Thriller Evaluation

I-spy

Heres our finished thriller opening:

Just a quick update on how filming went

After our first day of shooting, we found that some of the shots of the computer screen showed lines that weren't there. So we got everything prepared for another session of filming where we concentrated on ensuring there were little, if any lines shown on the screen. To avoid this mistake we had to put the screen at a slight angle which ensure no lines would be shown.

Audience feedback

Questionaire

Me and Sam conducted a questionaire into what people enjoy in the thriller genre and how we can incorperate this into our own thriller. An exampleof one of our questions was: What do you enjoy most about the thriller genre and why?
We got the response from most participants that the suspense of thrillers really creates the interest and draws the audience in, teasing them and giving them narrative engimas so they can try work out the story line but have twists to keep them guessing.


Focus Group

Me and Sam put a focus group together so an audience can watch what we have produced so far and get constructed feedback on ways we can improve on our piece. The suggestions made were the use of a sound track should be included as it is vitual to creating suspense and setting the mood. Enhance the digetic sounds of the current piece to build up tension and draw our audience more into our piece.

Characters, costume, make-up, props and settings

When considering our characters, we wanted to create narrative enigmas surrounding them so we didn't want to give too much away. The opening shows two characters who the audience assume are friends but after reading the messages passed between the two of them, there isn't necessarily any proof of a friendship which creates questions about the relationship the characters share.

The two characters would seem completely normal to the average human being so revealing the characters little by little is a better way of gripping the audience so they never become bored of what they're seeing.

To blend the characters into the stereotypical teenage boy we used people with typically shoulder length, overgrown hair with no make-up and naturalistic costumes. We didn't need to purchase anything for our costumes as (being of the same age as our characters) we had the appropriate clothing to display our characters ages).

In terms of props, we relied on a working laptop and webcam in two different rooms. Although only one of each were shown in our piece the other laptop and webcam were used to enable us to show somebody on webcam, a key part in our opening. We had to create a 'top secret file' to progress the story and relieve one question (what is the file) that cues many more (such as; Why does a secret file concern young teenagers?, Who is the man in the file? and What does it say?). We used a red background for the file to ensure it's bold enough to stand out and put an image of a man in a suit on the front large enough so people can see it and assume the file concerns him.

Of course to include this we needed the printer as a prop to film printing the file. Hannah and I thought of a perhaps subtle, yet effective prop use of a mug. There is a scene where our main character turns around on his chair, gets up and grabs the mug and drinks from it while being followed by a pan from the camera. Including this scene breaks up the piece a little bit and creates a kind of relief for the audience after being confronted with lots of close-ups and extreme close-ups in succession.

The setting we used for the main characters room contains models of boats along with sails, oars and various other parts, suggesting that there could be an obsession with the nautical. If the audience were to take the assumption further they could then link this obsession with the reason he's interested in secret information (for example, when he was a child, his father may have been killed in the navy).

Defining our target audience

To maximize revenue, it is important to have a target audience for your product. This helps developers to control content to gain the appropriate classification certificate for their film. for example if a spy-thriller is aimed at 12-20 year olds it would be inappropriate for them to include content that would cause the film to be classified as an 18 as this would cut out a substantial percentage of their potential consumers, ultimately losing income.

The typical age range for a film is 16-25 as this is proposed as the age range when people have the time and money to watch films at the cinema. We decided to aim for a similar target audience however the introduction of modern technologies along with a teenage protagonist may create an appeal to a younger audience, for example 14-25. Targeting this audience would require a rating of 12/15 to include the highest percentage of possible consumers.

Storyboards

Here are the storyboards, the page numbers didn't show up but they are in order from top to bottom.

Original plans and alternative ideas

During the early stages of we came up with several ideas, these included the use of hospital corridors and office blocks which drew us to conclude that it would be unlikely that we could film the required scenes to really give the dramatic tension we were after. So we talked about simpler ideas and Hannah recorded them in a mind-map.

