Thriller Opening (Planning): One Page Pitch

We did a one-page pitch to pitch our ideas of our movie towards a producer of some kind to look at.

Working title: Systems Down

Film Genre: Psychological Thriller

Length: 110 minutes

Target Audience: 15- 24 year olds

Why?: This is because of the genre of the film and content that’s within the film itself, the suspense and fantasy type of feel to it from the ghosts, an audience younger than 15 may think of it as something real, as though ghosts do genuinely exist. We believe that the audience will be all genders but it may appeal more to the males who typically like ghost and thriller movies more, stereotypically anyway. This is meant for an audience who’s not so much as a serious film goer but watches it for just entertainment and for those who enjoy movies like paranormal activity for example, just films that would keep the audience on edge.

Tag-line: Murder doesn’t stop when you’re dead.

What if premise: What if the psychotic thoughts of a woman drove her to destruction yet still lingered, even in the afterlife? What if the woman who sees ghosts, turns out to be the ghost?

Plot Synopsis: The protagonist is a beginner ghost hunter who has encountered an advertisement, asking for help about something ‘spooky’ occurring within the house. Taking up the job of investigating, he goes to the house to only come across the owner of the house and talk to her about the issues occurring, after hearing the information on the happenings within the facility.

He then installs cameras about several rooms that the owner reported the strange happenings occurred in, the cameras are known to pick up ghosts. He then travels back to the kitchen where he’d set up his ‘base’ before looking through the cameras at midnight, when the occurrences were rumoured to start, he then noticed the ghosts stood before the camera. Staring in awe, he then checked other cameras through the system and spotted them in different locations.

These ghosts seemed docile at first before gradually growing quite fierce and restless as they slowly noticed the man’s existence within the kitchen and slowly approached the kitchen as he could see through the cameras where they were and how fast they approached him.

One by one, the cameras start to go down, showing only static as he falls into fear and panic. Looking up though, slowly from the screen, he spots the three ghosts before him as they just seem to stare at him. Before they decide to take his life though, he catches a glimpse of their past and what had happened to them.

Statement of Intent: This was inspired by the game Five Nights at Freddy’s but has obviously taken a slight turn as we altered accordingly to not be seen as plagiarism. We wanted to tell this story because of it being chilling and it takes a twist of things, as some plot twists occur within it. The audience in the younger range of our audience may take a thrill of all the events that occur so we are hoping they will enjoy it. It’s a film over a TV drama because of it being cut so short as the main protagonist is *spoilers* ‘killed off’ by the ghosts with grudges, hence why it’s a film, also, it’d be difficult to figure out how to continue it.

Visual Realisation: We have realised that a similar thing has been done but with Paranormal Activity though ours isn’t a mockumentary style, instead it’s simply more like a point of view film. The Babadook is how we wish to portray our film as its recent and uses effects that we’ll be able to find now but in particular, how things are shot is good as well. The dialogue is limited to only a little as this is found during the opening sequence mainly with the woman explaining the events that have been occurring before the ghost hunter arrived on the scene.

Audience Appeal: We understand that our target audience may go for things that are visually scary and enjoy watching things to do with the paranormal, believing in the possibility of them existing, so we decided to add in some plot twists as well which would keep the audience on edge as that is what is assumed that the audience will enjoy, an example of the plot twist is that the woman who currently owns this house is actually a ghost.

We decided on some young actors as well, such as Emma Watson as an example as she’s a young actress who appeals to our young male audience that we’re hoping to gain, as well as popular actors such as Josh Hutcherson from the Hunger Games to appeal to a female audience and hopefully attract their attention.