A thriller is a genre of film aiming to generate a feeling from the audience, this feeling being a “thrill”, they create this feeling through using eerie soundtracks, quick cuts, a variety of shots and creating everyday characters that we feel could easily be us.At the start of the project we watched a documentary called “Watching” which explained the different types of openings you could get and expect from a film classified as a thriller, which proved to be very helpful when it came to creating our own opening. The different openings that you could get included:
· Classic (“instant arousal”)
· Title Sequence (set the tone through titles/credits)
· Flashback (start at the end)
All of the openings aim to initially do the same thing, attract the audience into watching the whole film and set up questions that the audience will expect and wait to be answered later in the film. At first, the flashback opening appealed to my group because we had all watched films which had started like that and thought them to be particularly effective. But this then turned out to be quite difficult to do because we tried to show the present and the past at the same time and it got a bit confusing, so we then thought that it would be best to do a classical opening but not one that gave “instant arousal” but one that gave away little clues so that they will gradually get to the big climax. We done this by starting off with an establishing shot to set the scene and then panning across in the direction of the wall to introduce the main character but because you only see the shadow of the character the audience still won’t know entirely who the character is, getting them wanting to know more.
We later reveal that the character is a woman and take the audience into her “office” where the mise en scene, candles, newspaper cuttings of arson attacks, locations pinned/written on the board and matches, indicates that she is some kind of arsonist. This lets the audience pretty much know everything about that character from the beginning and would give them the information that the other characters, which would come later in the film, wouldn’t have. We thought about doing it like this after reading an extract from Alfred Hitchcock’s book “Thrills, Suspense, the Audience”, suggesting that you let the audience “play God”.
When wondering what camera shots and cuts to use in the thriller we looked at films such as “The Shining” and tried t
o see what different shot types they used to create suspense. We decided that the ones that worked best were the worm’s eye view tracking shot following the little boy round the hotel and the quick cuts and jump cuts so that you were only getting a glimpse of what is happening leaving you wondering what is going on. We tried to use this in our film when we showed the woman entering the basement we done a worm’s eye view shot of her feet to keep the audience from getting a good look at the woman and we were going to try and add in some quick cuts in the thriller but it didn’t work because compared to “The Shining” our opening has quite a slow pace.
A camera shot that I feel has a real thriller feel to it is the extreme close up pan of the woman’s sunglasses where you can see the reflection of the candle flame in the glasses, I feel that this is really effective because it shows the importance that “fire” has in the film and also I always think it is quite creepy to not be able to see someone’s eyes because you just cannot see what they are thinking and suggests that they are trying to hide something.
We wanted the lighting for the opening to be dim to create a feeling of mystery and also with the candle light it makes it look as if the audience are looking into someone’s secret lair which from the bright, light establishing shot at the beginning creates a great contrast and hopefully gives the audience a bit of a shock, because they just wouldn’t expect there to be a place like that in the location that the film is set. The dim lighting was something that a member of the class commented on positively- “The use of dim lighting added suspense.”
The soundtrack was something that was quite difficult to do because we had to match the action to the sound which is not as easy as it sounds, as I found out. I feel that the soundtrack compliments the film because it starts off with a typing sound and a simple beat that gets more complex as the opening progresses.
To get us prepared for the final project we did two tasks before hand, the first one we had to film someone reading a newspaper in a thrilling way and it was through this exercise that we realised how much preparation needs to go into the filming process because we ran out of time and didn’t get all of the required shots through lack of planning. So the next time we had to do a task, the proper preliminary task (match-cut exercise), from the very beginning we planned every single shot and managed to get everything done.
For the match cut exercise my group decided to do something away from the thriller genre so that we would fully understand how different conventions apply to different genres. What really worked well in this piece were the shot/reverse shots because from the previous film we learned that the key is to film the same thing from many different angles so that it gives you more to edit in the editing process. This was some of the knowledge that we took with us when it came to filming our final project; we filmed much of the shots over three times. When we started filming the final thriller we bared in mind some of the difficulties we had with the match cut exercise one of these being remaining continuity throughout the piece, for example when watching back the match cut film we saw that there was items suddenly in places where they were not a moment ago. To make sure that this didn’t happen in the thriller we just had to pay extreme attention to what was in the mise en scene in all of the shots.
