Film synopsis and overview of film opening

Film synopsis, overview of film opening and thoughts about the opening

I will now begin planning my film opening. After having researched the genre of Thriller, I am confident that I would like my film opening to be the genre of Thriller.

 In this opening, the events will occur in chronological order and will start with a 911 call with a woman reporting a shooting. The woman who is on the phone reports that everybody has been shot and that she is wounded. The woman then drops the phone (indicating her death). Then the opening will feature a police officer who receives the dispatch call and then leaves to respond to the shooting. Then the officer arrives on scene. He finds clues to the shooting and then sees a shadow pass in front of him. Thinking it is the shooter, he shoots at the shadow but then realises that he has killed an innocent instead. Then the song "Great Day Today" begins to play and a sort of montage begins which shows the officer's downfall into drinking, drugs and violence. The end of the opening wraps up this downfall by the end of the song.

If I were to continue the film past the opening, I would probably have the rest of the film be a sort of "on the run" film where the ex-officer is being chased by the police and has to uncover who the shooter was that caused his downfall. As many Thrillers feature a twist by the end of the film, I would probably have a twist in this film that shows that the officer was actually the shooter with multiple personality disorder and that he started shooting. Then, he responded to the call of the shooting as a police officer where he is looking for himself to stop.

In my opening, the message that I would like to convey is the weak nature of this character and how his mistake led to the breakdown of his emotions which made him violent and as bad as the criminals that he made a vow to stop. This weak nature element is quite obviously subverting the stereotype of male behaviour when looked at from a wide view. However, the representation of this character in the opening will show him as quite strong in his actions in this chaotic situation that is occurring around him and that he is not actually physically weak, but is mentally so. This representation is enforcing the stereotype of males when immediately viewed and will take an analysis by the viewer to fully understand how this character is in fact weak.

I am using a male actor based on availability but almost did use a female actress to film. This mental approach of mine was open to using either gender to film with and so I feel that my representation of this character is not affected by which actor I worked with and that no element of sexism was present in this decision.

I feel that my approach to domestic abuse, drug abuse, innocent people killed and general violence is being done appropriately and that these elements are not represented as positive things and instead things that bring negative events and situations into a person's life.