the audience may perceive him to have emotions. To avoid this perception, we changed the idea of a rose to an arrangement of lilies which are commonly seen at funerals representing innocence, purity, and resurrection. They're often associated with the Virgin Mary and resurrection when placed on woman’s grave. When I researched the symbolic meaning of lilies at funerals, I found they also symbolise the restored innocence of a soul at death. This connotes the vindictive characteristics of the antagonist.
As the narrative outline of our thriller includes criminal suspects, we gathered two images of convicted felons from the internet printing them out to look like identity photographs. This involes two images with question marks representing the unidentified suspects. As we were unable to film inside of a real police station, these props make the situation of an investigation more convincing. Along with collecting images of suspects, we needing images of female victims including a photgraph of me (Rachel Brooke) as missing victim number three. Like the potential suspects, below the images are pieces of relevent information that the audience need to know. Also is an image of another criminal found on the internet, however this image takes on the role of missing informant, Bob Jones to fit the opening script.
(Alex Christian)
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
The Missing Suspects Brainstorm
Here is a brainstorm for The Missing Suspects thriller our group created showing every aspect of pre-production taken into consideration.
(The Group)
(The Group)
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Alterations
We decided to change our previous film ''Axeman'' because it didn't quite work as a whole, the shots were too fancy and the mise-en-scene didn't quite work successfully, so we decided to come up with the missing suspects which sounded promising from the start and developed into a very successful 2 minute sequence. Although in Axeman we used good shots it didn't engage the viewers as we wanted it to, but we now have a finished film which has had several views on you tube which can be viewed by entering 'the missing suspects'. We are now going to proceed onto our evaluation, but we would shortly be uploading the audience review, which we have gathered feed back from audiences and we will let u know what they think about our thriller film, 'The missing suspects'. The props didn't seem to work in axeman as well as the locations,
So we will keep you posted on our latest updates
So we will keep you posted on our latest updates
Monday, 23 February 2009
Locations
When analysing thrillers it became clear that locations in which footage is filmed is important when showing representations. Therefore, in order to show that the main character Rachel is a student we filmed the thriller sequence at our college, Havering College of Further and Higher Education. As we wanted to use a range of locations, we decided to film four major main areas. Firstly, we filmed in a science laboratory where the Axeman is introduced cleaning the room and washing blood off his axe. As the subject of science is associated with experiments, the calm nature of the killer as he washes his axe gives the audience an idea of his psychotic and unpredictable behaviour.
Another reason for the filming in this room was because of the high key lighting. Here is a photograph of the sink in which we see the Axeman washing blood off his axe. As the light reflects of off the shiny surface, it creates shadows that help create the dark atmosphere that the cold hearted killer brings to the screen.
He then leaves, bringing us to our second location of a footpath on college grounds which capture the killers footsteps. We chose this location with the intention of creating suspense as his footsteps will be accompanied with disturbing and high pitched score music. By choosing an outside location on college campus we thought it would create further suspense as it gives a sense of reality to the thriller. The realistic feel was accompanied by the use of natural lighting.
The third location is The Space, an immense room with dark lighting. As a successful technique when creating suspense in a thriller is the use of lighting, we chose this location as the dark and isolated area creates a sense of fear which reinforces the intense thriller conventions.
The fourth location is the college library where Rachel wakes up realising that what she experienced was a nightmare. We had chosen this location to end the sequence to show the representations of Rachel being a student. The aim of this was to mislead the audience into not expecting anything as horrifying as her nightmare could never happen to someone like her. But as the last shot of the sequence is of the Axeman’s axe behind her in the library, the audience are left with the knowledge that there is more truth in Rachel’s nightmare than expected.
(Alex Christian)
Another reason for the filming in this room was because of the high key lighting. Here is a photograph of the sink in which we see the Axeman washing blood off his axe. As the light reflects of off the shiny surface, it creates shadows that help create the dark atmosphere that the cold hearted killer brings to the screen.
He then leaves, bringing us to our second location of a footpath on college grounds which capture the killers footsteps. We chose this location with the intention of creating suspense as his footsteps will be accompanied with disturbing and high pitched score music. By choosing an outside location on college campus we thought it would create further suspense as it gives a sense of reality to the thriller. The realistic feel was accompanied by the use of natural lighting.
The third location is The Space, an immense room with dark lighting. As a successful technique when creating suspense in a thriller is the use of lighting, we chose this location as the dark and isolated area creates a sense of fear which reinforces the intense thriller conventions.
The fourth location is the college library where Rachel wakes up realising that what she experienced was a nightmare. We had chosen this location to end the sequence to show the representations of Rachel being a student. The aim of this was to mislead the audience into not expecting anything as horrifying as her nightmare could never happen to someone like her. But as the last shot of the sequence is of the Axeman’s axe behind her in the library, the audience are left with the knowledge that there is more truth in Rachel’s nightmare than expected.
(Alex Christian)
Cast
Here are the photos of the two actors in the Axeman thriller opening. The Axeman is played by the director, Dominic Wilkinson whilst Rachel the college student is played by editor Alex Christian. We thought the decision to take on the roles ourselves would be more convenient as we planned to shoot at a time when people were unavailable. This decision also saved time as we already understood the story line, character positions and gave us a chance to explore with the cinematography.
(Alex Christian)
(Alex Christian)
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