We didn’t create a soundtrack for our preliminary task because we felt that the diagetic sound was enough and created the right atmosphere that we felt was appropriate for the tone and setting of our piece, which was a romance set in a school. Although, it would have been useful if we had played around with the sound to give us some experience with the software before we had to do it for the thriller.
The audience for my thriller would generally be young adults, the reason behind this being that they make up a large percentage of the cinema going public. The majority of viewers would be working/middle class people because I feel that the film will appeal more to them because it is set in a location that is familiar to them.
Audience profile:
Monique, 17, from a working class background is a student at a college in East London and is studying media. She likes to spend her spare time going to the cinema watching films based on real life situations but have a twist. She has seen many of the small budget British films such as “Kidulthood” and “Adulthood” and enjoys seeing films that she can relate to. She likes to look fashionable and gets most of her clothes from High Street shops such as Topshop and Oasis. She is very in touch with the technologies of today and is a member of Facebook and Myspace and most of the films that she watches have been advertised on a social networking site. The only TV channel that she watches is channel 4 because she likes watching the teen programmes that come on such as “Skins” and “Shameless”; she also watches films on Film4 sometimes.
To attract the target audience I would put a star like Ashley Walters in not the lead role because that is a woman but have him as a supporting actor so that younger people would give the film a chance. I would advertise the film on the internet because that is very much the place to attract a young audience, it will allow the target audience to know about the film and enable them to share it with friends, so more people are aware of the new film coming out and more people pay to watch it at the cinemas. I would also advertise on the TV, specifically on channels such as channel 4 or music channels such as MTV, where the majority of the audience is comprised of young adults.
In the opening of the film the audience only sees one character; this character is female, you would assume that she was in her late teens/early twenties because she is looking casual/smart in jeans, a jacket and sunglasses. We made the character working class because the majority of the people that watch the film are going to be a part of that particular group and we wanted them to feel a connection with the character. We have set it in Hackney, East London because again we felt that the audience that we want to attract would be familiar with the area and feel a connection because it shows how most of London is today, the side that they don’t show in the majority of films set in London. The mise en scene focuses more on the arsonist aspect rather than trying to represent social groups.
My film would be distributed by Working Title Film production company which is a British film company. Working Title is however owned by an American company, Universal studios, but because my film would be a low budget film they would have little involvement in it. Studio Canal are Working Title’s distributers over Europe so they would play a big part in the distribution of my film because I think it would only be released in Europe, possibly America but only on a small scale because Americans tend to want to see old Britain where everyone speaks really posh and stay in mansions seen in films such as “Four Weddings and a Funeral” not the Britain, specifically London, that my film is depicting.
I think that I would want “Under Construction” to be released over the internet for download also so as to make sure that the target audience are definitely able to see it. I don’t think that it would be good for the film to be released as a TV film because the majority of the target audience do not watch TV that much.
I was a bit worried at the start of the project because I had never filmed or used any editing software before and thought that it was going to be awful but once I had the workshop with Micky I found it quite easy. The most annoying and difficult part of using the filming equipment was the tripod, it never seemed to allow us to get the shots that we needed, for example, when I tried to get the shot looking down on the stairs it was next to impossible to get the tripod in the right position, this was however soon overcome by just holding the camera.
Final Cut pro was a bit more complicated than the filming; again the workshop with Micky really helped because I had never used it before so was totally confused about the whole thing. I eventually got the hang of it but was never quite as good as some of the other members of my group but stuck with it never the less.
The internet has come in very useful in the production of the thriller because it has been a valuable research tool, for example I have been able to look up thrillers and see what kind of camera shots they used so that I could see what worked and created a feeling of suspense and suggest adding it into my thriller. The internet also allowed me to record every step of the filming process in the form of a blog and every so often look at the blog to see what has been done and what still needs to be done. When it came to the finished product we also embedded it in our blogs and put it on vimeo.com meaning that a lot more people will have the opportunity to watch it, which is generally the whole point of making a film. Most if not all of what we have done would definitely not have been possible without any of the technology that has been involved.
