AS Media Studies: Foundation Production

Evaluation of Thriller Production

The aim of this project was to produce an original two minute thriller film opening
by preparing, shooting and editing it whilst also producing a new soundtrack to
accompany it for a specific target audience.

We had to look at the theories behind thrillers in order to deepen and widen our
knowledge of thriller movies and the conventions that come attached to them. This
was to enable us to produce the best possible opening to embody the thriller genre.
For our thriller opening to be successful, we felt that it had to raise questions
which created suspense and tension. This follows Roland Barthes’ theory of action
and enigma codes. He believed that in order to create suspense and tension, there
had to be unanswered questions. For the main plot of our story, we wanted to catch
the attention of our target audience which was males and females aged 15 and
above. This was the age range we chose as we wanted to appeal to an age range
that is more likely to attend the cinema. We didn’t choose the age range of 18 as
doing this would restrict the market and would lose a valuable amount of people
who may want to watch it.
We tried to develop an idea which would encourage the audience to carry on
watching the film in order to resolve the unanswered questions that they may have.

Research had to be carried out for us to grasp the characteristics in the opening
scenes of thrillers and for us to see what we possibly could be included in our
openings to make them more effective. One of the movies that we watched and
deconstructed was Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959).This film consists
of many of the conventions associated with the thriller genre. The enigma which is
seen throughout the film is “Who is George Kaplan?” The opening of the film
illustrates Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of equilibrium. It starts off by showing us the
protagonist behaving how he usually does and carrying on with his daily activities;
this presents the audience with the equilibrium.
We then see the state of equilibrium being
disrupted by the protagonist being kidnapped
and mistaken for “George Kaplan”. This fits into
the sub-genre of innocent on the run. The
theory of thriller sub-genres was devised by
Charles Derry who said that all thriller movies
can be sub-divided into six further genres:
psychosomatic thriller, innocent on the run,
thriller of murderous passions, thriller of
acquired identity, political thriller and moral confrontation.
To further my understanding of thrillers and for me to be successful in giving the
Fig 1
audience what they want, I assembled a questionnaire and set out to question
people who fit the criteria of our target audience. I questioned 30 people from in
and out of school to get a wide range of results (these can be seen in Fig 1) and to
find out information such as the likes and dislikes of our target audience which
could guide us to produce a successful film opening. In Figure 1, our findings show
that people were uncomfortable with the idea of someone watching them and that
the majority of them preferred psychological thrillers to other types of thrillers.
Once all the information was gathered, our first task as a group was to brainstorm
different ideas which could be possible plots for our movie. Ultimately we decided
on the idea of an obsessive father grieving the loss of his daughter, who finds a girl
who looks identical to his daughter and goes out to stalk her. We felt that this
would give us a strong foundation to build our story up on and would enable us to
be imaginative in order to make our storyline as disturbing but exciting as possible.
Before we moved forward with character names and sorting out the fine details, we
decided to come up with the rest of our story. This was a very enjoyable part of the
process as it allowed us all to talk about our ideas and experiment with what we
thought would work best. It also meant that we could merge ideas between
ourselves which would help develop the storyline whilst also getting everyone’s
input. As the ideas began to come together, we started to draw out a storyboard to
help us visualize what we hoped to achieve and to help us see if what we wanted to
do was feasible. Doing this also meant that we could plan out what sort of shots
would be used for each of the scenes to convey the message we wanted to get
across. It also helped to save time so that we could be organised when it came
down to shooting the film, once all the storyboards were made I took it upon myself
as the camerawoman to compile the schedules so everyone would know what we
were shooting when and the props that we would need for each of the shoots.
Once the preliminary idea for our movie was thought up, we decided to pick a title
which would fit our movie. We wanted our title to be a date which would be
significant to the storyline so decided on 06.06.06. However when we pitched our
idea to our peers, the feedback that we got was that the title was associated with
the devil and that it made them guess the plot of our story incorrectly. This lead us
to coming up with a new list of titles. We had slimmed down our list to a final choice
of four and as we could not decide upon ourselves which we thought would fit best,
we again turned to the opinions of our target audience. We set out to question them
on which movie they would go see if the titles that we presented them with
appeared in the cinema. We eventually went with the most popular title, Mirror
Image.

