2) STARTING POINTS 2

FIRST IDEAS

Now, I had to think of a base for my film, these decisions were in the first planning stages. I had to think of: the style, target audience, title and synopsis for my product to get me started. Here is what I come up with...



This was my planning for initial ideas^

I wanted to create product which concentrates on one specific location, whether it be a house, hotel, or room - somewhere eerie and spooky. So I started to think...

A lot of ideas passed through my mind and eventually I settled upon basing my film around a hotel location. A typical location for terrifying paranormal occurrences.

More specifically I wanted to base my moving image on activity in one room, therefore it would make sense to name my product after this... BLACK ROOM. Shortly after naming I decided to change the film title to DARK ROOM. The reason behind this was because I was looking for synonyms for the word 'black'. After saying some of those words along with 'room', 'Dark' felt right and more subtle adding mystery behind the meaning of my title. 

My ideas were then clarified by looking at other films similar to mine for inspiration and to spur ideas. >>>

When I got to this point my ideas started to change.

The setting would be the same: A specific spooky and weary location what is haunted, my target audience would remain the same, but my genre, title and story of my film would change slightly. My genre would change to Horror/Thriller.

My genre changed because my story did...
New Story: 'A story following two young men (A writer, and a College student) who go to a haunted hotel because the student needs to attend work experience to work towards his ultimate goal of being a writer as well. The writer accepts the students application and decides to undergo a trip to a haunted hotel to find inspiration and write his book from experiences while learning the student the theories of paranormal activity.' 

Instead of basing my film around paranormal activity (which the characters are hoping to experience), I decided to base my film around a killer. A stereotypical serial killer who feels no regret and is very hard to kill. Therefore my genre changes to horror and thriller. The horror element is still going to be there since the film will be horrifying, spooky things occurring. But thriller as well because people are going to get hunted down, and killed, one by one. Thriller also ties in very well with the horror genre. 

I decided to change my story and genre because I thought that this would be more realistic for the viewer to experience. You would be able to relate to a story following a serial killer because unfortunately they are real. Making my film more frightening for the audience, it will allow me to play with the viewers imagination by using realism  It is also relevant that the killer will be able to isolate and trap his victims in the haunted hotel. So 'there is no escape.'

My title would change also...
New Title: ZERO HOUR

My title would change from 'Dark Room' to 'Zero Hour' because my film is now about a killer and it would not be sensible to base the film around one room because that seriously limits where the killer can go. It will be based around the whole hotel giving the murderer a chance to chase and frighten his victims.

It is now called 'Zero Hour' because that is midnight (00:00). A stereotype can be driven from this; all bad things start to happen at midnight. When the sun goes down it gets dark and darkness is a instinctively frightening element for humans. It will give the viewer a chance to wonder what the title is about, it entails mystery which adds to the frightening element.

These changes mean that I needed to add some more inspirational texts that would fit in with HORROR and THRILLER...

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I had created a mood board to explore ideas and see if those mood board images made me think of any new ideas...

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