Group:Developing concept (responding to questions from pitch)

After hearing feedback concerning our pitch about our project, from our class peers, we have concluded that the following modifications to our two-minute horror/thriller opening will be made:

• Many people arose the problem that the victim of the death is supposed to be a “Satanist” like character, the problem with this is that we will need to ensure we convey this properly, we will also need to maintain a sense of her being more innocent than the murderer, as she may appear as if she deserved what she received, thus giving taking the antagonistic nature away from her and giving it to her, which would be make the opening less suspenseful.
• Many people said that murder scenes, if not shot to a professional manner, can make the rest of the scene or movie look slightly ‘tacky’. For this reason, we have concluded that we will either avoid showing the scene of the murder, alternatively, we may use shadows to substantially avoid displaying the actual murder, we feel this may also fit in with the idea of “fear of the unknown”.
• Due to the previous point, we have decided to use a gun as the choice of weapon for the murderer, as opposed to using a knife, this is not only because a gun would leave less evidence than a knife, thus complying with the narrative, but also, for us to convincingly use a knife would be extremely hard.
• Many spectators of our pitch presentation pointed out that it may be hard to achieve birds-eye views without the use of professional equipment, to counter this, we have decided to use a small step ladder of which the person operating the camera can stand on when shooting the shot, in addition to this, we may also use some sort of camera rig that will allow us to extend the reach of the camera operator.

However, a number of our ideas were strongly reinforced by our peers feedback:

• Firstly, most people praised the idea of the use of juxtaposition between the girls earlier and latter state, specifically, she is first shown to be innocent, then later shown to actually be a Satan worshipper. People liked the idea that at first it looks like the killing is simply unreasoned, but when she is shown to be a Satan worshipper, the killing is still not justified, but at least a motive is clear; which is that the man is mentally unstable and believes that God wants him to commit these acts of terror.
• Secondly, our peers praised the idea that the use of binary opposition is used differently to that of other movies. While in many of the movies that we studied as inspiration for our project such as such as "Seven" (Fincher, 1995), in these films, the antagonist recieves little prevelance for the first half of the movie, however, we are doing the exact opposite and by making the antagonist the main character, thus he recieves more prevelance that any other character.
• Unarguably, the most highly supported point that we presented in our pitch, was the integrated text that we deciced to incorporate. The text that we would incorporate was contradictory of that of most other films and TV shows, in that it is that not everyone is equal. This will be conveyed by the antagonistic main character, who will imply that the people he kills deserve to die, simply because they disobeyed one of the ten commandments. This will also work in a religious sense, as the bible teaches that everyone is equal, despire their actions, because it is also taught that people can be forgiven for their sins and wrong doings, this is completely contradicted and this is the integrated text we want to convey through our opening.