I tried to base my ideas around what actors and locations were available to me rather than to think of a story first, as last year finding a location was something that was fairly difficult for us. My first thought was my little sister, Sophie who is 5 years old, I thought she would work well in my short film because of her age. I then thought that I wanted to do a very atmospheric thriller/horror film, as I’d had most experience making this genre of film throughout the last year.
It took me a while to develop an initial idea, I mostly had ideas for shots and genre rather than a storyline to start with. However, I soon took a little inspiration from a scene in ‘Con Air’ in which a dangerous criminal is seen singing and playing tea parties with a young girl, we are lead to believe that he murders her, but instead she is seen waving him off as he leaves in the hijacked plane. I twisted this scene a little to make it fit a more horrific genre and came up with a scene that showed a father and young girl playing together but as the mother goes upstairs to check on her it is revealed that the ‘father’ is not actually the father but in fact is seen hiding behind the door and the scene is left ambiguous as to what the adult male figure is doing in the young girl’s room.
In order to perfect our ideas, we pitched them to the rest of the class to receive some feedback. Here is my pitch:
Jess Marshall's A2 Media Studies Blog 