Main Protagonist Girl We will dress her mostly red to highlight her vulnerability and the danger that surrounds her. Hair Pins - £3.49 from eBay
Pumps - £12.00 from Asos Coat - £13.99 - from Ebay Following Man We are dressing him solely in black so he will remain hidden, and blend into the crowds. As black is a common clothing colour we should mostly be able to use clothes that we already own. Black boots, coat and jeans
The film opens with us seeing a shot of the girl bing tapped on the shoulder by one of her friends, which will parallel the final shut off the film.
We then see her talking to her friends, seemingly happy, before saying goodbye to walk home alone
We see a series of wide shots of the girl, highlighting her as isolated and vulnerable
The audience starts to hear loud footsteps and heavy breathing over the top of shots of the girl
There is then a series of close ups of the follower crosscut between a close ups of the girl's face
More of the follower is gradually revealed, though the audience never see his face
We will see some shots where the follower is not there, playing of the idea of paranoia and whether the follower is really there of if the girl is imagining it
It will end with a shot of the followers hand on the girl's shoulder, then she will turn around, it will cut to black and there will be a loud scream
My partner and I went to talk to several more people in the 11-17 age range as this was the most popular age of the responses to our questionnaire. We filmed us asking them some follow up questions and told them about our proposed idea for out thriller. Everyone we we talked to seemed intrigued by our idea and said they would be interested to watch the film after it is finished.
For the end of our film, we want to cut to black and have a diegetic scream from the girl - this will help to create tension and intrigue the audience as to what happens next. We also want to enhance the diegetic sound of her footsteps and her breathing to intensify the piece.
As concerns the music, we hope to design our own soundtrack for the film in a music creation software such as GarageBand or Logic Pro (depending on which we have access to.) We want the audio to start quietly dramatic and build slowly to the scream at the end.
I had a go at creating some of the idents I mentioned before using adobe after effects, here is the results of my work...
I did another one (the glass one) which was my favourite, but I was unable to save it as the file was too large, so I can't upload it. As this looked the best, it is likely we use for the title of our film as it introduces the creepy, and mysterious aspect of our thriller.
My least favourite is the spin orbs one, which looks too much like it is for a sci fi film or television program such as Doctor Who.
The hexagonal one we feel would fit the best for our ident, though we are yet to decide what will be the name for our production company.
This weekend, Emma and I went location scouting. We decided against the Barbican centre as we found Paternoster Square, which was much more visually interesting.
Furthermore, we found that we liked the Millenium bridge as it was also extremely cinematic.
To add a level of verisimilitude, we decided to plan an actual walking route for the girl to follow. We did this because we are using well-known locations that people will recognise, so we need to ensure that the film makes sense.
For our ident we wanted something with a creepy feeling to match the film. We had a look on video co pilot at possible dents that we could make on after effects ourselves. I liked this 'Glass' Ident and my partner, George liked the Spin and Polygon Idents below
Young Girl: Ruby Ballantyne - A friend of mine whois currently taking A Level drama and is an aspiring actor
Following Man: We are planning on asking one of our fathers or tall male friends
Other Friends: Olivia Bremener, Ashley Whyte, Ellie Thompson - We have selected several friends from other schools who are also taking media A Level to act as the friends
Here is the results to our questionnaire, we have learnt that...
We can the majority of our responses from 11 - 17 year old so we will am to target our film towards this age range.
There was a relatively even split in gender telling us our film should appeal to both a male and female audience.
Nearly half of the people who took the questionnaire watch films every week showing how in demand films are at the moment.
If we where realising the full film we would need to try to get it on a Video on Demand service e.g. Netflix as this is how 50% of people watch films.
The most popular sub genre of thriller by a long way was psychological which fits very well with our opening we are planning on making.
93% of people said they would watch a film with a female protagonist so this means having a female main character should have very little detrimental impact on our film.
60% of people chose 15 as their preferred certificate so we will aim so make ours this certificate, though the opening may end only a 12 as we will not show any violence, but with the rest of the film it will likely be a 15.
53% of people chose to see a film because of it having an interesting plot which we hope ours will be.
As can be seen by the favourite films people like a wide variety of films that make the viewer think and are powerful.
For our location we wanted to shoot on and around Millenium Bridge in the City of London. We chose this location because we think it looks cinematic. For this same reason, we chose to open the film with her friends to meeting, at the Barbican. We took screenshots from google maps street view to show these locations, see below, though we are yet to go location scouting. Our plan is to go this weekend and we will update with photos and a more definite plan for our locations after this.
This is the stabiliser we will be using for our film. It is made by Yelangu and is a good stabiliser. It will hopefully add some dynamics to the film as it will allow us to move the camera in much more creative ways. It will also allow to make our handheld shots much smoother, and allow us to have much longer shots which will let us have some more fun creatively.