Here is the result:
We didn't focus solely on one idea, instead we focused on developing both of our main ideas. The result was an opening we were going to call Endurance. So I came up with a story line and drew up some rough ideas on how we could approach the narrative.

A 17 year old girl has been impersonating people online and leading people to make a fool of themselves, she has been doing this for 4 years now. Although recently she has been risking more than just pride to fool people into relationships with these fake people. To make things more 'fun' she decided to involve her closest friends.

However, the fun was cut short when her friend is due to meet her make believe boyfriend in an unfamiliar wooded area. After disappearing for two days her body is found in a nearby river. After months of investigation, the police stumble over records of previous text and instant messaging conversations with a mystery boyfriend. Later leads have the police locating the position of the fake boyfriend as the house of the dead girls best friend.

After several interviews, the 17 year old is accused of the murder of her best friend. With the evidence of their meeting arrangements against her along with her lack of explanation, she has to find a way to prove her innocence.

But there is more to her character, a dark past that could in fact provide a secret innocence to her actions, but before she has the chance to speak out, her regret and lack of dignity along with her new found lifestyle of violent abuse from both those she knew and strangers, grabs her and starts to take control.

At the lowest point of life she takes an overdose of pills, after viewing a collection of articles, as the history repeats itself in her final moments she writes a final statement suggesting she was innocent all along.

The police along with one of the girls friends later find clips of her past and realise not only was she innocent, but her family holds a much darker past explaining her twisted ways.

The opening would of shown the 17 year old girl lying on the bathroom floor with pills and newspaper articles scattered around. As the camera pans up on the body there will be voice overs and flashbacks showing violence from friends and strangers, as well as psychiatric and police opinions. As the camera pans up more, the girls lifeless face is revealed. Here are the designing sketches with some ideas written on them (Click to enlarge):

How does "Memento" use the codes and conventions of the thriller genre

"Memento" uses many of the codes and conventions of the thriller genre such as narrative enigmas which is when the film is making the audience ask questions which may or may not be answered. This is shown in "Memento" as the present is in black and white and the past is in colour. This asks questions because it's hard to work out what is actually going on and creates a confusion between time and space so the audience ask "What's the actually happening now and what happened in the past?" Another way which "Memento uses the codes and conventions is the idea of iconic props, which is a prop typical to the genre of the film. In "Memento" the iconic rop of the thriller genre is the pistols that are used as this represents crime and creates suspense which is often seen in a thriller. Another way is that "Memento" Implies elements of ambiguity which is when something has more then one meaning for example Lennard uses the Polaroid camera photographs as his memory's but the pictures are also used to tell the audience the plot like a jigsaw puzzle as they all fit together towards the end. "Memento" also uses elements of film noir as we are shown the idea of a rugged main character who is slightly mysterious which is Lennard along with shadowy low key lighting and sets to emphasis the blackness of the film. There is also elements of a femme fatal who is Natalie as she starts off being portrayed as good but the audience also question if she is really out to help him or if she is trying to guide him into more danger so we question if she is good or bad and later find out the answer to that. Another convention "Memento" uses is the idea of voyeurism which is the idea that we are watching someone else's personal life passively and that we are intruding as we would not do that in real life. This is shown in "Memento" when Lennard is on the phone, he is having a personal conversation with someone and we are intruding in on his conversation and trying to figure out what he's talking about and who he is talking too. "Memento" uses lots of elements of foreshadowing as it is telling the story in the future and the past at the same time, so when the audience are shown a picture which we haven't seen happen yet it is dropping a hint to the plot we have yet to see and makes the audience keep trying to guess what's going to happen next and work out the ending for themselves. Finally "Memento" uses the conventions of a thriller through its camera work as it shows constant pans and tilts to tease the audience and make them ask questions for what is going on for example in the montage scene there is many pans and tilts so the audience can't work out what is going on.