The document discusses the process of establishing the plot, genre, and other technical elements of a student film project. It describes taking inspiration from films like Wolf of Wall Street for the plot, which involves drugs and takes place in a busy city. Scenes include close-ups of drugs and match cuts during conversations to clearly show who is speaking. Music and camera angles are used to build tension. Editing, sound effects, costumes, and typography were chosen to fit with crime thriller genres and make the film feel smooth, tense, and professionally produced within the limitations of a student project.

1. By Amber Renshaw

2. Narrative (how we
established a plot)
When writing the story for our film I looked at many different
films. We wanted something that would catch peoples eye for my
research into a film I chose the recently released Wolf of wall
street. We could easily take inspiration from this. This film
included everything that we were thinking about doing for our
own film. It has drugs, sex and violence all in it and is new and
modern. When I did my 15 minute analysis the film starts off
pretty slow but then after the 15 minutes I watched all the film
because I was that engrossed in it. In our group we wanted a
thriller film something that would shock the audience and want to
make them carry on watching it. The plot was set in a busy area in
the city and has suspense building from the first moment. I like
how in this film their not afraid to do things like swear and drugs
are seen a lot. I think our film will be a little more tamer and
probably keep to a 15 rating. I also looked into other films and tv
series that were similar to this such as Pulp Fiction, Dexter and
Catch me if you can. We want our plot to be fast paced and
immediately attracts a certain audience. We all decided that after
watching different kind of films that we thought that
crime/thriller/psychological kind of film would be the best to go
with. Our film is linear because we do not flash back before an
event it all goes in time. The event that does complicate the film
happens first though we decided to do this because we want to get
the shock out of the way and then find out why its happened. This
event includes drugs being used in the first scene.

3. Genre (where does it look
like your chosen genre)
In our film we establish the genre in
various ways. The use of props in ours is
very significant with the use of drugs. The
audience immediately recognise that the
film is going to be about some kind of
crime. Plus the use of music in the
background gives the sense of suspicion
as well as tension. At first when the film
first starts no one knows exactly what the
film is about. We also set it in a park
which can be linked to crime as a lot of
teenagers are known to cause trouble
there so we thought it would be smart to
do this. We did this because when we
took inspiration from the clichéd story
lines from ‘taken’ and ‘the da vinci code’.
We left our film on an open ending to add
intrigue to the crime drama.

4. Camera, angles, shot
movement and positionThroughout the film we used shots such as match on
action and shot reverse shots. This is because we had
lots of conversations throughout the film and the
camera is shot from a characters left shoulder then
the opposite to the right and we didn’t cross the 180
line because it would confuse the audience. So the
audience knows who's speaking at what point. We
did close ups of the drugs also to draw attention to
them because it is a key part of the narrative,
especially when they are brought out of the bag
accidently we had to include match on action for this.
When doing this I referred to shots from pulp fiction
when characters are having conversations.
Furthermore we included the use of high and low
angle to show the audience who would be the
‘superior’ character in the shot. This happens when
Daniel falls and Olivia looks down on him. It could
also indicate ‘good’ and ‘evil’.

5. Continuity and editing
In our film we tried to keep our film smooth
and edited the clip to make sure we achieved
this. The pacing of the film could have been
better by using a tracking shot on Daniel when
he walks through the park, as it does look like
a hand held camera because its shaky. The
rhythm of the film goes very fast when Daniel
falls and we cut this to make sure it all fitted in
to run smooth so we had no pauses. We
wanted to film so it was verisimilitude so the
audience felt like they were actually watching
it that’s why we did close ups of the drugs so
they could actually see what was happening.
This was achieved by doing short takes. We
also used fade in and outs on the end and
beginning of our film to make it smooth and
not just jump straight into it.

6. SoundWith the sound we decided to put music in to
accompany the majority of the film. We used a
sound bridge so it would carry on smoothly
into the next scene. When researching for the
music I found the sound and took inspiration
from Law and Order and films such as Shutter
Island to get that tension in traditional crime
thrillers. We also used a sound effect of a
‘gunshot’ when the drugs are accidently spilt
onto the table to create a tense atmosphere for
the audience as well as the characters this can
also be called a synchronous sound.

7. Mis-en-scene and
iconography
Our film is a beginner for a crime thriller
and we included appropriate costume and
props. We used a bag of flour for our prop
to portray cocaine. Furthermore Olivia was
holding a suitcase looking bag to fit in with
the crime stereotype. Then for the costumes
Daniel needed to look smart and older so he
wore a suit to go with his lawyer career that
is mentioned. His hair is quite messy as well
to suggest there's something off about him.
Then Olivia wore a mac coat and sunglasses
this is easily associated to a traditional
crime thriller because it suggests an
inspector/spy role creating a twist in the
story line. For my role I had just casual
clothes on to suggest I’m just a normal
friend, when Olivia was still dressed smart.

8. Typography
For our film we spent a lot of time deciding what
typography to use. We did some research into films to
decide how we wanted ours and we found in films such
as crime thrillers they used quite bold but simple text
for the title and credits. We did this because we wanted
a clean looking film. This is why we decided not to use
colours and stuck to black and white.