Tittle ideas

We considered a range of other ideas that we could use for our tittle which would link to our chosen narrative and thriller genre, these included:

Lurking
Shadows
Stalked
Behind closed doors 

All of these names did link to our chosen theme, however after some consideration we felt The Pursuer worked best.

If a person is pursuing someone it means they are trying to overtake, chase or capture them, we felt this gave a clear impression of a stalking figure and felt it had a memorable ring to it. 

Soundtrack

Our opening will include both diegetic and non diegetic sound, the diegetic sound will be made by our various surroundings when we are filming, for example cars, dogs barking and footsteps. Our non-diegetic sound will be created on GarageBand which we planned to use in the very beginning of the opening credits and throughout. We aimed to create quite a fast pace, up tempo music piece to build up tension and anticipation. 

We feel we have created a unique, tension building soundtrack which compliments our opening sequence. We have combined a range of sound clips to create one continuous soundtrack, we feel incorporating a variety of clips to create one music piece is more effective as it gives it a more unique feel instead of using just one music piece which might sound quite boring.  

Editing

The editing process we used to edit our entire opening was the iMovie software available on the apple mac computers; we were new to this software and had never used it before, we were advised to use this software by our media teacher because of previous success with other students that have worked on it.

We chose to edit the majority of our shots clean cut to present realism and to make the scenes believable, we used a few fade to black shots and one dissolving shot at the very end of the opening sequence.

As well as using transitions we also edited some brightness, contrast and speed of our shots to enhance certain scenes and create a separate mood for each.

Shot list

Here is our chronological ordered list from the beginning to the end of shots we we have used within our opening sequence:

Extreme close up of a hand on a computer mouse
Point of view shot of the computer screen when the Facebook password is being entered 
Point of view shot of the credits being wrote onto the screen
Point of view shot of the computer screen as the user is logging in
Close up of the stalkers reflection in the computer screen
Point of view shot of the credits being wrote onto the screen
Point of view shot of the computer screen as the photo's are being searched through
Point of view shot of the credits being wrote onto the computer screen
Point of view shot of the computer screen as a photo is being saved
Point of view shot of the computer screen as 'Nottingham' is being searched into Google Maps
Point of view when searching for the area the victim lives in 
Extreme close up of the villains lips
Over the shoulder shot of a hand stroking the computer screen
Point of view shot of the computer screen as the film title appears 

Over the shoulder shot of the villain 
Establishing shot, panning across the garden to the shed 
Tracking shot of a hand running across banister 
Close up of the dripping padlock
Close up of the villain unlocking the door 
High angled shot of the villains timetable
Close up of walking feet
Medium long shot of the victim walking
High angled point of view shot of the grass being walked upon
Close up of a clenching fist
Medium long shot of the victim walking (shot from behind)
Mid shot of the villain (side profile)
Mid shot of the victim looking at her phone
Extreme close up of the phone with a text message reading "I'm watching you" 
Medium long shot of the victim turning her head to look behind her
High angled close up of the villains burning timetable    

Rough Cut

This is the rough cut of our thriller opening; we have tried our best to stick to our storyboards and shot list which we prepared before filming. over all we feel we have portrayed our story line clearly through the shots we have sued but we also know there are a a fair amount of things that we need to do on our final cut to improve the opening.

Mise-en-scene

We plan to use a small variety of props within it our narrative, including:

A set of keys, these keys are used to open the isolated room where the stalker keeps all his guarded information about the victim. 

A timetable, this scrappy timetable is significant because this where the stalker presents his information on where the victim is, when she's there and who she's with. This will be used a few times in the opening sequence. 

A phone, the phone is held by the girl being stalked, Lucy, and is used toward the end of the opening credits where she receives a text from an unknown number.  

The costume we plan to use is normal, casual clothes for the victim to allow the audience to relate to her and create a sense of realism.

The villain will not be shown completely in the opening sequence however parts of the villain will be shown; we aim to dress the villain in dark clothing to create a sense of mystery and to create a clear contrast between the victim (coloured, casual dress) and the villain (dark, obscure dress).

We have also created a contrast between the two protagonists by using a vary of lighting depending on which character is being shot; 

When the victim is being shot we have used bright, natural lighting to allow the viewer see and recognise her with ease, this sharp lighting doesn't give her any opportunity to hide away or blend in to the background of the shot. Giving the suggestion that if she cannot hide from the  viewer she definitely cannot hide from the stalker. 

