Character list

Characters:

Crimson- a dark serial killer who is on the run from the police. Character is dressed in all black to add to his suspicious nature. Similar build and intelligence level to the Protagonist. This character is highly skilled with weapons such as knives and will use this to his advantage. If we were to make this as a movie I would get Kevin Spacey to play this character. This is because of his role in Se7en where he plays a dark character and plays the role very well being suspicious and sinister throughout.

Adrian Sykes- this is the main protagonist of the movie. He is a highly trained detective with a high intelligence level. He wants to get revenge for the death of his Brother-in –law and will do whatever it takes to kill Catch and kill crimson. This character is of a similar build to our main Antagonist and is of similar intelligence. This means that the characters are equally matched so that we never know who is going to come out on top. I would have Joseph Gordon Levitt playing our Protagonist. I would do this because he is of a similar build to Kevin Spacey but also because he is mid 30’s so is an ideal age for a detective who is the top of his trade.

John White- a detective who is being killed by Crimson in a horrific way. This character is an ordinary detective with no particular special features. He is vulnerable to Crimson as he is able to out think him and so has him in a position where he can kill. This character is the brother in law of a highly intelligent detective who in turn will be out to get revenge on Crimson for killing his brother in law. I would choose Wade Williams to play this role as he plays the role of an imposing figure in Prison Break but turns out to be a very soft and gentle character, similar to the character we are depicting in ‘mortem’.

Police officer- this character is a cameo and tells Detective Sykes that he won’t want to go down the alley. This character should be an ordinary officer/detective but not a main character. For this charecter i would have David Oyewolo to play this role as I have seen his acting skills previously in 'Selma' and 'rise of the planet of the apes' and feel as though he is capable of giving a good performance in every role he undertakes so feel he is suited to this minor role.

Script

Shot opens by fading to black then reappearing with Det Adrian Sykes sat writing at a desk

Then we cut to Crimson Daray who calls Sykes

We then cut back to Sykes who is writing at a desk then picks up the phone

Sykes: "Hello"

Sykes is silent as he is told about the murder of a family member

"There's been a murder down thew back of old street. you need to get here, now!"

Fade to Sykes arriving at the scene, a hooded figure follows him

Sykes pauses as his phone rings, crimson is right behind him

Crimson: "Hello..."

Yolo Brielz turns around to see Crimson isn’t there

Crimson attacks and strangles Sykes

shot list

Shot list

1. Opens with ‘triple m productions logo
2. shot opens with medium panning shot of Sykes at a desk
3. shot then shows close up of Sykes answering ringing phone.
4. we cut to a shot of Crimson in a long shot in dark lighting 
5. we cut back to a long tracking shot of Sykes walking out of the room.
6. we have an ellipses edit and then show Sykes arriving at the scene
7. ellipses edit to then show a tracking shot of Sykes walking down the road being followed
8. cut to show Sykes walking down the alleyway in a long-shot being followed by Crimson
9. long shot of Sykes' reaction to no murder.
10. close up of Sykes ringing back the number he had got information of a murder from.
11. medium shot of Crimson attacking Sykes

synopsis

Synopsis – Media AS level:

2011 - A deranged psychopath has committed 10 murders in the last year, all of which are the family members of detective Adrian Sykes. the mind games have been going on for some time and Sykes is out to try and catch his killer.
Sykes receives a phone call telling him there has been a murder when in fact there hasn't and lures him out. Sykes is exposed and is followed by psychopath Crimson Deray. the phone rings again, Sykes answers and Crimson comes in to capture the detective. Sykes.

AS student thrilller analysis

Student Thriller Analysis: Locked In

The opening shot shows an out of focus long shot of a street and some street lights, there is also a white overlay title placed in the bottom left corner contrasting the dark sky background, a convention of thrillers is the consistent use of black and white. This then quickly fades out to a full screen title with the same white font and a black background.

 After the full screen title fades out a map of Asia appears with Beijing pointed out, a line then stretches across to London which suggests this is the setting of the film (an urban city, again a convention of thrillers) but also that the main character is from China and has traveled to England for whatever reason. Some non diegetic upbeat aboriginal music begins to play also which adds unease to the film.

We then cut to another full screen title with the same font and background, this then swiftly fades to an extreme long shot of the moon in the sky, the fact that the rest of the screen is black and there is a tiny piece of the white moon links to the title 'locked in', which is then shown as an overlay title in the next establishing shot of another street which is again out of focus.

