Possible Locations

Elthorne Park & Canal (by Maya)

This location is ideal for our opening sequence, as we require a playground area and a woodland area. In my opinion, the woodland area looks sinister which would add an effect to the opening sequence to make the atmosphere more tense and eerie.
However, the disadvantage with this location, is that the woodland and canal area is quite far from the playground area, therefore it would create a problem with filming our characters running from the playground to the forest area.



This shows the playground and the area surrounding it.


This shows the playground.


This shows the close surroundings of the playground.


Another picture of the playground area.


This is a trail up to the canal.


This shows the area in front of the canal/woodland area.


Further down is the canal, and surrounding it is a woodland area.


This shows a pathway leading to a woodland area.


This is a bench area, next to the woods.


This shows the woodland area.

Analysis of our questionnaire-Amber, Aimee and Maya

From our questionnaires that we handed out to other students from our school, we were able to find out the following:

We found that the most popular thriller films were:

• The Dark Knight

• Saw

Psycho

Donnie Darko

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Question: Are any of your favourite films thrillers?


From this chart, we are able to see that from the majority of the people that filled out the questionnaire, their favourite films are thrillers, suggesting that it is a popular genre, and that there is a wide audience for it.

Question: What is your favourite way of watching films?

This chart shows that the most popular way of watching a film is on TV, although it is closely followed by DVD/Blu Ray, and then by cinema. This will be helpful for us to find out who our target audience will be.

• What aspect of a thriller do you enjoy the most?
  
  

It seems that the most popular aspects of thrillers were Tension and Action for both genders. Fear-factor and Adventure came up as joint-third as preferred aspects for females. Fear-factor as third, with mystery and adventure, coming up joint-fourth as preferred aspects for males. This means that our opening sequence should include some of these aspects in order to keep our audience captivated.

• Was type of thriller do you enjoy the most?

This question will help us determine who our target audience is and what they want to see in a thriller film.
This graph shows that action and horror are the most popular types of thriller amongst females, whereas Action and Sci-Fi was the most popular type amongst males. This is a positive result as our opening sequence is a mix of horror/sci-fi/action.

• Do you like thrillers?

Almost 75% of people like the thriller genre. We found that both females and males had a higher percentage of people who did like thrillers, rather than not. This shows that our target audience could be teenagers from both genders.

Our Questionnaire

Age:

Gender:

How would you describe a thriller?

Do you like watching thrillers?

What type of thriller do you enjoy watching?
Action
Sci-Fi
Horror
Crime
Gangster

What aspect of a thriller do you enjoy most?
Tension/suspense
Action
Mystery
Gore
Fear Factor
Adventure
Supernatural

Are any of your favourite films thrillers?
Yes
No

If YES, please state which films:

What is your favourite way of watching films?
TV
Internet
DVD/Blu Ray
Cinema
Portable Device (IPod etc)

Four people who had nuclear experiments tested on them, they broke out and are now hunting the Doctor who experimented on them and are now targeting his close family and friends to get to him.

Would you watch this film?

Opening Sequence Plot: Similar Films -By Amber

Our opening sequence holds many of the same plot lines as:

• 28 Days Later (click here to see the trailer)

• 28 Weeks Later (click here to see the trailer)

• I Am Legend (click here to see the trailer)

The similarities include a new breed of human, created by some variation of a scientific experiment which goes terribly wrong, escaping from the place they were created in and going around killing and biting innocent people and, in turn, spreading around the virus or gene which makes others turn into mutants too.
We decided, once seeing the significant amount of similarities, that we needed a slight change of plot so we added these unique concepts:

• The people are mutants, not zombies
• They are super strong, smart and fast.
• They have not lost complete ability to speak, and thus communicate with broken words. although they do not speak eloquently, fluently or regularly.
• They do not senselessly kill random people.
• They are seeking revenge against the scientist, Doctor Johnson, who was leading the experiment that changed them into what they now are.
• They go about this by kidnapping and killing those who are closest to him.
• A military force will be the ones with the mission of finding and eliminating these mutants.
• The mutants are all 15+ years of age only

In comparison, we found this was definitely the preferable plot, so we chose this as our final idea. There is, however, a film which has a similar plot to this. The film is called 'The Omega Man'. It was created in 1971 and the plot is that most of the human population is killed off in a war but then a new strain of the Plague infects the majority of the remaining human race and turns them into nocturnal, homicidal, albino mutants. These mutants are, similarly to our mutants, also quite intelligent and able to speak, they also have a reason for killing other humans (although here is where the difference lies) in that they want to destroy all that is left of technological society.

Thankfully though, there is enough variation in the plot for us to continue on with ours without seemingly copying the plot of this film.

Initial Ideas

Ideas

Idea Number 1:

The narrative:

• Detectives find a series of murdered women with related marks on their body. Detective Conolley and Detectective Hail have to solve the mystery murders, paying attention to all around them, including the corrupt instution that they work in.

Characters (in the opening sequence):

• Detective Conolley

• Detective Hail

• Sandra Ford - the head forensic scientist

• A murdered woman

Locations (in the opening sequence):

• The kitchen of a house

Clues about the film's narrative:

• The markings of the corpse, and markings on the body of another corpse in a photograph

• The characters will have a dialogue that will indicate that the murders are related

Idea Number 2:

The narrative:

• A group of mutated humans from a nuclear testing experiment gone wrong, go on an abducting rampage. They do this to convert humans into mutants to restore their type and to take revenge on the humans that destroyed them. The country's army then have to save the nation by capturing and killing the mutants.

The characters (of the opening sequence) :

• Emily Johnson - A young girl of around 12 years old
  

• The 4 main mutants
  

• Caroline Wilson (17 years old) and Lucy Green (16 years old) - Two teenage friends

The locations (of the opening sequence):

• A park playground

• A forest/woodland area of the park

Clues about the film's narrative:

• A radio voice over telling the audience about the science experiment

• The audience will see the mutants

• An innocent child is killed

Development of idea number 2:

As we analysed our second idea that appealed to us the most, we recognised that the narrative was too similar to the film 28 Days Later. Therefore, we decided to change the narrative of idea so that we had a more unique plot :

Narrative:
A small group of mutated humans who where in a nuclear science experiment that went wrong, escape their containment hospital in persuit of seeking revenge of the Doctor who was in charge of the experiment and responsible for it going wrong. They do this by threatening the life of those closest to the Doctor.