Opening Sequence: Final Storyboard

Final Group Film Idea

Title: Omitted

Genre: Thriller

Age Rating: 





Characters:

Molly Taylor
Missing Girl
10 Years Old
Mysterious, Innocent, Intrigued, Curious
Played By: Charlotte Webb
19th October 2013

Francesca Hartell 
Previous Missing Girl
11 Years Old
Played By: Josie Knipmeijer
19th October 2012

Rosie Smith
Previous Missing Girl
12 Years Old
Played By: Sahar Ghorishi
19th October 2011

Location:

Forest
Molly walking through the forest in a pale white dress.
-Nonsuch Park wooded area

Police Room
Investigation Board is located on a large table with a white/ cream wall. The entire 'police room' is not shown, only the wall featuring the board. 
-Dining Room in my house, white wall with white desk and bright lighting 

Typical street road
Missing poster placed on a lamp post amongst an ordinary street scene. 
-Stanley Park Road

Tree/Leaves

Missing poster placed on a tree and missing poster hidden amongst autumn leaves. 
-Nonsuch Park

Storyline:

Beginning:
Missing Posters of a young girl are found all over the local area, this then leads to a shot of the young girl walking through a dark, wooded area alone. The missing poster is then shown on a police investigation board, they are currently investigating where and how this girl has disappeared. The police board then reveals that two other young girls have mysteriously disappeared on the same day the past two years. Private detectives are putting together the links between their deaths in an attempt to discover what has happened and who is behind it.

Middle & End:
As Police Investigators continue their search, they find more links between the three girls disappearances. The film follows the detectives as the encover the story behind what has happened. Molly is later found along with further clues to uncover the other missing girls whereabouts. 

Title & Font: Omitted

We decided to call the film to our opening sequence Omitted. We chose to use the word individually as we felt that it was typical of the thriller genre to use one or two worded titles. For example: Psycho, Se7en, The Departed, Inception and The Prestige all use minimal wording in order to build suspense and tension. This means that the film title gives as little as possible away about the plot and encourages the audience to question the films intentions. 

As our opening sequence is based around a police/crime investigation due to a missing girl. We discussed words around this theme and knew we wanted one word. We came to three final options of 'Absence', 'Omitted' and 'Astray'. We agreed that they all had strong connotations of suspense and of a missing person.

Potenital Font Ideas

Audience Questionnaires: Analysis

We gave our questionnaire to 10 individuals aged 16-17 years old of both genders (a key target audience group) who completed the survey. Their opinions were greatly influential when it came to making key decisions regarding locations, plots and titles. We wanted a variety of opinions from both genders as the target audience consists of both male and female participants. We used both open and closed (multiple choice) questions in order to try and get the most out of the respondents.

The first question was 'what is your favourite film genre?'- this allowed us to see what genres are most popular to this age group. Thriller was the most common answer, closely followed by horror. We decided to follow this by creating both a thriller and horror version of our opening sequence. Both will overlap between these two genres through the suspenseful plot. 

Those that answered with thriller being their favourite genre- explained that this was because of the tension and suspense building factors, some also mentioned about the idea of having 'butterflies in their stomach' gave them a thrill and adrenaline. 




The next question was if they liked film opening sequences in general. The majority of participants said no, but the two that said yes explained that this was due to the continuous, almost never ending list of names being shown as the focus as opposed to the storyline. We wanted to ensure that in our final piece that the credits were a main contributor to the sequence- but not last too long. 





We then asked which location they believed built the most tension and created the most enigma codes as this is a key factor in keeping an audience engaged throughout. The most popular location was a dark forest. We wanted to incorporate this location into a piece of our sequence- but not have this location the only one featured otherwise it could've felt repetitive and ongoing. The second most popular answer was an old abandoned house, which would be featured in the horror version.


We then gave a brief summary of the initial plot idea and asked for potential feedback and improvements on it.
Improvements included:
- "Maybe focus on 1 girl"
- "Add some more background info at the start"
- "Include info on how the girl went missing and some background info of the other girls too"

Finally, we asked what they felt was the best title for a thriller film. The majority of people selected Omitted- with it being a synonym for 'Missing'. 

Audience Questionnaires

We conducted a questionnaire, in which both male and female students aged 16-17 answered a few questions on what they thought of our initial idea for our opening sequence. This age group was a main target audience- with them being in full time education and therefore their opinions were greatly influential on our final piece. This gave us an idea on what a main proportion of our targeted audience felt was the most effective. 




Here is a few examples of the responses:

Audience Feedback

Initial Ideas: Thriller/Horror Divide

After our initial ideas process, as a group of four we decided that we wanted to explore more than one genre between us. We discussed that the final idea we had decided on could be explored in two slightly different ways, with some similar and some slightly different shots. After discussing a horror/thriller hybrid film, we felt that it would be better for us to work together to produce two different opening sequences- one being a thriller and the other being a horror. This meant that we would have multiple shots of similar things, but with slight alterations in order to fit the genre. 


For example, one idea we wanted to incorporate was a image of a teddy bear on the floor of a forest. For the thriller, we felt that this shot could incorporate a footprint in the mud in order to create further narrative enigma and follow a typical theme of thriller filmstrip including this. However, for the horror this angle would be more appropriate if it were to have blood or weaponry on the floor surrounding it. In two pairs, we researched into the genre we had chosen in order to make accurate judgements as to what things would be different between the two opening sequences. Therefore, with my opening sequence being a Thriller- my blog focuses on research into that genre. The genres do cross over at points and some elements have clear links, which will be reflected in the final piece.

Eleanor Burgess (me) and Louise Chapman - Thriller


Justine Panlaqui and Kate Foster - Horror


With my project being thriller based, I wanted to ensure that the storyline had a clear link to the police or a possible investigation occurring, whilst Justine and Kate wanted to focus on a possible culprit of the incident. Although, we all agreed to work together in order to help each other achieve all the shots required for the project.

Initial Ideas Process

Initial Ideas Process

We got into our groups- in my group of 4 we decided we were going to go down the thriller/horror route. To begin with we made a mind map of all our initial ideas with conventions of the genre, possible content, character, location, lighting, editing and costume ideas. We discussed some initial shot ideas, such as placing the camera on the ground in order to see footsteps of an unknown person in our opening. We also mentioned including shots in which a character gradually faded away, to follow along with the initial theme of a ‘missing person’ investigation. Also, we liked the idea of focusing on a variety of shot angles over just using wide-angle shots constantly.We wanted to ensure everyone had their chance to mention their ideas at this point so that we could develop the ideas further next time.

After this, we made a rough storyboard of our opening sequence plan: