Costumes - Victim

By chose of our costumes we wanted to show the personalities of both characters, and create the contrast between them. We wanted to show how hopeless is the situation of the victim. She is a young vulnerable girl, not ready, surprised by grow up, ruthless psychopathic murderer with massive knife firmly held in his hand. He does not say anything, does not explain why just continues his revenge plan.

Overall
Victim, unlikely to the killer does not expect anything to happen, does her daily activities. As victim is quite young her pyjama will portray some pink and bright colours in order to highlight her age.

Shirt
White or any other bright colour in order
to make blood more visible and also to
present her as a pure, clean child that
is unlikely to contribute to someone's death.

Trousers
Any type of pyjama trousers, best if matches to the shirt or include things that are usually on child accessories e.g. : colourful images, animals, flowers..etc. This would focus our attention on her age and arouse questions why is she killed?

Socks
We deliberately didn't use any socks as naked feet connotate the coldness and add to her image as defenceless and vulnerable.

Slippers

Crucial factor while trying to make her look vulnerable, especially when they are intended to look like some animal therefore made with a soft material.

Costumes - Villain

Overall
Dressed in black plain suit
with black tie and white shirt.
Very firmly looking, seriously,
professionalism, self confidence.
Increases testosterone and make feel
powerful, professional killer and dominating
Examples: Hitman (Hitman), Joker (Batman), Sloan (Wanted)

Tie
Contrast to the shirt, black, plain and modest, perfectly done up. Last button of the shirt is done up, even during the killing. Stays calm and does not panic, ruthless.

Shoes

Matching to the suit, add to the overall style, very solid, still new shine, wears only for special occasion.

Props

While working with our project we used the range of different props and objects in order to make our movie be more professional and realistic.
When we look on all items, tools that the killer uses, we can infer that he uses the everyday accessories to kill, things that are normally used or household works however when it comes to clothing, he takes it seriously and professionally.

BLOOD
As we know, the most popular blood substitute is a ketchup
or a cherry juice. However we reached to more professional
solution, we therefore purchased a 'fake blood' and used in
our movie creating very realistic crime scene. Fake blood is
mouth free and easily washable unlike to ketchup or cherry juice.

KNIFE
As knifes in most thriller movies:

big, sharp and dangerous. When is shown,
symbolises death straight away.
The knife is only shown once in our movie,
however it is not while the killing scene but
when killer prepares. We dont know that
he is a killer until he reaches for the knife

BAG
Used by killer to transport all his 'equipment'.
In the movie we show the bag by the close up,
therefore when the killer closes it, whole screen goes
black, This gives us perfect place for inserting
the subtitles. The bag itself is traditional sport
bag, we previously planned to use business bag
but we did not have one.

GLASS
We used the broken glass in order to present the feelings

of the victim. Crashing glass connotates destruction,
something unavoidable and irreversible, like death.

NEWSPAPER AND PHOTOGRAPHS

Our killer's motive is death of his girlfriend, he decides to take revenge upon all people contributed in her death. His obsession is shown by the newspaper extract pinned to his wall informing about his girlfriend being killed. The extract is attached to the same wall as the photographs of them together which creates contrast and makes him even more motivated.
In order to create the real-looking newspaper extract we used the website which lets people to add the custom title and article and print off later.

GLOVES

traditional, gardening gloves, can be found in every

household. Used to cover all signs of the killer,
by the way he puts them in the bag we can see
that this is nothing new for him, just another
person to be killed, another trace to be hidden.

In our project we sometimes had to improvise. E.g. when the victim was dragged out on the blood we tried to avoid her clothes and hair being spoiled with that therefore we placed her on the plastic bag and hide it under her body so she could move on the spoiled surface without damaging her hair or clothes.

Setting

According to our questionnaire feedback and audience opinions we decided to film indoor. Buildings are always good place to set the horror/thriller movies because of many elements, objects that someone could hide behind and strike the fear-paralyzed victim.
Very often exploited scene used to present the killer is his appearance in the mirror or behind the door. This is the best way to scary the viewers as killer appear unexpected and gains advantage with it. We also planned to use such technique and only way we could only accomplish that in the kitchen when victim will be preparing her dish. While killer appearance, shocked victim drops everything she held in her hand (glass and egg) spoiling it on the floor. We firstly wanted to place this scene in the living room however it has a carpet on the floor, while in the kitchen glass would crash easier because of tiles and more open space. Moreover, the kitchen was better place because it's position allowed us to obtain the better camera shots and angles like view through the window.

