Costume, Props, Setting, Mise-en Scene

Costume

Anthony Smith – Protagonist – He will have a mixture of two costumes. The first costume will be something he sleeps in at night a simple T-Shirt and Boxer shorts. This is to add some relaxation to the start when your watching. It also allows the male viewers to relate to him as its what men tend to wear when they sleep. When he gets dressed he will wear casual clothing so it allows the viewers to relate to him again.

Mike – Antagonist – Mike will be wearing mainly black. This is to hide his identity. This adds a sense of mystery of who he is.

Props – The Knife – The knife tells us that the antagonist brings some danger and makes us wonder what will the knife be used for. We see this knife in the point of view shot at the start and in the kitchen.

Black bags – The black bags are used in the parents bedroom and when the antagonist attacks the protagonist.

Setting – The whole setting is inside Mikes house. This is because we are treating it as a normal school day and it relates to the audience as its what everyone does.

Mise-en Scene – What makes this effective is the deafening silence followed by sudden impact of loud noises. The silence makes everything seem normal then the sudden impact of sound scares the audience.

Editing Process/Programs

The programs we will use are Sony Vegas and possibly adobe after effects. We will use Sony Vegas because we both have this software and believe it is best for editing. It is advanced yet simple to use. It contains all the effects to customize it and works will all formats. Sony Vegas also allows you to render the project to whatever you want it be, i.e. MP4, AVI, and WMV. The benefits of this are, different formats have different benefits, e.g. AVI has very good quality however the file size is very large and will take a while to upload to YouTube. MP4 will have good quality and have a small file size allowing a quick upload to YouTube. We will use adobe after effects for visual graphics and effects e.g. someone hit by a car, or lightning, even rain. Sony Vegas is used for cutting and editing the videos together, putting everything together. We will both edit the project together and do separate parts and we will give feedback to each other on how to improve it. I don’t believe there are any downsides to using these programs as we both have experience with them and find them easy to use. If we do get stuck there are tutorials online to help guide us.

Soundtrack Research

We decided to research the soundtracks into various popular thrillers, they are; Batman the Dark Knight, The Silence of The Lambs, Pulp Fiction and The Godfather.

The Dark Knight’s sound track is a mixture of orchestral sounds composed by Hans Zimmer. This collection of orchestral music suits the film perfectly. They are used because the type of music fits everything, it can be calming yet it can be chilling, much like the film. Some of the songs in this film are very effective. The song Why So Serious? Is played whenever the Joker appears. This song is named when the Joker tells Gambol Why So Serious? This tells and relates to the audience telling us that the joker is evil and when you hear this song you know something bad will happen, this also tells us that the character the joker has such a presence that he has his own song.

The Silence of the Lambs soundtrack is again an orchestral mixture of songs. The soundtrack is chilling and suits the film very well. The soundtrack is used to chill the viewers when needed during the film. The songs used are eerie and make the audience have a frightening experience.

The Godfather Soundtrack is once again an orchestral mix. The soundtrack is a light and fluffy mix of instruments. This soundtrack works well with the film as it is about family and protecting them, yet is also about crime and violence. The music works well especially when the famous song plays when we first meet the godfather it asserts his authority and tells us that he is all powerful.

 We aren’t 100% sure of the sounds that we will use in our thriller but, I think we decided to mainly have sound effects. The use of only sound effects will make it seem like a normal day and have a strong effect when needed, e.g. we will have a muffled sound when the boy wakes up after being startled in a flurry. There is no relationship to the soundtracks in those films with ours because we don’t want a whole orchestra as for a short thriller we believe it’s over the top.

Storyline/Settings/Titles/Roles

In our thriller scene there only need to be 2 actors in it. Mike has agreed to act as the man who kidnaps the boy and we are trying to consider other people for the boy. If we are unsuccessful in finding someone else then Luke will be the boy. Hopefully during the filming both of us will agree on camera shots/angles, then depending if I’m starring in it or not then either we will film. I hope we can acquire a tripod to ensure the shots are still not wobbly and look professional. Both of us will edit the film together to our liking. We will use Sony Vegas 9.0, Adobe After Effects. This is because we believe they are the best to edit and we both have these software’s. The soundtrack will not be needed as the film will mostly be silent however there are some moments in the film when sound effects are needed. Luke already has a lot of sound affects with a range wide of sounds needed. Together we will decide what goes best and which sounds best. The story line so far is; A boy is twisting and turning in his bed, he turns one final time and we have a close up of the boy’s eye and it shows it dilating. We then have a point of view shot showing a man standing in front of him. The boy rubs his eyes and the man vanishes. Then we have a point of view shot from where the man was standing and we can see the man behind the boy in the bed. The boy turns slowly and as has facing upwards he sits up to the sound of his alarm clock. The boy gets up and out of bed, as the boy walks down the hallway we can see a crack in a door frame of his mum and dad’s bedroom. The boy calls “mum, dad”, with no response. The camera then enters the parent’s bedroom to show they have both been killed with black bags over their heads. The shot then cuts to the boy walking down the stairs. The shot then follows the boy into the kitchen. The camera is placed in front of the window and the boy gets a glass of water, the boy steps away and where the boys head was there is a man in the garden. We then cut to a quick edit of the boy getting dressed, we will show the boy putting on his; shirt, pulling up his trousers, cuffing his buttons, his socks, his tie, and putting his feet into shoes. Then the boy picks up his blazer and goes downstairs. We have the same shot of him going downstairs as before. He goes back to the kitchen for breakfast. He gets out the toaster and puts bread into it, he then goes to the fridge to get butter, as he closes the fridge door the man is around 3 meters away from him in full sprint, and is running at the boy. The man tackles the boy with a black bag in his hand and the shot fades. The sound of a heart beat tells us when the shot comes and goes. At one heartbeat the shot of their legs struggling are seen then it fades, we then have a shot of the boy being thrown into the van/car for the second heartbeat. Another heartbeat shows the boy in the van. The penultimate heartbeat happens when a light swings over the head of the boy. The final heartbeat shows the title ‘Taken’.

