First group meeting and ideas

Yesterday, I met up with my group (myself, Tanwyn Smith-Meek and Helen Blyth) to decide on some ideas for our 2-3 minute introduction to a thriller. After thinking though several ideas, such as a chase scene, we decided that the best thing we could do to show off our ability was to have a simple plot where two men meet in a desolate area, hand over a briefcase, and a betrayal takes place. Although the finer parts of the plot have not yet been decided, I thought a good idea would be to have 1 minute of hearing one persons thoughts on the issue while he approaches the destination, and then 1 minute of the other persons. The final minute would be the trade/betrayal itself. This idea gives us a large amount of room to show off camera shots and editing - I thought that using a split screen with one character on each half would be a powerful use of both those things. With two characters and a briefcase, the rule of thirds will be very easy to use, with the men on either side and the briefcase in the middle.
For the "desolate area", we have decided to bring video footage of somewhere we think would be good in for monday, so we can see how the lighting ect works in the place, what might get in our way, and how we might film it. I am going to go to the car park which I have already written about, as I still think it would be a prime location, especially if we could get a good view of the cityscape. However, I would need to find out when it shuts, and when I could film without distractions. Other ideas so far include a forest and a lake, but I'd like to see footage of them both before I try to list good and bad points, as I am currently biased.We have decided that we do not want to create a film which challenges the thriller genre, but takes successful parts from other thrillers, and rolls them into one. This is not only very likely to succeed, as what has already been proven can rarely go wrong, but this will also give us the chance to learn lots of new techniques and watch new films. In short, we think it to be the most efficient way to learn, and that is more important than nearly anything else the subject can give us.Already we have decided that we want to create a dark thriller, which possibly means looking into the film noir genre, and watching some dark psychological thrillers, such as "The Machinist". Studing psychological thrillers also helps us with our rough idea for a plot, as the two characters will need to be very carefully planned out and must have distinct personalities. We have also decided that we want our film to have a style which stands out, maybe influenced by "Sin City", and it's use of high contrasting. It is too early to say how many of these ideas we will stick with, and so to start, we will watch and analyse the thriller genre in it's simplest form, and find out about some of the best techniques used in it, and then conciser the best way to use them for ourselves.