Story Board

Then there's a series of fast paced clips for the third act/ climax of the trailer in sync with the ticking sound.

Script for 'Contradiction'

Maria Jones: Kayleigh can you tell us what you remember?

Detective: What happened?

Maria Jones: You can tell us

Detective: Kayleigh? Kayleigh?

Kayleigh: …They’re all dead

Police sirens

News report: Last night, at 11:36 December 5^th an entire family were murdered in their home in Cambridgeshire, only one survivor remains. The Police are linking the murders as they appear to be identical to the ones from 10 years ago, but Detective Maria Jones appeals to anyone who has any extra information to come forward immediately.

Overlapping questions.

Journalist: I’m Peter Stone and I’m a journalist, I just wanted to ask some questions about the family murder.

Detective Jones: I’m not releasing any information.

Journalist: You may have imprisoned the wrong man, I need a story and you need to keep a good reputation…we can help each other.

Policeman: This County depends on us they need to feel safe. We’re right back where we started.

Maria: The suspect always leaves one survivor so they’re left alone with the loss and trauma…

Peter: He feeds off knowing the devastation they’ve caused...

Prisoner:  Let me out! I want to see my family! I didn't do it!

Peter: I think I can figure out who he’s going kill next.

Kayleigh: I don’t know if I can live without my family any longer…

Maria: You’re out of your depth! This is my job not yours!

Peter: You’re just intimidated that I might be able to actually solve this case because you’re incapable without my help!!

Voice message or phone call from killer: Hello Maria, I’ve been watching you, your career will be ruined unless you catch me this time. Time is ticking… Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock (continue saying this)

Locations and Settings

One of the most difficult location to find was the prison; we have a character who's been wrongfully imprisoned for ten years for multiple family murders across Cambridgeshire, so we wanted to have a couple of shots of the prisoner in an attempt to achieve a professional look but this could only be done by having a lifelike location. I was informed by another media student that their friend had used the St Neots museum that was a real life prison, which is 100 years old and so i contacted them and requested to film there and to scope out the location to show the rest of my group.

We were worried that we would never find a location that resembles a prison since we could never go to a real one, however we are extremely lucky to have found this perfect location and it'll look accurate and realistic in our trailer.

Other locations will take place in an office, in houses, outdoors which will all be located in Buckden, this is because they're easy to get to and look how the group had in mind for the rest of the settings. Although some settings that we wanted to include in our project may have to be cut since location hunting can be quite difficult and long process.






















Prison corridor and the cells.

 Back garden.

 Crime scene.

 House of the crime scene.

The detectives office.

Communication and scheduling

 One of the biggest obstacles we have faced as a group and as individuals is scheduling; people have other priorities whether that would be different subjects, jobs or other plans. Last year we had a very small cast for our AS film and didn't need different people, since it was an opening title sequence. However, this year we have heavily depended on communication in order to make sure we're all on track and can achieve to get all the tasks done and work effectively as a team.

For one of our lead protagonists, we have had to work around his busy schedule to figure out which days we can film. Travel has been slightly difficult and because he's so busy, it has made filming with other actors not as easy as we'd hoped.




We have set up a group chat dedicated to our A2 media project and by creating this chat it has made communication, scheduling and exchanging of ideas so much easier. We can send images of our script, story board, actors timetables and discuss ideas and changes towards our trailer. Without online communication with the group, actors and the teachers we would struggle to complete our media trailer.

Props and costumes list

We carefully selected props and costumes that we think would be involved in a crime thriller film, and would emphasise those themes by using them. By looking at other crime thriller trailers, we have been able to use them to source what specific props we would need for typical crime thriller conventions, and what would be expected by our audience to have in our trailer.

White body sheets will be used for the crime scenes; we want to keep the gore down to a minimum for the trailer and save it for the actual film if we were to make it. By having the body sheets it makes filming easier since we wouldn't need to spend time on special effects make up, use lots of other actors and wait for their availability and using the body sheets draws the audience in by showing less, therefore engaging our audience rather than showing them the gory details and revealing too much.

Crime scene number cards are something that we have noticed appearing in crime thriller films and TV shows, and so we are using these to follow crime thriller paradigms so we can be as accurate to what would happen in a real life situation as possible.

 Another crime thriller convention is crime scene tape, this will capture the audiences attention as this will be the first clue to the first murder early on in the trailer.

 Fake blood will only be used when needed as we want to keep the blood and gore down to a minimum; the gory action would normally be left until the actual film is released depending on the certificate rating. By having less violence, gore and blood we can have a lower certificate rating resulting in having a larger audience.

