Actor Research

Actor Research 

Ideally, we would want to use third party actors in order to compensate for our groups lack of acting ability and additionally these actors would convey the persona and archetype of the characters within the short with age, body type and personality all playing a part in the making of the characters.

Mary Melonie - IDEAL

In a perfect world the actor who plays Mary will be in her mid to late thirties or forties. She should portray a rather cold business like personality with an aura to match. This will cumulate with her dialogue and costume, however the foundations lie with the actor in order to portray her rather callous attitude towards her husband. The delivery of her lines should be presented in such a way which show her disinterest in her husband giving the audience an unsettling perception of the nature of the relationship hinting at the eventual breakdown of the marriage and the subsequent murder. To avoid spoon-feeding the audience we would like to make as many as the narrative points indirect rather than telling the audience what they see on screen. Ideally we would like to let the audience draw there own conclusions on the nature of there relationship rather than holding there hand the entire way through.

Our Actor:

Due to time constraints we had to look for an actor around our age but that could be dressed up to look older then they actually are. Claire Matthews was our first pick due to her high acting ability and her rather adult looking face.

Patrick Melonie - IDEAL

Ideally we would like the actor for patrick malonie to be in a similar age range to that of Mary in there mid thirties or forties. The actor should portray a rather happy and upbeat personality at the beginning of the short, a perfect "house wife" persona. Her dialogue portrays this but the delivery of the lines should match the tone they are written in. As the tone of the short changes and adapts, so too should the personality of the husband. The perfect house wife persona should adapt into a noticeable facade and his previous cheerful attitude should reflect an ignorance or denial of the previous events. Finally, towards the very end of the film when the husband is left alone while the detectives eat the murder weapon, the actor in mention should be able to show the rather manic and "unhinged" side of Patrick to which he shows no one.

Our Actor:

Our actor is Terrence , a professional actor and a man in his thirties. I feel that he is perfect for the role of Patrick due to his rather docile looking nature and his background in acting which will greatly improve the quality of our film

Detectives - IDEAL

The detectives play a small yet equally as important role to our protagonists Patrick and Mary malonie. The detectives should portray a rather stern and very business like approach, however they should be kind and respectful to Mary, the now widow as this suggests to the audience that they do not suspect her to be the killer. Other than that the detectives do not have any discernible true characteristics when compared to patrick and Mary.

Our Actors:

The two actors which we were able to find to play the detectives are Emmett Dorrian and Ryan McGarry. Both can play the role well and due to the lack of speaking roles and the nature of their roles, great acting abilities are not necessary in order to play the role effectively.

Shot Research

Shot Research 

• We had wanted to research how to accurately convey a vicious blunt object assault convincingly while not putting our actors into any sort of harm. This particular video was extremely helpful in allowing us to plan a shot that would fit all of our needs while also making the shot seem realistic.

Character Inspiration

Character inspiration for protagonist.

Patrick Maloney- Alvin Steele. League of gentlemen.

For our male protagonist, the husband and victim, Patrick Maloney we have taken inspiration from
many different television characters, Alvin Steele from The League of Gentlemen probably being the biggest inspiration for us. This character is s portrayal of the idea of a house husband who is very dull and boring but who is married to a dominant and passionate wife. Because of these differences Alvin struggles to relate to his wife and this comes to be an issue within the marriage. We also intend for our male protagonist, Patrick Maloney to be dominated by Mary Maloney and we wish this to be extremely obvious in how our actors portray these characters, this will then cause the viewer to experience a greater shock when Patrick Maloney kills his wife with the frozen leg of lamb and then fails to experience any remorse for this action.

We intend to have our male protagonist similar to this character, The costume worn by the actor playing Alvin Steele immediately allows the viewer to understand the type of character he is, we intend to make use of a similar idea so that Patrick Maloney is immediately recognisable as a dull but extremely sensitive house husband. What makes this immediately recognisable in the character of Alvin Steele (Based on the picture above) is his large round glasses, neck brace and his cardigan. We hope to dress our actor in a similar outfit however without the neck brace as this would require a back story as to how he ended up in neck brace, which is not possible in a short film whilst it was possible in a TV series.


