Costume For Our Thriller

To help us put focus on what kind of costumes we want, we have divided the characters into generally two groups:

1.The Policemen

2.Men involved in the Drugs Gang

Police costumes

The police will be dressed one in a casual suit and another in smart casual clothing this is representational of officers in the police force that are high authority figures e.g. CID officers. They are also undercover and need to blend in with their environment as they have been watching the men for along time. Officers that are not in uniform are the ones that are higher up within the police force, this will help portray that this raid is large scale and important enough for CID to be involved. Inspiration for this has come from The Bill, a police based drama where the CID officers always wear smart clothing rather than uniform. Neil pictured on the left is always seen wearing a smart suit to work, we would like to reflect this in our thriller.

This is an example of trousers we would like our CID officer to wear.

There will also be uniform officers alongside the CID officer, acting as back up and extra hands for the raid. The CID officer is in charge of the other uniform ones, this can be seen through the different costumes.

We have decided to use costumes that we already have at school for the police as it is easier. The costume includes a yellow jacket, walkie talkie and police hats. The rest of the costume will just be black trousers, black boots, a white shirt and black tie.

This is the type of boot we would like the uniform officers to wear, this is typical of a police officer as they are sturdy and can withstand a lot.

We have taken inspiration from a range of different films that represent policeman, and of course policemen themselves. The film 'The Town' represents the criminals pretending to be the police. This is shown in the picture above. We took inspiration from the way they interpreted the way that police dress and we decided to mimic their ideas using costumes that we have at school.

The drug gang

We want the boss to look smart, signifying his ambition for success. A suit like this one is ideal because the red in the suit invokes the feeling of danger, implying that if blood is what it takes, blood will flow.

This should contrast with the costumes of his associates to highlight how much more serious he is about his business that they are which should create impact in the scene where he inflicts violence on one of his employees for inefficiency.

We also want him wearing jeans to make him slightly casual so that the audience still relate to him as a character.

We may give Ted nicer jeans to make him look
 more respectable and smart...

... in which case we would give tattier jeans to the boys,
in order to lower their status

For the other men involved in the drugs gang, we want to dress them in casual clothing, making them look just like normal people. We got inspiration from top boy, the men are involved in dealing drugs and they dress in casual clothing but not extremely casual, i.e. not tracksuits, which is the look that we are aiming for.

Though we don’t intend to give too much of a ‘street’ feel, we want the associates to dress with a slightly lower status than the boss, (e.g not quite as smart. These examples of jeans, hoodies, plain t-shirts, jackets and trainers are close to what we want. The clothing should be slightly baggy to give an idea of this rugged look.

Evaluation of Pilot

The first thing we realised from having filmed the pilot was that it was considerably too short to be able to have any impact whatsoever and we were going to need to add things to lengthen it. We did not want to make the concept of the opening any more complex because we wanted it quite simple to get the audience interested but not give everything away. We therefore thought about how we could use similar scenes but maybe prolong the time. This may even help to create effects.

We could:

• Add some scenes with police chatting and preparing for the raid. This will incidentally help to draw some focus to the police as well as to the criminals.
• We could add slow motion to some of the scenes (e.g. when the police sneak up to the container) 
• We could take a wider variety of shots (e.g. close-ups of drugs, wide shot of police car) 

Another issue is that for the pilot we had underestimated the importance of the costume to give us the right vision of the police. We did not think it would matter as much as it did, and the pilot ended up looking a lot more amateurish than we thought it might. This was like a wake up call to tell us that we were going to need to pay particular attention to mise-en-scene. We would need much more effective costumes and we would definitely need to be careful about using appropriate props. On the subject of mise-en-scene, after looking at the pilot I realised that the lighting made the video look very amateurish which is very far from what we want in the thriller.

Thriller Pilot

Shot list

1. Wide shot of warehouse with jeep driving in front.
2. Close up of door being opened.
3. Middle shot of characters coming out of the jeep.
4. Wide shot of unloading boxes.
5. Tracking shot of people carrying boxes into warehouse.
6. (inside warehouse) close up of boxes being placed
7. Low angle shot of Bill confronting employee.
8. Close up on slap.
9. High angle shot of employee on floor.
10. (outside) Wide shots of police cars.
11. Shot of police in car on walkie talkie ready for raid.
12. (inside) wide shot of an employee lifting the other off the floor.
13. (outside) Middle shot of police 'Go!'
14. Tracking shot of police raid.
15. Wide shot of door bursting open from inside.
16. Panning shot of 'wrong' warehouse.
17. Middle shot of police defeated.
18. Middle shot of Bill coming out of warehouse.
19. Tracking shot following Bill to the car.
20. Close up of doors closing
21. Wide shot of jeep driving off.

