Screenplay

Today I had a lesson about screenplay and how to write one. There are different steps to follow and this is a good scheme that will be able to help me to write my own screenplay for the current film project as well as future projects.

Visitor

Today a man named Rob came to visit us. He works as a film maker and gave us some advices and tips to use for our film project.
We had previously checked our blogs and told what was good and what we could improve.
He mainly talked about target audience, about the importance of a script and a call sheet, and about what we could add to our opening in order to make it better.

ChristMass Murder's characters

Santa Klaus - never speaks, always in full costume, has his own Christmas sound motif used whenever he kills a victim. 

Taylor Hart, 30, freelance journalist. Single, independent and determined. Keen to make it big and get her break. Career-focused.  

Mark Johnson, 38, camera-man. Secretly in love with Taylor. Available to her whenever she wants him. Hates being looked down on or treated badly. 

Police investigation team - 2 Head Officers - Cole Phelps, a hard working police officer willing to sacrifice himself to find out the mystery behind the murders. 

Nathan Drake - Also, a hard working police officer who likes to take charge and do investigations his way, even if it goes by police policy. 

Victims - Mike Chang,20,karate teacher who told Mark he was to bad to train under his wing. Jessica Green - Mark's old English teacher who always picked on him when he was in school. Ross Johnson,he bullied Mark during school days.

Taylor's family - Rose Hart, Taylor's mother. Matt Johnson, Taylor's father (dead prior to film). Jack Hart, Taylor's brother,worries Taylor is taking her job to serious and could end up dead.

ChristMass Murder Props/Costumes/Locations

These are the probable props/costumes/locations we're going to use in our film's project.



EQUIPMENT:
Camera
Tripod


PROPS:
Knife or Axe
Christmas Tree
Christmas decorations
Couch
Sack
Fake blood



COSTUMES:
Santa Claus'dress
Jacket
T-shirt
Jeans/trousers
Sneakers 



LOCATIONS:
Phone booth
Night street
House
Living room

ChristMass Murder's target audience

After a long research on BBFC, the target audience for ChristMass Murder, in my opinion, should be 18+.

I also came to this conclusion after having made different researches such as looking at other films targeted 18+ such as Se7en and Saw that both contain an high amount violence. We plan to make this film with violence as strong as the films used as examples and after having checked the various targets definitions, the 18+ was the most appropriate. I was actually thinking that also a target 15 could be ok but after these researches I changed my mind given that film targeted 15 cannot dwell the infliction of pain and injury which something will likely happen in our film project.

18+ films can contain:

  very strong violence

  frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***') and / or very strong language (e.g. ‘c***’)

  strong portrayals of sexual activity

  scenes of sexual violence

  strong horror

  strong blood and gore

  real sex (in some circumstances)

  discriminatory language and behaviour

As stated by BBFC, which is what we (Impact Productions), had in mind while planning ChristMass Murder.

Plot synopsis - ChristMass Murder

After discussing all together about what the film's should talk about we came to a decision and wrote the plot which is the following one:


Our thriller movie centers around a serial killer who dresses up as Santa Claus. At Christmas time, he kills his victims, one a day, in the run up to Christmas. He then puts their bodies in a sack under the Christmas tree as a 'present' for the victim's family to open on Christmas day. Just before he kills his victim, he always plays the same Christmas tune as his warning motif.

There have been 50 murders over the past two years and the top police investigation teams are now working on it, determined that the killer will not get away with it for a third year.

ChristMass Murder follows the story of Taylor Hart, 30, a female journalist who is desperately seeking her big scoop to make her career. She is an independent and determined woman and has been closely following the murders for the past two years. She wants to be the one to reveal the murderer and has a sneaky feeling she is very close to it! 

Taylor's close friend and camera-man, Mark Johnson, is also very interested in the case and desperate to help Taylor make her big break. He is always available, whenever she needs him!

 

PLOT SPOILER: Mark is the killer. He kills anyone who he feels treats him badly or looks down on him. He is in love with Taylor and almost willing to sacrifice himself in order for her to get what she wants and catch the killer!

Impact Productions

Impact Productions is the group I'm working with to film ChristMass Murder. The group's logo is a magnifying glass and it's formed by 4 people.
The people who are part of this group's names are : Tiziana Russo, Giordana Russo (me), David Dordi and Vikramarun Sigh.
We're all working together on this project and each one of us has different roles.

Thriller short analyisis

Sleepy Hollow

Horror/Thriller Film

Box Office

Budget: $100 million

Opening Weekend: $30,060,467 (USA 19th November 1999)  (3,064 theatres)

Gross: $206,071,502 (Worldwide)

Opening Sequence: http://www.movietend.com/sleepy-hollow-1999-%E2%80%93-filme-online-video_25308.html  (first 2 minutes)

•The sequence begins with the opening titles accompanied by tension music which gives a feeling of interest to the audience;

•The opening titles are made with dark colours and disappear leaving space to the following title by fading away;

•Right after the opening titles, we’re thrown into the film by a close up of what looks like blood but we’ll find out it’s not very soon. A hint of the plot is given by showing a man and woman’s hand holding each other and a testament being signed and sent to a location that we can imagine is the place where the film take place.

•The lighting of this opening sequence is soft and relaxing but the music is not, implying that something not happy is happening.

Mindscape/Anna

Psychological Thriller

Box Office

Budget: $4,357,373

Opening Weekend: $397,978 (Spain 24th January 2014) (154 theatres)

Gross: $1,218,200 (Spain and Singapore)

Opening Sequence: http://www.hdlord.com/item/124/anna-mindscape-2013/  (first 2 minutes)

•The sequence begins with the opening titles written in white letters on a black background, but instead of a tension music we hear foley sounds in order to give hints of what’s happening even though we’re not seeing it;

•After the opening titles, we ourselves looking at a window and a clock in a dark room during night. A character is introduced who turns on a non tension music which challenges the normal conventions of a thriller. Right after it, the challenge ends and we hear something breaking a something that we usually see in a thriller occurs: the character exits the room and goes to check what happened;

•Dark colours and foley sounds are used for this sequence. The house where we see the character is dark with really few light turned on and the sound of an object breaking is exaggerated since we can hear it clearly but it’s not in that room.