Our Thriller - Synopsis

As a group, we have discussed a few ideas for our opening sequence, originally thinking about using the story line of a graphic novel as the basis for our thriller, but in the end, we decided to focus on a different story line.

The story line we have chosen as a basis is more of a psychological thriller, although the main character is a murderer and there will be physical violence. The idea is that a woman kills her husband with the help of his mistress, before going on the run with her, driving across the country to get away from their previous lives and the crime that they have committed. But, along the way they become increasingly paranoid, as a car identical to his follows them around everywhere they go. They end up killing everyone that gets in the way and in the end, the wife kills the mistress in a final fit of madness, before the police come and take her away.

My original idea for this storyline was quite different to the one that we came up with as a group. I made these notes on the idea for homework towards the beginning of the project.

· The sequence begins with an extreme close up of a knife, lying on a kitchen worktop. The camera pans over it slowly, while a mass of red, bloodlike liquid falls in slow motion over it and starts dripping down the side of the worktop.

· Then, also in slow motion, a hand reaches for the knife’s handle. When it touches it, the sequence starts to move at normal speed and slow music with a heavy pulse starts, along with the credits. As the camera pulls back, we realize the liquid is from a bottle of red wine, not blood and that this knife is being used to prepare dinner.

· As the credits go along, the words are in an unusual, deformed font, we see the woman preparing dinner but we don’t yet see her face. When she chops things up, the sound is emphasised and we focus on the knife coming down.

· The credits and title sequence end with the sound of the doorbell and there is an extreme close up of her eyes shifting slowly towards the door. Then there’s the sound of a slamming door, where the screen goes black and the name of the film comes up.

Within the group, we decided to start at the end, using in medias res narrative to gain the audience's interest and to create enigma, as the film will start in the investigation room with the woman being questioned. As she's being questioned, flashes of the things that she has done comes up on the screen, such as dead bodies and pools of blood but instead of telling the police about it, she lies or stays quiet. Then, when the titles start, there begins a montage of important clues and crime scenes, influenced by the title sequence as Se7en.