Thriller Research

Through the mass amount of research that we have done to do with the recent change in our film, changing the original mercenaries as disguised police officers, we have found out that mercenaries are joining the police force and the UK police force has become much more elite due to these new recruits.

So, in our change we have Shane Himathong Kong & George Hill being the disguesed mercenaries kidnapping Simon Woods' daughters as he works for some sort or political party/company.

However, it does happen in the UK but not as often, but the events leading up to the Ludlow Massacre is a good example of this. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company hired a "detective agency" however some people felt that they were more like thugs for them to break a miners strike. The detectives armored a car and put a machine gun on it and fired at the strikers. Not only that, every once and a while, they'd just randomly fire a bullet at the tents where the miners lived, sometimes killing someone. However, the Ludlow Massacre was in 1915, not being a recent event to prove the mercenaries police recruitment.

Above, there is is newspaper article about foriegn mercenary recruiments into the British army. This is our key eveidence towards the change of our film. Mercenaries and foreign fighters are now replacing British soldiers when Army numbers are slashed by 20,000. Also, there is eveidence that Legendary infantry units could have disappeared as Defence Secretary Philip Hammond admitted that ­“difficult decisions” will have to be made and that “Some units inevitably will be lost or will merge.” Mr Hammond then conceded that cuts would mean greater use of reserves and private contractors and that Britain would have to look to its Nato allies to provide future military support.

Audience Interveiws: What Is Your Favourate Thriller & Why?

For this video interveiw, we asked the audience what their favourate thriller was and why, in order to see what people remember in films, what sticks in people's heads. We found that, from more than one of the more in-depth answers, that action, blood and and violence are indeed key points to having a great thriller. Of course, this is good for us, as it means that we are on the right track with our thriller.

Auidience Interveiws: What Do You Look For When Watching A Movie

For these interveiws, we found potential audience members and asked them what kind of thing they like to see in a movie so that we could get an idea of how popular our film would be with todays audience. Fortunately for us, some of the responses included 'hot actors' (James Hartman, attracting the female audience), death, violence and a plot twist. We asked both male and female movie-goers and found that their answers were very simmilar. From the answers given here, we can assume that our film will probably be relatively popular with a younger audience, wich means that some older people are likley to go as well, either because they are going with the young ones or because they too like films with lots of action, blood n' guts.

Props

The props we will use in our thriller are as follows:
-Guns (For all, H&K G-36, AK-47, M92F, TPH)
-Cigar (For mercs., Richard or Mike)
-Car (For Ted and James, Chrysler Voyager)
-Fake Blood (For Ted's execution)
-Army Uniforms (For mercs.)
We chose the guns that we thought fitted the characters, for example, the mercenaries have automatic machine guns that make a lot of noise and have a high caliber round. For James, we chose the TPH, because it is easily concealed and very subtle, making it clear that he is a double-crosser. Fpor the car, we chose a big black one that looks like one someone of importance would drive, but is still quite discreet. The cigar is an action movie classic, A-Team, The Expendables, we had to have the mercenaries with a big cigar, it would be wrong without it. The mercenaries have the uniforms to show that they are professionals, although uniform is no guarantee of professionalism. The blood is for James' execution of Ted, we are going to have blood fly everywhere when he gets a bullet in his skull.

Mercenary Uniform

Cigar

H&K G-36, Merc. 1

Chrysler Voyager

Fake Blood

Walther TPH, James

Baretta M92F, Ted

AK-47, Merc. 2

Music For Our Thriller

The type of music that we will incorporate into our thriller will be kind of 1970's style hard rock, as this kind of music has the aggression that a film like ours requires. Hard rock is often used in the action-thriller genre, in films such as Terminator 2, The Expendables and Shoot 'Em Up.  Some examples of the kinds of bands whose music we would use if we had the rights would be bands like Thin Lizzy, Budgie, George Thoroughgood & The Destroyers and Guns N' Roses (who aren't 70's but that's beside the point). Rock N' Roll and violence are often stereotypically associated, due the the loud, awesome nature of rock. It also ties in with the typical active fans of Rock, most often teenagers and young men who indulge in antisocial behaviours such as listening to loud music, excessive drinking and smoking, drug use and, most relating to our thriller, getting into fights and destruction of property. The characters in our film would be described by the audience as 'Badass', and being total badasses, they would listen to classic hard rock. Of course, the actual soundtrackwill be by the Dakota Stars, as we have been given permission by the artist to use their songs.

