ProposalKirsty, Shannon and Leo

Idea Summary

After an unexplained murder of Detective Hunter's son, Ethan, occurs during Ethan, Laura (his girlfriend) and his friends' group camp-out, he must take things into his own hands and find out what involvement his son had in this conspiracy. By talking to each friend who was there at the scene of the crime he begins to put the missing pieces together, as well as beginning to understand more about his son than he had originally planned.

Group Roles

The roles in our group, for what each persons main focus will be are as follows:

Kirsty: Director and Editor

Shannon: Costume and Propp design and Co-Director

Leo: Cameraman and Co - Director

Characters Detective Alex Hunter

Alex is middle aged detective inspector who has a comfortable life with a good income and lives at home with his son, Ethan, in a nice and friendly neighbourhood. He is divorced from Ethan’s mother and they live separately but their son sees them both frequently so he believes Ethan still has the sense of family.However by him having his particular job, it makes Alex, who has a seemingly good lifestyle, have to work around his murdered son which allows the character to develop from a friendly, laid back character into an obsessive father who’s life now revolves around finding out how his son was killed. As Alex starts to find out secrets about his son’s dark double life, it makes him start to question and blame himself. Did his divorce with Ethan’s mother trigger his rebellion? If he had tried to work it out, would Ethan still be the good son he once remembered?Ultimately he wants to find out what happened to his deceased son, but the more he discovers about his child, the more he begins to regret the decision.

Characters Ethan Hunter

The character of Ethan creates the controversy and, ultimately, the dark theme that surrounds the story. Throughout his life he has gotten everything he has wanted because his family has never struggled in anyway. That is until his parent’s divorce. As his mother had to move away from the town and his father’s work meant he was constantly busy, he turned to being rebellious to try and go against his family. He is a very forward, arrogant character however he has a certain charm about him which means he is always seen as the leader and is very popular with people, especially with the opposite sex.Ethan’s strive to be bad and go against everything his father works for is meant to benefit him. He starts to get involved with an anonymous, dangerous stranger who makes him deal with such crime as drugs and assault he believes his father’s ignorance to what he is delving in means he has the upper hand as he as all the knowledge. However this all changed after it went the opposite way for Ethan after he took his obsession with competing with his father a step too far.

Characters

Laura Hackett Laura is a kind, mature and respectable girl who clearly knows right and wrong. Yet she liked the security she felt Ethan brought when they first started their relationship and thought he was misunderstood. However the longer their relationship continued, the more Laura started to find out about Ethan’s secrets but because of her ties to Ethan, she feels like she can’t betray him even though she knows what he is doing is wrong. Laura comes across as quite a shy, understated person and this is due to the control Ethan has over her and the need to always be dominant over everyone else so over time she has become insecure with herself and is expected to support Ethan in everything he does.Her role is vital within the film as she has all the key answers that would explain Ethan’s murder but is scared to betray her dead boyfriend and furthermore is terrified about her own safety as she may have an idea of who committed her boyfriend’s crime.

Characters Close group of friends

This will consist of four more people, two girls and two boys which are all in the dark about the worse of Ethan’s secrets. They all know Ethan isn’t exactly good as he has openly admitted to taking drugs and even does drugs in front of them, in fact they are all quite scared of him. Yet they all know minor details towards why he may have gone down a different path to what his father wanted him to be. Individually they each have small pieces of information they can share with his father that may help towards finding out why he was murdered which they are happier to share individually as they don’t feel like they’re betraying their dead friend.Overall they act as the people Detective Hunter can refer to if he needs any indications about his son.

Locations The majority of scenes will be taken in the woods (as the

teenagers are predominantly out during a camp-out) which can be achieved in many surrounding woodland areas around Dunstable and our local area. There will however still be some scenes shot in a small suburban town (for the scenes with the detective and the more investigative approach), which can also be achieved in numerous local areas in Bedfordshire.

Costume Detective Alex Hunter – His outfits will mainly

consist of grey and brown suits to show the professional status he obtains. However his appearance will change from smart and presentable at the beginning of the film to a scruffier one (e.g. shirt un-tucked, stains on clothes etc.) to connote how the task of solving his son’s murder and the double life he finds out about has taken its toll on the character.

Ethan Hunter – Ethan will wear mostly dark clothes to connote his more cynical outlook on life and the bad things he partakes in. The clothes he will wear will be mostly casual e.g. leather jacket, t shirt, jeans, trainers and a beanie to show he still fits in with the laidback teenage lifestyle, even though he’s living two different lives.

Laura Hackett- The character of Laura will always have some sort of white garment on to connote her goodness and purity that will contrast with Ethan’s darkness. Her clothes will still be casual so she fits in with the crowd e.g. casual t shirts, hoodie however she will not wear anything even the slightest bit revealing (for example a top that may show off her figure) as this will display the control that Ethan has over her.

Close group of friends- Their costumes will consist of mainly chequered shirts, casual shoes and shirts with a range of different colours to display that they are ordinary compared to the other three major characters.

PropsProps

To show that the film still revolves around a group of teenagers l, such props like phones, bags and packets of unhealthy food will be present. In the camp scene props like tent bags, blankets and hats will be incorporated to add to the mise en scene and allow the audience to identify the scene more easily.Lastly to create the darker thriller aspect, alcohol and drugs will be involved to connote the darker element substances can create within a person and knives will be used to create the danger and suspense within the film.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack for our opening sequence will include following track as well as some dialogue and diegetic sound.

‘Zero – Smashing Pumpkins’

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was chose, because it relates to what our target audience like to listen to (Alternative/Indie rock) and the feeling it portrays is quite eerie and dark which fits with the feeling of our plot. It portrays this feeling because of the harsh vocals and the distorted guitar that is in a minor key.

Effects

We don’t plan to use very many effects in our opening sequence, as we don’t want too much going on and for it too be too complex. The effects we are using though are as follows:

- Post production Lighting effects (Day – Night).- Slow motion.- Title effects.

Effects

We intend to use these effects because they fit the mise-en-scene and will create certain feelings. For example, the lighting effect will be used, because part of our opening scene is set at night, and we plan to film during the day. By applying the effect we can simply change this. Another example of how a feeling can be portrayed through the effects we have chosen is slow motion. We will be using this to create suspense, for example when Ethan’s Dad gets the phone call from the police that his son has been killed.