COUNTERPLAY pitch

Below is the pitch for our 2 minute thriller opening COUNTERPLAY.







"A young girl who finds herself in a traumatic experience after a party with a mysterious older man results in a heroic counter-play."

Soundscape for COUNTERPLAY

Above is the non diegetic music we are going to use in the opening 2 minutes of our thriller film COUNTERPLAY. The track is called "turning the screw (pad)"

We chose this music because it works with the action we that will be shown on the screen, the scene with Grace being followed by Lewis down the alleyway. We believe it will raise tension and suspense and is in some ways very similar to the music used in American horror story opening credits which successfully create suspense and raise tension.

We believe the tone of the music connotes feelings of vague fear and unease.  The deep bass notes are usually linked to urban settings and the fact that there are houses in the background of our clip works because it also shows that there are people close by but yet they can do nothing to help Grace, and do not even know that she is being followed and abducted by Lewis.

We are going to have some diegetic music in our thriller which will be diegetic sounds of both characters breathing heavily and the diegetic sound of footsteps which will increase in pace as the characters move more quickly, the fact that this sound will be diegetic will increase tension and raise suspense.

We also have 2 other soundscapes in our opening, the music played when Grace's leaving the party which will only be played for a few seconds but will have the connotations of a teenage party. The other sound will be the Jazz music played over the top of the chess game scene which has connotations of secrecy because many composers believe jazz has a hidden meaning under each of the notes.

This was chosen as a whole group.

Locations for filming COUNTERPLAY

 We decided to film the alleyway scene and the leaving the house party scene in an alleyway in Eaton near Ali's house. This firstly was a convenient location for us because it was near school and we could all walk there with no trouble, it also worked because in the dark the alleyway has an eerie atmosphere in the dark and was perfect for the atmosphere and aesthetic we were aiming for. The alleyway had a few streetlights we could use for our diegetic lighting and there were bushes on the side we could hide in and use non diegetic torchlight to cast shadows across our antagonist's face. The red line on the photo is the direction the alleyway takes behind the houses and the red X is where we were filming which was the corner under a streetlight.

This is the entrance to the alleyway where we were going to film.

 

Below are the photos of the alleyway in the dark so we could get an idea of the aesthetic and style of mise en scene we would have with the film opening.

 

This was created by Amy Roberts (me) but all decisions were made as a group.

 

Shooting template for COUNTERPLAY

Google doc of our shooting template

Here is the shooting schedule for COUNTERPLAY
This was created by Amy Roberts (me)

Actor selection COUNTERPLAY

For our main female character we needed a teenage girl with long hair. She would be leaving a party in the early hours of the morning to walk down a dark alleyway as a shortcut, she would also send a text to her father lying saying she was getting a lift home.

We chose Grace Peacock because she was a GCSE drama student and we could be able to explain to her what we wanted and knew she had experience with acting. Her long blonde hair worked for the aesthetic we were aiming for. The white blonde of her hair also contrasted with the darkness of the alleyway and the shadows of the trees. We also knew her from lessons at school and knew that she would be free after school when we wanted to film.


For our main male character we needed a young adult male in his early twenties. He would need to follow Grace down the alleyway in the dark.

We chose Lewis Hunt because he is 23 and would work for the slightly older man that we wanted to be following Grace down the alleyway. We wanted someone in their 20's who was older than Grace but not too old. His dark hair and the fact he had his hood up helped his face be cast into shadow. We knew that because he is Ali's older brother we could ask him to film with us and he would be free after school when we wanted to film.

For our men, in suits, playing the chess game we wanted 2 young adult males who would be willing to appear in our film and partake in smoking and a game of chess. We decided on Rakib Hussain and Ali Hunt to play these characters. Ali was already part of the filming and directing group, and is taking drama at A level and it made sense to have him playing one of our lead males. We chose Rakib because he was free after school, but also because we believed he would be able to play the part well. Both were free after school when we wanted to film, both of them already smoked which helped with the aesthetic we wished to achieve and both had suits which were the costumes we wished them to be wearing.






This was done by Amy Roberts (me) and all actors were chosen as a group.

COUNTERPLAY Intertextual references

In many thrillers they often make reference to other medias or often they shape their work around someone elses, this is a common theme in many thriller films. An example of intertextual references is in the film TheMatrix which contains many references to the Wizard of Oz such as when Dorothy goes Oz connecting to when Neo goes out of the matrix and into the real world with the others.

