Our film title:

The title of our crime thriller is called The Initiative. This

conforms to the standard thriller conventions as they
traditionally have short titles, examples being The
Departed, Heat, and Collateral The films share the
semantic field of crime, this was the motivation for us to
choose the title as we wanted to give the audience an
indication of the genre of the film through the title. Our film
fits with stereotypical crime thrillers, as there often the element of the unknown involved within the
film.

Typeface:
Our typeface is situated in the bottom left hand of the screen,
this allows the audience to continue the watch the film without
the typeface being distracting or obscure vision, additionally, it
allows the viewer to have an added indication to the names of
charcaters and actors and. We chose the naming font as it has
connotations to retro policing, similar to that of popular police
TV show Ashes to Ashes. This rather basic title sequence is
effective as it shares the necessary information of the film but
allows the audience to get a full frontal view of the characters and surroundings.
Location/Setting: Our film featured 4 locations, this was in
order to explain various character profiles as well as a stage for
the eventual drug deal to take place. Our main location was set
in a secluded car park, this conforms to the conventions of a
crime thriller as typically, a deal is mysterious and is not taken
somewhere that's in the open for people to see. Our second
location is in a house kitchen, we wanted this to look trashed
and messy as typically within crime thrillers, a house with
affiliations with drugs is normally messy and has evidence
dotted around the area. Our third setting was based within a
gymnasium, this was in order to emphasise the fact that this
character is tough guy with anger issues. We used a variety of
different camera angles in order to detail the setting, the fact the
gym was empty detailed that there is an element of privacy and
mystery surrounding the character. Our final location shows a
character over grass, this details that the character in the black
coat is transmitting information to someone else in a different
location, this fits standard thriller crime stereotypes as the twist
Props and Costumes: Our film had lots of props involved normally relates to a character being double crossed.
within the film, this was in order to portray in detail the
personalities behind the characters and gave an insight to
the progression of the film. We tried to be fairly subtle with
some of our prop placement, to give the audience a deeper
meaning in regards to the setting which relates to the
characters. In terms of costumes, we wanted our main
antagonists to dress in clothing that showed that they were
hard men that shouldnt be messed with. Typically within
films, gangsters are dressed in expensive formal clothing.
We believed that this sort of outfit gives the characters the
respect they need from the audience, if our antagonists
were dressed in tracksuits, the element of being hard would
be difficult to achieve.
 Shot selection and Editing: Throughout the film
we used a variety of shots, examples as shown in
the pictures are point of view, master shot, over
the shoulder and close up. This was in order to
give a new dynamic to the audience, using the
POV shot added an element of mystery as the
face of who is getting out of the car is eagerly
anticipated. The use of cross-cutting was used
towards the end of the film in order to showcase
that the man with the money was in fact an
undercover police officer, transmitting
information to an outside source. This created a
slight shock factor as it would not have been
anticipated by the audience. This is typical of a
thriller as the idea is to keep the audience
engaged for as long as possible.

Our storyline and how this sets up the film: The

initiative is about an undercover police officer
hunting down an unknown yet notorious drug
dealer. The only information that he knows is the
names and history of the new dealers alias'. The
officer meets them for a deal but unbeknownst to
the felons, he has hidden a tracker in the bag of
money and is now able to track their location to
eventually convict them of their crime.

Our film genre and how our opening suggests this:

Our opening begins with a black and white shot of the
Warner Brothers logo, this is to show that they are our
distributing company. Following on from that, the
scene opens with a close up of the officer, strern faced,
walking into a secluded car park. The camera then
transitions to an over the shoulder shot, followed by
cross cutting to identify that the man is walking up to
a car, this was in order to get the perspective of what it
is the officer is there for. This links to crime thriller
conventions as the audience are normally are hinted,
through the use of camera shots, about key parts of the
scene, allowing the audience to guess at what may
happen next, this constant guessing game builds up
tension and suprises the audience when they see that a
tracker has been set in the bag. The music in the
background has relation to the opening close up, the
deep base line emphasises the fact that the person we
see in the opening is a man on a mission.
Introducing our characters:
The officer is the main character in our thriller, this
relates to why he motivates majority of the cuts within the
opening. We used cross cutting to emphasise the power he
has as he transmits information at the end of the scene to
another unknown character. Stereotypically police
officers work as one large force in order to crack down on
criminals by being as efficient and covert as possible.