First Plot Draft

Our First plot Draft

In a the busy centre of London, 2 ordinary teenagers were going about there everyday lives. school, homework and tests were all a chore, everything was completely normal, but when one of them is invited to a party and over hears a conversation between some shady characters everything changed!
Natalie an ordinary schoolgirl finds herself fighting for her boyfriends life. The police won't help her because his existence has been wiped! all she has is word of mouth and having to overcome many obstacles means every step that she takes, is another step towards never seeing him again.
An epic love tale about a girls fight for true love!


This is the first overall outline of our plot that we have decided on so far. It fits into the thriller genre well and the kidnapping theme was influenced by Nick and Leylas analysis of the thriller 'Taken' which is based on a ransom. However, in order to give our plot a unique selling point, we needed to come up with an interesting twist. I wanted to break some conventions in the form of mixing time periods e.g. having a character from the future in the present day in a thriller situation as it would be interesting to see how someone with a maybe more advanced knowledge would tackle the stressful situation and cope in the world. However this may be too complicated and therefore we decided instead to break the gender conventions by having the female as the hero saving the male, which is completely opposite and breaks all regular gender conventions of the huge, muscular, fearless male rescuing the damsel in distress, and the fact that the main character is female is unstereotypical and therefore, our unique selling point.

Our Second Plot draft

Holly was an ordinary 20 year old, fresh out of the University of Greenwich. Holly's life was great she had a much desired job with times magazine and a handsome boyfriend who she adored. On the night of her 21st birthday she celebrated with all of her friends at a club, the night was young but mike holly's boyfriend could not contain himself, in the middle of this packed party he got onto one knee and proposed to his darling holly. The happy couple headed home but mike needed to fill the car with petrol, they stopped off at the nearest petrol station and filled up, she went in to pay. That was when holly's great night turned bad. She turned with a smile to her boyfriend but he didn't smile back. He was being dragged into a blacked out Mercedes and all holly could do was scream. Trying to find him brings up many obstacles which mean every step that she takes, is another step towards never seeing him again. An epic love tale about a girls fight for true love!

This is the second draft we came up with. However i want to change the main female characters name to something other than Holly as it will get confusing having the same name as me. Also we have since decided a scene in an abandoned petrol station late at night would be an amazing scene to set some shots in as it has the thriller, creepy vibe.

Trailer Analysis: Panic Room and The Dark Knight

As research for our project, each one in our group is analysing an existing thriller genre film to achieve some ideas and find out what the typical conventions a thriller genre holds. We can see what works well, & what we like & dislike about the movie. I decided to watch a film called Panic Room. It stars Jodie Foster & Kristen Stewart and was made in 2002. The plot revolves around a recently divorced middle ages woman and her daughter who have just moved into their New York apartment & it is their first night. When burglars break late that night looking for money, the woman & her daughter hide in the panic room upstairs, however money they want is in the panic room.

This film really builds the tension. The entire movie happens one evening in one location.


I also analyzed the trailer. The opening shot is an establishing shot, panning across New York City, which is obviously an extremely busy city and typical for the thriller genre because anything can happen there. Also, the fact that this storyline is set in such a popular & normal place like New York is even more terrifying for the audience because these terrible events can happen anywhere to anyone. At the start there are many fades to black in between each scene which is suitable for the genre. The inside of the New York apartment is introduced to us & we see that it is old fashioned & very large with several floors & almost completely empty as they have just moved in. The emptiness gives the audience an Erie feel & makes the two women in the apartment seem very vulnerable and unprotected. There are lots of stair bannister's in each shot, which symbolise entrapment, which is obviously the major theme in this movie. It also shows irony as the woman says 'its just the two of us' which makes us suspicious and we find out, it is untrue as they are soon joined by 'bad guys.' There is a really interesting camera shot half way through the trailer where the camera zooms out the bedroom door and backwards through the gaps in the bannister's. It ducks and flies down two levels to reveal the silhouette of a masculine character peering through the window. This camera shot demonstrates how far away the characters are from where the 'bad guys' are entering and therefore, how unaware they are. This is a typical thriller convention as we want to know if & when the character will realise they are in danger and if it will be too late. The overall colour palette of the trailer is extremely dreary, many blacks, blues & greys. This is something we must consider in our trailer as it sets the mood very easily. 1 minute into the trailer, slow music starts to play, building the tension that implies something exciting is about to be shown. The exciting bit is played in slow motion, which helps us to gather what exactly is happening, especially in a trailer because it is so short. Suddenly the music gets louder and faster and builds to a climax then abruptly goes silent. This is a typical technique for thriller genres. It ends with diagetic sound of a voice being played over a black & the movie title showing. Narrative structure, iconography and characterisation have been usesd in Panic Room as the narrative structure is organized in the typical way, it starts at the start and takes place over one night. The character conventions are broken because its the woman and the daughter vs. the three guys, but in the end the woman and the daughter win. Also, they are represented as very smart because she works out ways to defeat the men. Similarly, the daughter is not represented as weak, she too atempts at defeating the men.