How Patrick Maloney is dressed should be a direct contrast to how Mary Maloney will be dressed, we envision that Mary Maloney would be wearing a suit like outfit, this involves a long skirt and blazer. We are basing this off people such as Hilary Clinton who portrays a professional, conservative and dominant appearance. This is what we intend Mary to be wearing when her husband kills her to again reinforce the idea of her being the dominant party within the marriage and again adds to the surprise when he kills her with the leg of lamb, manages to destroy the evidence all the while feeling no sense of remorse.

Risk assessment

Shooting Schedule

Updated Costume Research

Costume Research

Patrick Maloney-
Patrick should be dressed for house hold work, this may include a cardigan or jumper and trousers, 
clothes that are comfortable but don't appear slobby. This will give Patrick a comfortable aesthetic whilst not seeming over dressed. It is important we don't not allow him to appear overly formal or to casual as if he appears to be dressed in a way that is to casual, it may take away from the image of him being eager to please his wife.

Mary Maloney- As Mary Maloney is a detective we intend to have her dressed for work, this may include a suit or formal clothes such as a dress or a skirt, however it is vital she appears professional.. It is important she is neither overly formal or not formal enough as if she were to be overly formal, it would immediately create a sense of abnormality within the marriage, and we intend to convey this idea without actually saying it.

Detectives- We imagine the detectives to be dressed also in professional clothing, this may include a shirt and tie and possibly an overcoat. Again, this is an outfit that is typically worn by detectives so I believe it will increase the realism within the short film.

We intend to source these costumes through gathering from our own possessions or from borrowing items of clothing from friends and family or from the actors themselves, this is due to our limited budget which would not stretch to buying new costumes for each of the actors.

Changes To The Original Story

Changes to the Original Story

We decided that to make our piece original, and set it apart from the Roald Dahl story, Mary and Patrick Maloney's roles should be swapped. In our production, Mary Maloney is a strong female businesswoman. It is also insinuated throughout that she is actually gay.
Patrick Maloney is presented as a meek, spineless house husband, who adores and worships his wife. We are basing Patrick's character on Mark Gatiss' character, Alvin Steele from League of Gentlemen.

We have slightly edited the grocers' scene from the original Roald Dahl piece, in that we have omitted any dialogue between Patrick (formerly Mary) and the greengrocer. Instead, we decided that a shot of Patrick picking up some vegetables would be enough to show he left his house.

We added some dialogue between the two detectives in the police car on the way to the Maloneys' house, to further reinforce the idea that Mary and Patrick are completely mismatched.

We thought it was important to add our own twist onto the story and eventually came up with setting it in modern times, contrasting to the already existing short film which is set in the late 1970's to the early 1980's. However we considered many ideas before settling on this one, we considered changing the murder weapon to a more popular food item that is more commonly seen, such as frozen potato smiley faces, We did not make this change as well felt it made the overall tension in the film laughable and reduced the overall quality of the film.

We also considered adjusting the characters personalities to being extremely lazy and slobby, and instead of Patrick Maloney offering to cook a home made dinner, he was ordering a take out meal for his wife. However we decided against these ideas as we felt it may ruin the quality of the short film and cause it to come across as "cheesy" or unprofessional.

Audience Expectations

1. Look at the target audience for the film and how each film attracted their target audience

Thriller Mysteries as a genre is extremely broad and attracts a wide variety of audience members from male to female, from young to old and from every walk of life. Indeed due to these extremely wide scoped, many Thriller mysteries are extremely different from one another with many micro genres being created in order to focus on individual target audiences. 


For example the hit British TV show "Sherlock" is aimed at a much younger audience from around the ages of 15 to 30. This is due to its much more comical and lighthearted tone as well as the younger actors featured within the show to appeal to these younger audience members. Additionally the show features much more action and excitement than the majority of thriller mysteries in order to appeal to this younger audience.