Intertextual references are used to enhance and extend the meaning of the film to the audience.

Intertextual references are also used make films more captivating, as the audience has to decipher and notice where they are and figure out where they have seen them before, whether in real life or in another film or aspect of the media. This is something have tried to include in our 2 minute opening.

Some of our ideas for our thriller COUNTERPLAY have been taken from the 1996 film Fear, starring Mark Wahlberg and Reese Witherspoon. The plot for the film Fear is that "When Nicole met David; handsome, charming, affectionate, he was everything. It seemed perfect, but soon she sees that David has a darker side. And his adoration turns to obsession, their dream into a nightmare, and her love into fear." This plot synopsis was taken from IMDB

In our film we wanted to give it a darker edge, we filmed all of it, except the cross cuts to the chess scene at night, the darkness of the shots raises more suspense and tension among the audience and it works really well.

The idea for the cross cuts came from the 2012 film House at the End of the Street. There is a scene in there where they use a few cross cuts to raise tension and create suspense amoung the audience and we decided that this was highly effective and that we should use something like that in our thriller task. The scene (the video of which I have included below) at 2.05 where Carrie Anne escapes and is running towards the house, lived in by Elissa and it cross cuts to Elissa on the phone completely unaware that she could be attacked at any moment. This is hugely effective and another part of the scene that is also highly effective is when we see the room through Carrie Anne's eyes and it flickers at cuts around and this is effective because it shows her perspective and we know how she is feeling.




It is also the ordinary and the extraordinary element that also helps to raise tension. We wanted to use that in ours when we have Grace leaving the party, normally as if nothing is different, then we have Lewis leaning on the car at the end of the drive which only the audience can see, this would raise tension because the audience will be wanting Grace to turn around and see him and not let him creep up on her. This is a contrast of the ordinary and extraordinary because leaving a party is a normal thing to do, but standing, hiding and waiting for someone to leave a party and then to follow them down a dark alleyway is not a normal thing to do.

We wanted to use aspects from both of these films and we took aspects like the shot of the feet walking along the ground from other films which can have different connotations depending on the stride and style of how they walk. In ours we had Grace stumble around to show that she was drunk and we also had her take long strides and not walk in a straight line to back up this.


This was written by Amy Roberts (me)

The Script for COUNTERPLAY

This is the script we have decided to use for COUNTERPLAY we decided to have minimal speaking to raise the tension.

FEMALE

(Walking out of house whilst music is playing)

THANKS! SEE YA!








This was written by Alice Heffer.

COUNTERPLAY costume planning

Here is the costume selection for COUNTERPLAY and the reasons why we chose the costumes for our characters.

http://app.emaze.com/@AOFCLIRC/counterplay


For  our other 2 characters, the men playing the chess game in the cross cuts we decided to have them wearing suits which suggest they are business men, or could connote feelings of masculinity, power and dominance because of their costumes.

Planning mind map for our thriller task

This is the mind map of ideas for our thriller task.

We decided in the end to have our title as "COUNTERPLAY" and the font in which it would be written would be taken from da font and would be "erthqake".

We decided good props for our main, female, character (Grace) to be holding would be a bottle of vodka, vodka would connote a party spirit and show the younger and more wild side of our main character. We also decided she would have her phone with her because technology also works with the age range we were using and then we could use the shot from the story board of her texting her dad to say she was on her way home.

We decided the location would be a city at night and that we would be filming down a dark alleyway which would be spooky and we could use the shadows to hide the antagonists face. We also found a dark alleyway that wasn't too dark because it had diegetic streetlights and then we could also use non diegetic torches to cast shadows and light.

We had our main character (Grace) as a teenage girl leaving a party in the early hours of the morning. Our second main character (Lewis) was the antagonist following her as she left the party and cut down a dark alleyway.


This was drawn by Amy Roberts (me) and decided upon as a group

Storyboard for filming COUNTERPLAY

Below is the storyboard of shots for our media studies thriller filming task. They are in the order of how we will edit them together, but they are not in the order in which we filmed them.

 



 Shots 1-3

 Shots 4-6

Shots 7-9

 Shots 10-12

 Shots 13-15

 Shots 16-18

Shots 19 & 20

 

 

This was drawn and labelled by Amy Roberts (me) and decided upon as a whole group.