Budgie

Guns N' Roses in Terminator 2



Thin Lizzy

New Cast

Our new and improved cast now includes  Mike Azutaurov, Richard Slesers, James Hartman and Ted Jackson. Mike and Richard are our mercenaries, Ted is the crime boss/person of importance and James is Ted's right hand man/betrayer. We chose James Hartman because he could pass as a Jason Statham type action hero, which will probably be the main selling point of the film for the female audience. He is also quite believable for the role as he is a relatively well built 30/40 year old man who looks as if he could hold his own in a fight.

James Hartman

Jason Statham

High Concept: Final Logo

 

 

Out of the 3 original ideas we have chosen this one because we think it is the most striking and powerful and really highlights the genre of film we have made - an action thriller, the first to depicts violence and action. The colour scheme we have gone for was chosen because we thought the red colour would real emphasise even further the action and violence involved in the film. When the audience see the colour red they will instantly relate it to blood and will instantly know the film genre. In order to convert the original drawings into a graphicly designed uimage we have used Photoshop CS6 and by doing so we have been able to edit colour schemes and remove the orignial 'paper' background to make the fist more imposing.

Original Storyboard

This is the storyboard that I drew out for the original plot of the thriller, in which the mercinaries are the focus, as opposed to James Hartman and in which Ted was meant to be blind drunk.

Influence From Press

After we looked into detail of our thriller, we found the similarity in term of the plot to the news that recently occurred in France. According to the article the cyclist has been gunned down alongside the british family. At first the police and the investigators thought that the cyclist was just a victim of the drive by shooting while the british family is the intended target. The investigation went further more, two months after the incident the investigators then suspicious that the cyclist might be the intended target because he was found with five bullets wound and was actually the one who died first.

This is relevant to our thriller because in our thriller we have an idea that we want the assassination of the victim to look as if it was an accident, that he is not the intended target. This will make the mercenaries look more professional and realistic.

 

Link to the news article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9653238/Alps-murders-Family-of-French-cyclist-Sylvain-Mollier-speak-out-for-first-time.html

 

Setting

Our film is going to be filmed on a remote lane on a hill-side. We chose a setting like this because it seems like the ideal location for an assassination/ambush to occur. We saw inspiration for this idea from looking at remote roads in Russia and other Eastern European countries such as shown above. Also, you see ideas like ours in films, with vageley simmilar storylines and so this is why we picked a setting like this for our thriller.

Production Company Logo

The logo that I designed for the production company that would make our film is one that is definitely in keeping with the film's target audience. The company is called 'High Concept Productions', which already implies what kind of films it will make. The term 'High Concept' is used to describe films that do not require very much, or any explaining. Films that are easy to follow and understand, but that does not necessarily mean that they are bad films. Most mainstream blockbuster movies can be described as 'High Concept'. The reason for the clenched fist in our logo is that it shows that the majority of the films that it makes will be low-budget action thrillers like ours.  It also implies the violence and action that the films it makes will contain, which in the case of our film 'Commando', is a lot of action and violence.

Costumes

Obviously the mercenaries are going to be wearing army fatigues, forest green camouflage with boots and webbing, as they are going to be the ones undertaking the operation and hiding in the woods in order to ambush Ted. The men in the car will be wearing suits of some kind, Ted will be dressed a little more smartly than his accomplice (James), as he is the boss, the target. James will either be dressed in a business-like pinstripe suit or a tweed suit.