Preliminary Task 1 Planning- Pill productions

Media Studies Preliminary Task 1 Planning- Pill Productions

Luci Crawford

The following is a rationale I have written to explain and describe the codes and conventions we will be using in our clip 'The Hitman'. We decided to name our Production 'The Hitman' as the plot is based on a man who has been hired to kill a man by a woman with power in a high up position. The plot that goes with this man however, is that he is unexperienced and new to his career. We show this through the use of a kitchen knife, and a flashback. The kitchen knife is usually what a mum would use to make dinner for her children as opposed to murdering , someone. It shows that this killer wasn't prepared or didn't have access to a proper murder tool, such as a proper knife. The flashback helps to prove this as well because the man looks down at his hands and picks off something thats not there and then we flashback to him washing blood off his hands it shows he is almost haunted by what he did, and that he regrets it. We are using eerie music at the beginning if the clip to add a mysterious and tense feel, the music will be mostly violins/string instruments. We are planning on getting a more drum, based, intense music for the background during the flashback so that it comes across as the fastening drum beat mimicking the Hitmans' heartbeat. For the bathroom scene we see the hitman pack away his knife which was his weapon and his black hoodie which was a disguise (to help add to the verisimilitude so he wasn't walking in and out of the bathroom looking the same making him harder to identify), and he turns around and the shot follows him and goes to a slowly growing pool of blood coming from a cubicle door. This adds to the verisimilitude as a pool of blood after seeing a bloodied kitchen knife makes more sense than a lack of blood would as there would be no clean way of killing someone with a knife like that, especially someone knew to the trade like our character. In the office scene, both characters are dressed in work attire. The hirer lady looks especially powerful, the black and white on her costume represent the power and evil (black) and the purity (white) contrasting each other, and obviously the evil wins out. The hitman will be in a dark grey suit, which symbolises being calm and neutral, but this too contrasts with his red tie as red symbolises guilt and regret. The hirer will be portrayed as having a sense of hidden identity and secretiveness about her as there will always be a shadow cast on half her face. A shadow itself represents the blocking out of light, and therefore, implies the existence of darkness or some lurking force of evil, which we are shown through her at the end of the clip when she hands the hitman an envelope after  he replies 'yes' after she asked 'is it done?' The envelope is obviously filled with money, and the envelopes are a convention used in many thrillers, an unmarked envelope always has either money, or a key to a safe of some sort in it as payment to the assassin. The Hitmans face will always be shown in full light. This will be to show the audience how he feels he cannot hide in the dark from what he's done.

This was the original brainstorm for our group: 

And this was the second and final brainstorm after we decided to change up some of the effects we were planning to use:

This is the shot list for when we film on Thursday the 27th of February:

For costumes:

The first character is the hitman. He'll be wearing a dark grey suit with a red or blue tie. We made this decision because the colour red represents guilt and regret, and the colour blue represents sadness.

This is in contrast to his grey suit because grey represents calmness, being neutral and emotionless. However, when he flashes back to the crime he did and we see him washing his hands we see that he is not completely emotionless and may even feel regret for what he did for money.

 
     



The second character is the lady who hired him. She is wearing an official looking tracksuit, and a dark blazer. The dark colours add to the mysteriousness of her character- the darkness of her clothes could reflect the dark shadow hiding her face. The black in her costume also represent her power and the evil side if her.

  

For props:
Fake blood will be needed as the hitman cleans blood of his hands, and a pool of blood is shown underneath a cubicle in the bathroom. We chose to use the blood because blood signifies death, danger, and violence. It also adds a tension and shows the audience that the man has done a bad thing. The following is a video of the recipe I'll be using to create the fake blood.

A black hoodie will also be used as a prop, not necessarily as a costume piece because the hitman doesn't wear it, but he does put it in a black bag showing that he was wearing a disguise when he entered the building where he committed the murder. The hoodie adds more verisimilitude as it shows the audience that the hitman didn't just walk in and walk out again, he had a disguise to get to the bathroom which makes it more believable. This is what the hoodie will look like, unmarked and black in colour, however it will be scrunched up as the hitman grabs it.

                                     

The last prop we'll be using is a kitchen knife. This represents how the hitman is new to the business as he doesn't have the proper equipment. The kitchen knife helps to tell the audience why the hitman is so remorseful and nervous about what he's done. A proper torture knife would be a signifier of danger, violence, and death, however a kitchen knife would signify a mum cooking dinner, so it contrasts the man with the knife almost as if hes just quickly gone to his kitchen or his local supermarket to get his weapon. The knife will be shown when he cleans blood off it after we seen   him clean off his bloody hands.                                   

I did the weather check for my group, we have windows in the office we are using and are planning on creating a dark atmosphere by pulling the blinds. The weather on the 27th is cloudy, which means the sun won't be too strong or come through the blinds too much or ruin the effect we are trying to create.

I was also in charge of creating a callsheet for my group. This also has the film schedule attached to the bottom as I was assigned to that also.