Planning: Screenplay

Psychiatrist

by

Liam Wood and Scott Hackett

Fade in:

Title - 'BROADMOOR FILMS PRESENTS'

This is in a white, scratchy font in front of a book background with is all in capitals

Goes to a dead cut with a black screen.

Title two appears in bottom right hand corner in white, scratchy font

After variouis shots a black screen appears with the name of the 2nd actor in white, scratchy font.

Close up of notes being written in a book showing another actor title which is again in a white, scratchy font

Camera shot - extreme close up

shows hands cutting up photos of victim (victim 2)

Close up of blood being smothered over the page. Blood is red (obviously) on top of pages which are white

Dead cut. goes to the whole face being crossed out (victim 1)

close up of photos being aligned on the page. Screen has a red filter. The title again is in a white, scratchy font stating 'music by...'

Close up of photo being stuck down onto the page which is being rubbed over by the palm of a hand.

Camera shot - mid shot

Panning shot of filing cabinet with the title statin 'written by...'. The title is again in a whit scratchy font.

Close up shot of the main characters hand shuffling the papers together, banging them on the table to line them up and then laying them back down.

The screenplayt is finished with a black screen with a title saying 'directed by...'. This title is again in white, scratchy font.

Planning: Treatment

The film opening starts with a clip of a book opening up, where the fist title appears in the bottom right hand corner. There is then a dead cut to a black screen where we have title 2 in the top right hand conner of the screen. We then have a dead cut to a hand turning a page of a book with title three appearing at the bottom of the screen. We then have a close up of a blunt object, or the weapon that the psychiatrist uses with the camera panning across, then a cut to a black screen with title five appearing on the left hand side of the screen. We will have a dead cut to a black screen where we will have the main actors name in the center of the screen in rather larger writin than the previous texts. we then have an extreme close up of the index finger and thumb rolling a pen inbetween. There is then a cut to a black screen and the mane of our second actor appears in the centre of the screen. We then have a cut to a clip of the psychiatrists cutting up of newspaper titles linked to the killings, the screen then cuts to black where the film title appears in the middle of the screen, slightly off centre in larger writing than all other texts. The cut then goes to a hand grabbing a closed book off of a table with a few sheets of paper scattered. This is also cross-cut or over-lapped with a clip of pages being turned. This cross-cut is then changed into just the clip of pages turning with another actors name appearing. We then see a man writing notes in a book when the name of another actor pops up in the corner. The man writing his notes is then overlapped with a a still picture of some notes that have been made prior. There is a cut to a black screen with the name of another actor that stars in the film. There is then a cut the actor cutting up photos of the victims that have been killed after they have died. Another black screen and another actors name appears on the screen. We then see the actor cutting out pictures of his victim when they were alive then the cut again, goes to a blckscreen ander an actors name comes up. The cut then goes to the psychiatrist cutting up more photos of the victims when they've been murdered and then we see him slide them onto the page from a different angle. There is then a page of notes that has blood splattered over it and the actor runs his hand over the page. There is then a close up of the psychiatrist writing notes with a couple of layers of hands over lapping just off centre. There is a black scrren for the majority of the scree but then a spotlight towards the top right hand side where we can see a picture of one of the victims. Here we can see the title of who did the casting for the film. In the spot light we can see the psychiatrist get a marker pen and draw a line through the eyes of the victim. Then a dead cut to the same screen set up but with the whole face already crossed out and witht he man just drawing the last line; then we have a cut to an extreme close up of the pentip writing notes. The psychiatrist then aligns the pictures onto the page with a red filter over the whole screen, the title of 'music by...' then comes onto the screen. We then have the killer sticking the pictures down onto the page from a height and we have a dead cut to a black screen with the title of 'Edited By...' and then a cut to the psychiatrist rubbing his hand over the picture that has just been stuck down in the previous clip. There is another dead cut of the psychiatrist picking up a pile of notes that are on the desk, then a fading in cut of the book being turned with the pictures of the victims on it. There's a cut to a black screen with the title of 'Director of Photography' appearing in the centre of the screen. There is then a clip of the psychiatrist holding a pen in the writing position in the air. Another black screen is shown with the title of 'Executives Producers'. There is then a pan of a filing cabinet where the lighting is quite dim, and the title of 'written by' comes onto screen. A cut to the killers hands shuffling papers together, tapping the bottom onto the table and then laying them down. A black screen once again appears with the title 'produced by' comes onto the screen, there is another pan of a filing cabinet but with brighter lighting and the final dead cut is to a final brack screen with the directors name on again.

