Initial Ideas: Grovelands

We all took the idea of a girl being chased through the woods and expanded it again:



Liam
I like the idea of a conventional female victime - innocent looking, short girl which is emphasised by the white dress she will be wearing. I also think that an establishing shot, possibly a pan at the beginning of the scene would work realyl well in setting up the scene and creating enigma, for example, why is a girl runnin thorugh the woods. I think stalling the first appearance of the stalker works really well as this will also create enigma as we have no idea who the girl is running from until this point. We decided that we should not see his face, by casting it in shadow or by simply never having a Medium Close up or Close Up of his face, again to raise quesitons in the audience's mind. We would show the stalker with Extreme Long and Long shots to connote the isolation of the scene. We would also use close ups of the stalker feet and tracking shots from behind him, aswell as his POV as he chases after the victim. POV and handhed shots would be the majority of the camerawork to create realism and suspense, although we do need to use some static camerawork aswell as a range of distances and framing to keep the action hear-thumping and not let the audience get bored. The closing stages of the scene would see the stalker catching up with the victim and drugging her, followed possdibly by a fade to black and then a shot of the white dress floating down the river, to connote he has raped and killed her.

Alix
I really like the idea of having a very innocent looking girl, particularly in a white floaty dress to connote purity and to make her stand out in the woods. The opening shot would be a very blurry POV shot of her running so the audience is disorientated (possibly because she was drugged) and then an establishing shot of sorts is shown and it becomes clear she is running from something/someone. After 20/30 secs a man all in black far away from her would appear, very calmly striding towards her (obvioulsy chasing her). Then at somepoint she looks behind her and she is gone, which obviously even scarier and builds up further suspense. It turns out he somehow got in front of her in the woods and the shot where he appears (not finalised idea) makes the audience jump a lot. The final thing we are shown (possiby after the title comes up) is her dress torn and dirty left on the floor, so it is obvious she has been raped or killed etc.

Angelie
I think having a chase scene through the park would be very interesting for an opening sequence. The chase sequence we discussed in our meeting is quite similar to one of the chase scenes in 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'. There would be a girl in a dress running away from a irrecognisable man who is just walking to try and catch up with her. Him walking rather than running shows his confidence and how he is in control of the situation. I like the idea of the girl wearing a white dress to connote purity and innocence (as Alix said above). As she's running away from the man, she could fall a few times, causing her dress her dress to become more and more muddy/dirty, which could symbolise the gradual corruption of innocence and perhaps foreshadow what will happen later on (i.e. her being raped - corrupted innocence). I think using a few jump cuts could be very disorienting for the audience, which would link to the idea of her being drugged and then trying to escape.

Matt
I definately agree that a small, young white lady runnning through the woods can be a really sucessful opening to our thriller. I also love the fact that the villain has a hidden identity throughout the chase.

I like the idea of her being drugged as this means that her action codes are much slower and less coordinated - a stark contrast to that of the villain's actions. The aim of this is to really agitate and cause tension among the audience as they really want to help the victim and react to her wrong decision making (events that hinder her own getaway.)

I think the victim's POV shots could possibly be more successful if, when editing, we take out a few frames from these shots and slow the shots down, as this will be highly reflective of her state. However this is ONLY a suggestion at this point and we will experiment when editing the footage.

When Liam and I discussed the idea away from the whole group, we came up with a really thrilling and enigmatic ending, which we think is really unique and could slove any problems we had with the content being too 'repetitive' (i.e. the whole opening being a chase throught the woods and then he finally catches her). We came up with the idea that once the victim has been caught and chloroformed by the villain (to knock her unconscious), we then go back in time at a fast speed to give more information to the audience. For this reversal of time we suggested that a montage type effect is used of only some shots that had just been seen by the audience. e.g. If in the chase we see her stumbling, looking over her shoulder etc... we may see this again. However after one of the beginning shots has been replayed we keep reversing the footage- therefore the audience see extra footage of where the victim has escaped from and why she is running. The only issue with this idea is that we would have to make it really obvious that we are just reversing what has just been seen (and more) very quickly, rather than a continuation from the last shot (likely to be the 'chloroforming' of the victim). Otherwise the audience may think that she[the victim] has escaped the villain when trying to chloroform her. On the whole, i really like this idea and will be brought up in the next group meeting.