Where as all shots of the villain are darker and clouded making it more difficult to see the villain, this links to his secretive persona and suggesting that if the viewer finds it difficult to see him and hardly know what he looks like the victim has no chance of suspecting that he is stalking her.    

Anamatic

We created a story board to display our camera shots we aim to use in our opening sequence; this enabled us to have a rough idea of what our final opening sequence will look like. We then took pictures of each box in the story boards and selected them all together, ran them on a loop, added zooms and fades  which eventually lead to us creating a short anamatic. Creating this anamatic gave us a clearer idea of what our rough cut will look like, helped us arrange the order of our shots and let us experiment with different angles that we could incorporate into our opening sequence.    

Narrative

Our narrative consists of a teenage girl called Lucy being stalked and molested by an anonymous character close to her, this person collects numerous photos, items and information about Lucy and builds up his own personal fact file about her and her life. In our narrative we have two main characters involved: 

• The Anonymous stalker - an anonymous character who we know is stalking Lucy, but we are unaware of who he/she is.
•  Lucy Jackson - Lucy is a middle class teenage girl attending college, who is the character being stalked. 

The reason we chose to base our storyline on a stalker is because its a typical thriller based type of narrative which we feel we could create successfully with the help of other previous and similar style stalked based films.

In our opening credits we plan to give the suggestion of there being a stalker by filming shots of someone gathering information and images of a teenage girl and working over them, we aim to include shots of him reading over previous recorded notes, forming new notes, scanning through written texts and flicking through images of this girl and others close to her. We then plan film the stalker watching Lucy walking home from college. We plan to show elements of the stalker including close ups of hands, feet and the side profile of the face/back of the head, we feel this would be effective as it gives an insight of the stalker but still allows this person to be an unknown figure, which creates mystery.

Credits

We originally planned to involve our credits by setting them on objects within the room at the begging of the opening, for example the directors names would be wrote in chalk on the wall of the stalkers isolated room, the actors starring within the sequence typed on a document, the film company spelt out in objects on the floor also within the room and the name of the film printed on the face of the scrapbook the stalker uses to collect his information.  

However we tried some of these methods of presenting our credits and didn't feel they looked professional enough, after some consideration and plenty of trial and error practice we found an effective way to display our credits. 

We used a text displaying application on windows paint to write the credits and filmed this from the computer screen as it was being written on to the black background, we purposely filmed these section of the sequence in a shaky, distorted manor to add to the creepy, chilling effect we aimed to create. 

Setting

For our location we aim to set the teenage girl, Lucy, in an ordinary house hold environment in an urban setting to create realism, but we plan for the stalker to be mostly shot in an old rustic shed in a rural setting to create the sense that he is isolated suggesting secrecy.

We have captured some images of some of the places we plan to use; we have chosen this dull, worn, eerie shed located at the bottom end of a long garden, we felt this was perfect for our stalkers base where he does all his secret work and keeps all his closely guarded information.

We also chose this long, thin pathway leading up to the shed to film the stalker when he is walking at the beginning of the credits.

     

We also plan to film the parts where the victim is being stalked in this park; we chose a park because we though it was would appear to be a natural environment which we felt would create verisimilitude. 

Production companies

The production company we have chosen to represent our film is New line cinema; 

we have chosen this company because it has produced many other successful thriller films such as the Final Destination series, the Rush hour series and Se7en. All of which are on going successes so we feel it would be a suitable production company to use for our thriller.

instead of typically using the original new line cinema anamatic we have created our own to use to stick to the consistent theme we have created for our opening sequence:

We used a text displaying application on windows paint to write the text and filmed from the computer screen as it was being written on to the black background, we purposely filmed this section of the credits in a shaky, distorted manor to add to the creepy, chilling effect we aimed to create.  

Target audience

We decided our  target audience should be aimed at people aged  over 15, we chose this age market because we feel the narrative would appeal to a teenage audience  the most and would play on their mind as the girl being stalked in our opening is a teenager herself. We have rated our film at age 15 because the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), an independent, non-governmental body which has classified cinema films for a number of years, states that for 

a film that contains:

• frequent strong language

• portrayals any sexual activity
• strong violence
• discriminative language or behaviour

Should be rated at age 15, we feel our narrative may include some of these factors so we think it would be suitable to rate it at this specific age group. 

Filming schedule

We decided to film the majority of our footage in February as we had a holiday from sixth from within that month; we planned to use Paige's garden to film some of the scenes in as she had a garden shed that worked well for our stalkers isolated room. We planned to film the other shots in a large grass area next to a local park near Leah's house which was convenient to us as it wasn't very far away from where Leah lived.

