Following our test shoot, we decided to pitch our idea to one of the other media teachers, Mike, and get his feedback about the potential sequence. Whilst he acknowledged that the idea had been developed, he said that the subject matter may be somewhat controversial; the idea would work, he said, but the fact that we were using a nun, priest and religious background made it somewhat impractical as no church would let us film due to the rather poor light that it would shine upon them. He said that in order to keep the church setting we would have to take the nun and priest out of the story line and replace them with ordinary people instead. However, wanting to keep both the nun and church setting in our opening sequence, we decided the idea needed to be changed. Consequently, we took away the idea of the priest altogether, and instead agreed to make the nun the aggressor by having her be the one to commit a crime. Once again, however, we forgot to acknowledge that this too would shine a poor light on the religious community, and as such we would, once more, not be allowed to film within a church.
As such, the idea adapted - opening with a nun figure walking down a humble country road with a small shopping trolley whilst, in the background and slightly out of focus, a man in a distinguishable jacket slowly gets out of his car. The nun would take little notice of him and progress on through the village and into a bed and breakfast, where we would see her make her way upstairs and into a private room. Once within, she'd start to unpack her trolley (which is loaded with drugs and money). There would be a knock at the door, and after hiding everything quickly and accordingly, she would open it to see the man (in the same jacket as seen before) standing there, where we see as her face drops - clearly indicating he is some kind of disconcerting figure.
However, after re-evaluating the idea and talking to Mike once again, we all agreed that not much happens in this new concept, and nor would the sequence be overly entertaining to film (which would be a waste of our time). As such, once again, we decided we needed to come up with a new idea once more... And so starting from scratch, we decided not to use any of our back up ideas as none of us were truly passionate about them. Instead, we decided to think of an entirely new and fresh idea.
Consequently, what we came up with was an idea based upon the Salem Witch Trials:
A young girl is standing by a pyre, surrounded by a number of men (a couple of which who are tying her up). They stand within a small clearing deep within the heart of a dark forest. Behind the pyre in the background, to either side, are men holding flaming torches and around the gathering, a couple of mounted horsemen. One man stands before the girl, declaring her a witch and condemning her to death when suddenly the high pitched wail of a woman sounds from somewhere in the distance. The collective turn their attention to the direction of the scream and await in silence. The scream sounds again, and some of the men begin to shout to one another and move out to find its source. All of a sudden, the distinctive calling of, “She’s gone!” can be heard, and we see as the ropes that were being bound to the young girl fall to the ground. Within seconds she is already pacing away from the clearing, and the gathering chase after her - commencing the hunt. We then see her running through the trees, breathless and desperate - the intimidating sight of horses and a mob with pitchforks and other armaments in hot pursuit. The sequence comes to a close with the girl tripping on the forest’s undergrowth and collapsing to the floor, with her followers close behind.
Researching more into the idea and possible inspiration for the mise-en-scene, I stumbled across this trailer which I think shows a lot of aspects that we'd want to include in our sequence (namely regarding location and costume). In terms of the movie trailer's actual plot, if we were to took any inspiration from it we'd have to be sure that we kept the iconography strictly thriller related, being extremely careful as to not make our idea 'too horror'.
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