Overall, I think that my group have been quite successful in creating an opening to a thriller for younger people. I think that we have been successful because looking at real thrillers that I have watched there are a few camera shots that also feature in my group’s thriller that I think create suspense. There were many changes to the storyboard and at one point we changed our whole idea because our first idea was far too complicated and we thought that if we were to try and continue with it we would end up with something which looked mediocre. We also felt that the change in location would also make it much more everyday and make it more thriller-ish.
I also think that we were successful because the feedback from my class was very positive for example; one fellow classmate said it “...was an interesting opening, with a good use of shadows...and the all black costume and dark lighting was classic thriller mise en scene.”
When wondering what camera shots and cuts to use in the thriller we looked at films such as “The Shining” and tried t
o see what different shot types they used to create suspense. We decided that the ones that worked best were the worm’s eye view tracking shot following the little boy round the hotel and the quick cuts and jump cuts so that you were only getting a glimpse of what is happening leaving you wondering what is going on. We tried to use this in our film when we showed the woman entering the basement we done a worm’s eye view shot of her feet to keep the audience from getting a good look at the woman and we were going to try and add in some quick cuts in the thriller but it didn’t work because compared to “The Shining” our opening has quite a slow pace.
A camera shot that I feel has a real thriller feel to it is the extreme close up pan of the woman’s sunglasses where you can see the reflection of the candle flame in the glasses, I feel that this is really effective because it shows the importance that “fire” has in the film and also I always think it is quite creepy to not be able to see someone’s eyes because you just cannot see what they are thinking and suggests that they are trying to hide something.We wanted the lighting for the opening to be dim to create a feeling of mystery and also with the candle light it makes it look as if the audience are looking into someone’s secret lair which from the bright, light establishing shot at the beginning creates a great contrast and hopefully gives the audience a bit of a shock, because they just wouldn’t expect there to be a place like that in the location that the film is set. The dim lighting was something that a member of the class commented on positively- “The use of dim lighting added suspense.”
The soundtrack was something that was quite difficult to do because we had to match the action to the sound which is not as easy as it sounds, as I found out. I feel that the soundtrack compliments the film because it starts off with a typing sound and a simple beat that gets more complex as the opening progresses.To get us prepared for the final project we did two tasks before hand, the first one we had to film someone reading a newspaper in a thrilling way and it was through this exercise that we realised how much preparation needs to go into the filming process because we ran out of time and didn’t get all of the required shots through lack of planning. So the next time we had to do a task, the proper preliminary task (match-cut exercise), from the very beginning we planned every single shot and managed to get everything done.
For the match cut exercise my group decided to do something away from the thriller genre so that we would fully understand how different conventions apply to different genres. What really worked well in this piece were the shot/reverse shots because from the previous film we learned that the key is to film the same thing from many different angles so that it gives you more to edit in the editing process. This was some of the knowledge that we took with us when it came to filming our final project; we filmed much of the shots over three times. When we started filming the final thriller we bared in mind some of the difficulties we had with the match cut exercise one of these being remaining continuity throughout the piece, for example when watching back the match cut film we saw that there was items suddenly in places where they were not a moment ago. To make sure that this didn’t happen in the thriller we just had to pay extreme attention to what was in the mise en scene in all of the shots.
We didn’t create a soundtrack for our preliminary task because we felt that the diagetic sound was enough and created the right atmosphere that we felt was appropriate for the tone and setting of our piece, which was a romance set in a school. Although, it would have been useful if we had played around with the sound to give us some experience with the software before we had to do it for the thriller.
The audience for my thriller would generally be young adults, the reason behind this being that they make up a large percentage of the cinema going public. The majority of viewers would be working/middle class people because I feel that the film will appeal more to them because it is set in a location that is familiar to them.
