Everything went to plan and everything was filmed as we had planned to. We also got more than we had planned to so that in the editing stage myself and my partner will more to choose from. Firstly when we filmed Elena in the park we got interesting shots of her on the climbing frame like the close up shot of her feet on the climbing frame. We could use these shots to still give the same feel and aspect but it would make the film more interesting to watch.
We also got more shots than we had to when we filmed the scene with Nick in the garage. This time we got some mid shots from a side angle of Nick opening and closing the book. I liked these shots and could possible use them because they give a more sinister look to him and thus adding to the whole affect of the thriller.
There will be a few risks when filming my thriller.
When filming the shots needed in the park the risks are:
Dogs and other people in the park.
The road near the park.
The climbing frames and play equipment for the children in the park.
These risks cannot be eliminated but they can be minimized. These risks could affect all working on the thriller and we must therefore put measures into place to reduce those risks. Generally in the park we need to just be aware of these things and to steer as clear as possible from the road and to keep a sharp eye out for things like play gyms and people and animals that we could possibly bump into.
The risks for filming on the street are:
The road.
The pedestrians walking by.
Again these risks can affect all people working on the thriller and also can't be eliminated. The risks can be minimized by again steering clear of the road and any on coming traffic and by again watching out for pedestrians.
The risks for the garage are:
Furniture, tools and stored items from the house.
Due to the fact that the garage belongs to a home within the garage there are things such as furniture, tools and stored items. These can not be eliminated as it would take too long to move everything out and so everyone involved in the making of this film will have to be careful when moving around in such a small area as this.
All shots of the child in Toton park and child on Seaburn Road will take place on Sunday 20th February.
If the weather is bad this filming will take place on Monday 21st of Febuary.
For this I will need Elena Bowley to play her character and I will need Haydn Bowley(Elder sibling of Elena Bowley and owner of the camera in which he will be in charge of as my camera man). The shots that will be taken will be the long shot and close up of her at the park and on the swing and the long shot of her walking down the street.
All shots of the villain in a garage will take place on Sunday 28th February.
For this I will need Nicholas Chawner who plays the antagonist and the book of images of past and present victims. I will also need my camera man and camera again.
These shots will be taken undercover so a back up plan for weather is not needed.
The shots filmed will be the close up of his hand turning the pages and of the high angled over the shoulder shot of the same aspect.
Age:10 Elena has had no professional experience in acting as she is only ten years old and is currentley not interested in taking acting as a carreer. She is suitable to play the role of the innocent ten year old in my thriller as we needed somone who is ten or looked ten and experience is not needed as there is no dialogue or specific acting. Her simple role is to act normal as she plays on the park and walks along the street in which we need to film her. For the costume I am going to ask her to wear her school uniform In which she is wearing in the picture above. Her school uniform consists of a blue shirt, navy blue skirt, navy blue tights and black shoes. The costume has been chosen because it will exadgerate her young age and her innosence/vulnerability. As Elena is only 10 years old I have had to require her parent's consent to allow her to be involved. I have received consent as shown below.
Nicholas Chawner
Age: 49 Nicholas has also had no proffesional acting experience. Again as said before this is not a problem as there is no dialogue and the acting does not require amazing acting skills. He is appropriate for the role of the antagonist/murderer because he is the right age that we are looking for, which is middle aged, maybe slightly older and he has a good solid build which exadgerates the innosence of the child that is being preyed upon in my thriller. As for the costume he will wear a black shirt and some denim jeans with trainers. All his clothing will look scruffy (Top button undone on his shirt, one side of the collar flicked up and one folded down ). This is to give him a rough/dangerous look.
Locations: The first place I have chosen to shoot my thriller in is my garage. Inside my garage there is a work bench where I can have the actor standing with his props on the work bench whilst he plays the antagonist. I have chosen this location because it has a dirty, rough look which makes it seem very sinister and perfect for my thriller. It also has a light that is positioned just above the work bench and so this means that we will not need any additional lighting and thus means that we won,t have to waste time setting up the additional lighting. As you can see there is a lot of stuff on and around the bench but they will be removed ready for filming.
The second location will the park where the child will be shot playing. The park was chosen because it has plenty of bushes that we can shoot from and thus we can recreate the look of the serial killer stalking the child. It will also have other children playing there naturally and so we will have our extras without having to actually employ them. It will also make the diegetic sounds of the other children playing which will give to the effect of the vulnerability.
The third location we will be filming in will be the street in which I live on (Seaburn Road, Toton, Nottingham). I have chosen this location because I wanted a long shot of her walking down a street on her own to exaggerate her vulnerability.
