Conventions of a Thriller opening

Camera- Many different camera shots are used within a thriller. There are several main points to focus upon.
 If a character is shown to be vulnerable, the angle of shot should be taken from high above. This makes the character look small and insignificant on the camera and gives a hint that danger could be coming. Another typical shot is, when a character is dominant in a scene, the camera is used from below. This makes the character seem powerful as they cover a large surface area of the camera lense, become the central focus and look larger than normal as they fill the space the camera can shoot.
 It is also important to keep to the 180 degree rule in order to maintain a professional look throughout shooting. If this rule was broken the characters would flip from left to right and back again throughout one conversation leaving the audience confused as to who is saying what.
 The rule of thirds should also be taken into account to give your shot a more exciting look. If a character wass put straight into the middle of a shot, they would take up most of the room. By putting the character to the left or right of the shot, it allows the camera to show the surroundings and set an atmosphere as well as show the storyline.
 By using a variety of camera shots it helps to get the storyline across quickly and gives hints to a characters personality. In example, by filming a conversation between two people in only three different shots, the audience could easily work out the sociala status of the two individuals.

In this shot, the child looks very vulnerable. She is made to look small

and the direct eye contact makes the viewer feels as though she is looking at us personally in a troubled way. By making the character a child, she is already more vulnerable than that of an adult as her personality and human skills are not yet developed, she is in more danger to be lead in the wrong direction and end up in trouble than an adult.

The man in this shot looks very dominant. He is made to look big as most of his body covers the camera lense and he is the only thing in this shot, demanding our attention. His stance suggests power as he has what looks to be a short tempered attitude by having his arms crossed. As well as the shot being taken from below, making the man look powerful, but he also has a strong physical appearence by having his muscles on display, making him look much more dominant than the child in the other shot.

Editing- In a thriller, the way in which you edit can change the whole perception of the film. Shots can be edited to make them change quickly with fast flashes of blackouts, this would be good to use in a fight scene to show the fast paced atmosphere and how each character is putting lots of effort into the fight. By using a slow arrangement of camera shots, an atmosphere could be created slowly to increase the emotion put in the footage. This could be used in a scene of romance, building up the tension slowly to show the intensity and personal feelings of the character. Fade to blacks and fade to whites are easy to add and make the film look much more effective so that it isn't jumpy when scenes change. It gives the piece a more professional vibe and ensures that the audience doesn't get confused with what is going on in the piece, for example a man couldn't be walking down the road to his car and then be in the car, but by adding a black out it would miss out the inbetween section and make sense to the audience without taking up large amounts of time, watching him get in. It is also possible to speed up the pace of a shot, or slow it down depending on how you want the shot to look and change the colour and style of the shot to make it relate to the time period of atmosphere of the film. By using many of these different editing techniques, it is possible to make the opening look as realistic and professional as possible.

Narrative- In a thriller opening you could have a narrative piece. It could happen at the start of the opening, demanding the audiences attention and causing them to become familiar with the main characters voice. As well as this it could happen throughout the opening whilst the scene is happening without sound. The characters voice becomes the story teller as well as the footage. In some openings, when two characters of the same sex are acting out a scene, it is difficult to tell which one is speaking until you hear both voices of the men. In our opening, I would rather use one girl and one boy to ensure that our audience know exactly which character is talking. The voice over needs to be planned effectively to ensure that it makes sense with the scene which is playing. For example a character could not speak about somethting which has not yet happened as it would confused the audience and lose their focus in the film.

Mise-en-scene- It is important to ensure that this fits in with your piece. If a group chose to act a scene out from say the 1920's, it would be important to ensure that what ever is captured on camera fits in with the same era.  This includes everything such as costumes, setting, speach, machinery etc. If one thing was out of place then the atmosphere would be ruined. By having the mise-en-scene wrong, the whole piece becomes unbelievable and makes the film look very unprofessional. By having so much to think about, it would be helpful to sit down in a group and discuss what would make our opening look the best and talk about things such as what time period we want to aim for, the costumes in which we could get hold of and the prime location to make everything come together. It is important to plan this carefully to in order to get the best filming we can.

