Film Brief

Film brief


The task set for us is to make the first 2 minutes of a horror movie; the purpose of this is to realise the organisation and prep that goes into film making.

We have decided to make our horror film in the sub-genre of psychological thriller, we chose to do this as the movie will be twisted and the aim is to make the audience think. The horror genre has evolved in the past few years. From 'slasher-flicks', where there is not really much of a story, apart from a succession of characters being picked off one by one, with a man and a woman surviving u0ntil the end, to a film like Saw(2004) which brought gore to a different level. Saw breaks many of the generic conventions of horror, demanding so much more from the audience in terms of their expectations. The audience of Saw will be shocked, surprised, challenged and have have an experience that may stay with them for time.

Our brief was to produce the first two minutes of a horror film.

We created a logo and a very short ident for our production company, as every film that we looked at had the institution before the opening or credits, giving the production its first sense of identity.

The opening of our film starts with a black screen for a second with a heartbeat sound fading up. This extra-diegetic sound will suggest the genre immediately, so that the audience has the opportunity to attune themselves to the genre. The sound of a heartbeat is one that is commonly associated with the horror genre. In a horror film, one of the aims is to raise the audience's heartbeat, to increase feelings of stress in what is perceived to be a safe environment.

The camera then pans across a wall/board covered in photos of Rachel, who the audience will assume to be the protagonist. These photos show Rachel in a variety of situations and we want this shot to show the audience that an antagonist has been stalking her. The way that we could show she is being stalked is through some obviously long-shot photos. we could symbolise this with a red crayon circle over a map, with an arrow pointing to a particular photograph. The wall/board is also covered in newspaper articles about vairous attacks on women.

Then there wil be a snap fade to blackout and the audience will see the male antagonist in a junkyard rummaging through scrap metal trying to find weapons.

Another snap blackout, and we see the male character either pouring acid on on a picture of Rachel or scribbling on her face.

Another snap blackout will resolve as we see Rachel sitting at a bus stop with her university books and bag. This is just a normal day for her. A bus or large vehicle then drives past and obstructs the camera. When we see Rachel sitting at the bus stop again, the male character is revealed to be standing behind her in his black hoodie. The heartbeat sound effect has been getting rapidly faster as the scenes switch from scene to scene.

Fade to: a heavy gasp disrupts the heartbeat and the camera looks out of Rachel's perspective (point of view shot). The sound of heavy, obviously, male footsteps and Rachel begins to scream and shout. She is asking who is there? and where is she? She is panicking, the camera then reveals that Rachel is tied to a chair and then quickly pans around the room, zooming onto a shadow, a broken chemical bottle and then back onto Rachel where it reveals her face and the audience can see she has suffered a horrific acid attack to her face. After Rachel screams, the footsteps fade away from her and you can hear a man laugh. Rachel screams again and asks who's there and what have they done to her? He laughs again and begins to tease her. The woman is frantic and crying while the man remains calm. While he continues to tease her in a flirty manner, Rachel begins to cry. The man then starts a guessing game with Rachel, making her guess what object he is going to kill her with and he laughs a slow evil laugh. The camera then pans onto Rachel's eyes she looks straight into the camera as she gasps, this is when the audience become aware of the damage of the acid attack to her eyes.
Then you hear and object drop and the screen goes blank and the film title appears.

Later in the film the audience become aware that after the attack Rachel starts having bad nightmares reliving the experience. Rachel doesn’t leave the house after having a number of these dreams as she becomes petrified of men in hoods. She feels trapped, venerable and unsafe.The very last shot in the film is off people from the mental asylum knocking on her door, so then the audience can tell she is being taken to be sectioned. We also discover that the man had attacked Rachel as a revenge plot on Rachel's fiance who he had worked with.

However, as time goes on, she comes to terms with her condition and vows to seek revenge on her attacker. Just as he stalked her for a long time, now the tables have turned. Even with her disabilities, she becomes a feisty, focused assassin who becomes obsessed and tranfixed with seeking revenge on men who committ senseless random, violent attacks on women.