Props update

We've been talking about what were going to need in terms of prop quite a bit now, here's some details.

This is my favourite prop, an old leather suitcase, thought we could use it for the scene where the detective comes home to find his wife dead.

This is pretty cool, its a lunchbox shaped like an old radio, it had vodka in it. It's going in the kitchen for the scene where he finds his wife dead.

Black document wallets for the titles.

Just a few bits and pieces, mostly my costume, see the little metal badges, thought they'd be cool as part of the "shamed detective" idea.

The Polaroid photos, my printer wasn't happy to print them in grey scale, so we'll have to shoot those bits normally, and edit them to black and white on the iMacs. I thought they had Polaroid colour photos in the fifties though.

The envelope for the Polaroid photos.

Some other little bits, thought these would suit as things on the table, but also thought about a little, evidence assembly montage, similar to Se7ens opening scene.


So there it is, i took out twenty quid last week to buy the props, but so far it's all been stuff we have or £2.05s worth of stuff from Fovia. Maybe i was expecting too much. I've still got to have a look around some shops in town for:

• A trilby/fedora - whats the difference?
• A "trench coat" - i thought we had that sorted, but Monty was thinking of this:

• A few more evidence files, i can't even find a picture of what Monty descirbed to me.
• A picture of myself as a criminal, so a mugshot, with a board with my name and that.

Costumes, Characters and Props

Our main character, the protagonist of our story, is the detective. We've decided for our story to have a 1950's theme, so a noir feel, this is because these films are pretty much all crime-thriller, and we have to dress accordingly. We plan for him to be wearing a long coat, a shirt and tie, suit trousers and smart shoes, and a fedora. We've got all of this, the only thing we have to do is have two ties, one for the present time when he is in the attic, and one for during the flashback.

The antagonist of our story is the burglar. We were discussing this and were unsure of how to have this character dress. We didn't want to say, "just wear a balaclava", that's really cliché, and that's something we wanted to avoid. We decided on a black jacket, a black beanie, plain black gloves, we couldn't decide between jeans or suit trousers, we didn't want a completely stereotypical burglar, and again, smart shoes. This character only appears once for a few seconds, but we felt it was important that we made as much effort with him as the other two characters.

Finally we have the wife of the detective. Because of filming dates we thought we would struggle with this, but luckily our group is filming on Monday, so we'll have the camera over the weekend, so we can film any scenes with her in at the weekend. We want the stereotypical dress code of the 1950's, so a cardigan, skirt, tights and the slippers girls wear that look like they're about to fall off, you know the ones. A necklace, ring, hair tied back maybe, little details like that to finish it off.

In terms of props, there isn't much we need which we don't already have to hand. We need to get some paper files to write the titles on, and put together some newspaper articles about the story, this seems easy enough. We plan to make these, print them off and stick them to the front page of existing newspapers, which we have plenty of, to make them look official, or we could leave them loose, so it appears as if the detective has kept them purposely as clippings of his career. We have a gun for the robber to use, I'm concerned this is going to be a plastic one with an orange barrel that doesn't look realistic, but I'm assured it'll look the part. We need to get a photo of the detective character and his wife to use as part of the array of evidence, were going to get this when we've got someone willing to work with us, then edit it to black and white, print it off and trim it down to Polaroid photo size.

We have a few scenes that will have shots of the house we film at, which I'm concerned may not look like houses from the 1950's era, this shouldn't be a problem because we can't be perfect, and we can't time travel, so we'll just have to be sure to move anything which wouldn't look right, like a TV, DVDs, microwaves, things like that.

We were discussing getting a few props that they would of have, so on the Saturday before we film I'm going to have a look around in a few charity shops for things we could use as props, things like a Polaroid camera, old books, and so on.

Storyboards

As you'd expect, we've been putting a lot of effort into making some good storyboards, i know, believe me, a good storyboard is key in succeeding.

This was our very first storyboard, its primitive but it was drawn out to give us the basic idea of what he was thinking of for the idea from his pitch.

I drew this one out, it's a little more detailed, and starts to take into account the content of the flashbacks.

This is one we drew out with intention of following on our filming day, it shows stage directions in red, camera angles (some in the number circles, some just written out), sound ideas, and is just more detailed in what the audience sees. Its nicer to look at.

Title Ideas

We’ve been discussing how we want our titles to look in our Thriller production, here are the ideas we came up with.

Idea 1:

This first idea, we were thinking of a typewriter look, with each letter being added to the title in a typewriter font. This would create the effect that the titles are being typed out, on a typewriter, to the audience. We decided on a typewriter for this idea because we want to make a 50’s noir Crime-Thriller, so a typewriter fits in the feel of the era.

Idea 2:

For this idea we thought about mixing it in with footage at the start of the thriller, after the character has been introduced, but before the flashbacks. The detective is in his attic looking through old evidence files, the titles on the evidence file say, for example:

“Case 0602

Detective: Actors name”

“Evidence file 73

Director: Directors name”

These would look really effective and work really well in the theme of looking through old evidence files.

Thriller Update

Just thought i'd keep you updated. We agreed on idea one, about the shamed detective having mysterious flashbacks about how he fell from the height of his career. At the moment were working on some mock storyboard, title ideas and getting together costumes and props.

Thriller Pitches

We recently presented out Thriller Pitches, here they are.

Idea one.

Our first idea is about a shamed detective in his attic looking through old evidence files, reminiscing about before what happened, happened. He has flashbacks of his career and how it slowly deteriorated.

These show location, props and costume. For location, we've found a number of suitable places we can film the attic scenes, and for the flashbacks we would film them in a variety of places, based on what the flashback is. We have plans for a car crash, which we would film on a country road. This would be out of the way, and we wouldn't be disturbed by traffic.

Idea two.

This idea is about a sinner who has gone into a confession box to confess to a priest about his sins, but after a while he notices the priest isn't who he thought he was. Personally, i'm unsure of this idea, i don't know whether we would be able to film in a church, and i don't know if we'd be able to make two mintues of footage.

As shown, most of the filming, if not all, would be in a church or a churchyard. I don't know if we would be allowed to film here.

Idea three.

This idea revolves around a burglar who has broken into a house hoping to steal some valuables, but soon starts finding strange paraphinalia relating to murder, kidnap, etc. He then enters a room and finds something that we don't see, we only see his horrified reaction, and someone knocking him unconscious. He then wakes up tied to a chair in a dark room.

Well, there they are. We like the first idea the most.