Research: Target Audience Feedback

Target audience feedback is an important part of the process in creating a film. It is used to give us, the film producers, a clear idea of what our target audience will prefer to see in our final production. We presented 15 people, who fit in the bracket of our target audience, with two possible film openings that we have created. They read the openings and the commented on which one they liked the best and what they liked about it. Although this is only a brief survey, it gave us an idea of whether these ideas were good or if we needed to re-think our potential openings. When we did the survey, all the people we interviewed were enthusiastic about the openings and were thoroughly engaged. From this we can tell that these potential openings were a success. We created the pie chart and also a short video of what a few people thought about their favourite opening.

 

 

Research: Pen Portrait Of Target Audience

This is the pen portrait for our target audience. The idea of the pen portrait is to narrow down the qualities of our ideal target audience to who we would like to have watch our horror film. This is a much more specific version of what we envisage our audience to be and it almost describes one person. We looked at qualities like age, social media usage, sports, jobs, family and home life, food likes and obviously film interests. The pen portrait that we have come up with is the one below;

Planning: Possible Film Openings

As a group we have come up with two possible film openings. The reason we have done this is so that we can see what type of opening our target audience will enjoy the most. The aim is to present a group of people with these opening and get their opinion on which they prefer. When this has been done we will have a better idea of what will make our film opening a success. The possible openings are as follows;

Film Opening One

 

• Who: The Psychiatrist that will appear in the film as the main character and villain, and one patient that he choses as one of his victims.
• When: At the middle of the day, in a meeting between the two characters. The victim is a patient of the Psychiatrist so visits him often.
• Where: The two characters are sitting in the Psychiatrists office having one of their regular meetings, the patient is sitting on a sofa with his/her back facing the door with the Psychiatrist sat opposite.
• What: The Psychiatrist is asking the patient questions and recording the answers. After a while, the Psychiatrist excuses himself and walks out of the room. When he goes outside, he picks up a blunt object and takes his shows off at the door to avoid being heard. The Psychiatrist then walks back into the room, stands behind the patient and lifts the weapon - as he brings down the weapon and just before it makes contact with patient the scene cuts to titles.

 

 

Film Opening Two

 

• Who: The Psychiatrist will briefly appear in the opening, but just the character writing in a book or notepad, so the face of the character may not be included due to a lack of importance of any story.
• When: There is no time or date for this opening as it is an opening with no story, but based on the opening titles, like in Se7en.
• Where: Again, there is no story line in this opening so there is no location for the opening, however when the psychiatrist is briefly shown, it will imply that he is in his office even if the filming doesn't take place there.
• What: Like in the opening to Se7en, the opening will be wholly based on the opening titles. The structure of the opening will be a selection of clips of the psychiatrist writing, blood splatters across a page, glimpses of the psychiatrists head collection etc.

Research: The Importance Of Sound In Horror Films

In any kind of movie, music and sound are an important factor in creating an atmosphere for the audience which allows them to explore the film in a lot more detail. The sound of some films are iconic and can be tied to a particular film, and in horror films particularly. The most iconic of them all is probably Jaws, where the composer, John Williams mainly uses string and wind instruments. When listening to the sound track, the speed of the piece gradually increases to build more tension, as you'd expect of a horror film. From this, we expect that something bad is going to happen which is the entire aim of the music. The music builds on fear but also on excitement as we wait in anticipation of what will happen next. This iconic piece of horror music is now used by everyone when they want to symbolise fear or threat, they will hum the tune and follow the same pattern of getting louder and faster as the threat becomes greater. 

Another major soundtrack in the horror film industry is that of Psycho. As opposed to the Jaws track, this one is more exciting from the offset. The creator, Bernard Herrmann uses string instruments which are played at a fast pace to fulfil the fear element of the piece and to leave the viewer powerless and defenceless. The difference between this and the Jaws soundtrack is that this doesn't build tension, it just jumps in at the deep end however they both have very similar outcomes, in the fact that the audience is in ore of what will happen.


On the flip side of this, instead of talking about the perks of using sound in a horror film, what about a horror film with out music and sound? I watched a horror trailer the other day as part of this research and muted it to see the effect and the feel of it was completely different. Just watching the trailer itself is not enough to build up the adrenaline inside and bring fear to me. This sold me on how important music is to a horror film and now I am focused on producing a good piece of music for my opening to really bring out the horror element of it.

Research: The Importance Of Opening Titles

The opening titles in any film are used to present information to the audience and can also set the tone of the film like in the opening of 'Se7en' where the opening credits present a very eerie feel with the scratchy text font and the dark and creepy background. Apart from setting the tone, the credits also present the audience with initial information that may be found important by the viewers and other information that the film company find important, even if the viewers will pay full attention. The opening titles of a film are more to the point than closing credits. The opening credits include key information, for example:

• Film's title
• Film production company
• Distribution company
• Actor's names
• Director's name
• Producer's name
• Music by…
• Cinematography by…