Initial Ideas

Initial ideas for character

Only one character will be featured in my opening sequence, this will be a main character. Their gender will be determined by my focus group. They will be aged 30-40. This character will be very eccentric and will suffer from multiple mental illnesses and disorders, these will also be determined by the focus group. During my opening sequence I would like to keep the details of the characters appearance a mystery, giving slight clues to create enigma’s.

Initial Location possibilities

The setting with be in England, and the time will be present day. I am planning on using my house to film at. These are a few ideas I have on places that I could film:

I can see this rocking chair location working well in my opening sequence. I think that close up shoots of the bottom of the rocking chair moving with someone’s feet dangling from it would work well. There could also be counting noises. This would hint at OCD mental illness and would create an enigma.

I also have this old fashioned writing desk, complete with feather pens. Including an object like this would show the eccentric qualities of my character. Due to the fact that writing desks and feather pens are no longer used. I worry that this could confuse the audience on which era it is set in.

This desk would be perfect for filming some of the writing scenes. The main character would be sat at the chair.

If I decide to involve the mental illness of “night terror”, I will need a bed scene. For this I have two choices. Depending on the gender of the main character will determine my decision on this. I feel that purple is more stereotypical of females.

   
I would also like to create small sets, using antiques, etc. This will allow me to experiment with creating manic disorderly and eccentric scenes for the character to interact with.

Initial Plot

My current plans are to not reveal to much about the plot in the opening sequence. I would like to instead, but bring forward the ideas of mental health issues. This would allow me to bring the main focus of the plot straight to the psychological aspects. To bring the thriller idea forward, I would like to give the sequence an mysterious air. This sound be done through use of editing  sound effects, lighting and mise-en-scene. The lighting would be highlighting certain area, but leaving the rest to fall into shadow. This effect creates enigma's in the audiences head, but allows them to create the rest of the image for them selves. I would like to use editing to overlay scenes so that that play disjointedly over each other. Sound effects will mostly be non-diegetic, maybe include of screen voices etc.