Research Into Making Our Victim Look Dead

Here is the sort of knife we are looking on having through our victims head. It doesn't have to be particularly professional or too realistic as our camera angles and lighting will only get a gist of it there will be no gory close ups. Therefore a knife such as the above is perfect.

As a group we researched various different ways of making our victim look bruised and dead. This is one of the tutorials we found. We will use all of this information on the day of the shoot to create a realistic looking dead victim.

Script Information

Everything that the detective and intern say are with a russian, eastern european accent, or in their language. They say very little to each other, instead they communicate with looks or gestures which are proceeded by the intern writing something down or nodding etc. 

So far, the only line that seems necessary is the detective, after opening a cupboard, saying

"This is where the drugs were hidden".

We thought it would be good to put in a line of their mother tongue when the detective can turn to the intern and say: 

"Lets go." (In their language.)

Evaluation of our Shot List Pilot

Making our shot list pilot really made us realise how we have many more shots in our new idea than in our original. Whilst doing it we came up with various new things such as the checking of the watch and the creation of the intern character. Just by making images, we realised how long it was going to take just to get a few shots and that you have to stay focussed. We discovered that a few shots such as the circling of the head with the handheld camera were going to take a while as they may be difficult. We realised, unfortunately for the person playing the body, that they were going to have to stay in the seat for the majority of the time incase we got a shot where they were in the background, this happened in a few of the pictures and we had to crop out the empty chair however we cannot do this while filming, therefore will have to choose our actor for the body carefully.

In conclusion I feel more confident with the idea after doing this, there are are plenty of things that we can improvise on the day of filming, to create more shots and help portray an interesting view of the characters.

Sound

We decided not to put in any non-deigetic music till the end of the piece, when we would have one beat getting louder and louder until the door slams. This beat will create a crescendo, dramatic, suggesting that the detective has some sort of anger towards the killer in a previous event allowing suspense as a storyline appears.

But throughout the scene we don't any music, if anything we want all sounds of footsteps, talking, writing etc. to be particularly clear and possibly over exaggerated therefore everything else must be very quiet. This is to make everything seem very secretive and discrete.

To end the scene we want the detective to scan the room one more time then slam the door, here we will need some diegetic door slamming sound to emphasise this. To make it a clear ending to the first scene, and alike the beat will show his anger towards the killer, revealing a dramatic storyline.

Props, Costumes and Location

Props list:

• A knife that looks likes its lodged into the back of the corpses head

• Some police equipment, such as radios badges maybe a pocket gun

• A watch for the detective

• Notepad for the intern

Costumes:

• detective- long black coat, leather gloves, scarf, possibly a fur hat to continue the siberian theme.

• Intern- very similar with coat, scarf, dressed for warmth. Without the fur hat.
• The dead body will be dressed for warmth also but in slightly shabby clothes. we are also looking into having some makeup done to make the actor look more "dead".

Location:

• Apart from the arrival of the car, it will all be filmed in a studio. 

We are aiming for it to have this sort of feel and look:

The window would have to be very foggy to demonstrate the cold outside.

We need old boxes and some sort of 'forgotten cargo', and a cupboard left open for the drugs to be.

The arrival of the car and the getting out, will have to be near a large but abandoned looking building.

New Story

Our new story consists of a drug murder scene. It will open with a wideshot of the detective driving to the scene of the murder. By viewing the sequence we will understand that the detective is the protagonist and that he is about to embark onto a drug cartel case, and this murder is just a minority of problems that he will have to face. This will be shown by the mise-en-scene and the mannerism that the detective has. Mainly as he enters the scene he will be examining the body shortly and he will be able to crack the case by seeing the motif of death being, drugs, stolen drugs. He leaves the scene after only spending a brief amount of time analysing it. The way he leaves is key to establishing the scene. This is because he will leave, as he already knows the case is bigger then this small murder. He will leave the scene by saying something as “I am leaving for business”; this will establish the characters strong attitude and lock the audience into the sequence wanting to know what happens. 

Shot list/pilot

 

we see an old rusty car arriving

 two men, detective and his assistant intern get out

medium close up of dead body on chair

zooming out to a wide shot so we can properly see the warehouse like place

we then see the detective and his male assistant intern entering down some steps from the cold our side.

there is a close up of the detective looking down then checking his watch

we then see the dead body again

the detective starts to walk around the body and it then cuts to his eye-line match and we hear the footsteps, this will probably be done with a hand held camera.

as it goes around the head we see that there is a knife lodged into the back of the murder victim

we see him going behind the dead body then crouching down to show he is looking past the body and its eye-line.

we zoom into the side of the head then..

it zooms into its eye-line and we see a prominent place that has been left open 

he walks over to the place looks inside then says in his language, that this is where the drugs were hidden.

we see them both walk out through the door and the detective looks back

we see a wide shot of the whole room, with the body in the middle. and some curious non-diegetic music starts

Castings

In our thriller we have three main characters, our detective, his assistant intern and a dead body.

considering that we are having a cold siberian theme, we need the actors to be dark features witha  russian sort of look.

our detective needs to be in his mid thirties, witha serious face. he needs to look rusty; therefore we ould like to have a stubbly face, making him look slightly cooler.

his assistant needs to be in his late teens eary twenties, goodlooking- to appeal to audience, and also serious looking and again dark features

our dead body is less specific, we need an older person, who looks worn out and who will be able to stay still with his eyes open.

Update of Thriller

We decided that our thriller opening didn't say enough about the movie and there may have been few too many shots to create a long enough sequence. Therefore we decided to change the sub genre slightly and add in a few other characters.

We decided to change the sub genre to a conspiracy thriller. We wanted the main character of the movie ( a downtown detective) to come and investigate a dead body with his intern, who throughout the film would become a more prominent character.The detective would immediately find where "the drugs" had been. This would suggest to the audience what sort of scheme would be unravelled. 

We want the detective to be a "cool" but cold man, which would give him a mysterious edge, suggesting that his past will unravel along with the storyline. Therefore when choosing our actors we have to be specific. The intern would have to be a good looking young boy to appeal to the audience.