‘Missing’ New Short Film Pitch

Dominique Bendelow & Michaela Boddy

The new ‘Missing’

Due to unforeseen circumstances, our group decided to go separate ways at the beginning of filming. This left only two of us to do everything between us. We struggled to find actors who could do the time slots that we could and in the end decided to change our story line in order to save relying on others. Our story now has only one main actor in and another small part. We had to change the plot in order to this, so… Here’s our new short film pitch…

The PlotOriginally we were to have two main actors, a male and a female. They were going to meet up in the woods and we were going to leave the story ending on a cliff-hanger. This time however, we decided that we were going to keep the concept of a stalker that the girl was familiar with, but change things. For example, our story starts with our main actress, Michaela, who is walking with her friend when she gets a text message saying ‘woods in 10mins?’, Michaela tells her friend she has to go and walks to the woods/graveyard. Michaela is very nervous as she is walking around and stops every time she thinks she hears something moving. We then flick to another point of view, as if a person is watching Michaela walk through the woods. This is to emphasis the fact that she is not alone and she knows it. The camera will follow her facial expressions as she turns around and see’s something she doesn’t want to see. We will then have a person just out of shot to grab her and cover her mouth. The screen will then go black as it did in the original and we are considering having the phone vibrating on the floor again. We then decided to edit it in a way which will look like time is being rewound, back to the beginning when Michaela gets the text message, as if she’d had a premonition about what was going to happen to her. We think that the themes of time travel and technology are suitable in this plot line and we think it will be much more easy to film and more convenient for us.

ConceptThe concept of our film will still be the same as it has a very similar story line of obsession and stalkers, along with an innocent victim .There are a couple of films that gave us the inspiration for our film, mostly circulating around serial killers with a psychological thriller theme in the genre.Some of the films we watched included; The Butterfly Effect; Psycho; Zodiac and mainly with our new idea, Final Destination.Although our story line has changed we still want it to remain as a thriller if possible, but we know that it may not be possible to pull this off as well as we want to, and there is the possibility of it looking very much like a ‘typical student film’, which we want to avoid.

Concept Trailers

The trailers of films are very important as its usually what gets an audience to go and see it, we have included some of the trailers for the films of which are mentioned in the previous slide, our concept films.

http://vimeo.com/9513557 - Sweeney Todd

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG3-GlvKPcg – Psycho

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dWgRfb17-M – Zodiac

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR9MsNurndQ – The Butterfly Effect

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD_MAz96L70 – Final Destination

CharactersMuch like our last plot, we are keeping the same ‘Villain - Victim’ thing as its one of the most popular things and is easy to work with.‘Victim’Within our short film we are going to have a so called ‘Victim’. We are going to make the audience feel like this person is a victim all the way through, but also make them question themselves as they consider the fact that maybe she isn’t the victim, but she’s also another villain by cheating on her boyfriend. We leave this bit to the imagination which also keeps people in suspense and makes them want more.Villain’ We also have the typical ‘Villain’ who is after the victim. We will make the audience constantly feel on edge with the way this character is portrayed in our short film. But towards the end we make it obvious that everything may not be what it seems, and we’re unsure of where the story ends. Although this happens, we also make it known that he was previously a villain which adds to the confusion of the narrative.

Mise en SceneLocation – We have set this version in a closer location as the previous wasn’t realistic or convenient. We have set it not far from college in a very suitable woodland area with a Graveyard close by which is great as shots often work well there. It’s a misty place and is quite dark which works well with our theme. We wanted to create the feeling that the only people in the world that were there are the main character and an unknown villain.Era – We are setting our film in the modern day, 2012, as we feel that it’s the best time in which we can relate to and create the best possible short film with as much detail. It also makes it simple for things such as costume and technology. Lighting – We will use mainly natural day light if possible as carrying round lights will be hard enough, plus we’ll be out in the open without plug sockets, and battery powered lights aren’t strong enough. There is a possibility it may snow when we’re filming which means that the snow should naturally bounce light back up to the main characters face so we should be fine!

Audience Profile

Audience profile is very important to us as it determines who will watch our film and who we should aim it at. We would say that our film, because of it being a student film, would be aimed at an audience between around the ages of 15-21 year olds, also because of the ages of the actors in it. This demographic would most probably be able to relate to our short film as there has been many stories of young people meeting up with a person they didn’t know whilst on their own, and then they go missing.If our film was made into an official feature film we would have to get it rated by the British Board of Film Classification. We would say that our film would be either a 12 or a 15 certficate because of our audience ages.Thriller movies have tended to attract more of a male audience rather than a female audience so, it would most probably be dominated by a male audience. Although the fact that our main and only actor is female, this might turn the tables as females may be able to relate more, plus its usually girls that go missing after meeting up with strangers rather than boys.

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Theme’s – Time and Technology

The themes of our story are most definitely time and technology, and it has been fairly easy to create these themes. Technology is a part of our generations everyday life, so to include a piece of technology such as a mobile phone has been very easy. Just a simple shot of our main actress walking with her phone in her hand, or the text message that she receives in the first place, would have done it.Time was a little bit more difficult to include as the theme of time travel would be too hard to do, we felt stuck.. Until we realised we could have flash backs and flash forwards. In our original plot we had a flash back but in this one we have a flash forwards. We think it generally works better now, plus there are less actors to have to direct!Other themes also include; Mystery, the infamous ‘Unknown’, Drama and Thriller.

AdvertisementWe decided that we would go for advertisement and a movie poster in the same way in which things such as District 9 and the Blair Witch Project did. We are going to make realistic ‘Missing Persons’ poster and write an article for a newspaper on how a young girl has gone missing. We have decided to do this in hope that it would bring big ‘hype’ to our film and it would get it recognised for being different. Although we’re taking inspiration for The Blaire Witch Project, we are filming it like a normal film and not hand held!