Planning - Project Proposal

Introduction: 

My name is Santiago Acosta, and I will be working with Samuel Ruiz and Laila Harran to make a film opening, and I will be the editing director, and the director of photography and we will split the responsibilities evenly and act in our own film opening. 

Chosen Product:

As a team, we chose to make a psychological thriller film opening where we will use silence and long shots to create an uncomfortably quiet environment to build tension. We chose this sub-genre because we were inspired by films like American Psycho, and Fight Club where characters are shown to slowly have a mental decline throughout the film. We were also intrigued by the way psychological thrillers were able to create such a tense atmosphere without excessive visual effects.

Target Audience:

The target audience for our film opening would be young adults as other films in the sub genre often contain mature themes relating to mental illness, or death as well as other sensitive topics that would not be appropriate for younger audiences. Our film is likely appealing to people who like movies that interpret real world issues, fans of previous psychological thrillers, and viewers who like a film that provides a mental challenge and does not show its full message at face value.

Representation:

Some social issues we will address in our film will include topics relating to mental illness and how easy it can be to misinterpret and overlook someone with a mental illness like schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder. Our product will show audiences an exaggeration of what people who suffer from these disorders go through with the intention of bringing awareness rather than being insensitive. A major theme of our opening is paranoia which will be represented through the reactions of our protagonist. These themes will all be represented through technical choices as well as the acting to demonstrate these issues to viewers. 

Software & Hardware:

Editing will be done in Adobe Premiere Pro where I personally will be in charge of piecing clips together and will manually add edits to video and audio to create specific choices as well as adding sound effects to add immersion and music that relates to the tone of the scene to add more detail which will bring all of our work together as one final brief. For hardware, we plan to check out a camera from our school's yearbook program to help us film with a high-quality picture. Also, the handheld aspect can be later manipulated to create shaky shots when relevant to the film to add meaning to a scene. 

Basic Plan:

We plan to make a psychological thriller opening by the name "Paranoia." The basic premise is a mentally ill woman dealing with trauma from her mysterious background that causes her to become extremely paranoid and wrongfully interpret situations and having a neglectful therapist who fails to help her manage her trauma causing her to mentally destabilize until a breaking point where during a mental episode she murders her only friend that can effectively calm her down and help her manage her trauma.