February 15th - on this day we decided to film the parts in Paige's garden; we started filming at around 4 pm because we though the lighting outside wouldn't be too bright but also not too dark by this point, we needed a source of natural but not too harsh lighting. We filmed Joe (playing the villain) walking through Paige's garden, running his hand across the banister leading up to the shed in the garden, opening the shed door, looking over the stalking timetable and all the other shots that he was included in. We successfully filmed all the right footage with Joe in that we needed on this day.

February 17th - on this day we went to the local park near Leah's house to film the footage of Leah (as she playing the role of the victim). We started filming at the park at around 2 pm, we chose this time as we needed brighter, harsher lighting on so it was clear to see her on camera. However because of the intense brightness on this day, the shot of the phone with the text reading "I'm watching you" couldn't be read clearly by the camera as the light was reflecting on to the screen meaning you see the camera through it and could hardly read the text message. We realised we had to re-schedule a time to film this shot.

February 18th - on this day the weather wasn't suitable for filming outdoors so we decided to film the footage from the computer of the stalker on Leah's Facebook page; these shots took a lot of time accuracy and plenty of trial and error shots as it was difficult to film from the computer screen with out catching the cameras reflection. eventually we secured all the right shots that we needed and had completed another section of our filming. Later on on this day we filmed the shots of our friend Joe (playing the villain) sitting by the computer screen including his hand resting on the mouse and him pressing his lips together.

February 23nd - on this day we filmed all the remaining filler shots that we needed including the padlock, the burning timetable and re-filming of the phone, the lighting was darker on this day so it was clear for the camera to pick up the writing on the text message.

When returned back from the holiday we uploaded and edited all of our footage, but because we had filmed some shots horizontally they didn't look right once they had been uploaded, for this reason we had to re-do some filming over the a few weekends in order to get the best shots that we could.

We had finished the majority of our filming by mid March, but still had to change and develop some scenes which we were pointed out through our feedback.

Discarded Ideas

When we first started this project our initial ideas were not completely planned out; we knew that it had to be an opening sequence for a thriller film however we did not know exactly what plot and narrative we were going to follow which would enable our product to fall into this specific genre.


We had various ideas at first about what storyline we were going to follow; one of the ideas we discussed was based around a detective who was investigating a serial killer (similar to the narrative in Se7ev) although we thought this was a effective and interesting narrative we didn't really feel comfortable with this specific storyline as we thought it might be quite hard to give the suggestion of a serial killer and we believed we could adapt more to a storyline easier to portray.


We chose to base our opening sequence on a stalker. We believed the storyline we have chose now fits us perfectly as we could experiment with different camera positions much more effectively and could really adapt with it and develop on the idea of a stalker.

We were inspired by films such as the Stalker, Fatal Attraction and One Hour Photo. We gained ideas from watching these movies, to then develop onto our own, to create our opening sequence 'The Pursuer'. 

Inspirations

After watching and analysing many other thriller based films that appealed to us we have found many inspirations, including; Seven and Memento for their interesting narratives and opening credits, but particularly Notes on a scandal which inspired us the most as its also a stalker based film which involves characters in a similar age group and situation to ours. 

A directors that has mainly influenced us is Christopher Nolan; a British-American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Most known for working on The Dark Knight Trilogy, the science fiction/heist film inception and (the ones that inspired us the most) psychological thrillers Memento and The Prestige. In Memento constant use of photos inspired us to incorporate photo's into our opening sequence, in our opening we have used photos took from a social networking site to bring it more up to date and to link to our target audience (teenagers).  

Another influence to us was Alfred Hitchcock; probably one of the most famous thriller directors. His style of work is very unique and recognisable. He was known to be the master of suspense, we wanted to create the same high levels of suspension within our opening sequence with the tension building soundtrack, quick and snappy shots, and no real reveal of the villain involved. 
We tried to create a similar feel to our villain as he did in his hit film, Psycho. In Psycho the protagonist didn't speak much which created high suspension and tension, in our opening sequence the villain doesn't speak at all; giving it the same apprehensive feel. 

A final highly influential director we found was David Fincher; an American film and music video director who is known for his dark thrillers, such as Seven, The Game, Fight Club, and Panic Room. the opening sequence for his thriller Seven inspired us immensely. We took many ideas from the opening of seven but tried to put our own twist on it; we used a similar stalker based opening involving collection things to do with the victim but instead of presenting them in books and on printed photo's we showed it all through a computer to appeal to our target audience.