Research on Social Groups

The social groups we have presented in our thriller are: police, criminals, youths and adults.

Police

I wanted to really give the audience deep insight into the different social groups presented in our thriller.  Assuming from the way the film is laid out, the audience are more likely to connect with the criminals rather than the police. We still, however wanted to make the audience feel immersed into the world of the police just as much as into the world of the criminals. In order to represent them with more vibe, I decided to research the different ranks of police in order to get an idea of what kinds of police do what in a thriller.

I found these websites showing the different police ranks and their field of expertise.

I recently found out that one year, in the UK, 92% of murder charges were cleared. I wanted to suggest in the thriller that there can be faults in the police force. Most of the time, the media represent the police as 'superhuman' and able to solve any crime at all. We want to show that the police can also be corrupt or lazy as well as heroic.

Youth Criminals

We wanted young men in our thriller to show the world just how immerged young people are into crime. Most crime thrillers involve adults but few involve teenagers in criminal gangs. I had found a website on books about young people involved in crime

http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/teenagers/booklists/183/

Also, there is an episode of skins series 6 where Nick has to deal with criminals in order to help his brother to come back into England and he lands in to trouble with a criminal. With all the involvement young people usually have in criminal activity in the media, we decided we wanted to actually show them as part of the gangs.

Adult Criminals

In terms of the criminal gang being run by Ted, we looked into films with famous Dons or bosses. The first one that comes to mind is Don Coleone in The Godfather played by Marlin Brando.

However, our gang leader won't be a Don of Italian origin but an English 'bloke' with big dreams, so I looked into real world cases of British criminals and bosses. I also took a look at some British films with criminals gangs.

 I found this website of the 25 most notorious gangsters in the world to help me.

http://list25.com/25-extremely-notorious-gangsters/

 

The last two are Reginald “Reggie” Kray and Ronald “Ronnie” Kray, who were twin brothers and English gangsters who masterminded the series of organized crimes in East London. They were primarily involved in large-scale robberies, assaults, arson,  protection rackets, as well as the murder of the notorious criminal from London, Jack “The Hat” McVitie. Though they were among the most feared gangsters of their time, the twins became US celebrities in the 1960’s.

This is the kind of gangster we envisage Ted to be. This is where we got the idea of giving him the smart clothes from.

Thriller Timeline

1. Van arriving (0.00-0.03)
2. Door opening (0.03-0.05)
3. People Transporting (0.05-0.11)
4. Into warehouse (0.11-0.18) including cuts
5. Ted confronts (0.18-0.28)
6. Dude gets beaten up (0.28-0.43)
7. Police in cars (0.43-0.45) outside shots (0.45-0.55)
8. Raid, Go go go (0.55-1.00)
9. Shot of door opening from inside (1.00-1.03)
10. Empty warehouse pan (1.03-1.06)
11. Police confused + dialogue (1.06-1.14)
12. Ted & co. swaggering back to van with non-diegetic narration (1.14-1.44)
13. Van driving off into the distance and fade out into title (1.44-1.50)

Locations/Set for Thriller

We want to use a variety of different sets for our thriller to keep the action interesting, but we somehow need to convey that it is all happening around the same area. We are going to use a container outside our school for the gang's headquarters.

However, the environment directly around the container is not appropriate as it looks too academic. We are therefore using other parts of the school grounds which look more neutral for the scenes with the police sneaking to the container.

We investigated some of the possible areas we could use...

This is the container

I like the green leafy area around this cabin
as it neutralises the location as well as evokes
an idea of hiding.

The stairs on the side of this building could be useful to offer a more interesting
alternative for shots of the police sneaking up to the container.

The full shot of this building is not appropriate, but I look the 'run down' look because it can set the scene for the film. A shot around this area could be useful for this.

This sort of shot could be useful as there is not a lot going on in the background, giving a stronger feeling of isolation and secrecy.

Despite the building, this could make an interesting shot in terms of showing the concealment of the police.

I am looking for opportunities to find compositions for shots that are appropriate and somewhat neutral, but that will also interest the audience. The foresty look is very typical in thrillers because of the idea of secrecy and concealment evoked by forests. However, most crime-thrillers occur in urban settings, so it might be interesting for an audience to see a police raid happening in a more country setting. By using this kind of setting rather than great complex office buildings in cities, we are not only offering something different but we are also reducing the sort of epic and hyperactive feel that most crime-thrillers give from police chases in buildings. By lowering the energy of the action by setting it in a more serene kind of setting, this will hopefully heighten the action by bringing it down a level from the usual fast-pace action in most thrillers and therefore making it more naturalistic. Rather than present an unrealistic and larger than life episode of action full of explosions and energy, we want to approach creating the suspense differently by focusing more on the tension of the actors rather than the setting and the speed of the action on screen.