Pitch notes

LIZZI,DANNI and CHLOE

Slide One.

Films of the thriller genre are known to be some of the best-selling films in today’s society, and on average make a worldwide income of around $200 million in the first month of screening.

We have chosen to go deeper into this, and have decided to create a psychological thriller based on three things: 
It is an incredibly popular genre, and so will attract and appeal to a large audience. 
It is commonly known that this particular sub-genre generates a lot of money for the film industry. 
There are few films of this sub-genre in production at the present time, making them much more desirable to our target audience.

Slide Two.

Via research ranging from interviews to questionnaires, we have decided that our chosen target audience will be within the 18 to 30-age range, as we have found it is primarily this age group that favors the genre of thriller. 


Slide Two.
Our primary audience will be females within this age range, and secondarily males, since research has shown that it is predominantly females that are interested in the sub-genre of psychological thrillers. By aiming our film at a female audience, it is more likely to become successful and meet the correct criteria while realistically adhering to the masses.

Slide Three.

During our research process, we also found that the mass of answers we received showed that psychological thrillers were preferred over other popular sub-genres, such as action, crime and supernatural.
We similarly found that the majority enjoy some form of violence within this genre, be it physical or mental in order to satisfy their subconscious desire for some form of taboo content that would not be acceptable in society.

Slide Four.

The basic plot to our film will be set in the 1960’s, and revolve primarily around our antagonist, a thirty seven year old man named Eric Mathieson, who lives in a remote home close to a stretch of road in the Netherlands, which he offers for the night to travellers. The narrative will reveal that he was once a respected neurologist, before losing his license after developing psychological problems due to witnessing the brutal death of his wife and unborn child in a car crash. However, being intelligent our antagonist will know that there is something wrong with the function of his mind, and so dedicates his life to attempting to put this right and rebuild his inner equilibrium. In order to do this, he kidnaps men, women and children as they sleep and confines them to a small room built underneath his home, where he binds them and performs a number of experiments on them to test exactly how far the human mind can be pushed before entirely breaking, and then if it can be rebuilt. If he fails, he kills them and disposes of the body.
As the narrative continues, he will be faced with a particularly quick-witted victim who attempts to escape, wounding him and herself in the attempt, though will do this to no avail. The ending will be left open to the viewer’s digression, when our antagonist will simply be seen left, kneeling by his victim’s body and wounded himself, before he is seen again at the front of his house, closing the door on us.

Slide Five.

We plan on addressing several themes and representations throughout, conventionally found within the thriller genre and particularly the psychological sub-genre.

Realism – There will be a clear sense of reality versus illusion, particularly found through a point of view shot, where we will see things through the effected victim’s eyes.

Disability – We will address this in a slightly unconventional manner, and look at the disabilities that psychological disturbances can bring about rather than physical disabilities.

Mind Games – There will be a clear sense of the disturbance of the mind, particularly within scenes where we will see our antagonist performing his tests on others and breaching their minds defense.

Obsession – Our antagonist will show an obvious obsession with his one goal, to study the mind and fix his own at the expense of other lives.

Horror of Personality – We hope to give some insight into the true, visceral nature of mankind, and have taken many of our influences from men such as Stanley Milgram and John Watson, both men known for imposing psychological tests on humans.

Human Subconscious – Similar to the Horror of Personality, this will apply to revealing our raw need for normality and knowledge.

Slide Six.

Using Todorovs narrative structure, we will be coming into our plot at point three: At the point of recognition that there has been a disruption. This of course, will be a disruption in our natural world and also a disruption of the natural state of the mind.

Through doing this the audience will instantly be thrown into confusion and the conventional question of ‘why?’ will be asked. This also allows the audience to experience a sense of suspense and fear of the unknown situation they have been placed into.

To do this, we will specifically use the mise-en-scene of our setting to our advantage and attempt to create an eerie, disturbing mood instantly. This will be done through a variety of ways, such as the use of shadow and silhouette to increase the feeling of the unknown, and information being hidden. Dim lighting, and an unmotivated camera will add to this effect and create a sense of unease, obstructing the audience from any tangible information to begin with. We will also focus heavily on the sound element and plan to use a lot of silence, with occasional disruptions in the form of loud, electronic, and discorded notes paired with the non-diegetic sound of screams, as the camera distorts, matching the sound. At the end of the opening sequence, we will switch this around and turn the scream into a diegetic noise before ending on a blank screen and therefore grasping the audience instantly, creating tension and again bringing in the aspect of an uneasy silence.

Slide Seven.

This is a picture of our ideal location. As you can see, there is a lot of debris and scaffolding, peeling paint, rotting floor boards and general deterioration that would be ideal for a film following the conventions and themes we have listed.
This is actually a picture from the abandoned Stafford County Lunatic Asylum and would be accessible, but would require many months to receive permission to use.

Because of this, we have decided to use one of two locations we have access to at the moment. The first would be the underground rooms located in the small church in Cheddleton, which we have permission to use if need be. The second would be an unused barn in Endon. In order to create the same disturbing atmosphere found in the picture on the screen, we would have to take serious consideration into what to do with our space.

Some ideas we had would be to line the floors with cloth, paints and dirt, as well as using old papers and photographs, littering them around the room to create a very dirty and untrustworthy atmosphere. We would also place a single chair in the middle of the space, and bundles of rope, frayed at the edges around the room to be used as props during filming. This alone would create a very distressing scene.

Slide Eight.

The only character we plan on initially introducing will be our antagonist. We will do mostly through camera and editing, keeping the camera unmotivated but allowing the character to constantly pass through the frame. This repeated motion will familiarize him with the audience, and the lack of lighting will create the sense of suspense we require.

The victim seen in the opening sequence will be of little importance, and so will only be seen once throughout the entire film. They will be a mere symbol of the narrative and our antagonist’s motives and so will simply come into view as a shadow, submissive to the looming figure of our antagonist.