Audience profile:
Monique, 17, from a working class background is a student at a college in East London and is studying media. She likes to spend her spare time going to the cinema watching films based on real life situations but have a twist. She has seen many of the small budget British films such as “Kidulthood” and “Adulthood” and enjoys seeing films that she can relate to. She likes to look fashionable and gets most of her clothes from High Street shops such as Topshop and Oasis. She is very in touch with the technologies of today and is a member of Facebook and Myspace and most of the films that she watches have been advertised on a social networking site. The only TV channel that she watches is channel 4 because she likes watching the teen programmes that come on such as “Skins” and “Shameless”; she also watches films on Film4 sometimes.
To attract the target audience I would put a star like Ashley Walters in not the lead role because that is a woman but have him as a supporting actor so that younger people would give the film a chance. I would advertise the film on the internet because that is very much the place to attract a young audience, it will allow the target audience to know about the film and enable them to share it with friends, so more people are aware of the new film coming out and more people pay to watch it at the cinemas. I would also advertise on the TV, specifically on channels such as channel 4 or music channels such as MTV, where the majority of the audience is comprised of young adults.
In the opening of the film the audience only sees one character; this character is female, you would assume that she was in her late teens/early twenties because she is looking casual/smart in jeans, a jacket and sunglasses. We made the character working class because the majority of the people that watch the film are going to be a part of that particular group and we wanted them to feel a connection with the character. We have set it in Hackney, East London because again we felt that the audience that we want to attract would be familiar with the area and feel a connection because it shows how most of London is today, the side that they don’t show in the majority of films set in London. The mise en scene focuses more on the arsonist aspect rather than trying to represent social groups.
My film would be distributed by Working Title Film production company which is a British film company. Working Title is however owned by an American company, Universal studios, but because my film would be a low budget film they would have little involvement in it. Studio Canal are Working Title’s distributers over Europe so they would play a big part in the distribution of my film because I think it would only be released in Europe, possibly America but only on a small scale because Americans tend to want to see old Britain where everyone speaks really posh and stay in mansions seen in films such as “Four Weddings and a Funeral” not the Britain, specifically London, that my film is depicting.
I think that I would want “Under Construction” to be released over the internet for download also so as to make sure that the target audience are definitely able to see it. I don’t think that it would be good for the film to be released as a TV film because the majority of the target audience do not watch TV that much.
I was a bit worried at the start of the project because I had never filmed or used any editing software before and thought that it was going to be awful but once I had the workshop with Micky I found it quite easy. The most annoying and difficult part of using the filming equipment was the tripod, it never seemed to allow us to get the shots that we needed, for example, when I tried to get the shot looking down on the stairs it was next to impossible to get the tripod in the right position, this was however soon overcome by just holding the camera.
Final Cut pro was a bit more complicated than the filming; again the workshop with Micky really helped because I had never used it before so was totally confused about the whole thing. I eventually got the hang of it but was never quite as good as some of the other members of my group but stuck with it never the less.
The internet has come in very useful in the production of the thriller because it has been a valuable research tool, for example I have been able to look up thrillers and see what kind of camera shots they used so that I could see what worked and created a feeling of suspense and suggest adding it into my thriller. The internet also allowed me to record every step of the filming process in the form of a blog and every so often look at the blog to see what has been done and what still needs to be done. When it came to the finished product we also embedded it in our blogs and put it on vimeo.com meaning that a lot more people will have the opportunity to watch it, which is generally the whole point of making a film. Most if not all of what we have done would definitely not have been possible without any of the technology that has been involved.
Overall, I think that my group have been quite successful in creating an opening to a thriller for younger people. I think that we have been successful because looking at real thrillers that I have watched there are a few camera shots that also feature in my group’s thriller that I think create suspense. There were many changes to the storyboard and at one point we changed our whole idea because our first idea was far too complicated and we thought that if we were to try and continue with it we would end up with something which looked mediocre. We also felt that the change in location would also make it much more everyday and make it more thriller-ish.
I also think that we were successful because the feedback from my class was very positive for example; one fellow classmate said it “...was an interesting opening, with a good use of shadows...and the all black costume and dark lighting was classic thriller mise en scene.”
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