Props: There is only one prop in my thriller and that is the book of photos of past and present victims of the serial killer. I have chosen to use this prop as like in the thriller Se7en it gives hints into the plot without revealing anything major and thus still keeping the enigma which is one of the things which my target audience like about the film Se7en. At the moment the images are not in there but we will put the images in the book after filming Elena at the second and third location using the stills.
This is a mindmap of my Ideas for my thriller. I started out by thinking of things that myself and the target audience liked from the subject film of seven. I liked the aspect of the book and how he had the planning of the murders inside it. I had a rough idea from the start that I wanted the plot to be based on a man that preys on the innosence of young children. This was where I came up with the idea of having the book with the images of past children he has prayed on and the present child in which he wishes to pray on. Originally I was going to have a wall of pictures of children but I realised in the time that I had I would not be able to gather all of the pictures for it to look effective in time. Also I planned to have a slow nursery rhyme made with minor chords for the soundtrack. However, I decided that although the nursery rhyme would fit with the theme of young children it would not fit with the genre of the thriller. Therefore I have chosen to make a soundtrack inspired by that of the soundtrack made for the thriller, Vertigo. It will also contain a heavy base line in it to build the tension within the audience as that is one of the things listed in the questionnaire that I did earlier that the audience liked about the thrillers. I decided that there would be an image of a girl that the antagonist was planning on murdering and thus this is what the film would be about. The shot would zoom in on the image and would then cut to a clip of the girl. There could be two clips of the girl in the opening scene; one of her on a swing in the park and one of her skipping down the street laughing. These would be filmed in colour to show that she is good. The antagonist will be filmed in black and white to show his negativity. In between all of these shots there will be a black screen where the titles will be shown. A flickering effect will be added to the titles to add to the genre of thriller. I planned that there would be a shot of the girl on a matress and tied up. However, I decided that I could not find a location for this and thus I decided that it would not be included in my thriller. Also at the end of the opening scene there will be a gigle from a laughing child. Although it is not on the mindmap, I have decided that the name of the thriller will be called The Unfortunate Souls because sometimes when somone refferes to a child they say "she's a wonderful little soul". I like the idea of the innosence that the refference of souls give also they would be unfortunate because obviously they've been killed as you've seen in the book.
The Story Board:
This is my story board.
The first frame is simple. It will be black with the title of my production company on it. The next frame will be an over the shoulder shot of the antagonist and the book of images of the other victims in the past and the victims of the present. After this the next scrren will flick on and again it will show the titles "Directed by Ellie Keys and Stephanie Chawner". The next frame will be a long shot of Elena playing her character on the swings at the park. After this the next frame will be credits again that will list the actors. The next shot will be a longs shot of Nick playing the atagonist who will be planning the murders. The next frame is credits with a black background. The credits will be about who created the music. The next frame will be a long shot of the protagonist walking down the street. The next frame will be a black screen with the credits reffering to the costumes. After this the next frame will be a close up of the antagonist. After this there will be another black screen with the credits reffering to who it was produced by. There will then be a long shot of the protagonist on the park which will fade into the first shot of the over the sholder shot of the antagonist with the book of photos of the antagonist. The screen will then fade to black and the title of the film will appear.
At first I conducted a random survey to find out who consumed the most thrillers on average, per month. I asked thirty-two people from the age of sixteen to fifty-one plus. I did not ask anyone below the age of sixteen as most thrillers are rated at the age of sixteen or higher which means that people below that age cannot purchase or watch the films.
Out of the thirty-two people I conducted the survey with it was the sixteen to twenty-five year olds who consumed the most thrillers at one to three thrillers a month and some who consumed six plus films a month. Due to the fact that it was this age group that consumed the most films, I decided then to do a focus group on this age group. I also decided that my target audience would be the people who watched the most thrillers, sixteen to twenty-five year olds.
The first question I asked was "Which genre of thriller do you like the most?". Forty percent of the sixteen people I interviewed said their favorite genre of thriller was action/adventure. This was closely followed by the genre, sci-fi, voted by twenty-five percent of the people interviewed. From this I have decided to do an action/adventure thriller as that is what my target audience enjoy the most. Here I have made a pie chart to demonstrate my findings.
The next question I asked was "Have you seen any of these films?", here I was referring to the films that I had analysed in my research. I wanted to incorporate the conventions that the target audience liked from those films into my own. I found that thirty-eight percent of the people I interviewed had seen Psycho, closely followed by the thirty-one percent of people who had seen Se7en. I think that most people had seen Psycho as it is a timeless classic that has been spread through the generations from the first people to see it to the people who are only discovering it now and who will ultimately also pass it down through the future generations. I also think that a lot of people have seen Se7en because it is a modern film that people of this age group would go to see in large groups of them and their friends. Here is another pie chart to show my results.
