The Hypnotist rough cut

The Hypnotist- Rough Cut 

This is the rough cut for our thriller "The Hypnotist." For this opening to our film we attempted to include as many conventions of a thriller as possible. 

To get to this point we had to do a lot of research around thrillers. We watched a lot of thrillers and evaluated them as in depth as possible. Alfred Hitchcock was one of the thriller producers/directors films we looked at. Some of his films we looked at were, North by Northwest, Psycho and The Birds. These films included a MacGuffin, red herrings cliff hangers, mystery suspense and much more. All of these conventions we thought were effective so we wanted to include as many as possible in our film. 

First we had to select an appropriate story line which would fit the thriller genre. To do this we had to think of the other thrillers we had watched and what they included.  This is the story line we came up with:

Dr J. Smith specialises in hypnotism and provides treatment for patients who have previously suffered trauma. Rupert Jones is one of his patients who attends a session after suffering from increasingly violent and obsessive visions of an unknown girl. In attempt to unravel his issues the doctor heavily influences his patient to confront the issue by finding this girl. Rupert, who remains disorientated, is offered hypnotism and without consent, a strange injection to follow. Rupert’s visions repeatedly reveal him carrying a torn photograph of his victim which matches the complete photograph on his doctor’s desk. The complete copy shows that Dr. J. Smith is in the previously missing half of the photograph. Is the hypnotist really who he appears to be?

This story line was chosen as we thought it would be possible to include fast paced action and many thriller conventions.