PINS AND NEEDLES PITCH

The Opening sequence is of a polieceman telling the father of a victim about the situation and crime scenes. The two men are old friends, partners from their last unit, brought together by the attack of the mans daughter. The officer fills the father in about the attacks. As he describes this, flashbacks and images appear on the screen, following the narrative voice over. There are images of the evil couple and the vicar, of how they became like this and performing their sick rituals on victims. These are shot flashing cuts from many angles, making it fast paced and exiting. Rapid jump cuts. The two men are at a crime scene or at the hospital. As the two men talk the flashbacks reflect what they are describing. There is a transition between past tense and the present when the father changes his complexion and we get a sense of his new found determination to end this. The music cuts out so only his words are heard, while the screen is black and the title appears.

This Sequence fills us in about what has got to be dealt with, so there is tension and excitement from the start. After this title sequence there is a flashback to before this had happened and the fathers daughter is about to be married. The attacks then happen and we are in the present and the father goes about trying to find the wife and vicar. There are many leads and locations he discovers while doing this and there are plenty of twists and complications throughout. He succeeds in hunting down the Vicar, but then the wife used acupuncture on the officer he worked with, and taunts him with the remedy. He finally obtains this and the wife disappears and we are left not knowing if she is dead or moved onto another town.


Visual style:
Jumpy camera techniques with rapid jump cuts throughout. The steadiness, speed and angle of the camera changes with the location, so when focussed on the two men in the hospital there are smooth slow shots, but the flashbacks will have fast rapid cuts, often hand held and short shots, lots of close ups and medium shots, so the focus of the shots fill the screen, i.e. the bodies of the victims, cuts of the rituals, the vicars face, the fire and destruction of their church etc, and flashes of crucifixes will be shown throughout, but very fast and subliminal.


Location:
The two men are talking at either a crime scene (a small grim dark dingy room or flat with crime scene props) or a hospital.
The flashbacks take place in quite a few locations:
Many church shots for the victims and the original church fire. (A set can be used when there are close ups of the dead family and friends)
Dark small rooms for the several victim crime scenes and rituals, about 3 will be shown including the mans daughter (The rituals taking place are shown and then afterwards when the police have discovered the scene)
The woods and a liar for the evil couple and vicar to keep their wax castings, and live to plot their next attacks.
A place to shown the corpse of the dead husband (edge of the woods?)



Characters:
The officer is tall, strong and quite young, 30’s roughly. He is straight forward and trying not to be shocked by these horrific incidents. He is factual and brief but we can tell he is affectionate for the father too, although he does his best to hide it

The father (Mark Coldstone) is older, with experience in his eyes. He has similar characteristics, though he is unshaven and greying slightly. He has a sense of dominance although he he is run down and riddled with grief. It is evident that the two men are familiar with each other, but they are professional, serious and experienced and do not show this much. The father starts off very worn down and beaten which is evidently out of character for him. This emphasized his visible change near the end of their conversation. “a look of determination and rage replaces the grief in his eyes”
He is standing more upright and a close up of his hands show his knuckles turn white. We see him staring at the officers handgun.

The Vicar’s face is never seen fully, it is always concealed by one of the scary wax casting masks, but we sometimes notice the cancerous red skin underneath. He wears a long black vicars uniform with a black misshapen hat, long white gloves and a large gothic crucifix on his chest. He always carries a blood red bible.

The couple:
Again we on only catch glimpses of the couples deformed faced but their hands are exposed, red and misshapen. The wife wears a dirty holey wedding dress with a vial that covers her face, one of her casted wax masks underneath. The man is dressed in a tuxedo, scruffy and dirty, the white shirt underneath is covered in flecks of blood. His face is also covered by a wax mask, but it looks inhuman and abnormal.

Props:
The crime scene:
Two bodies are side by side in a dark room. Only the candles which surround them illuminate them. Needles cover their skin, and only their blinking eyes can move. The vicar stands above them reading from his bible. Wax is poured on the couple to preserve their expressions and worn by the evil couple. They stand to attention either side of the vicar as he performs his ritual. The only time the masks are taken off are when the sick couple kiss according to the vicars sermon.