Title of film

In the second half of our opening scene we are going to focus on the killer preparing to leave his house to kill his first victim. The first shot that we see of this section is going to be an alarm clock. Since we want to focus on the clock to show he is getting up at an unsocially early time in the morning to catch the victim off-gaurd as soon as she gets up. So we wanted to link the film title to the time shown on the clock, to further emphasise the killers mental instability. The film names we came up with were:

• 2:34
• Half Past Death
• The Time Has Come
• Death Time

Our first idea was tojust call the film 2:34 and have that as the time on the clock. However we finally decided to use Half Past Death as none of the other titles didn't flow proplerly and didn't really tell us anything about what the film could entail.

Chosen film title: Half Past Death

Movie Questionnaire

In order to find out about the audience's expectations we had to conduct the research asking them about the main factors that would establish our ideas about the project.
We for example wanted to make sure that people especially young generation still wants to watch the traditional films. We were satisfied with the respond as most people chose thriller as their preferred genre, moreover almost all of people asked stated that gory horrors are rather disgusting than scary for them. We wanted to create the thriller film therefore the positive research results ensured us that our movie can be successful.
Our questionnaire has been answered by 20 people, in most questions their answers were dominating, other, less relevant and depending on personal taste were more even.
We also found out that people like to involve in the action and solve the secrets in the plot. Most gory movies does not include very mysterious elements, usually, the villain is presented straight away, unlike to our movie where the killer is only shown shortly in the critical moment.


Media Production Questionnaire
please copy a ✓sign and paste next to the answer that applies to you.
Also change the number [20] by adding 1, this will let us know how many people answered our questions.

1. Which of the following genre would you prefer more?

a) traditional horror ✓✓✓✓
b) thriller ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓
c) gory horror ✓✓
d) mix of genres ✓✓✓✓

2. What movie setting do you prefer more?

a) hospital ✓
b) shops ✓✓
c) school ✓✓✓✓
d) house ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓
c) forest ✓✓✓✓
d) graveyard ✓

3. What type of villain do you prefer ?

a) human ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓
b) monster ✓✓✓✓
c) ghost ✓✓✓✓
d) animal ✓
e) vampire ✓✓✓

4. Do you like mysterious plot that isn't clear at the beginning?

a) YES ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓
b) NO ✓✓✓✓✓

5. Do think that modern, bloody and gory horrors are more disgusting than scary?

a) YES ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓
b) NO ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓

6. What type of victim do you think is the best one?
a) girl ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓
b) children ✓✓✓✓
c) middle age woman ✓✓✓✓
d) middle age man ✓✓✓✓

7. Do you like when movie requires you to focus and concentrate on the plot, in order to reveal the secrets along with the characters?
a) YES ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓
b) NO ✓✓✓

Thank you for your contribution.

Target audience

In order to find out about the audience's expectations we had to conduct the research asking them about the main factors that would establish our ideas about the project.
We for example wanted to make sure that people especially young generation still wants to watch the traditional films. We were satisfied with the responses we got as most people chose thriller as their preferred genre, moreover almost all of people we questioned stated that gory horrors are rather to crude to be scary to them. We wanted to create the thriller film therefore the positive research results ensured us that our movie can be successful.
Our questionnaire has been answered by 20 people, in most questions their answers were resounding. Other, less relevant and depending on personal taste were more even.
We also found out that people like to involve in the action and solve the secrets in the plot. Most gory movies does not include very mysterious elements, usually, the villain is presented straight away, unlike in our movie where the killer is only shown shortly in the critical moment.
Other ways of finding out about the audience's expectations was research and viewing the existing movies like Tormented that have the similar, young target audience. We found out that teenagers prefer to see people of their own age in the movies as this helps them to familiarize and empathise with the characters. In our movie we will also have the teenager casts and props. Teenage thrillers/horrors usually appear as gory and bloody scenes of people death. We also wanted to create the teenage movie but with bit more serious content, plot and situations. We wanted to keep the traditional theme mixed with the modern and fresh ideas. Therefore even though our target audience are teenagers, older people will also find it interesting.