Introduction
Our brief was to create a short opening of a film sequence in the Thriller genre. The usual conventions of a thriller are a frightening, puzzling plot which captivates the audience to give them a terrifying experience. For our film to be a thriller we needed to have sound, camera shots, lighting and mis-en-scene that reflected the genre. The audience we targeted are teenagers aged 15 – 18.
Before filming we all chose a night that was suitable, we also discussed what costumes, makeup and props we needed. We constructed a shooting script and shot list; this helped us know exactly what we were doing on the day to avoid wasting any time.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The purpose of an opening sequence is to leave subtle hints to what the film may include, creating an air of mystery or enigma code, leaving the audience questioning the outcome of the plot; the answers to which are revealed in the rest and end of the film. Music, lighting, camera shots and mise-en-scène are used effectively to show the protagonist and the antagonist of the piece, as the openings of thriller films is basically the establishment of the main character.Most thrillers most commonly use horror, conspiracy, and psychological tricks to heighten tension. Examples of thriller movies include Red Eye, Psycho, North by Northwest, In the Line of Fire, Phone Booth and Silence of the Lambs. Block buster thrillers are often filmed in exotic or eerie settings such as cities, deserts and on a smaller scale deserted villages or towns. We decided to use this typical convention and set our film in a garage and a street in the dark. The heroes in most thrillers are usually "hard men" accustomed to danger: law enforcement officers, spies, soldiers, seamen or aviators etc. However, they may also be ordinary citizens drawn into danger by accident. While the heroes have traditionally been men, women lead characters have become increasingly common; for an early example Sigourney Weaver's character Ripley, in the movie Alien, 1979. We decided to take this on board and include a villain without an identity so it’s unclear whether they’re a man or a woman. In most thrillers, the hero must find out the plans of an enemy, rather than uncover a crime that has already happened. In a thriller the identity of a murderer or other villain is typically known all along. We decided to challenge this and not show the face of the villain so the audience wouldn’t know what sex, age or type of person it was. This allows our film to be unique and different from a typical block buster thriller. Block buster Thrillers also occur on a much grander scale: the crimes that must be prevented are serial or mass murder, terrorism, assassination, or the overthrow of governments. For our film we decided not to show what crime was being committed, all we showed was darts in pictures. This allowed the audience to guess what was happening to the girls in the pictures. We wanted our opening sequence to be a guessing game for the audience to want to watch the rest of the film to find out what happens next. The dartboard is the main iconography of our film.
The film Phone Booth inspired us to include many similar techniques and our main inspiration from the film was the plot. "Phone Booth" is not an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but it does manage to hold your attention quite effectively. This is what we wanted for our film. It involves suspicion and mind games to draw in the audience. We thought we would also use a game as our main plot (darts). Many people like playing games and people like solving mysteries, so by linking them together we hoped people would really enjoy our film.Our film is set in present time. The establishing shot is in a dark, eerie garage; somebody has thrown darts at 5 pictures of girls although there is one picture without a dart in it. We then see a long shot of a young girl being followed on her way home. The person following her gets close enough to reach out their hand and touch her shoulder. The shot then suddenly changes back to the garage scene and a dart is thrown at the last picture. The dart symbolises that clearly, something has happened to the girl but we don’t know what. We decided not to show what happens to the girl as it leaves the audience confused and wondering what happened, this technique is often used in opening sequences of thrillers to invite the audience to watch the rest of the film.
In the film ‘Phone Booth’ there is a voiceover which worked very successfully, it was the voice was of a middle-aged man with a deep voice. It worked extremely well to create an eerie atmosphere. This is a convention often found in a thriller film. As a group we decided to challenge this and have the voiceover of a woman. Here is an element of deliberate parody; we were playing with the genres normal conventions by having a woman as the narrator. We wanted to do this to make us different from your normal block buster thriller such as Silence of the Lambs which has a cannibalistic male serial killer as the main character and James Bond. We used the words ‘life is just a game; it’s the way you play that counts.’ This choice of words was used to make the audience feel the film is a personal message to them. We wanted them to feel as though they are watching a game that they could end up playing, and they’d have to fight to survive. This chilling message also adds to the creepy atmosphere.