Sound- Different types of sound can be added to a Thriller opening. Diagetic and non diagetic. Diagetic sound is what happens in the film, i.e. a conversation happening between two people. This must be recorded during filming to work! Non diagetic sound could consist of a range of things. Sound effects are often added to film openings to make something sound alot more exaggerated than what it would in real life (often used in fight scenes.) They could also be used to add to an atmosphere, something dark and mysterious coming to a climax could result in a crash, sound effects could give you many options to use for this, smashing of glass, the thud of someone falling over etc. All of the effects add to the final outcome of the filming to make it more believeable and tension building. Music is also very important in a thriller opening to set the scene. If done right, this could create the right environment for each individual thriller. Something mysterious could have a slow low note track where as something very fast paced and dramatic could have a fast beat music beat with percussion instroments with all manner of notes to make it fit effectively to the filmed piece.

Research of the thriller genre

  When doing background research into the thriller genre, I came across the 8 primary elements.

1) Either the villain or victim faces death somewhere within the film
2) The forces of antagonism should be stronger than the protagonist.
3) The protagonist either goes on a quest or finds a character who they cannot "put down"
4) The plot is usually a mystery. This needs to be solved by the end of the film.
5) The narrative is usually of the protagonists point of view.
6) The characters must be realistic. It shoud look natural and unforced.
7) There are two major themes for a thriller. Desire for justice, the morality of individuals.
8) Small but significant detail, the victim should portray the only flicker of innocence throughout the film, showing good humanity in a corrupt film.

 These 8 charactertistics give a basic outline as to what a thriller film should entail. By studying these closely, my group should be able to express ideas of what would make a good thriller film. The main idea is to chose an antagonist and a protagonist and discuss how each side will display whether they are good or bad. The plot, to some extent should be kept vague. We are only doing the first two minutes of a thriller film and so mystery needs to be kept after the film is finished to make the audience want to watch more. The opening of films should be one of the best parts as it is the oppurtunity to capture your audience. Usually, films put shocking footage or a flash back which the audience would not yet understand to encapture them. This will give an immediate emotion to the audience and keep their concentration on watching the story line develop.


http://www.twelvepoint.com/?q=blog/8-primary-elements-thriller-genre

Psycho; The old version of this film was created in 1960. It was and still is extremely famous for it's murder scene, filmed in the shower. Due to the fact that this film was, and still is so popular i watched the original version. The shower scene is mostly made up of close ups of the victim, highlighting their struggle for survival throughout the murder. As you can see from the mood board, the audience is hardly shown the murderer at all. The only thing we see is a silhouette of a man. By the film showing the victim to be a woman and the murderer to be a man we get the comparrison to genders. Women are stereotypically shown in thrillers as being weak, helpless and normally easily to kill off. Men are shown as dominant, the villain, strong, powerful and destructive. By including these two characteristics from two extreme ends of the scale the audience have a good idea as to who will get their way in the film.

 The mise-en-scene in this film has had a lot of time put into it in order to make it look as professional and effective as possible. The film was filmed in black and white. This could connotate the idea of good and evil throughout the film. White stands for peacefulness and purity where as black stands for evil and corruption. The shower also looks and stays very simplistic throughout this scene. This is important due to the audiences focus leaving the action and wandering onto whether the bathroom appliances are to their taste. Nothing should distract the audience from the film at this point as it is the peak of anxiety for the audience within the film and should be viewed with concentration, not distraction.

 Many point of view shots from the victims side are used in this scene. This is so that the audience see how clueless and vulnerable the victim is to have someone else in the room with her, and adds to the tension by the audience feeling it their responsibility to get involved with the film and tell the lady she needs to be careful. This gives the audience that "edge of the seat" feeling. By the victim being in the shower, it is seen as a private place where people should be alone. This plays on the victims vulnerability by the woman being naked. The fact that the character is showering, and transforming from dirty to clean plays upon the fact that a dirty murder is about to take place, resulting in the womans death. 



