Character #1

Gerhard Mattieu

Treatment (Thriller plot line)

We fade into a forest, illuminated by the cold mid-winter dawn.
A man is seen venturing through the woods. The leaves crunch beneath his feet, the snow gathers on his toes.
Twigs snap in the background; he thinks nothing of it.
Seconds pass, and he begins to dwell on the sound.
fearing a presence, he takes a brief look around, as if someone was there.
He reaches down to bury the contents of his pocket, wrapped in a small plastic bag.
In the background, a suited man wearing a venetian Carnivale mask appears, just watching.
He stands up again, looking around, clicking his neck. Unaware of anything else; the venetian masked man in the distance behind him.
he looks around, noticing the man.
He says nothing, and they maintain eye contact.
He promptly starts walking forward to leave the forest.
He looks back as he’s walking, the man closer than before, but standing perfectly still in the same stance, as if he never moved from his original spot.
we cut to a darkly lit scene of him sitting in a room, evidently trapped.
We then return to the forest, the man behind him again.
It begins alternating between him walking through the forest, slowly being caught up, and him locked in the room.
The screen goes black. Silent too;
It cuts to the dark room again, the man is sitting in the corner, clutching his knees, whilst the masked man is staring at him, looming over.
It ends as he looks up to the camera. Turns back to the man, and removes his mask.

The story itself takes it's thriller influence from Dead Man's Shoes - a revenge film involving gang warfare and violent intentions. We borrow the mental ambiguity from a character and give it to our protagonist.
It also takes influence from The Strangers; a cat and mouse style thriller involving murder; the villian in ours slowly catches the protagonist, as happens in both films, in different senses. We also take the scary, impending and unknowing torture element from horror film giant SAW.
Film Noir elements have influenced the writing of the story line, such as the brief emphasis on props, the extreme close angles, the use of suit and mask (mask to represent a hidden emotion or motive) and the limited visibility (interruption and obstruction by trees)
The idea of an enigma is created, as we know nothing about either of them, we have no contextual information behind them or the story.

Essex Boys

What do directors seek to establish in the opening of thrillers?

What do directors seek to establish in the opening of thrillers?

In the opening of any thriller, or indeed any film, the introduction is vital. No matter what genre or style of film, the introduction has to be good. You can potentially set or build the entire story in just 5 minutes of introduction. You can introduce a character, an event or an entire story. You can set the entire story in motion or say more in the introduction than in the entire story.
Genre has to be established; viewers recognise genre immediately, and can compensate accordingly. If its a horror, the viewer is going to be in a state of anticipation, if an action, the viewer is going to be relaxed and allow the andrenaline of the film to be entice them in its own time.

I am going to use an example.

In Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, the second Batman movie in his Batman trilogy, the opening scene is a cloudy sky, that forms the very well known Batman symbol, which fades into black.
From that black scene, a looming audio clip begins, and we appear to be soaring over Gotham City, zooming over to a glass building, where a window promptly breaks; we switch to inside the building to see a clown-masked guy holding a gun which fires zip wire line.
And thus we get brought into Gotham's first crime.
We can already tell that Batman is going to rectify this situation, but we're going to watch this crime unfold first.
The criminals are prepared, equipped with exactly the right tools for their job. They are masked too, adding a sense of anonymity. Currently, we do not know if there is a leader, and we certainly do not know who is who. However, this shot does add a sense of leadership.

This shot is very creepy. It's a lonesome character, holding a mysterious hold-all bag, and eeriely carrying his mask in his left by the side of his body. We can't see his face, he is facing away, giving us his slouching back to us. He looks vulnerable, yet very dangerous still. Presumably, this is the gang leader. (In fact it is the Joker, but we do not know at this point)

The introduction is still vague and unexplained as a blacked out van pulls up, and he gets in. At this point, we still know absolutely nothing other than something big is going to happen soon.

There is always something vague, and shady about a blacked out van.