We wanted to have a forensic suit to have a more professional look to our trailer and to highlight the crime element of our A2 film. We feel that this costume won't be used by many A level media students, and so this could make our trailer stand out from others, whilst simultaneously looking accurate and professional and possibly achieving the typical look of a real crime thriller trailer.

We decided to use this as one of the serial killers weapons because most people would be using something predictable like a big knife. We felt that by using a blunt object would be even more menacing and brutal and the deaths of the next victims would be much more violent and gory, all of this is suggested by just featuring the mallet in the killers hand.

 We need reporter microphones to feature early on in the trailer because as expected there would be a crowd of press and reporters lingering around a crime scene, when they are all questioning and harassing Detective Jones and the survivor Kayleigh.

 One of the shots that we want to show in the trailer is a close up of a newspaper article about the recent family murder, this is to constantly remind the audience of what's happened and emphasise that its essential to the plot. Using a newspaper also makes the trailer realistically accurate to what actually happens in the media when a crime has been committed.





After watching trailers such as Se7en and Zodiac, we noticed that usually the detectives will use torches in dark and dimly lit scenes so maybe at some point in our trailer we will feature a scene like that with either Detective Jones or the journalist.

One of our characters is a young policewoman called Jessica Woods, the costume that is need for this character is very basic with the shirt, stab vest, hat, tie and a radio. Involving a character with a costume like this will also highlight our effort into trying to be accurate to a crime thriller and will show that we are making an effort to have a professional look of a real film trailer. This costume is to allow the strong presence of law enforcement come through into our trailer.













The press and reporters will need cameras as well as microphones, this will help to get the flash effect when we film those scenes and create a claustrophobic and busy atmosphere.








A crime board will feature in a crime thriller film/ show almost all the time; most of the case solving will be based around the crime board. Our crime board will feature pictures of past murders of all the family victims, suspects and a map of Cambridgeshire.

Film Pitch: A2 Film Contradiction

USP

What makes our film trailer unique compared to other crime thriller trailers is that we have a strong female lead as the detective, we did this in order to challenge thriller conventions as they usually have male lead roles and female roles are usually just secondary characters.

We also have a young male as one of the lead roles, we wanted  a large age gap of the lead roles because they will have different life experiences and different perspectives in life. By having two different ages in the film, this may attract an older and a younger audience.

These are two actors who are the inspirations for our lead characters, FBI agent Dana Scully from X-Files and Cartoonist Robert Graysmith from Zodiac.

Target Audience

Males and females aged 18-30

Thrillers appeal to young adults, due to their complex narratives, violence, gore etc.

Crime thrillers are usually rated 15 at the lowest, this is because of the violence, sexual references and many other things. So a crime thriller film would be inappropriate for anyone below the age of 18.

Our film trailer will be rated 15, as there will be violence and gore as expected with most crime thriller films.

Production Logo
We wanted to reuse our production logo from last year to save time and concentrate on our film and blogs. However, if we have time we plan to alter it to become a moving production logo.

Plot

A family murders occurs in Cambridgeshire, only one survivor is left in each murder as the murders continue and It has been 10 years since the last murder and a man was imprisoned all those years ago, but now the homicides are happening again and so someone has been falsely accused and imprisoned for a decade. Detective Maria Jones was in control of the homicides all those years ago and now she has to start from scratch and solve the case all over again, but this time with the help of a young male journalist who is need of a great story. If he can help Detective Jones solve the case once and for all, she can maintain her reputation as a well respected detective.

Characters

Female Detective – Maria Jones

Young Male journalist/photographer – Peter Stone

Falsely accused prisoner – Mason Carter

The Survivor – Joshua Philips

Police officer – Jessica Woods

Generic Conventions

Dark lighting

Weapons

False accusation

Blood

Murder

Action/violence

Rough streets and neighbourhoods

Prison

Crime scenes

Press and reporters

Crime scene evidence

Bad weather (pathetic fallacy)

Police HQ

Trailer Conventions

Fast pace editing in the second half

Synchronous sound in time with editing

Dramatic pauses

Short dialogue from the film

Slow music (preferably piano)in the first half

Soundtracks

We researched non-copyrighted music and we tried to find music similar to the style of the soundtrack in The Girl on the Train trailer, but we have realised that this is too difficult and may have to settle for ordinary film soundtrack.

Settings and Locations

Our film trailer will be set in Cambridgeshire and the following settings used in the trailer will be:

A house and the interior (crime scenes)

Prison and cell

Interrogation room
Police HQ
Second house for the second murder
Prison cell
Office/Study
Abandoned warehouse building