2. Film Premise
The film revolves around a pair of detectives that have been working together to find a notorious
serial killer who has been killing a female for each day in December. As the search for the killer goes
on, one of the detectives begins to find more and more evidence implicating her partner as the
prime suspect. However, due to her strong friendship and trust of her friend and partner, she attempts to
ignore the evidence and try to prove his innocence before the rest of the department find what she has
discovered.
Unfortunately, failing to acknowledge the damning evidence leads Detective Charlotte Valgus right into the
hands of her deceptive partner who, on her birthday, unveils himself as the crazed killer. Detective
Frank Morvor unveils that he had been trying to impress her through killing people similar to her to
make her more unique. The sudden shock of finding this out leaves her in a state of shock and her
partner devastated that she doesn't appreciate his “gift.”
The situation then escalates to a fight, leaving both detectives with no choice but to draw on each
other...gunshots are heard, everything goes black...but who shot who?
3. Characters:
Police Detectives:
Detective Charlotte Valgus: Born with a drug addict Father, Valgus was
determined to follow in the footsteps of her father like figure and become a
renowned Police Detective and make something good of herself.
Detective Frank Morvor: Part time counsellor and Police Dectective. Born into
a middle class background with the name Frank Moor, Morvor suffers from
split personality disorder. One side of him wanting to find the murderer and the
other is the serial killer himself.
4. How are our characters related?
The two characters first met as counsellor and patient during Charlotte’s school years as she
struggled through her biological Father’s drug addiction. This would be shown through a series of
flashbacks throughout the film or would be revealed at the very beginning of the film in a short sequence.
A key line in this would be Charlotte stating during a counselling session that she just wants to be
loved and made to feel special. They developed a friendship through this and Frank gradually became
someone that Charlotte could look up too and see as a Father figure of sorts.
Frank on the other hand had always been suffering with split personality disorder and took specific
interest in Charlotte’s counselling case. He began to develop romantic feelings for her and became
blinded by his love, not being able to see the fact that she did not reciprocate his feelings.
The plot twist would be that his two personalities are almost like brothers in one body, the light side
seeks to help Charlotte with the murder case whilst the darker side is deeply in love with her and
wishes to impress. He does this by killing women that look like her in order to make her feel more
unique and special just like she had wished earlier on.
5. U.S.P
For this trailer we will advertise our main character as being a major actress
as our unique selling point. In most teaser trailers, a actor or actress that is highly
popular or well regarded is featured heavily in their marketing campaign in
order to attract as many audience members as possible.
We make sure that our main character can be seen as being featured as big
actress to help create a U.S.P.
We will also use iconography of the silhouette and the detective board of our
detective as another U.S.P as these two images are often related to the
stereotypical image of crime and would therefore make it easier to portray our
chosen genre over the poster and magazine cover.
6. Target Audience:
Taking into account the genre of this film (a detective thriller) our target audience
may be of an older demographic, due to the complexity of the film’s plot and
the violent scenes that may be contained within the film.
However, the level of action and violence within the film may be something that
doesn't appeal to a plus 40+ age group but to a slightly younger
demographic such as 18-32. This is because it will contain a large amount of
action, violence and tension to keep them entertained, however it is also
complex enough to challenge their initial perceptions of each of the different
characters as the film progresses.
7. Poster Inspiration and Idea:
For our poster we have taken various elements from other movie posters, the detective genre in general, and our own original idea to form a rough
base for what we will be aiming to create. We plan on using a similar title layout and camera angle seen in the poster for “Now You See Me” except
only showing one or two detective type characters, like the ones seen in the poster for “Edge of Darkness.” We also aim to try and utilize the same
silhouette with photos in design seen in the “Vantage Point” poster as it will convey the inner conflict in the main character. We also want to have
the detective laid out in a similar way to the man in the “GoodFellas” poster as from above it will leave some confusion as to whether they are dead
or not.
We also liked the stuck down pictures forming the island on the “Shutter Island” poster as it tied in with the detectives board idea that we want to
push
8. Ideas for Magazine Cover:
From these magazine covers, we identified a common trend between them.
They all include a medium/close shot of the main character that fills the cover
of the magazine. This is done to help the readers understand who the main
character is and advertises them as the main attraction for readers wanting
to see the film.
9. Magazine layout:
The title of the
magazine is usually
seen at the top of the
cover.
The name of the film is found
towards
The bottom of the magazine cover
making way for the image of the
main character to be seen clearly
with no subtitles in the way there
face.
Subtitles are seen to
one side of the
magazine in a much
smaller font in
comparison to the main
title of the film and
magazine.
This is a good magazine to be inspired by as it clearly marks the main
actress and star in the movie. This would therefore draw the
attention of the chosen target audience, followers of the star
would also be attracted to this movie as it would be clearly showing
her as a key feature. Furthermore, Empire Magazine is often
advertising thriller movies and we therefore decided that it would
be a good fit for our film.