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...

Dialogue for Thriller

Scene 1

Ted and Theo and Ollie drive up to container. They stop, leave car and Theo and Ollie carry boxes in following Ted. Ted opens container door. They all go in. Ollie starts getting to work and Ted hits him around the back of the head.

Ollie: Again?

They leave.

Scene 2 

Two policemen waiting in car looking forwards.

Add lib.

Police 1: Wait... Is that them? That's them! Picks up walkie talkie. Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!

Costumes and Props Added

For the police, we decided to have 2 florescent jackets and 1 black jacket among the 'action' police and two dark jumpers for the 'car' police to create a hierarchy within this social group. The black jacket would distinguish the most dangerous and highly trained police officer and the yellow jackets would indicate slightly less intimidating officers. However, yellow and black are colours which usually symbolise danger so this coordination of colours will hopefully help to create tension.

The two younger members of the criminal gang will be wearing coats. It'll be cold on the day of filming so it's important but they will also help to create a sense of mystery. One of them will be wearing a hat, distinguishing him as the younger and trendier member which we will find annoys the boss.

Car wise, rather than use a white van we will be using a Land Rover for the criminals as we think it would give them a little more character and would make the scene more interesting. The police car will be a BMW since it is easier for us to obtain.

Rather than simply have boxes of illegal items in the container, we have drug production on a table in order to have more happening in the scene. This would heighten the criminal element in our thriller to further relate it to the crime thriller genre. Here are some pictures of some of the items we might have in our thriller:

Emails to Actors

We managed to get our cast for the criminal gang with no problem.

We did not need to email Theo as we asked him in person. While the criminal gang was easy to cast and find, There was more difficulty with the police casting.

We couldn't get Ian and we would only have Dave for a short amount of time. This taught me how difficult an issue casting can be in the world of film making. However, we did find other alternatives. We replaced Ian and Jason with Simon and Tom by asking them in person. We asked James Tunstill to be in our thriller as we thought he may be capable of playing a comical police officer. We were pleasantly surprised to find that he happened to have a friend with lots of police gear that we could use. 

Luckily, we figured out how we could organise the scenes with Dave with the short amount of time we had with him and fortunately he agreed.

Finally, when all was arranged, I sent the cast emails with the times we would need them for filming.

Unfortunately, after emailing our cast, we were not able to get the actors we initially wanted.

Additional Props

We decided we wanted the warehouse to have a table with drug production so we added chemistry apparatus to our props list.

The containers of these chemicals would not be right but I like the very clinical and almost sinister and look of the different chemicals because that's the kind of idea we would want in our thriller.

We didn't think we would use everything we found. These for instance do not look as sinister or as professional as
we would want but we wanted as many ideas as possible because we really wanted to pay special attention to
detail.

We thought a set of scales would be extremely important is they are essential for drug production.

We wanted to really set up a scene that looked very dangerous and eery with lots of chemistry equipment to give our thriller an edge and present the audience with a clearer view of the world of drug trafficking so we investigated as many pieces of equipment as possible.

For our police, we want guns which we will acquire from our school's props and also walkie talkies which I will need to buy of Amazon. We have decided not to show stacks of money on the table because we are planning on setting the scene to look messier in terms of dangerous looking chemicals and we think that having piles of money on the same table would come across as unrealistic and therefore the film would lose its impact.

Updated Shooting Schedule

8.30 - setup

9.30 - shoot all scenes with criminal gang

11.30 - 12.00 shoot police car scene

12.00 - 13.30 lunch break

13.30 - 14.00 plan and set up next scenes

14.00 - 14.20 shot of police surrounding and opening container

14.20 - 14.35 shot of phil sneaking around hedge

14.35 - 14.50 shot of Simon running up stairs and of receiving message from police constables

14.50 - 15.20 shot of Tom spying from roof of building