The document discusses and compares three ideas for the opening scene of a thriller film in 2-3 sentences. Idea 1 involves a boy discovering his family has gone missing and his empty house bearing mysterious symbols. The proposed opening scene shows him waking alone in a field with a symbol on his chest and finding his empty house. Idea 2 features a girl being texted instructions to complete tasks for money and running from an observer. The opening would show her receiving texts while waiting in a park and then running from a pursuer. Idea 3 is about a psychopath stalking and photographing a family, focusing on their young daughter. The opening proposes showing his handheld point of view following them and closeups of the daughter before revealing his room

1. 3 IDEAS OF
THRILLER
OPENING

2. Idea 1
• Plot: main character discovers his family have
gone missing, and everything in his house has
been taken.The film explores the secrets of his
family, as they have done something bad in the
past.The ‘baddies’ that have taken the family are
on the same level of MI5 in terms of skills.The
plot twist is that he knew the villains all his life,
they seemed like innocent family friends.This
would be a psychological thriller, with twists and
turns.
• 2 minute opening synopsis:
• The boy wakes up in an empty field, very early in
the morning, so it is still dark and dusk. He finds
some sort of mysterious symbol inked onto his
chest which has blood on it. Uses his phone to
call people/text, no one picks up. He then makes
his way back home, but finds that his house is
completely empty, all the furniture is gone and
his family is no where to be seen.Then sees the
same symbol on the wall of a room, there are
random splats of blood.The boy is left there in a
state of confusion.
Pros and cons:
• The pros to this idea is that it isn’t so
stereotypical in the way that it doesn’t
involve a stalker. As it’s a psychological
thriller, there would be reoccurring things
throughout which would entice an
audience. this 2 minute sequence would
also be effective as it starts off with the
mystery of the boy being alone, and raises
many questions for the audience such as
‘where have his family gone?’ ‘What does
that symbol mean?’. In this opening it
would be more appropriate to use the tense
non diegetic soundtracks, varying in pace
depending on the more intense the
moment is.
• The cons are that as there will be not much
dialogue, we need to make sure it doesn’t
become boring where audiences may zone
out.To do this we need to make sure a
question is always raised e.i introducing the
mystery of the symbol, then the journey to
the house could have some sort of small
incident. We would also need to consider
that there isn’t a budget, so we will be
limited on props however the setting of an
empty house should be available.

3. Idea 2 Pros and cons:
• The pros to this idea are that it’s not a cliché as
most people in a thriller get followed or
stalked, where as this is more of an action
thriller consisting of high levels of suspense
and tension between the girl and other
characters. It will also allow us to use a variety
of fast and slow paced non diegetic music as
well as fast paced editing to reflect the action
going on in the 2 minute opening.Another
strength to this idea is that it raises a lot of
questions for the audience, such as who is she
receiving these texts from, and why she is
being chased.These questions are essential as
they intrigue the audience to watch on.
• The cons, however, are that is could be quite
hard to film due to it requiring different areas
t0 film e.g. when the girl is running away. It
also doesn’t leave much of a cliff hanger which
could cause the audience to lose interest. It
would also prove difficult to film the scenes
where se is running, which could result to the
camera movement to look too amateurish.
Plot:A girl is on her phone and is texting a person.This film
will be a psychological thriller as the person on the other
side of the text plays around with the girl’s emotions into
doing things out of the ordinary such as stealing money
from people and then at the end of the film she kills
someone.The girl will be a teenager as she is most likely to
meet someone online and be lured into thinking that she
can trust this person.
2 minute opening: the girl will be in a park waiting
around for something and the camera will be focused
on her phone which says various texts about what she
needs to do which will help her compete this task and
therefore get her reward which is most likely money. As
she does this she notices someone staring at her in a
suspicious way, she all of a sudden receives a text from
the unknown number telling her to run.Throughout the
opening two minutes we see the character witness a
series of obstacles whilst running away from this
mysterious character, during this she receives a variety
of brief instructions on where she should go from the
unknown person over text.

4. Pros and cons
Pros:
• It will create a sense of suspense as you wouldn’t
know who the man is also you will have suspicious
why he is taking more attention to the younger girl.
There would be more attention to certain places they
have been and locations. It would create a lot of
tension in the first two minutes.
Cons:
• There will be quite minimal dialogue so there could
be chance that it could become boring and not
interesting. It could be a bit confusing due to there
being no specific reason as to why it is happening, as
this would be shown later on the film. Also it could be
quite difficult to create tension in the first 2 minutes
of the film.
Idea 3
Plot: There is a psychopath that has a strange
obsession with a certain family. He goes around
taking pictures of the family and tracks down
where they go and what they do.The story will be
about their lives and how this psychopath of a
man follows them. He will also be targeting the
younger child of the family, a little girl.The man’s
identity won’t be revealed until the very end of
the film, as this would leave suspense all
throughout the film.
2 minute opening synopsis:
There will be a hand held shot so it looks like he is
following someone and following them.There will
also be close up shots of the little girl so it shows
that he is targeting the little girl more.There also
be showing different locations so the audience
know that he is stalking them. At the end of the
two minutes there will be a room full of all
pictures and maps showing where they have been
and there will be all of the names of the family
and more over exaggeration of the little girl.

5. Summary:
final choice
• We decided to go with idea 1 which was my idea that I put forward.The reason why we chose to make this our
final idea and go ahead with it was because we knew what settings to use as we know places that we could
use near us which match in well with the thriller of our movie. As one of our group members is moving house
soon, we decided to use her house when it is empty as it would create a lot of suspense and make the film
look improved. However, if this doesn’t go to plan and the house isn’t empty around the filming time, we will
still be using the house if the furniture is still there. We feel that the narrative of this idea fits into a
psychological thriller as there is many mysteries and plot twists that will entice the audience. I personally
hope that the narrative and psychological elements conveys well to the audience in that they understand
what is going on but also feel confused and wat to watch on.
This PowerPoint was made by our whole group, and we all contributed to one slide/idea.