Thriller Opening Treatment

Our first shot is of a 17 year old girl from behind. She is wondering down a beach (holkam beach on the north-norfolk coast, shown right) along the waters edge, the day is bleak, windy and cold. We chose this setting as, especially at this time of year, it is very isloated and the beach we chose is especially vast. The shot is in black and white and is in slow motion to emphasise the bleak atmosphere. The medium shot is moving along behind her and after 3 seconds begins to pan down and left around her body so that you can see her walking as well as the sea next to her. The camera is eventually situated at her feet from the front. It then pans slowly up her body revealing her distressed appearance, she wears black tights, but no shoes, they are ripped and dirty. She also is wearing shorts, because of the cold weather the audience will feel uncomfortable and already suspect something is not right. A black strap top underneath an oversized white shirt is all she wears on her top half and her make-up has run down her face as if she has been crying, her hair is down but unkempt. When the camera has reached her face it zooms in to a close-up as she is still walking, the frame is then disrupted by intermittent flickers of real-time shots in colour. As this is happening the girls face changes from emotionless to as if she is in pain, then the flickering shots cut over the image of her face and we are in the past. This, although is not the usual thriller way of doing flashbacks in black and white and real time in colour, connotes the girls emotion; when she is on the beach she is an empty shell, colourless and dispondent but in the flashbacks she is a fairly normal teenager living her life.

The flashbacks continue with breaks of the girl walking along the beach in between. The story is then revealed that the girl is a drug addict, born into the world by her boyfriend. Drowning in a world of debt the girl separates from her boyfriend hoping for the debt and drugs to dissappear. Unfortunately, without her boyfriend to keep the dealers off her they start to send threats which she ignores. When the girl is walking home one day, the audience see's a tall man dressed in black walking infront of her. He then turns left into the front garden of a house and the girl stops at the same house, it is then realised that the man is going to her house. The man walks up to the door and kicks it open, the girl's mother is in the kitchen with her younger sibling. The man starts screaming at the mother and pressing a gun on her neck, asking her where her daughter is. When the mother says she doesnt know and that she hasn't seen her for days the man gets angry and kills her. Meanwhile the sibling has run upstairs and hidden in its room, the man decided to go upstairs and look for it. The camera follows the man up the stairs, he has the gun down at his side, finger on the trigger. It then cuts to inside a cupboard slightly ajar, the shot is from the siblings point of view, the man walks into the room and is looking around (similar to the scene in Leon when the 4 year old boy is hiding under the bed). It then cuts to the girl still standing at the front garden and she looks up at the top window, it zooms in on the window (shot reverse shot) and there is flash and a bang that echoes as it zooms in on her face, her eyes are scrunched shut it fades into black and white and we are in back at the beach. The girl is standing still, wind blowing, alone. Her feet are in the water, the camera is behind her as she walks into the water and goes up to her waist, the frame then fades into complete darkness.