Changes to Casting and Costume

We've kept the cast for the criminal gang the same, but we made a few alterations for the police.

Rather than having only three random types of police in the entire thriller, we decided we wanted to research further into what kind of police we wanted how many realistically would be on the case.
I used the following websites to get a little more insight into the ranking of the police force.

http://policeuk.com/police_ranks.php

http://mentalhealthcop.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/police-rank-and-roles-explained/

 I also looked at the scene in Hot Fuzz (2007) when the police raid the supermarket. They had a base that kept in touch with them which was the police station. We wanted to show this within the action. As we thought that trying to set a scene in a police station would be too complicated, we went for a more realistic approach by having different types of police would be more effective to have two policemen waiting in the car to give the signal to three other policemen in more 'thriller' costumes.

The two police we chose to stay in the car, which would be police sergeants, were...

Dave Fonseka

James Tunstill

Here is a depiction of the type of police I mean, inspired by Scotty Webster from The Simpsons.

We thought these two would be capable of comically representing the archetypal bumbling police officers that sit in cars, stereotypically not doing much work and passing their time eating donuts. We would use them to represent the police force negatively, suggesting inefficiency.

We then chose the three following actors to play active, more admirable police:

Philip Ward

Phil, being a media teacher, has plenty of expertise in the world of screen acting as he has appeared in many AS Thrillers at our school. Therefore, we trust that he will be easy to direct. He also has a good dynamic with Simon and Tom, so hopefully their relationships may be able to translate on screen as a connection to one another in terms of having to accomplish a mission together. If this can read on the screen, this will add a dynamic to the action by making the police look even more realistic and really engage the audience.

Simon Wood

We chose Simon Wood to play our head of police. Simon is well known among our school media department as he appears in many thrillers. We have chosen him to play the main action hero because he has had a lot of experience in the field of acting on screen so we feel he will be able to connect well with the character and be able to show an effective reaction at the sight of the empty container. The fact that he is well known among our school community will also hopefully attract a niche audience within our school of people who will want to see Simon in his role as a police constable.

Tom

Tom is also well known at our school which we feel will also help to attract a young audience. He can pull quite a concentrated face which we think would be important for our thriller as we want the acting to be as effective as possible. 

This type of police officer, police constable, contrasts with the other type which are
We also thought the idea of the more dangerous police receiving orders from such seemingly 'regularly guys' implies corruption in the police force, and that lower ranks are taking orders from police officers that sit around chatting in cars.

We made sure to heighten the difference in types of police through costume. We talked to a professional expert in theatrical costume called Loz Tait who informed us about how important getting the right costume for the right time period and the right position in the police force. The two police in the car would wear dark sweaters to give them the fun 'ello ello' police personas.

The attitude in this picture is closer the the 'heroic' police,
but the costume is what we envisage for the 'lazy' police.

For the more active police, we found two florescent jackets and a black jacket with 'police' on the back. Though police wouldn't realistically be wearing florescent jackets for a raid, we decided that they could have been called in for the mission at the last minute. We thought the black would give Simon's police officer very high status and make him look like a police hero, reinforcing a positive, heroic representation of the police force. With any luck, the trio would look something like this...