After asking the previous question I then asked "What did you like about them?" I generalised their answers into four categories; sound, plot line, visual effects and feelings (how the film made them feel. fifty-three percent of the people I interviewed said that they liked the films because of the interesting plot line. Following this twenty-seven percent of the people I interviewed said they like it because of the music (sound) and how it made them feel scared. From this I have found that to make my thriller entertaining for the audience I must have a good plot line which they would find interesting and the soundtrack must be good enough that it would help me into building up tension in the thriller so as to make them feel scared. Here is a pie chart to show my results.
In conclusion I have decided that I will aim my thriller at people aged sixteen to twenty-five as they are the people who are most likely to watch it, it will be a action/adventure thriller as that is the favorite genre chosen by the age group and I will make sure that the thriller has a good plot line and has a good soundtrack as that was what was enjoyed most in the thrillers I asked about by the target audience.
Internet Target Audience research:
For my internet research on my target audience I found a website containing some graphs with appropriate figures on the the population of the country compared to how many watched thrillers.
This graphs shows that combined the under twenty-five year olds hold nineteen percent of the overall population and they consume the most thrillers at thirty-nine percent of all the thrillers. This backs up my own research when I did my own questionnaire and also found that the nearly all the under twenty-five year olds I interviewed watched at least one-three films a month. This also backs up my reason for choosing this group as my target audience.
This is a pie chart that shows the ratio of men to women who watch thrillers. From this I can see that from the total audience of those who watch thrillers in the general population fifty-seven percent are women. This tells me that my target audience should be swayed to a female target audience. However, looking at these figures I have decided to keep it a general target audience as the percentages are almost equal.
In all the opening scenes that I have seen they all had an enigma. An enigma is when there is a mystery in the opening titles, which keeps the audience guessing. This is there to initiate the story line.
Most of the opening scenes are also made up of close ups of people, objects or places to do with the plot line. They use close ups so that you can't see the whole object creating the enigma.
This brings me to my last convention. In nearly all the opening scenes we are either introduced to the main character or location of the film. This is to set the scene for the beginning of the film.
Conventions of a Thriller When I analysed the openings of the four thrillers I found that there were certain conventions that all of them had and that I will attempt to put in my own thriller opening.
The first thing I found was that the sound on the opening titles of the thrillers mainly consisted of non diegetic sounds. It was used to build tension and sometimes to hint indirectly hint at the plot.
Due to the fact that they are the opening titles they have titles over the top of the visuals to advertise who has made the film and who is in it to advertise them to the audience as if the actors are stars or if the director is extremely famous some people might just want to watch it for that reason.
This is the analysis of the opening scene to Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Unfortunately I couldn't embed the video on my blog as the embedding code had been disabled on the video. However, I will still analyse it with the use of screen shots instead.
Sound
The theme tune consists of a fast paced sound made by string instruments. This builds tension and thus following the genre of thriller.
The theme tune is composed mainly of minor chords giving it a sinister tone and thus allowing the audience to know that the film is of a thriller genre.
This piece of music becomes the theme tune throughout and builds tension because the audience know that when this piece of music is played they know something bad is going to happen.
The music ends on a long high note signaling the beginning of the film.
Camerawork
There is no camerawork in the opening credits as in the time that this film was made they did not have the technology to merge footage with visual and sound effects. This then means that the audience's attention is focussed on the people in the film and who made the film. They also focus the audience's attention on the music, giving them a taste of the genre.
Editing
Again due to the lack of technology everything is in black and white. However, this works to their advantage as it makes everything seem more sinister thus helping to tell the genre of the film.
A reverse block is used to show the opening credits to really attract the audiences attention to who's in the film and who made it because these facts alone could make the audience want to watch the film. [1]
Alfred Hitchcock has used special effects in the transition of the credits as they change from one thing to another. This is to make the opening credits seem more interesting to the viewer so that the attraction is not lost. [2]
[1]
[2]
In conclusion I have found that Alfred Hitchcock directed this film in a time that had a lot less technology then we have now. This meant that he had to let the music do the hinting of the plot and genre rather than the visual aspects. I also found that in terms of the visual aspects he had to focus all his attention of making the stars and himself stand out to make the film more attracting to the audience.
The opening scene starts with the sound of thunder. This is an example of pathetic fallacy where human feelings are attributed to the weather. In this film the thunder creates a feeling of tension.
It then starts with the soundtrack as the opening credits are played. It consists of heavy base, fast strings and the sounds of brass instruments in the background. All these instruments put together using mainly minor chords. This gives the feelings of fear and tension which then tells the audience straight away the genre of the film which is thriller.
The soundtrack builds to a crescendo as the main title of the film is shown. This is to express the importance of the film title to the audience.
After this in the soundtrack there is a constant ticking sound. Along with the fast paced music it gives an impression of a time limit that is quickly running out. This could be a taste of the plot within the film.