Name: Unkown Age: 40+ Ethnicity: White British Gender: Male Clothing/ style: All black clothing, large black boots, coat and gloves. Influences: Taking influence of many dark silhouette shots of the man, from films such as The Screaming Skull and film noir Character Function: To provide fear and a sense of the unknown in both the girl and the audience Character's Personality: The audience are only introduced to him through a series of close ups, never revealing his face, keeping the man very hidden from the audience, not allowing them to connect with him as they are left questioning whether he does actually exist or is just a figment of the girl's imagination
Name: Lily Age: 14 Ethnicity: White British Gender: Female Clothing/ style: Bold red clothing to have connotations of blood/danger and to make her stand out distinctly against the dark surrounding and follower dressed solely in black Influences: Taking heavy influences from Sin City, see the picture below Character Function: To appear very innocent and capture the audience sympathy to make them fear for her Character's Personality: There are two distinct sides to her personality. She appears cheerful and normal when interacting with her friends, though as soon as she leaves to walk off on her own her extremely fearful and paranoid personality is revealed.
We published it to Facebook and George's Google+ circles. We asked our parents and friends in person and via Social Media (Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct Message, Snapchat, and WhatsApp).
We hope to get many responses via these media and it will be interesting to see which choices people make. We intend to close the questionnaire on the 12th of December, giving it a gestation period of two weeks.
You can take our survey here - please do! It's free and it'll really help us out.
We have created a nine question questionnaire to present to our target audience to help us decide on how to make our thriller. Using the service SurveyMonkey, it was decided that we would use simple and easy to answer questions as this will encourage more people to answer the questionnaire ensuring more accurate results. Hopefully, 10-30 responses will be received. Looking at some previous media studies questionnaires, we came up with questions that we thought would be most relevant to our film. Below is a screenshot of us making our questionnaire.
Here is my preliminary exercise I found it reasonably straight forward to use the cameras and to edit the clips together as I have had practise doing both these before. Although it was useful for me to have a chance to experience using the specific cameras and editing software that I will likely be using for my final film.
The film follows a young girl walking home from school who believes she is being followed
2. Audience
15- A small amount of violence and threat
3. Narrative
The audience sees a girl say goodbye to her friends and begin to walk home
They begin to hear loud footsteps before seeing anything, then dark boots appear, clearly not her shoes
The shot's begin to crosscut between a close up of her face and the shot of his boots
More of the follower is gradually revealed though the audience never see his face
The opening could span over multiple days
It will play of the idea of paranoia, and whether the follower is really there of if the girl is imagining it
It will end with the girl looking back, though the audience will not see what they sees and instead just her a loud scream before it cuts to black
4. Style and Tone
Dramatic tone
Very dark, maybe with a slightly red tint to hint at blood and danger
Shot changes start slow as she is with her friends then the editing speed will increase gradually throughout the film to a high speed editing climax just before the scream
5. Characters, Costume, Props
The young girl - wears a red blazer/hoodie to highlight her from those around her
Everyone else very bland, dark clothing, though very few passers by to increase the ideas of isolation
Following man/woman - you never see his face, he is dressed in black, we mostly see him as a silhouette
6. Graphics
Titles could appear on the paving stones as the girl walks past, disappearing as she steps onto that paving stone
7. Sound
Non diegetic sound - quiet and minimal at first, begins to build and crescendo during the opening to a loud climax
Diegetic sound - not much but enhanced footsteps, heaving breathing and a loud scream at the end
Explore the use of film language for effect in an opening sequence to a
thriller. How does the director engage the audience?
Martin Scorsese’s 1990 film “GoodFellas” follows the life of gangster
Henry Hill as he becomes a professional mafia criminal. The opening scene is a
harrowing and graphic example of the casual violence that surrounds Henry. The
fact that this film is so real is what has ensured its success.
We open with opening credits, as many great films do. A large white font
appears, featuring the names of the actors. There is some faux-diegetic traffic
noise as these titles whip about the screen. This is a kind of sound bridge and
presents the viewer with an idea of the setting –
Very shallow DOF
Grey hair emerges from crowd as if from thin air
Extreme closeup, but no clear emotion - EVIL
POV shot, but shallow DOF means only focused on him - very self-centred man
Mid shots of people going about their airport business - we are reminded of the setting after a sequence of unrelated close-ups, just to ensure that we are still in the same place.
Bag swap! Dodgy dealings. Shot of bags on floor shows this.
Keep crosscutting between the two men - something is about to go down
Close up shots of taxi - takes a little while to actually realise what it is, and its onyl the colours that means we know that this is the same thing.
Motivated editing - we cut between taxi driver and taxi, meaning that we realise he is the taxi driver.
Montage of him getting ready to leave - we linger on the picture of the island, presumably a holiday location, as if this is very important to the man.
