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1. ADAM PICTON AS FILM REPORT:
Hidden in plain sight is a teen thriller set in modern day London,
Croydon (2017). It is about a teenage girl named Angela who
finds herself being stalked by a mysterious, white-masked
figure; who she can’t seem to shake. She goes to her friend,
Ezekiel, for advice and he continuously discourages her
attempts to go to the authorities. As she gets closer and closer
to him, she’s unknowingly getting closer to the stalker as the
white-masked figure is Ezekiel in disguise
There will not be many scenes in this short film that runs a total
of nearly 4 minutes. There will be a total of 8 scenes consisting
of shots of contrasting colours and lightings as this fits the
everlasting, juxtaposing theme of light and dark with Ezekiel’s
two personas.
As most of the film’s mood is centered around being creepy and
mysterious, there will be quite a lot of black outs and faded
transitions. During the production of hidden in plain sight, I will
consider many common themes used in the horror/thriller
genres to resonate with an already existing audience as much
as possible. To do this, I employed two teen actors to try and
establish a personal connection to the mainly teenage target
audience of 12-20 year olds. This will create a sense of realism
to try and engage the audience even further, making the film’s
scare factor much more prominent because if it seems more
real, it will make the audience feel as they are the one’s in the
creepy situation.
I also mentioned the continuous effect of juxtaposing colours.
This will connote the two sides to Ezekiel, the side that Angela
see’s, her trustworthy, best friend, and the side that only we can
see, the dark, hidden side. To hint at this, I plan to strategically
place many different shots that connote Angela’s innocent and
ignorant belief in her friend and Ezekiel’s twisted true self. This
is very in line with Barthes’ theory and Strauss’ theory where
binary oppositions are always present in a film and that enigma
codes are created and resolved by action codes. The most
common of which is the opposition of light and dark, good and
evil, which will be present in my film. I will also give the actor’s
specific instructions on their costumes to have Angela
portrayed in very bright colours and have Ezekiel portrayed in
dark attire to represent his other personality finally beginning to

2. surface and cause this disequilibrium, following Todorov’s
original theory.
For research, I have constructed many different essays
discussing themes that are often present in horrors such as this
film. For example, I have done extensive research on what the
difference between horror and thriller is to make sure I know
how to expertly intertwine the genres without disregarding one
or the other. I have also researched the differences between
creepy and scary to determine what mood I’d prefer to set within
the audience. Finally, I have analysed many different horror and
thriller movies and trailers. For example one such film is ‘get
out’ which is a horror film that has recently received much
praise for it’s trailer and so I thought it’d be perfect. However the
main difference between get out and my film is that get out has
many supernatural themes, while my film’s antagonist is strictly
realistic. The trailer started out quite happy and calm but
suddenly set the pace with a quick scare and from then on,
carried a creepy aura throughout, becoming increasingly
eventful as time went on. I discovered this occurs within many
horror trailers and is also just as present in the full films.
Another example of this is Carrie, both the original and the
remake. This story starts off quite normal with an unpopular
teenage girl. However once she’s pranked, she starts
relentlessly killing her peers with supernatural abilities. This will
help my film immensely as I can use this classic narrative to
create a tone of calm, evoking a false sense of security in the
audience, making the sudden scare much more effective.
A common reoccurring technique used in thrillers is the use of
violent props and effects. Things such as explosions, guns and
bombs all connote danger and raise the stakes exponentially.
However this slightly blurs the line between what is thriller and
what is action so to make myself completely clear, I did
extensive research on thriller films as well. Some of the films
that compiled my research include: Inside Man, Fight Club, and
Reservoir Dogs. I also watched some Action/Thriller titles to see
how they managed to fuse two genre’s, such as Flashpoint and
’71. The most common similarities I found between the two
genres were that they appeal to a very similar target audience,
teenage males, they both usually feature some kind of eventful
conflict (such as a chase scene, fight scene, final battle) and
both generally feature a young-middle aged male adult as the
protagonist. However, there appeared to be much more

3. differences. For example, Thrillers tend to have much more
complex plot’s, challenging stereotypical conventions and
veering from the linear narrative. If we look at Fight Club, yes it
has a big climactic conflict, yes is features a middle aged adult
male as the protagonist and yes it appeals to a young teenage
male demographic, however it also doesn’t have very many
huge battles with loads of effects like action films do. I also
found that Thrillers are often much more grounded to reality,
whereas it isn’t rare in Action films to see a character that can
seemingly defy physics in blood-pumping stunts. This research
will benefit my film because I plan to utilize this narrative of
building suspense through characters and complex storytelling
rather than high-budget action sequences.