IDEAS FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

26/9/14 | PLANNING | BRAINSTORMING

In today’s lesson, Harriet, Amber and I discussed ideas for our film opening in more depth. We decided we definitely wanted to do a psychological thriller, and that we wanted it to be about a psychologically damaged teenager who, let out of the psychiatric hospital early, becomes a murderer after seeing a girl being bullied triggers traumatising flashbacks from her childhood. We also decided on a rough sequence of events, as well as some finer details:

·         The film opening would start with the main girl (played by me) sitting on a bed in the hospital while her early release forms are being signed. We are thinking that she will have multiple personality disorder, but we will do more research into this to make sure we have a disorder that bests fits our character.

·         You will see the forms scattered over a large, old fashioned wooden desk, lit by a desk lamp (Harriet can supply this prop). In the background will be a heartbeat sound effect and then the light will flick off and in the pitch black that is left the film title will appear, pulsing in time to the heartbeat. We have not decided what the film might be called yet, so we still need to brainstorm ideas for that.

·         After this you will see my character at home in bed, doing an innocent activity such as reading and her mother or father switching off the light, and then her climbing out her window with a weapon. This fits the MPD we are thinking she will have and shows she is emotionally unstable. We will use rooms in our own houses to film this scene.

·         We are not sure on the exact sequence of events after this point, but we know it will include my character seeing a little girl (probably played by Niamh Wilson) being bullied by two other girls (played by Amber and Harriet). This will trigger a flashback to a time in the girl’s childhood when she was bullied herself by girls who were more popular than she was and thought my character was 'not cool'. The camera will zoom into her eye and back out into the flashback. This flashback then turns my character murderous and she kills the two girls bullying Niamh’s character.

·         My character will not have premeditated the murder as it is triggered by a flashback. You will not see the actual murder happen but we will use the power of suggestion.