The camera then zooms in on a man walking and then tracks his movement slightly, then it cuts to a medium close-up of him still walking and then to a medium shot from a low angle as he walks into an alleyway, the editing pace was very quick for these shots as none stayed on the screen for over 3 seconds.

Then there is an overview shot of a girl lying on her side either knocked out or dead, suggesting she is 'locked in' somewhere and her murder/kidnapping is a main part in the plot of the movie, we then cut back to a close up of the man as he walks down the alley, the tightness of the alley and when the two people walk into each other causing the woman's ID to be dropped again links to the title.

It then fades to a tracking shot of two men in black running towards the alley, their dark clothes suggest they are the antagonists of the film but the appearance and the non-diegetic sirens of a police car suggest they were law enforcement of some kind and that the man we had seen before is possibly the antagonist, is this why he came from China? To murder/kidnap the girl previously shown?

The camera then cuts to a close up of the girl's hand with a phone that begins to ring, the phone's background picture of the Earth connotes her death as she is no longer alive on Earth but it again links to the title as the picture is tightly packed against the 4 sides of the phone.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMlTIxT2HKQ

Preliminary production

Preliminary Production evaluation

In my preliminary production we worked in a group of three people to make the production, this would be done by having two actors, and a cameraman. Our production is entitled ‘the phone call’ a conversation between two students about one struggling with homework and asking the other for help with it.

In the production i have learned the difficulties of filming a production as in order to get the perfect shot it may take several takes as there may be different factors that affect the shooting for example, actors laughing or doing anything that shouldn’t be in the shot like a sneeze for example. I have also learned the difficulties of getting all of your shots in sync and getting everything into the right place changing from a shot, it is vital that you do not skip a split-second.

we found it difficult when attempting to try and find the correct shot fr the scene as sometimes it didn’t run smoothly with the editing and sometimes looked out of place. We found out the difficulties of editing and how we had to try and fit everything in sync perfectly, this is because for example in our match-on-action shot we had to make the timing perfect in order for it to run smoothly, this takes time with the editing to get perfect and so we now know that editing can be quite time consuming. We have also learnt that during your filming you should use a tripod in order to keep the camera steady so the shots aren’t shaky. This is because our camera was a camcorder and so was difficult at times for us to keep out hands still for the shots. We also learnt that we should keep away from areas where we can have a reflection in our shots as in one of our shots we can see a reflection of the cameraman.

  I thought that the planning of our production went well as everybody in the group knew what their roles were before we started filming and knew the scripts in order to have them saying the right things during the filming also felt as though the filming went smoothly so that we could capture all of the clips that we needed efficiently. This was good because it then allowed us to cut the clips well when editing as they were all separate and easy to tell when it has cut to a different clip.

We found problems in collecting all of our clips off the tape as it was done from an outside person to convert it into a file for us to use. This can be prevented next time by using one of the more advanced cameras so that it will save our clips onto a memory card automatically. We also found problems after we had films where on a couple of clips we found a reflection showing the cameraman, this can be prevented next time by us looking back at the clips in detail and changing the angle of the cameraman so that he is not in the reflection in the windows. In the editing we found a problem where we struggled to save our progress so had to stay on the same computer every time we tried to edit in order to continue editing. This can be prevented by exporting every time we make significant progress on our production.

I felt as though working in a group was productive as it allowed for us to have many ideas to choose from with everybody contributing to make it flow smoothly. I felt that by us working in a group it allowed us to efficiently plan out our production to the best of our abilities and also found that working in a group is much more enjoyable as you are working with other people and communicating well with them.

On the other hand i felt that at times we could be found messing about a bit too much and not fully concentrating on the job at hand and so found ourselves wasting some of the time that we had allocated to us, this can be prevented by us all having a full concentration and motivation to do what was required in this production.

I think I have learned that we have to make sure our clips are absolutely perfect for us to use in our main coursework. This way it will improve the production the most it can and make it much easier for us to edit our clips. I have also learned that we should be using one of the more advanced cameras in order to use more of the features that they have available and so that the saving of the clips will be easier.

Overall i felt that the production went okay but could have had many improvements and so we will have to learn from this in order to make it much better in our coursework. This can be done by us making sure that we get all of our shots off the camera so that we can use them for better use whilst editing I felt that i contributed well to the production trying to work as an actor in our production and work with all of the different shots that we needed to make.