Film Pitch

SHADOW

 

A teenage girl called Mollie is being threatened and followed by an anonymous stalker, who knows all of her deepest secrets. She receives constant text messages, emails and notes manipulating her into doing things which result in hurting her family, friends and herself. If she doesn't obey, this mysterious sender, her loved ones will die. At the same time of doing as she's told, she is investigating who this could be tormenting her and why they are after her.

The whole film is a complete mystery as you don't discover who the stalker is until the very end. This will create a lot of tension throughout the film because you will be suspecting everyone who interacts with the main character therefore creating suspense which is a key convention of thriller we are keen to involve in the film. Furthermore the constant secrecy makes the audience feel on edge as they cant trust any of the characters.

The main character is called Mollie, she is a 16 year old girl and is a student at her local sixth form. She is seen as a vulnerable character at the beginning of the film as she gets easily scared and paranoid about the mysterious stalker. But as the film develops, she grows into a strong, confident and fiery character as she has to strengthen herself to deal with these threats and messages in order to find out who is behind it.

If I could choose any director to direct our film, it would be Drew Goddard. He is famous for directing the horror/thriller Cabin In The Woods and has written thrillers like World War Z and Cloverfield. This is an advantage for us as we have an experience director who specialises in this particular genre. The ideal actress to play our main character Mollie is Amanda Seyfried. I think she will be perfect for this role because she is an actress that usually plays innocent characters which is how we want to portray Mollie in the film. The only difference with the role that I would want Amanda Seyfried to play is the fact of being innocent in the beginning but completely changing how the character acts throughout the film as in the beginning she is all sweet and innocent but gradually progressing through the film she become fiery and determined to catch the culprit behind the stalking's and murders of her close family and friends.

The typical conventions of a thriller/horror film that we plan to use are point of view, deaths, gore and CCTV shots. Point of view shots connote that someone is being secretive and hiding something, in this case they are hiding their identity from the audience. CCTV shots also support the fact that the main character is being watched and spied on. The deaths and gore wont be in the opening of our film, but if we were to film the whole of it it would include these conventions.
Furthermore, the use of the pov shots and the over the shoulder shots help show to the audience that they are seeing everything from potentially, the stalker/killers pov which can help create tension as the audience can tell what is about to happen whereas the characters in the film do not so clear conventions of horror/thriller are to be shown throughout.