 Typical characteristics of Thriller films
Breaking the law comes up alot in thriller films. The audience should go through the thought process of whether they think that what the character in the film is doing is justifiable, or morally wrong.Within this genre of film, the character usually breaks the law by displaying an act of violence or even murder. Violence could occur due to many different reasons. Vengance, hatrid, competition, an unhealthy mental state, religion, etc... The audience will weigh up the pros and cons for the character commiting a crime and decide on whether they would do the same thing as the character if the situation was the same. This is a vital decision as it will change the way each individual audience member will view each action of the film. Films usually sway the audience to make a decision by showing a film from a biased angle to ensure every individual thinks the same. This will keep the maximum amount of people interested and enjoying the film by relating to the main character.

 Making a bond with a character is important during a thriller film. Usually, the audience either feels companionship towards a character and therefore supports them, or is disgusted in the way which the character has acted and feels hatrid towards them. These two extreme emotions keep the audience on their toes throughout the film and encaptures their mind. The audience will decide whether the character is purely evil, or whether they are a good person doing an evil thing for a valid reason, leaving them sympathetic.

What we did with our presentation

 When we showed our presentation and spoke about our 3 main ideas, we were keen to get feedback from other members of our class. We asked which idea they thought was the best and why they liked it. We got positive responses and discovered after peer review that idea 1 (the airfield) would be very challenging. Not only would we need to get hold of expensive outdated outfits to fit in with the idea, we thought that the modern tractors and machinery in the background would ruin the mise en scene of the film and leave the opening looking unprofessional and rushed. Without managing to make idea 1 successful, we decided that this was a definate no go and considered it a creative idea but unpractical for our time scale and resources.

 Idea 2 and 3 both came back with very positive feedback. People found the ideas to be different, outgoing, and something they'd be interested in watching themselves. This seemed very promising to us as our film is intended for the age group 15+, and so our class fitted perfectly into this. However i did hav a slight worry that a hostage thriller opening (idea 2) was very cliche and had been done many times before and not worked out to peoples advantage. However if we were able to pull this idea off, it could work out very well and be an effective opening.

 Idea 3 would have involved a girl being drowned due to her fathers religious views. We intended to make this water scene as dramatic as the shower scene in psycho. However the feedback from our teacher was that not only would this be extremely challenging to make it look good without high level equipment but people who have used a bathroom in their house before when filming their media, their class mates commented more about their modern bathroom than the event taking place in the film. We wanted to avoid taking the seriousness away from the storyline and keep it as realistic and engripping as possible to watch. We ran this idea by our class and everyone seemed to agree that this would be better for the film as they'd want to make an emotional connection and not be distracted.

After considering the points raised by other members of our class, we sat down and discussed the possibility of merging idea 2 and 3 together and seeing whether we could make a new story including elements of both ideas.
 We went through everything and came up with a story line we found to be fitting, challenging but yet doable! We started on making a story board which included all of the qualities we want our opening to have, it needed tlo be very detailed and include everything from camera shots to lighting and costume in order to work to the best of our groups ability on the day, we had to stay organised!

Our Presentation on our 3 ideas

AUDIENCE RESEARCH

Questionnaire for expectations of thriller genre:

Please circle your best chosen answer.

 

1) Which gender are you?
Male?
Female?

2) What age group are you?
15-18?
19-30?
31+?

3) What type of sub genre of the thriller genre do you prefer?
Drama?
Sci-fi?
Crime?
Action?
Comedy?
Mystery?

4) Which is your favourite thriller film out of the following..?
Psycho?
Donnie Darko?
The Happening?
Paranormal activity?
Other _____________

5) What type of music do you think should be played in a thriller film?
Eerie?
Mysterious?
Up-beat?
Calm?
Classical?

6)Which location would best suit a thriller?
Woods?
Abandoned house?
Every day setting?
Shopping centre?
Other? ________

7) What factors do you think build up the atmosphere of a thriller film?
Special effects?
Sound effects?
Acting?
Realistic based plot?
Mise-en-scene?
Props?


8) Who would you watch a thriller film with?
Girlfriend/Boyfriend?
Family?
Friends?
Alone?


9) Who would you expect to be the victim within a thriller film?
Female?
Old person?
Hero/Heroine
Teenager?
Parent/Career?
Child?


