Thriller Pitch

For our first idea we wanted to show a little girl sat in an abandoned, derelict house with some old toys which have been worn with use. We also wanted to show flashback shots of when the child was younger and the times she had spent with her family. The montage of flashbacks would begin to pick up a pace until they reached a climax in which a quick shot of fire would be shown and an extreme close up of the little girls face.

Our storyline behind this is that the child’s family died in a house fire and she has been scarred by this ordeal, not wanting to leave the house of the toys which meant so much to her.

One of the props we wanted to use for this idea was an old dirty teddy bear with its head or limbs almost torn apart with the amount of times its been played with. Another prop of choice was either a music box or jack in the box. The music played on either of these would be non-digetic sound throughout the whole sequence. As there would not be any digetic sound after the home footage was shown. Finally our last prop would have been child’s spelling blocks and these would be also used to create our title sequence by spelling out the credits with them.

Our setting was an unused old barn house in Donnington, although we later decided that this wouldn't be realistic enough for what we had perhaps originally had in our minds.

Idea two begins with the audience seeing home footage and photos of a happy couple doing day to day things and living normal life’s; to contrast with this we would also show extreme close ups of a bloody knife and a warehouse corridor. In between these we would also show a panning shot of a wall in this warehouse, the wall will be completely covered with photographs and newspaper articles of mysterious murder cases.

These shots will merge in and out of each other until we hear the scream of a woman, this will then jump cut to a man who’s woken up from a bad dream. The man will get up, go to his bathroom and splash his face with cold water to clam himself down, only to then see in the reflection of the mirror the woman in featured in his dream. This will only be for a split second a quick jump cut will then show that the woman is no longer there and suggest she was never there in the first place touching on psychological emotions of the audience.

The props we would use for this would be a mirror, a bloody knife, newspapers for the title sequence and also a photo frame which would be placed on the man’s bedside table. The photograph will show a picture of him and the woman in his dream (his girlfriend)

 






We decided after looking at other thrillers we would set this in a normal day to day house to relate to the audience and show a conventional family, but then have something very unordinary occur.

We would also use the old Warner’s factory to shoot our flashback shots for the warehouse scene.










Idea three begins with a low shot of a man’s legs briskly walking along a street. He would be dressed in a suit with smart shoes carrying a briefcase, although this would be all we would see. He then pauses at a street corner where almost in sync to him a large black car screeches to a hold in front of him, once getting in and still unaware of what the mysterious man looks like we hear some dialogue from the mysterious man.

The dialogue is to give the audience an insight into the story and set the scene, all the while seeing only close up shots of certain parts of his face to keep his identity hidden. After the dialogue is over, the man will light a cigar and then blow smoke into the camera which will trigger the title sequence. For this idea we took inspiration from films such as 'Rock N Rolla' and 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’.

Props used in this idea would be a cigar, briefcase and the smart looking car which arrives on scene. We would also use some glasses to keep the element of hidden identity.

 

Here is the thriller pitch being presented to our peers.