Already we have met 3 characters who seem as though they will be central to the plot. Also, we know motives for the taxi driver and have established that at least one of the others is a businessman. We are lead to believe that one of these characters is definitely going to get in the taxi at some point.
Who is the man standing on the scaffold? Bit of a Chekhov's gun here.
Thrillers often create feelings such as exhilaration, suspense,
anticipation, nervousness, and (of course) a thrill. It creates these feelings
through their use of low-key lighting, enhanced diegetic sound and expression
of emotion through tense music. These things are what thrillers are known for.
Often these films are based around revenge, or someone seeking to restore
equilibrium. Common thrillers can include such themes as terrorism, crime, and
sometimes psychological horror, although there is almost always have a rational
explanation rather than supernatural. They often aim to create suspense and
jeopardy, as well as placing violence centrally in the plot.
Our brief was to create a short film called 'The Package' in which some form of item was transferred from one place to another. We had to create suspense and jeopardy.
We started very smoothly for the first few days, but then we had a major setback; I lost the SD card. This was not good as it meant we had to re-shoot over half of our film. We recovered quickly and I am pleased with the final product.
I have learnt that time pressure is the hardest thing to overcome on a zero-budget film such as this, and we were very pushed to hit the deadline, with me having to come in and finish the editing in my own free time. This was unfortunate but not too bad because I had nothing else to do during this period anyway.
I was operating sound, and I found that it is very difficult to hold a boom pole, the DAR (Digital Audio Recorder), and the cables all at the same time, and ended up affixing the DAR to the tripod. it is also hard to get close enough to the sound source to get decent audio.
In David Fincher's 1995 film Seven (stylised as Se7en), he needed to move away from the disaster that was Alien3, and show that he was a director to be reckoned with. Indeed, he went on to direct such titles as Fight Club, Zodiac, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and Gone Girl, all major box office hits. An important film for Fincher, then, and as we examine its opening sequence we will take a look at how he has accomplished such an iconic scene.
The sequence does not include any long shots setting the exact location or premise for the scene. This forces the viewer to think for themselves to work out where and what is going on - hence already giving the impression of a detective film. The audience is made to assume that the scene takes place in an office or a bedroom, because the close-up shots of props and furniture contain the kind of props and furniture found in these places. Furthermore, we cannot see who is writing, or turning pages, and this creates a great deal of suspense for the scene.
All of the shots in this sequence are quite dark, connoting danger, which is added to by the opening shot: a shot of a page being turned with such a shallow depth-of-field that you can hardly tell what is turning it. The shots are very low-key, further adding to the dark, mysterious and dangreous feel. The colours are mostly greyscale, giving the idea of a dark and myterious feel. The sequence is interspersed with shots of photos being developed. These shots show the red light used to develop black and white photos, again connoting danger, but also creating the feeling that the events depicted in the film are very current, just being developed (please excuse the cheesy pun).
There is almost no camera movement in this montage of events, forcing the viewer to focus on exactly what is happening. The lack of movement creates a very closed feel to the framing, furthering the mood.
The film opens with a wide, establishing, aerial shot of a building in a big city. Match on action with window smashing ensures that the audience follows the scene as it progresses. The high angle inside the building gives an overview of the scene, and also gives the feeling of a small room. The camera follows the robbers out of the building, then looking down, giving the idea of being a third robber, and makes the audience feel 'with' these robbers, as if they are the characters we are meant to follow in this sequence. Slowly building music creates a build-up, creating suspense and tension. There is a beat in the music, and the scene synchronously cuts to the audience's introduction to Heath Ledger's character, The Joker.
This shot is very carefully composed, giving a closed framing. The suit is very dark, silhouetting him, forcing the audience to focus on his mask and the bag. There is a buildup of music as we track into him, which then cuts back when the car pulls up. This helps the audience to know that this particular robber is important. All the while, the smooth motion of the camera shows how carefully the heist was planned, and introduces us to the style of the Joker's crimes.
In the car, one of the robbers says "I know why they call him the Joker." We then cut to one of the rooftop robbers saying "So why do they call him the Joker?" This content matching shows that all the robbers are thinking about exactly the same things. The "he wears makeup. To scare people" line creates suspense - we've seen the trailers, we know exactly who he is. This first mention of him is
Upon exiting the car and entering the building, the camera follows the robbers and uses a low angle, giving them power in the scene. Upon entering the building, the camera particularly follows Heath Ledger's character, further emphasising his importance in the film as a whole.
Inside the bank, the music begins to build, as the shotgun man shoots one of the robbers. Simultaneously, another one of the robbers is electrocuted whilst attempting to break into the bank vault; this is the proverbial 'volta' of the scene. This is where the little guy makes a comeback; or so it seems. This creates a huge moment of drama in this scene.