10) How often on a regular basis would you watch a thriller?
Once a day?
Once a week?
Once every two weeks?
Once every month?
Once a year?
Never?

11) Have you had further post sixteen education?
Yes?
No?

12) How would you find out about media?

Magazine?

Telly?
Broadsheet?

Redtop?

Internet?

13) Do you enjoy reading books?

Yes?

No?

14) Do you have any hobbies? If so please specify

Yes? ________________

No?

15) If you had money going spare, would you consider buying a thriller film?

Yes?

No?

16) How would you first find out about a new thriller film?

Radio?

Internet?

TV?

Cinema?

Newspaper?

 

 

 It is very important to do audience research before chosing the final idea for a thriller opening. It allows you to find out what people want in a film. A director might have many ideas and have a basic story line in their head of a thriller they think to be "the latest thing" but if the director doesn't have the best intentions of the audience at heart, the thriller could end up losing a company lots of money as it doesn't appeal to the market. A target market should be chosen, thrillers usually appeal to teenages over the age group of 15 to much older adults. The BBFC gives most thrillers the legal age requirement of 15 years old and anyone under this age could find the film distressing. With thin in order, we chose to give our questionnaire to people over the age of 15 to ensure that everybodies responses are valid and we don't base our film on people who won't yet be able to watch it.

Idea 3

 STORY LINE:
Main idea of a psycho being the main character.
 The mans daughter dies. She's a rebellious teen who goes against her fathers religious views.
 The story will occur at a grave yard. There will be flashbacks of how the father murdered his daughter (drowning in a bath) and show his cold personality through his lack of emotions when standing at her grave.
 The man found his daughter an embarrassment in modern day society and wanted to keep his biblical views in the family. Her rebellious lifestyle caused him to become insane and break down resulting in a murder.

CLOTHING IDEAS:
 Provocative teen age clothes (mini skirts, leather jacket etc.) -Things which will show an obviously rebellious outburst through personal choices in clothing.

By wearing clothes such as this, it shows the girl to be provocative. A mini skirt stands for a girl being "easy" and conflicts against the religious views of the father in the biblical quote of  "no sex before marriage."

The father would wear clothes such as a suit. This will show that the family are from a normal background. His suit will be black with a black tie contrasting against a white shirt. This will represent the good and bad in him through the colours of his outfit. White stands for everything good and peaceful, where as black contrasts this and reflects the darker side in his personal religious views. The suit will also fit in with the theme of death. It will work as a mark of respect at his childs funeral which he will be going to, even though he was the one who killed her.

PROPS:

Pills (shows the mental state of the father)

Religious necklace of a cross

The bible (shows he has commited a crime and in confiding in God)

Bath (place of murder)

TITLES AND CREDITS:

Name of the thriller- "Black Water"

Titles for the film- Our titles will be done on the macs at school. We will write the names in black text, this shows the dark side the film will have and gives the audience an immediate assumption within the first few minutes of the film. This writing will be on water, this connotates the place of murder being commited in water and shows the danger which water has within the film.

Idea 2

Hostage situation

Abattoir (set at Henrys house)

Main idea of a girl being kidnapped and held hostage. The dad wants to save his little girl.
 The kidnapper's aim is to get the maximum amount of money as possible by threatening to kill the girl.

Inspiration: The film "Taken" is about a girl being stolen and taken into prostitution. Her dad (an old security guard) is adding upp the clues to find his daughter. The main idea of  a vulnerable girls dad fighting to get his child back.

Costumes-
 Black clothing worn by the dad to show his seriousness.
 The kidnapper would wear a balaclava to hide his identity from the girl.
 The girl would be wearing casual clothing which would be raggid from the way that the man had kidnapped her. She would have make up down her face and look like she hasn't had a wash for a while. Her grubby look should show the audience a time bracket of how long she has been tied up for.

Props-
Rope
Knife
Gun
Dead animals (add a freaky effect and show the kidnapper to be a psycho)
Phone
Briefcase
Money

Titles/Credits-
Name of idea 2: Prisoner
 Titles for film: All black background. Only able to see the girls face. This inspiration is from the film mirrors as they used an expression of fear to show roughly what had happened so far.