We used a dark room with a red light for the establishing shot. The darkness created a creepy, uncertain atmosphere suitable for a thriller. The red light was used as a symbol of danger, it also represented blood. This created a sense of threat making the audience feel on edge. We also wanted darkness and red light to create shadows to help set the eerie mood, typical of thriller openings like Batman. Like a lot of other major thriller films, darkness is used throughout. Our whole film, even the outside shots were filmed in darkness to stick to the thriller codes and conventions and create a mysterious atmosphere.
For the opening we used the sound of a steady heart beat to link with the slow motion shot. This emphasised the feeling of anticipation and heightened the dramatic tension. Several other thrillers have used this technique. As the shot changes to the girl being followed, a ghostly, slow, gospel style of non-digetic music is introduced; this style of music adds ambience, it sets an anxious aura.
We carefully chose titles that suited the thriller genre the most. Our titles were RED and WHITE. These colours were deliberately chosen to represent the two main characters. One character is suspicious, dangerous, and blood thirsty, there-for represented by the colour red. The victim however is the opposite, she is innocent and defenceless, and almost angel like, so there-for white is used to represent her. Our titles slide in from one side to the middle where they sit next to each other. The bringing together of these two contrasting colours is used to represent what happens in the film.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Within my thriller title sequence, there are only two characters. However, the sequence does represent some social groups in particular ways.The teenage girl is represented stereotypically in a role as the female victim: defenceless, and vulnerable. She is completely alone in the shots in which she features, which creates the impression that she is isolated from anybody who could help her. She’s also in darkness which creates a sense of danger to heighten the tension. She is walking home from a party or social get together. She is stereotypically blonde, wearing trendy clothes and heels. She’s quite short and petite which again increases her level of vulnerability and gives her a less chance of fighting off somebody.
The audience would feel pity for the girl and want to warn her. Having a woman as the victim is often a technique used in thrillers such as Silence of the Lambs, as it makes the audience feel more scared and worried.
The face of the person following the girl is never seen, not showing the face or gender of the antagonist created a sense of uncertainty. The audience could make up what they imagined this person to look like, there-for making it more personal to them. The audience would also want to watch the rest of the film to find out who this person is.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
We felt that our film has a good enough quality to be broadcasted on the internet or television for public viewing. For example: YouTube or BBC Wales. The fact that our film is based on a game of darts makes it completely unique from any other film, which is why I think it could even be put in cinemas. The quality of our film is not your usual blockbuster as we simply don’t have the extreme budget and amazing technology that they have, but I believe with professional equipment and outstanding directors the plot is good enough to be a top selling film.
The obvious choice for an institution to distribute my media product would be a film company. Large, well established, American film companies such as Universal and Fox handle large blockbusters as well as smaller/shorter films and distribute them not only in the US and the UK, but all over the world. They don’t however often deal with very small films and those which are low-budget. Smaller film companies like Film 4 would be more willing to accept on smaller or ‘independent’ films. Film 4 films are fairly widely distributed in the UK, but are less well represented in other countries.There would be more of a chance that a smaller, British film company taking a chance on my thriller, rather than a larger, American company.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
To find out what audience to target we decided to produce a short survey. We asked the class, several younger pupils and teachers what film they liked. We realised that younger children seemed to like animated films most, where as the teachers preferred films like musicals, dramas and romantic comedies. We found that children from the age of 15 to 18 preferred to watch horror films and thrillers. This worked well for us as most major thrillers have a 15 or 18 certificate. We did consider targeting a younger audience but as our film includes a young girl being followed we thought this would be too frightening/disturbing for the younger more vulnerable audience. The majority of people who watch films in the cinema are between the ages of 13 - 24. There-for we wouldn’t have benefited from targeting an older audience.
Most films of the thriller genre are rated fifteen or above, although there are many are rated twelve. This is most likely due to the levels of violence found in most thrillers. The ideal audience for my thriller would be young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, as this is the audience that I relate to most and I am more familiar with. This would be very beneficial in terms of making decisions about the production of the film, and also the methods of marketing in order to attract this demographic.
A rating of PG (Parental Guidance) could be used if there was little or no violence, swearing, adult issues etc. in my film. This could attract a wider audience for my film. However, this could cause a lot of my target audience to not watch the film as the rating may form doubts over the quality of the film.
Our final decision was to target an audience between the ages fifteen to eighteen.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
During the project I have learnt how to use an Apple Mac, a video camera, iMovie 09, and Blogger.com.
Once we imported our film onto the Apple Macs we immediately selected all the clips we needed and saved the unwanted clips just encase.
