Preliminary Task- Planning

Planning for the Preliminary Task

As a group, we decided that the best way to start thinking about what to include in the thriller opening for our preliminary task, would be to mind map our ideas. By doing this, we were able to establish a brief story line, whilst also considering which techniques and appropriate conventions of a thriller would be best to include in our short narrative, for example the type of sound, editing, camera angles and elements of mise en scene which would be included in our footage.

Here is our mind map of ideas.

Originally, my group wanted to create a complex storyline, with a beginning, middle and end. However, we soon realised that this wouldn't be appropriate for the task in hand, as the while point was to create an opening which would portray the genre of a thriller, whilst including a narrative enigma, so that if this were to be an actual film, the audience would want to carry on watching to find out more.



After deciding that we couldn't add anymore to the mind map, we decided we were confident with our idea and the storyline we wanted to portray. So, we went ahead and produced a detailed storyboard of the camera angles and which characters would appear in each frame, enabling us to visualise what the final footage should look like and to make sure we all agreed and had the same vision with what was to be included.

 

These first 3 shots, quickly sketched onto a mind map allow the audience to realise who the narrative will resolve around.

 The next frames sketched on the mind map show the close up shots, presenting the audience with the character opening the door.

Here the characters will meet and sit opposite each other, separated by a table.

 This part of the mind map is when Character 1 will meet Character 2, they then exchange 4 lines of dialogue.

 The exchanging of dialogue is continued whilst incorporating extreme close up shots and close up shots.

 

The whole point of this task was to put into practice the skills which will be required to go into planning the actual task of creating a opening sequence to a thriller.