Planning Update 1.0!

I have been meeting with potential actors and planning my production, and I've organised actors, props, locations and shots. So far, I've planned a timeline for what needs to be done when in order to meet the deadline. Here is a short summary of what I need to do and when:

As there will only be one actress needed for the production, I can easily organise filming days when both of us are free and I can work on editing and post-production afterward. To ensure the realism and professionalism of the film, I want to take photos of other actors and use them in a police investigation-type board as suspects: arranging to take photographs of people is much easier than organising to film them, and it would also fit better into the opening sequence rather than introducing all the central characters in the first 2 minutes. 

In terms of locations, I needed a suburban neighbourhood setting, so I explored various options around my neighbourhood: we decided on Abbi's house as it was closer to school and easier to film at. I took some location shots which will be in a separate blog post, along with a storyboard and animatic I made (or attempted) which is an expansion of the original idea. I hope to start filming by February 20th, as I anticipate all the planning to be done by this stage and ready to move on to production! 

Synopsis and title ideas

The final idea I decided on is a psychological, missing person thriller in which a young girl is abducted and after a number of years held captive, she escapes the house in which she is being kept and runs away. The film will open with the girl escaping the house, and will cut repeatedly to a police investigation board of her own missing persons case. Cutting in this way will reveal narrative clues that would else be lost in the first two minutes, creating intrigue for the audience. If I was to continue and make the whole film, it would follow the present life of the escaped abductee, Lucy, but also the work of the police in their attempts to track down her kidnapper, and eventually flashbacks to her years inside the house as she begins to accept and adjust to life outside. At the very end of the film, the kidnapper would be shown with another abductee, repeating patterns he had with the main character, as the police find him. As is common in thrillers, tension would be high throughout the film, and a conventional happy ending would be too mundane for this type of film, therefore the disturbed kidnapper would suddenly commit suicide before he is caught by police for a plot twist. As I am only filming the first few minutes, I cannot give this much away, but by planting narrative clues and plot trails I hope to captivate an audience. 

Some film title ideas I came up with include:

- Stolen
- Predator And Prey
- Two Million Minutes
- Abducted
- Underdog

Initial planning and ideas

I have brainstormed a few ideas about my own opening sequence, and I created a mindmap (above) with a few of the ideas for the mise-en-scene in particular costume, props and setting. I also made a moodboard to put the ideas into image format (in a separate blog post) I took main inspiration from the BBC television show Thirteen, where a young woman is taken and missing for 13 years and finally escapes.



I plan on writing a full synopsis or even a script for the whole film, but the opening sequence would be similar to the opening scene of Thirteen in that the main character will be running away from where she has been held. Obviously this is a TV scene so there are no credits, so I would have these added in. I plan on writing additional blog posts about the soundtrack and other elements as my planning progresses. At the moment, I have a vague idea for narrative, actors and locations, but I'm still deciding on a soundtrack and a shot-by-shot storyboard for the opening scene.