 Another example of a Mystery thriller would be "murder, she wrote". This tv series differers greatly from that of "Sherlock" and with good reason. 'Murder, she wrote" focuses on an entirely different demographic from that of Sherlock, focusing on a much more mature an elderly audience. indeed this is reflected through the tv series its self focusing much more on the mystery of the episode and gathering clues. There is very little action within the series itself and it moves at a much slower pace than that of comparative mystery thrillers. The actors themselves also reflect the demographic of the show with many of the actors being middle aged or elderly in order to appeal to there demographic. The main character, Jessica fletcher, is a retired mystery novelist in her late 50's or 60's who also happens to be a widow. This character would appeal heavily to the middle aged and elderly audiences with many of the film viewers also happening to be female.

 Finally, the mystery thriller Seven, an extremely gritty and violent portrayal of a mystery thriller which appeals to an young adult audience. The film appeals to its young adult audience by increasing the action and violence within the movie in order to appeal to this audience while also featuring a cast of extremely well known actors with the main character being a young man in his twenties. 

Our short mystery thriller "Lamb To the slaughter" appeals to the more mature audience with a focus on the thrill on whether or not our main character, Patrick, will be able to solve these horrific crimes. The film is much slower in comparison to the high action seven yet i feel that thanks to editing, our film will be able to grasp the attention of the audience throughout through the use of fast shots and quick editing. Our film will attract fans from both genders, however, statistically, for slower mysteries such as out short, more females tend to watch this genre of film.

2. What type of company distributes your chosen films?

Due to its rather obscure nature and the wide breadth which many mystery thrillers can take, there are any number of film distributors which may distribute this genre. A massive distributor of crime films however is Warner bros with such films as Dial M for Murder and The Maltese Falcon. Indeed Warner brothers, especially through a period in the mid 20th century in which warner bros distributed a large number of crime and mystery films. However, today they have branched into various genres, yet they still release crime dramas on a regular basis.

3. How have social groups been represented in these films and how does this relate to the target audience?

In our film we represent lower middle class suburbia in the idolised sense while also revealing the far more dark and sinister reality behind the "perfect life". Our film however does not accurately represent the ethical diversity of the lower middle class with every actor we feature being white. However this is due to the nature of the demographic in our area which is predominantly white, without access to actors who are ethnically diverse we are unable to include them in our short film. As our film is not targeted at any particular ethnic group this will not impact the short significantly however some ethnic groups may feel alienated due to the lack of representation in our short.

Our film attempts to turn gender roles completely on its head with the female being the main breadwinner of the relationship and Patrick Maloney being a house husband. This is an attempt by us the film makers to put not only a modern twist on the short with the idea of working wife being inconceivable until very recently. This normalises the idea of a "working wife" and would resonate well with some people in our audience. This works well with our targeted audience of females in there early 30s to mid 50s as a large portion of this audience are women working in there families.

Our film also represents the LGBT community with Mary Malonie either being a closeted lesbian/bisexual individual. This aids us as many people in LGBT community feel that in modern day media they are not represented to the extent that straight individuals are. By including this small touch we would gain more support for our short film and reach out to a demographic that many films outright ignore.

4. What are audience expectations for these films?

Audiences expect to experience a wide range of emotions while watching a Crime Thriller. They expect to feel a sense of suspense while watching the film, essentially they want to be put on the "edge of their seat" and feel a sense of excitement on whats to come. Our film succeeds in this regard as the audience is constantly guessing whether or not Patrick will be able to get away with the murder and whether or not the detectives will be able to figure out the murder weapon in time. The audience within a crime thriller look for a scene of normality which is this disrupted by some sort of event, within our film, this event is Patrick learning of his wives infidelity and the impending divorce. This contrasts the rather surreal and ornate life they had previously with Patrick living about his everyday life as a house husband.

Shot List