Max Kill

Genre

For our film we decided to go with a Thriller Genre, we chose to do this because we found that with a Thriller theme the story could be much broader, our initial thoughts were to make a chick flick and we even came up with the idea of getting ready for a date which we still use, but by changing simple things such as the music it turned into a much deeper film about murder.
So our very first influences were from films such as Legally Blond and Chicago! After deciding to change Genre we starting to get idea's from films by Alfred Hitchcock such as his most famous film Psycho, we have a direct reference to this in our film when we see somebody turning on a shower and anybody in the audience who would have seen Psycho will become unnerved.

The Story Board

We used our Story board to plan all the shots we were going to use, what order we would shoot them and how big the shot size needed to be! The Story board was very usefull as it helped as a list of what to do next. However, as we tryed to stick to the story board we found it became difficult for a few shots which we had to improvise on the day.

Pitch for main task

This feature length thriller, set in the streets of Oxford, tells us of Max Furtado and his wild, obsessive grieving for Claudia Jones, the woman he once loved and killed. Will he be able to face the trials of murder, or will he hide forever, planning his next victim?

Synopsis for main task

Max Furtado is a 31-year-old publicist living the simple life, but wishing he had more…

When Max meets uptown girl Claudia Jones he is devastated that she will not return his love. He decides if he can’t have her, no one will. So one dark December night he murders her, only to instantly find himself thrown into a mad state of denial and regret.

He finds himself walking the streets looking for anyone that looks like her, only to find this is not a cure for grieve, it makes him madder by the day and he is soon labelled Oxford’s modern day ‘Jack the Ripper’. As his psychotic murders increase, more and more police are out looking for him. Every woman is in fear of her life; no mother daughter or sister is safe.

Chief Samuel is made head of the case; if he doesn’t manage to find Max his job could be at stake. And when his wife goes missing, it gets personal. Samuel works day and night in his search for Max but he starts to struggle to look after his scared 3-year-old boy as well as juggle the case.

One night he gets a mysterious phone call. A deep voice tells him to meet him at a shadowed remote alley way a couple of miles away. Samuel jumps into the car and races down the streets at full speed, he gets there in 5 minutes and jumps out of car. He finds him self face to face with Max and, behind him, tied up to a lamppost, is his wife covered in blood.

Max demands that if he lets Samuel have his wife back then Samuel should let him go free. Chief Samuel is torn, for he wants his wife home and safe but he needs Max caught, When Samuel runs to set his wife free, Max pulls out a knife on him. They get into a rough fight full of blood and gore, but soon Max loses strength.

Samuel releases his wife and quickly drives home with her back to his son who has been left alone. He calls his fellow policemen to get to the scene of crime where Max is lying powerless. But when all the policemen get there Max is no where to be seen, but as they walk back through the grave yard they see him laid over Claudia Jones’s grave with a knife through his heart.

Evaluation Of Preliminary Task

For our Preliminary task we had to practice camera skills such as the 180 degree rule, The shot reverse shot and a match on action sequence.
In my group of four, Helena, Sam, Kate and myself we all took different roles, we all worked together on story boarding, but Helena and Sam concentrated on character movement whereas Kate and I worked out how the camera would move.
The positives of working in a group was that we all had idea's and could share out the work e.g drawing up the story board, taking a photographic story board, finding a room to shoot in, and charging and generally looking after the camera. It was good learning how to use the apple mac's and the program Imovie because it saved time for when we did our official coursework task.
Although learning to use the apple mac's was a good thing that will help us later on in our work, it was also a very time consuming experience, we had trouble working out how to upload the footage onto the computers. We also had problems with our last shot, because we didn't have the correct equipment, we needed a dolly, but I feel that all the negatives can be used to help us in official task where I will be working with Helena.

The Film