Planning - initial narrative ideas

In order to meet our target audiences requirements and to meet the stereotypical conventions of our genre of thriller/horror, we need to build a narrative that intrigues the audience and fulfils audience pleasure. For us to achieve this, we aim to include elements of each genre within the 2 minute opening to entice the audience and to reassure them of the genre. However we won't give away too many clues as this would spoil the rest of the film and lose the interest from the audience. The identity of our antagonist will remain a mystery so that suspense can be created, this also will build up an atmosphere for the audience that will appeal due to the genre. There are a number of ideas that we could use to incorporate the genre into our film opening, for example:

• Murder
• Abduction 
• Psychological issues
• Revenge

Our initial idea was to have an opening based on the idea of psychological issues going along with the theme of revenge, where a male dominant character is suffering from psychological problems in a mental hospital who is trying to escape with an antagonist who is trying to get in the was of this happening. However the lack of resources that we have to make the opening and the planning of the narrative made it complicated to produce a opening that the audience would enjoy but also understand. Also it would have been difficult to include both the conventions of the thriller and horror genres.

As a result of this, we have decided to use the idea of a murder based thriller to convey our 2 minute story opening, and our narrative will switch between past and present through flashbacks to create suspense and mystery within the film. It will make the opening exciting, and we can enhance this by using complex camera angles and editing to have a bigger effect on the audience.

To show this in our opening sequence, we will introduce a stalker/murderer who will follow two girls in a woods and kidnap one of the girls. But this part of the narrative will be told through flashbacks from the other friend who was there at the time of the incident. The present part of the narrative will be the surviving girl retracing her steps 6 months on from the attack, with the disturbing flashbacks playing on her mind; we plan for her to meet the killer at the end, leaving the film opening on a cliff hanger.