We have had our main actress in mind since the beginning seeing as the thriller is based of her ability to pull off a well choreographed fight scene.
This is the email that was used in order to contact our main actress and ensure that she would be available on the day. But it was no only the day that her skills would be required, before the shoot we would need to spend time doing extensive fight scene choreography. As this needs lots of practice in order to get right.
The whole concept behind our thriller is to provide the audience with subverting stereotypes. In order to show this to the audience in a shocking and exciting way, we had to establish stereotypes for the characters to subvert. We designed especially Crera’s costume with this in mind. We had to choose a costume that would apply the connotations of helpless, girly and weak. So we did our research and especially took inspiration from David Fincher’s ‘GoneGirl’ where the character who Nick Dunn is having an affair with is wearing what would connote as innocent and pure but in fact she is describing how she has had sexual relations with a married man. So this juxtaposition is amazing in enforcing who a character is and we really wanted to achieve this.
We were worried that by dressing our main actress in the clothes usually you would find in a workplace that this would imply the idea that the woman is a professional. When in fact this is the complete wrong connotation that we are pursuing. We need innocence and pure. Although this costume bellow may have fit in better with the environment and setting of the film. The piece is based of contrasts and subverting what people would expect. It is why we have decided to go against the usual work place attire.
Another issue we had while choosing our costume was the fact that Crerar needs to be able to move in her costume, she performs stunts and does a lot of big and dramatic movements. So her costume had to be aesthetically pleasing but also practically useful. This was an essential balance that we had to get right, And so i did some research into films that require this sort of movement and studied the costumes that they wear.
Now as always things on set never go according to plan, Something always goes wrong so we had to prep for this inevitability. In case our actress could not bring in the primary costume, or it gets eaten by a dog etc. we had to have a back up costume, after some research on the internet and having a team brainstorming meeting we decided that this Noisy May Petite Short Sleeve Top would suffice.
But the reason why we like this idea is the fact that the costume connotes purity and innocence which were the main goals behind the costume for the main character. We decided on this blue Top because the connotations of blue are, calm, free, innocent and loyal. We liked the idea of these connotation but we were worried that the stereotype of blue being for men, would creep and give her the connotations of manly and strong something we did not want to present to the audience.
But I wanted to go deeper and look at how the costume department choose costumes for actions in big Hollywood blockbusters. So this is a look at the 'Universal Costume Department'.
We did plenty of research in the process of choosing our blood. Looking back into the history of movie making and the different colour connotations between different bloods. Also we studied the thickness and consistency of the blood and how it seeped into clothing.
Also for all of the digital blood that occurs in our thriller, we decided on Video Copilots Action Essentials two.
The Bourne Series is actually very similar to our thriller and this is clear to see because. Jason Bourne avoids a CIA official and his agents from an assassination programme while continuing his life as a trained killer. This is almost the same as our main protagonist has to evade an evil corporation and fight for her life but the difference between the Bourne Series and our thriller is that our main lead is a female rather than a male as we wanted to subvert from the stereotype that women are always the victims. Although both the characters from the bourn series and our thriller are cold hearted killers they are still considered the protagonists in the thriller.
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Hanna
Hanna is also a movie that has a plot rather similar to ours in the fact that she is a girl who is also young and trained as a killer assassin, and she is on a mission in Europe but is being hunted down by an intelligence agent this is similar to our thriller as our female character is also young, she is also being tracked down by a company that she has stolen codes off of. Both characters are strong female leads and are beating the odds of survival.
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Kill Bill
The Bride wakes up after being in a coma for four years, she has lost her baby that she was carrying and wants to seek revenge over the group of assassins that she was once with. This character is highly trained like our character, she looks innocent in the way that she has blonde hair and is an attractive female like our actress this therefore adds to the subversion of the stereotype. The plot bass assassins in and the idea of powerful people being after one person like our thriller but this is not shown in the opening scene but is the main idea in the whole of the film
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Kick Ass
This only has a few similarities with our thriller as Kick Ass is more of a super hero film, our thriller is more realistic and closer to reality with the way the costumes worked and the character positioning as the fight scenes in Kick Ass are more extreme with the level of violence that our scene. However, the lead character in Kick Ass is a young girl like in our thriller, they both beat the odds surrounding them and are highly trained in martial arts
An essential part of our piece was blood ( or red ). We wanted to use the blood in the scene to create amazing juxtaposition within the woman being in this situation. Bright colours and pinks are associated with the connotations of girls. Because we have placed this woman in this situation, we need to make the blood more... feminine.
We did some test shots, practicing with special effects and digital or practical blood.
We decided that by increasing the contrast of our blood digital assets, we could create the verbose and girly blood that we wanted.
After testing with digital effects, we needed practical blood in order to full immerse the audience and create another level of realism so we ordered a selection of fake bloods of amazon.
When deciding on our props we, came to the conclusion that all of the props we use would need to be realistic and naturalistic.
Also we felt that the props needed to add a certain level of stylistic effect to the piece, this would allow us to create connotations to connect with our original idea.
We discovered that our props department had a working gas blow back air soft pistol that would work perfectly with the tone of our piece.
We hopped that the gun that will was sending would match the reference photos that we had provided.
But we knew if there was a problem we would need a back up. So we went online and purchased a good looking BB-Gun, the only problem was that it is two tone, and the gun we were looking for needed to be single colour. But this is something we can fix in post, by adding a motion-tracked mask over the gun then decreasing saturation.