Our locations for the film opening were our local children’s park
and one of our group members house (shown left). This was
practical for us but it also provided us with the setting that we
had in mind. When out shooting we made sure that we always
had our schedule, any props that we needed for the shoot and
the letter giving us permission to shoot in any locations that
were also used by the public.
 The first shot was an establishing shot to allow the audience to familiarise
themselves with the setting. This shot then cut to a long shot of the protagonists,
the girl being followed and her friend Amber, playing on the swings in the park. This
shot gives the audience a chance to understand the characters relationship with
each other and the environment around them. The main bit of the film consisted of
close ups of dialogue between the girl and Amber discussing their plans whilst
cutting to point of view shots from the grieving father’s perspective. We never see
his face throughout the two minutes, leading the audience to an enigma code of
who this man is and why he is following them. To get the 180° shot for the dialogue,
the scene had to be shot twice from both characters point of view. As the
camerawoman, I found it quite challenging to film this as I had to be swinging on
the swing but also had to make sure that the characters’ gazes stayed the same
level throughout and that the camera remained steady.
As the movie progresses on we see the protagonist left on her own; this was filmed
to show her vulnerability.
The second part of the opening shows the antagonist in his house watching a
recording of the girl, which he has made. There is not much lighting for this section
of the movie and it is dull and quite dark. This is so that it connotes the dark side of
his personality. Much of it is filmed using long shots to show his body language and
behaviour as we thought that this would reveal more of his troubled personality.

For the soundtrack most of the audio was diegetic apart from the dialogue. We used
Garage Band to create our own music using the sounds that were provided for us.
We used orchestral and piano sounds to create an eerie and sinister effect. This was
to be played during the park scene to make the atmosphere more tense and
creepy. For the scene at the man’s house, the music playing was the tune from a
music box. This was to symbolise his daughter and to create a weird feeling of
nostalgia whilst watching the video of the girl.

When editing the shots and placing them all together in a sequence, something
seemed to be missing from the movie and it didn’t give the feel of a thriller movie.
As the dialogue took up most of the 2 minutes, it didn’t give the audience the
chance to come up with any questions therefore making it incapable for it to create
suspense. We showed the film opening to our peers in order to get their feedback
and our thoughts were verified. As a result of this, we decided to re-film the
beginning of the movie, cutting out the major chunk of dialogue and replacing it
with more cut shots of the characters.
When starting to re-film we had to brainstorm what was going to be done again
and organise what shots would be used in order to improve it. When looking at
some of the footage, it was clear to see that the actor playing the “man” was
female so we decided to change the character to a grieving mother. We felt that
this would add a more interesting dimension to the story as traditionally stalkers are
portrayed by men. The remake started off with a close up shot of the back of the
mother watching the girls playing on the swing. It then cuts straight to a long shot
of the two girls and then into the close ups of the shortened dialogue. However this
time round, Amber has to go meet her boyfriend leaving the girl on her own,
automatically making her seem vulnerable. At this point, there is a clear use of
dramatic irony; the girl is being filmed by the mother but is seen to be completely
unaware of it. The last bit of the scene shows the girl leaving the park and this then
fades into the scene at the mother’s house where she watches the video of the girl.
As the camera pans around the room from the television, it focuses on the order of
service revealing the mother’s true intentions and helping the audience to make
sense of the situation.

The outcome of our final opening was similar to our initial idea in some ways
however I feel that the changes that were made to it contributed to it fitting the
brief better than it originally did and helped to create a more powerful atmosphere
than there first was. I feel the enigma code of who this person is creates an interest
to the audience tempting them to carry on watching.