Throughout the opening credits of this film there is echos of sirens and traffic sounds. This gives the audience a hint of the setting and plot. The sirens also hint at a crime and therefore giving the genre of a crime, thriller.
Editing
The clip fades in at the start. This is to signal the beginning of the film.
The straight cut is used throughout the clip this is to give a quick and snappy representation of all the main people involved with making the film e.g. the star actors. This is to attract people in with the big names in as little time as possible.
Camerawork
Most of the camerawork consists of long shots to show the setting of the city and also to show the credit in front which they have placed there in the editing stage of production. These are used to give establishing shots to give the audience an idea of where it is set and who will be in it and who made it.
Also a lot of the camerawork consists of panning and zooms to give more of the setting then the long shot could. It also makes the credits more interesting to watch.
In conclusion, I have found that this director has used mainly sound to give hints to the audience of the plot line and the genre. It is also used to build tension and so sticking to the genre. The camerawork and editing is used to give a representation of the credits and the setting of the film.
Sound
The soundtrack in this film has an electric sound with heavy base in it. The electric style gives screeches within the music which then gives a very sinister feel to it. The heavy base has been added to create tension. This sticks to the genre, that due to these techniques the audience knows that the film is a thriller.
The music heightens when you see a shot of a picture of a boy being crossed out in a book. This adds to the shock effect to the revealing of what looks to be a murder plan.
Camerawork
The camera work mainly consists of close ups of someone's hands doing thing. This is to hint at and show the importance of these things in the story line.
At a several points in the opening credits you see close ups of a book that appears to have things in it about people and selections of there books in there. The close up is to highlight the importance of the book in the plot-line.
Editing
The editing mainly consists of straight cuts to the credits and time lapses between the making of what seems to be a book about planning murder.
The time lapses show the making of the book and thus hints towards the plot-line.
The straight cuts to the black screens with the credits on singles out the production companies, the director and the star actors and actresses in the film to attract the audiences attention.
Within the straight cuts to the black screen the title of the film flickers in the background. This gives an old fashioned reel affect which then gives a ghost like sinister effect to the title which then gives the film an overall thriller genre.
In conclusion I have found that for this film the director has focussed on hinting the plot line of the film and the genre of the film. He has also concentrated on highlighting the actors who were in it, himself as the director and the production companies who have produced it to attract the audience.
A genuine thriller is a film that relentlessly pursues a single-minded goal- to provide and keep the audience cliff-hanging at the edge of their seats as the plot builds towards a climax.
Today most thrillers are now hybrids with other genres unlike the classics. There are several genres that have been mixed with the thriller genre. For example action/adventure, sci-fi, crime-caper, western, film noir and romantic-comedy.
Action/Adventure-An action-adventure is a genre that is driven mostly by the action in the film, such as a high-speed chase.
Sci-Fi- A science fiction is a genre that uses speculative, science based descriptions of phenomena that aren't necessarily accepted by mainstream science.
Crime-Caper- A crime caper is a genre that is driven by crime and comedic aspects.
Western- A western is a genre that is driven by the later half of the 19th century in the American Old West.
Film Noir- Film noir is a genre that is driven by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, menace and cynical characters.
Romantic-Comedy- Romantic-comedy is a genre driven by a light hearted, humorous mood centered on romantic ideals.
I am going to analyse the opening scenes from Vertigo (1958) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Panic Room (2002) Directed by David Fincher, Se7en (1995) directed by David Fincher and Psycho (1960) directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Sound
The soundtrack of the opening mainly consists of minor chords. This is to give a sinister tone to the opening credits and allows the audience to connect to the theme as a thriller.
The soundtrack is written in a 6/8 time which gives a fast waltzing sound to it. Due to the waltzing sound it gives an impression of dizziness which is one of the symptoms of vertigo and so linking it to the title of the film.
The soundtrack builds to a crescendo when the Director's name and the name of the film appears to signify the importance of the names.
Towards the end of the opening credits the soundtrack changes to the sound of fast strings to build tension as the story begins.
Editing and Camerawork
At the beginning of the opening credits there is a close up of a girl's eyes. In her eyes she is showing fear. This gives the impression of the genre and it makes the audience feel scared.
Towards the end of the opening credits there is another close up shot of the girl's eye. This time it has the main symbol of the film. This gives an idea of importance towards the logo and gives the audience a taste of what's to come and makes them want to continue watching it.
The editing mostly consists of dissolves from one image to another. The images are spinning around. This could suggest dizziness and so once again linking to the title of vertigo.
In conclusion I have found from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, that using the techniques that I have highlighted he tends to give the audience a taste of the genre and also a taste of what's to come in the film. I have also found that he subtly links the opening credits to the title of the film so that he doesn't give too much away as the audience already know the name of the film.
[1]
[2]