Final idea: detailed planning

Plot The plot of our film revolves around a young teenage girl. At the beginning of our film, the protagonist is proceeding with her every day, regular life in her kitchen at home. At this point, the character is happy and isn't phased. As the kitchen scene progresses, the character receives an eerey text message reading "I haven't forgotten what you did". This mysterious text message will immediately introduce an element of tension and suspense into our film, additionally, the method of using communication through phones is extremely popular throughout thriller films and is known as an effective way to build mystery and tension, this method has been used in popular thriller films such as speed, phone booth and taken. We decided to conform to this convention in order to easily introduce an element of anticipation into our product.

After the young girl receives this mysterious text message, she seemingly disregards the incident and carries on with her routine in the kitchen. The screen will fade to black and suddenly, the girl will be shown lying on the floor of a dark and unknown forest. This quick switch in location and lighting will build huge suspense and mystery for our viewer. Our character will then be shown frantically running through the forest, calling her friend's name. Quickly after this, another young girl will be shown, tied to a tree by dirty rope. The viewer will become aware that this is the friend that our protagonist has been attempting to find when our protagonist quickly approaches her, continuing to shout her name. There will then be a few moments of our protagonist attempting to free her friend before her efforts are halted; a black, gloved hand will appear from behind and pull her down onto the ground. We will then draw a close to the opening scene by showing a close up shot of our protagonists' eyes, accompanied by a suspenseful soundtrack for further effect. I feel that this will be an extremely effective opening sequence as our audience will be left eager to discover the fate of our protagonist and her friend.

Location: Myself and my group have decided to film scene one within my kitchen. Scene one is set in a kitchen to show the situation as being normal and casual before the moment of impact hits. We thought this would be an effective way to surprise the viewer by showing them a normal situation and then quickly switching to dark, dramatic scene. The kitchen scene will also introduce the plot to the viewer and will include a moment of tension when character one receives a mysterious text.

We will film scene 2 and 3 inside a forest, myself and my group decided to film here as it is an appropriate location for a thriller genre. The two scenes within the forest will be filled with mystery and suspense in order to appeal to our target audience of teenagers and young adults. Our aim will be to engage the viewer throughout, and the dark forest location will help to achieve this.


Costume/makeup
Character one is being kidnapped, so we have decided that it is important to portray her as innocent and vulnerable, this can be achieved by dressing character one in a white shirt; to connote those two qualities. Character one will also have blue eyes in order to symbolise her innocence.

Character two is the girl who is trying desperately to find her lost friend, therefore we have decided to apply dark makeup to her eyes in order to portray the drama and darkness of the situation. There will be close up shots of the girls dark eyes while she is in the forest to mirror the darkness of the location.

Character three is the kidnapper, we have decided to dress the kidnapper in an all black morph suit, this will represent the kidnapper in a negative, eerey light from the outset. The colour black represents many negative things, so by dressing the character in black, we are showing the evil within the character straight away. Furthermore, a morph suit covers a person's body entirely, so the suit will suggest that the kidnapper has something to conceal, possibly a dark secret that he is hiding. Additionally, it will add more mystery to the scene and create more suspense for the viewer if they can't see the kidnapper's face/hands etc.


Props
We have decided on a number of props that will enhance our film. We will use rope in order to tie character two up, this will ensure that she will appear trapped and vulnerable.

We will need a cloth which will be used when the kidnapper gags/gasses character two. In order to add effect to the scene, we will make the cloth appear dirty and worn in order to convey something unnatural and corrupt.

We have also considered using a baseball bat - this will be used for the kidnapper to hit character two (his victim) over the head with.

Lighting
Throughout the first scene, we will ensure that we use high key lighting to convey a calm and positive atmosphere within a mundane, casual situation; a girl in her kitchen. This will create a significant contrast between this scene and scenes two and three. Scene two and three will be filled with low key lighting within the dark forest, creating a negative, suspenseful atmosphere. Because we are filming the forest scenes in the dark, we will ensure to use flash to make sure that the shots remain clear.

Characters
The two main characters within our film are young, teenage girls; this adds to the vulnerability of our film as this particular age group is often considered to be weak and feeble. This stereotype will lead to the audience feeling enhanced empathy for the helpless characters and thus enhance their viewing experience. Additionally, our target audience for our product is teenagers, therefore, our teenage viewers may feel more engaged whilst viewing our film as our protagonists are of the same age group, making our characters more relatable.