We still know little, but now the two clowns from the original zip wire line scene have landed on the roof. We are shown their perspective of Gotham, a New York-esque city, where no one is taking any notice of them. We encounter the other clowns that picked up our main clown, and we are finally given some incite to their plans.

"Alright, lets do this"
"Just three guys?"
"Two guys on the rope. Each guy gets a share, 5 shares is plenty"
"6 shares, don't forget the guy who planned the job"
"yeah, he thinks he can sit it out and still take a slice, then I get why they call him joker"

We've established that we're now heading to a crime. we switch between the two and the three clowns. The two clowns are switching off the power, and the three are taking the front doors.

We now learn more about our location, and our genre in three brief seconds of the film.
The clowns storm into a bank, and are clearly about to perform a robbery.
Bank robbery - classic crime film etiquette.
Violence and gunfire ensues.

However, there's a twist.
One of the clowns kills the other one.

A sense of mystery has just been added, normally accomplices do not kill each other off.

Not only is a robbery taking place, but something is happening between them. A twist; a clever sense of mystery established in a very full on opening scene. Who are these people? what are they doing? What is the significance of the masks? Christopher Nolan has already established a guessing game within 2 and a half minutes of his film.

The other clowns are now taking hostages; classic crime/action etiquette again, however there is a more destructive twist, as instead of just binding their hands, they are bound and given grenades.

A usual action film prop would be a hand gun, however we're witnessing a grenade. A weapon capable of great destruction, and the audience sense an element of danger. We also witness the other clown pulling the pin, followed by the line "obviously, we don't want you doing anything with your hands other than holding on for dear life"

The bank manager is fighting back, having taken out Chuckles, the other two clowns (Bozzo and Grumpy) jump for cover. Everybody likes a shootout, however this one does. However, it's short as Bozzo fires back promptly.

We go back to the actual bank vault, where we find out it's a mob bank
(relates back to bank managers line "do you have any idea who you're stealing from?!")
Happy (Vault clown) had been struck with 5,000 volts previously, so we know whatever is happening, is going to have huge consquences.

Yet again, another clown is being killed off. Grumpy is killing off Happy, which confuses the whole robbery even more, bringing the numbers down surely increases the shares, but how does it help them other than that? why are they being killed off?

We then have a showdown between Bozzo, and Grumpy, who appear to have been friendly and working together. They collect the money, and then Grumpy pulls a gun on him. The power is centralised in Grumpy, who is holding the gun, therefore the audience side with him. It's a confusing moment, but Bozzo plays it cool. (we can instantly hear Heath Ledger's Joker voice when Bozzo talks, but that information is irrelevant at this point)
The dialogue goes as follows.

"i'm better the Joker told you to kill me as soon as we loaded the cash?"
"no, no. I kill the bus driver"

Then Grumpy says exactly what the viewer is thinking.
"What bus driver?"

Completely out of nowhere, this occurs.

The driver jumps out, and packs the money in the car.
The audience is finally in the knowing; this characer is getting killed.
Sure enough, Bozzo shoots him.

He then makes his way over to the last bag, when the bank manager crawls up, and talks to him.
He's arguing with him about his motives, when Bozzo approaches him.

"I believe, what doesn't kill you.. simply makes you. *removing mask* stranger"

And here we introduce our main villain: The Joker.
He was not introduced as our main villain at all; he introduces himself at a point in the film where it could almost have been accidental. He was not going to remove the mask.
The other clowns joke about him, laughing at his make up and about his plans, and he remains quiet.

Christopher Nolan built up the introduction perfectly. He introduced his film perfectly; he explained nothing. He started with an organised display of crime, that built up the insanity of his main character perfectly. Nothing is explained, using inference we learn absolutely everything.
The genre is placed very quickly between crime and action, the thriller element constantly there.
The character is perfectly portrayed without saying much at all.
Plot isn't even covered, we know nothing of the plot and what's going to happen, we just know that Batman is in this film, and evidently now, so is the Joker.