I really love the way this trailer starts, with each 'boom' of music, a image is shown in time with the sound. This builds suspense, which is released when you see the man jump off the building. This gets off to a quick start and lets you know straight away that it is going to be an exciting thriller. The production company logos etc. are displayed here. The camera angles sweeping the city at the beggining are amazing and set the location perfectly. It then slightly tones down, some more characters being introduced sitting in an office and getting more in depth into plot, next a car is shown crashing through a wall, then the shot goes back to the people in the office. These changes of atmosphere make the exciting scenes appear even more exciting and significant, as they are in short bursts between the less exciting but vital scenes. The appearence of the character 'The Joker' is striking as he looks so unlike anything else, drawing the attention of the audience as they are interested to know more about this unusual creature. The huge explosions demonstrate what is to come in the film, as they are so extreme, and demonstrate that a large budget has been used to fund as well as special effects. The contrast between scenes that show reality and an everyday life such as the people in the restaurant and at a party, and the extreme shots of unrealistic circumstances are interesting, and indicates that these events are occuring in the real world to normal people, which makes the plot easier for the audience to relate to. The music really gets going around halfway through which is when the majority of the exciting thriller scenes are shown, edited in a fairly fast pace for anticipation. Overall this trailer is great at capturing the attention of the audience due to each snippet of an important and shocking scene.

We Have Decided!

Year 13, A2 Level Media ... Here We Go!
I am in a group of 5 alongside Alex Whittall, Nick Reilly, Leyla Ahmet & Shanyse Johnson. We have decided out of music video or film trailer, to go with the film trailer. Personally i would have preferred to go with the music video but got outvoted by the other members of the group. However we know that with a film trailer, we can include dialogue which makes the plot easier for the audience to follow. We have also decided that we want to make a trailer for a thriller genre & over the next week need to decided on a plot so we can get started :)

Walk Chase Sequence Preliminary Task

In class we were asked to do a walk chase sequence through the school. We planned out the plot of the sequence, & where exactly we wanted to film. Nick & Alex were the actors in the scene, & luckily were already wearing suits as this is the sixth form uniform, so they already looked the part of the stereotypical character involved in a chase scene. However this caused a problem as the next day we filmed, some of their clothes were different, causing continuity issues. But this will remind us in future to make sure of our outfits being consistent throughout the shoot. It was really fun filming around the school & it is surprising how using the right camera angles can make it not look like a school at all. As well as in the school, we also shot accross the road in the park, the change of location making the entire scene more interesting. We had a selection of music tracks suitable & it took us a while to decide on one, as they were all quite different & gave the chase a completely different vibe. The one we decided sets an extremely serious mood & builds the tension.

8 Second Music Video Preliminary Task

We were asked to make a music video for the song 'harder better faster stronger' by daft punk, but for only 8 seconds of the song & it had to be completed in one lesson. We wanted to portray stereotypes & therefore each of us had a character role. The two typical stereotypes; the popular guy playing basketball & the typical girl skipping. Contrasted to the unstereotypical; the girly popular girl playing rugby & the geeky boy playing football. Both totally out of their comfort zones. The editing is really fast & matches the song really well. It was a lot of fun to film because as it was simply a task in lesson, we were not under pressure to film perfectly. A fun fact to know is that when Nick is playing basketball & shoots the ball into the hoop, that was not in fact achieved by him. He spent ages trying to shoot the ball but it refused to go in the hoop. We all ended up having a try & failed every time until luckily Alex finally gets it in. Then after wards we filmed Nick throwing the ball & edited it so that it appears it really IS him shooting the hoop!

Laughley 2007

"Media theory can be defined as a systematic way of thinking about means of commiunication"
"Theory is really nothiing more than a way of thinking what is more systematic & sophisticated than thinking in an everyday sense"