I used iMovie to edit my thriller opening. I was able to edit the sequence, purposely using transitions to have the cuts seeming ‘jumpy’. I didn’t want the cuts to seem too smooth as the film was flashing back to pictures in the villains mind. I found that iMovie was a very useful way of editing my title sequence as it enabled me to remove background noise from the clips, and to change the colouration of a few of the clips and to carefully place a voiceover to the start and finish of the clip. I also found it easy to add effective titles to my sequence in the font that I wished to use.I was able to add copyright music to my title sequence via importing music from a disc to iTunes and then iMovie.
We placed all the clips in the order that worked best. We linked the scenes together by cutting, this is where one scene ends and the other starts immediately. We used this device to show the audience that the action is taking place in a normal time sequence. We then altered the first clip to play in slow motion. We thought this would create a sense of anticipation and link with the heartbeat sound. Whilst the girl is being followed we decided we needed to add a slow tempo non-digetic sound. Our final choice was a slow, creepy, gospel type of sound to relate to the almost supernatural atmosphere.
As the girl is being followed the aggressor is having several flashbacks of the other girls on the dart board. We had to carefully trim shots of the other girls to look like quick flashes (thoughts). These flashback shots were edited into a bright red colour. We would have chosen a spinning transition to cut to the flashbacks to symbolise the aggressor thinking. Unfortunately this type of transition wasn’t available on the iMovie 09 version, so we stuck with a ‘jumping out’ style transition.
With several of our shots we realised that there was a lot of space behind the young girl. The girl looked very small in the shot; the background was taking over the shot if you like. So we carefully cropped a square of shot we wanted to see. We found this a very useful technique and I believe it’s improved our film sequence significantly.
To show our research and planning we set up our own personal blog. The blog site address is www.blogger.com. This helpful site was straightforward and easy to understand. The blog helped us to think of interesting ideas and develop them. It allowed our teacher to monitor our progress. It also allowed us to research other films and use their techniques to improve our own. We regularly updated our blog with posts about what we had done in the media lessons and about our filming sessions.
Having a tripod was also a learning curve for our group. We found that sometimes the tripod would restrict our ability to move. We invented many ways to change the type of shot. At one time we even taped the camera to a bike so we could have a shot that appeared to be somebody walking into a house. We didn’t end up using this shot as it was far too unsteady.
Whilst making our film we realised how much lighting contributes to the feel of the film. The red light had an important connotation as it represented the danger and uncertainty. To get the red light we used an infrared back lamp as we didn’t have any access to professional lighting equipment. The darkness was important to create an eerie, creepy atmosphere.
Throughout the project, I used Blogger.com to keep a blog. I learnt how to upload things, such as images, to my blog; this improved its appearance, and also allowed me to display my storyboard and ‘stalking’ on the blog. The blog allowed me to monitor my own and the other members of my groups’ progress. It allowed me to see what I needed to improve upon to gain extra marks.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Throughout the preliminary task, we learnt about continuity editing and how making mistakes with the continuity, for example, objects that suddenly disappear and then reappear can destroy the verisimilitude and realism of a film. Continuity errors such as changes in the level of drink in a character's glass or the length of a cigarette can ruin the illusion of realism, and affect suspension of disbelief. Our continuity sequence had to be simple, with no transitions or music, consisted of only cut edits, and had to last a maximum of 45 seconds, a mediocre task compared to our thriller sequence which had a time limit of roughly two minutes. During filming we looked back at our preliminary task for guidance. We also tried to make sure that every single shot had the same positioning of the original objects. We also made sure that there were no length changes of the shadows. The 180 degree rule is also a very important concept, so we made sure we stuck to this rule throughout the filming process. The continuity task introduced me personally to several new types of shots and techniques, for example, over the shoulder shots and extreme close ups to emphasise what’s happening or what object/character is in the frame. We benefited greatly from looking back at this task for guidance during the making of our film and I believed it has significantly improved the quality of our film sequence.
Conclusion
By using and challenging the codes and conventions of a thriller we successfully made an interesting film sequence that we hope will capture the attention of audiences and give them a frightening experience. By purposely using techniques that were opposite to a normal thriller film we created a unique thriller opening sequence. We also had a very unique effective plot line which captivated audiences and made them want to watch the rest of the film. This again, made our film completely different from any other film.
As a group we carefully managed the location, timing and equipment to produce a unique film sequence.
