Thriller Idea Pitch FEEDBACK

Today, we presented our thriller concept to Matt and Simon.  Their initial reaction was that it was a cool idea, quite basic and out of the ordinary.  Their main criticisms were that the boy (murderer) had too much screen time, which would make the audience emphasize with him.  I agreed with this point, however, the point where he is walking around the suburb is a large part of the concept.  A solution to this might be only staying with the perspective of the killer. We could give him positive characteristics to experiment, to see if the audience can sympathize with a murderer. I really like this idea; I hope we get a chance to try it.

A different direction we could take would be that we don’t know IF he has killed anyone, we can only suspect.  It would create suspense, a great addition to any thriller!

Another criticism that Matt had was that we might have too many locations.  This would make it inconvenient to film and also that there would be too much going on.  By limiting the locations, we could focus more on the filming, editing and mise-en-scene.

An important part that they mentioned was the actor for the mother.  She would need to be very skilled and to have the “mum-look”, otherwise it would ruin a substantial part of the scene.  He said, “You can’t have some Hollyoaks girl play the part, it has to look believable!” which we thought was quite funny.  It’s a difficult role that we would be asking them to play because it is unusual.

They thought that the story was interesting.  As our society is familiar with school massacres, it would show a different perspective with the mother.  A negative side of this was that it would turn into more of a drama, rather than a thriller.  Adding a voiceover of the boy’s thoughts would bring back the thriller mood; we could emphasize his mental characteristics in this way. 

Matt and Simon stressed that in order for the opening sequence of a film to work, one must film “choice shots”. These are the shots that stick with the audience, even after the movie.  

Here is a choice shot from one of the films that inspired our thriller: