Planning my plot

By planning out the entire film first it meant I could create a more effective and mysterious trailer as I knew the entire plot, therefore I could add in the best shots into the trailer to create the best tension and mystery. I decided t create a film about a new boy starting a school, I decided there would be a lot of students that randomly go missing every month from this school, however no one understands why – this is the mysterious part of the film. I decided the missing students will have something to do with the teachers, however in my trailer it will not be obvious which teachers are really involved with the missing students and if in fact they are at all. My aim is for the new boy at the school to figure out exactly what is going on. As I have a basic plan for my film I decided to ask my class members if they had any suggestions on anything else I could add and also to help me choose a good name for my film, to do this I created a survey.


Through this survey I could decide on a name for my film, the most popular one chosen was ‘Silent Students’ therefore this is what my film shall be called. I only received a few simple suggestions back, however I spoke about these suggestions and adapted on them with my teacher and other students and it was decided that;
Within the school, to keep the teachers secret we decided there would be posters around the school promoting ‘No mobiles’ and ‘No talking in the corridors’ this was so no students could have any communication, I decided this to help link it in more with the name. I also decided this would be the opening shot of my trailer, a panning shot of the corridor showing all the posters and school rules. We then started discussing the teachers and I decided that I did not want them to be actual qualified teachers, I discussed this and eventually decided on the idea that they would be scientists, taking the students for some kind of organ testing and research. Finally I decided that for my trailer I did not want the audience to assume that every student missing has been killed, because of this I decided I wanted a small news report in the trailer reporting on one of the missing students being found. However this student has no memory of what happened to them therefore keeping the mystery of the film and not revealing all within the trailer.

A2 Research & Planning Opinion on Thrillers

This is a short video discussing Thriller movies, I decided to do this as well as a questionnaire as I felt people would be able to go into more depth on a video giving me a clearer idea about peoples ideas on thriller movies. Through this video I will take what is being said and use it to influence my final Thriller Trailer. One of the questions I ask towards the end of the video is for their opinion on the popular Thriller movie 'The Woman in Black' being a 12A age rating, 3/4 agreed that this rating was acceptable and explained their reasons, whereas one disagreed and believed it should be at least a 15. I decided to do some research and see if their were other people who agreed with this, these are some quotes I found; 'I loved watching it but I thought it was totally inappropriate for 12 year olds to be watching!' 'I'm 15 and i went to see it and its not something a 12 year old kid can watch. This is definitely more adult kind of film.' 'I was shocked when i saw that it was rated a 12A.' The video and research each show that there were various different opinions on the age ratings for this jumpy Thriller, therefore when creating my own thriller, I will take this into consideration when giving it an age rating.