Cumbers's Blog

Storyline, Setting, Title, Roles | January 28, 2010

It is important when producing a video or trailer to have assigned roles in your group so you know who is doing what and when this will keep you organised, help you meet deadlines and have a very good final piece to be proud of.

Acting – The whole group (Alex Helsby, Jess Stares, Matt Cumbers and George Miller)
Camera Work – When the four friends are all in shot, the little boy who is another character will film
When the two boys (two of the friends) are in the shot Alex Helsby will film
When the two boys (two of the friends) are in the shot George Miller will film
Editing – The whole group will edit together. We will sit and discuss as a group our ideas and all will be
present during the editing process but the boys of the group (George Miller and Matt
Cumbers) will operate the mouse.
Soundtrack – Jess Stares and Alex Helsby will find and cut down the sounds used and wanted then
incorporate them into the edited footage.

Our Original Storyline…
A group of students are travelling on a train home; the train is slow and suddenly stops. A driver’s voice is heard; he states due to unknown causes, the train has to take a different route. While passing through an abandoned station, the lights are out due to no electricity, the train begins to shake and the students find themselves trapped in an abandoned underground station.
As the students awake to find they are trapped, they panic, they are afraid and their goal is now to escape as uninjured as possible. After finding the main exit and entrances are blocked, the group split into pairs and explore the station to find an escape. The students can pass through a series of maze like tunnels and passage ways, at this point, POV shots from the darkness looking at the students can be used to imply other ‘creatures’ lurk in the station.
As a student catches the eye of an unknown creature, it will launch itself at its prey and the viewer will not know if they are captured or not.
While the other pair can be exploring a different section, they hear strange noises, and the music can reflect the fear at this point. As they get closer and closer, we build up suspense and as the door opens, only darkness, leaving the viewer in complete mystery.

Although as a group we liked this idea, when we were developing it further we thought of a better and more detailed idea, which would be easier to film and create. We still based our idea on a train and kept the setting the same, also the idea of their being 4 friends messing around but the actual story itself and what happens to the friends changed. We thought it would be too complicated to create a shaking effect of the setting, so had to change it.

Our New Storyline…
A group of friends are travelling on a train. One of the students is recording the other messing around on their phone when they notice a little boy sitting behind them with his dog. The friend with the phone zooms in on the boy and we can see that he is poorly dressed and is not showing his face; he is facing down. Then there is a power cut and everything is pitch black and we know that the train has stopped because we hear the screeching of the train stopping and the friends confirm the train has stopped, when they discuss it between themselves. When the lights turn back on they see that the little boy has switched places and is now sitting on the seats next to them which freaks them out ad we can hear the girls scream when they see him. The lights turn back of again and back on, this time the darkness lasts about 2 seconds, and this time the little boy is gone leaving only his dog behind. The doors open and the dog walks out. They start to wonder who the boy was? Why was he there next to them? How did he move without them realising? How did he vanish, get off the train when the doors were shut? One of the friends suggest that they split up; two of them stay on the train encase someone comes for them and the other two go and investigate where they are and if there is a way to get out of the station. They check that they all have their phones which they do but they do not have any signal. They decide that there can’t be anything scary or bad out there so go ahead with the plan. One of the students joke ‘If there is something out there we’ll just scream, I’m going to keep recording encase there is anything creeeppppyyyy’, ‘yeah, yeah just go’; the others reply. It is quite clear that this person isn’t scared and finds it all a joke. So two of the students leave the train and go and investigate. They are walking down the poorly lit walkway when they hear a little child’s voice and a music box. They peer round the corner and see the little boy sitting at the end of the walkway. They can see that the little boy is holding a music box and singing along to it. The dog then makes them jump when he runs past them to get to his owner. As the dog makes them jump they scream and the student drops the phone which the dog picks up and lays it in front of his owner. We can now see half of the little boy and the two students behind him, in the frame. When the dog put the phone in front of him the little child stopped singing for 2 seconds, laughed, and then carried on singing. The two students carry on walking towards him as they want to know whether he will be safe or not as he is only a child and they also wanted to get their phone back. Nobody would expect a little kid to be bad so they do not even think of their safety. When the students get really close we can see that the boy closes the music box so there is no music and sings the words ‘and then you will all die’, when he says these words we can see him smiling, giving the dog a treat and then he stands up and turns slowly so that the students can see him but we can only see the back of his legs, then the dog will lunge towards the camera to which our opening to our thriller will end. When the dog does this we can hear the girl scream ‘no!’ and then the title of the film will appear on the screen

After long discussions and many ideas, we decided and came up with the idea of naming our Thriller, ‘Music Box’. We thought this title was short but to the point and will make the audience think and try and guess how a music box is involved in the story, if it is at all? We first called it ‘The Music Box’ but then thought there are many film titles including many thrillers beginning with the word ‘The’; The Ring, The Godfather, The Silence of the Lambs, The Great Escape, The Shining, these are a few examples .

As our task is to create an opening sequence of a thriller we decided a good but different location to film our thriller is on a train station platform and on a train, also incorporated in this idea we may do some filming down a poorly lit alley. We have decided to film at a train station, near where we live because this setting is easy to access and it has the mysterious effect which we need, especially when it’s dark. A Thriller convention which shows how the setting fits in is ‘Extraordinary events happening in ordinary situations’, the ordinary situation is four friends being at a train station and on a train but the extraordinary event is finding the little boy sitting on the floor singing along and humming to a music box he is holding, its not an event you would see everyday. Another thriller convention in which the setting fits into is, ‘Mise-en-scene which echoes/mirrors the protagonist’s plight’. The protagonist who could be said to be the young boy lives a very dull and saddened life, we see this by his dirty, ripped clothes; the Mise-en-scene mirrors this a trains stations are also dull and dirty and some don’t have much light or hope like the little boy.

Images of our setting…