Group Narrative - Miss Georgiou

Planning the thriller production

I will be working in a group to produce an opening sequence of a thriller. I will be working with Chloe Eustace, Elizabeth Lawrie.

Elizabeth's Narrative Idea:

A group of friends are going on a camping trip for Alice Morgan's 18th birthday, little does she know the females in her family have been plagued by a curse since the 1800s. Every once in a while, a female in the Morgan family on their 18th birthday, usually of good nature and innocence, are said to have been taunted by a young ghostly figure before mysteriously vanishing and said to be claimed by an demoniacal being. 

During the 1800s, William Morgan, a relative of Alice, broke the heart of a beautiful young woman named Elise Elliot, she was a young maid working for William and his wife Anna. Elise and William had a whirlwind affair, and eventually called their relationship off, explaining to Elise he never loved her, only his wife. Unknown to William, Elise was of Romany decent, she was in fact a gypsy. Elise was riddled with  unbearable heartache, excruciating grief and anger, so much so she cursed William before taking her own life. She cursed the whole Morgan family because she wanted William to pay for the pain he had caused her and wanted her suffering to be remembered for all eternity. 

Alice, leading up to her 18th had been having what she considered of odd dreams, she had been vividly dreaming of a young woman weeping over a man she had loved and lost, a woman eventually revealed to be Elise Elliot. Alice reveals to her friends the strange dreams she has been having while camping in the woods by her house, shortly before the ghostly taunting's commence. 

Advantages- Contains enigma- not sure where the curse is coming from 

• Innocent female victims- conventional to a thriller
• Victims being taunted by a ghostly figure- contains suspense, shock & mystery

Disadvantages- More conventions are needed such as Iconography & setting 

• quite a complicated narrative, will be hard to use for our own thriller sequence. 

Chloe's Narrative Idea:

The main character is a girl (One of the Victims), her parents are away for the weekend and decides that she could have a party with friends. She lives in a pretty abandoned place in the town where there is only the neighbours. The party gets out of hand when everyone starts bringing there own friends and there is actually a murderer been brought to the party.  They try to work out who is the killer (antagonist) but people keep dying one by one leaving only the females alive, the males at the party are being killed first. 

Advantages-  Contain enigma, abandoned area - makes the victims more vulnerable, we s an audience sympathise more.

• Only female victims survive, shows audience their strong but we also fear for them. 

Disadvantages- male victims being murdered, not female. Not conventional to a thriller.

• Needs more conventions added to make it a thriller (weapons, lighting, blood etc.)

My Narrative Idea:

A house in the middle of the Countryside. There will be 3 female victims who wake up locked in  different rooms scattered around the basement of the house, banging on the doors screaming trying to find a way to escape thinking that it is abandoned. However, with out them knowing the antagonists family are living in the house, not aware of the victims being there as all the walls are sound proof. Will the victims escape before it is too late or will one of the family members become suspicious as the antagonist keeps heading down to the basement?

Advantages-  3 female victims- a conventional thriller as it creates tension and suspense for the audience as we fear for the female victims, they are scared and vulnerable which makes us worry.

• abandoned area- isolated being only in the presence of themselves, the antagonist and his family. This creates enigma as we as an audience wonder weather the antagonists family will ever find out. 

Disadvantages- more conventions, what kind of editing would be used, mise-en-scene.

• would be difficult to find a setting with an isolated area with a segregated basement. 

Final Group Narrative:

Two young girls, Holly and Gemma are on their way to a party. Holly is driving down a dark deserted road when her car breaks down. Gemma and Holly start to panic when they relise their phones have no signal

• Forest / abandoned area / broken down car
• Female Victim
• Weird noises - car radio
• Being followed
• visible breath (cold)
• no signal
• friend goes missing

Narrative Theory: The theory that we have chosen is Todorov's Theory, this is where either the film starts off as Equilibrium or Disequilibrium.
Equilibrium is where the film starts off happy with everything being normal.
Disequilibrium is where everything erupts, making the film not happy.

Todorov's Theory;

Summary: 

Our narrative is conventional to a thriller as the eating of it is in an abandoned place with a female victim. With non-diegetic music being added, this is all evidence to show that our narrative is conventional.