We decided to have this storyline and we can both see this story having an impact at certain point. We believe it will defiantly bring a few jumpy moments. We also believe that this is back to basics, we haven’t thought of a beautiful storyline were every shot must show something and it doesn’t contain art type work just a plain and simple thriller. The film ‘paranormal Activity’ was a basic film made with a general hi-tech video camera and with very little yet simple Effective illusions and has been dubbed one of the scariest movies of its time.

During discussion we have decided to modify a few things in this story. We will add one more scene showing the cracked doorframe again to reassert the parents are dead and he is still oblivious. We will also consider moving the scene where to man runs at him to the front door as we know that there isn’t sufficient space.

The setting will plainly be a house. This is to make it seem realistic. The whole thriller is based in one setting. We need a house with a window in front of the sink and a easy to work with layout. We have decided not to go to a dungeon with candles etc as we feel that is unrealistic, and not needed to make a thriller. We will use a house with a reasonable drive and reasonable space to shoot the parts we need easy and hassle free.

Thriller Storyboards

This is our thriller storyboard and below is our strengths and weakness’

Strenghts

1/ Extensive storyboard.

2/ Use of editing within storyboard.

3/ Use of arrows to indicate movement of camera/characters.

4/ Sense of dramatic irony, see eye diluting

5/shot 12 has a use of quick editing.

6/ docu-style in shot 16,17 & 18

Areas to Improve

1/ shot 1 + 2 have close ups of different things like face, hand moving etc

2/ 3, research the diluting eye effect.

3/ 3-4, rubs eyes, squinting.

4/ 7-8 need more shots for when figure vanishes.

5/ Between 6-7 have more variety of shots, close up of phone, alarm clock etc

6/ between 6-7 call parents and add shots

7/ look at old thrillers, what establishes suspense

8/ 9+10 focus on sink and head

9/ 11, maybye zoom and jump cuts

10/ shaun of the dead influence shot

11/ 13, possible ‘goodbye’ see shot of cracked door then shot of dead parents

12/ 23 swinging lights the shot gets closer with every swing.

Feedback

From the feedback we have considered a few changes. We also thought about spacing and wether or not it would be possible to shoot them. We have decided to change; We will add one more scene showing the doorframe of the parents room again to reassert the parents are dead and he is still oblivious. We will also consider moving the scene where to man runs at him to the front door as we know that there isn’t sufficient space. When the light is swinging at the end we will experiment which is best the zooming shot or just the one still shot.

Mike is the Kidnapper/Man and either I or someone else will be the boy.

Ideas for Thriller Opening

Ideas

Our group drafted up 4 different rough ideas for our Thriller Opening. Each in the form of a spider diagram. Here are the scanned images of the notes we made for 2 of our ideas. We slimmed it down to our favourite 2 ideas and added notes.

Popular Thriller Openings

To get an idea of what makes a good opening to a thriller we looked at a few of the best thrillers, as ranked on IMDb. Out of the top ten we chose a few of our personal favourites to use as examples and to look closer at the openings to see what makes them good and how they engross the audience straight from the start, using various media techniques, like character enigmas.

Here are the openings to the films we chose:

The opening to The Dark Knight is very crucial to the film as it sets up the main antoginst of the film. The opening itselfs shows characterists of the Joker in the not only by his actions but the content of the scene that we see reflects the character and have similar qualitys (mysterious, physcological, clever, etc). We think this is the best opener to a thriller as we as an audience feel instantly grabbed by the scene, like a good thriller opening should. Other than the content of the scene, we also noticed the affects good music can have on creating the mise en scene. For example in this scene the music helps to create the heavy tension between the characters performing the robbery. We think that any good thriller needs a good opening to instantly grasp the audience and get ingaged with the story, The Dark Knight is no different.

Here are some other thriller openings…

[Silence of the Lambs]

[Pulp Fiction]

[The Godfather]

Research Areas For Blog

This is a short video made to show what areas of research we must cover for our blog.

Primary Thriller Research

Primary Thriller Research PowerPoint <<< Here is the powerpoint.

Thriller Preliminary Powerpoint Research in these two videos:

Questions and Answers:

How will this research influence our idea?

The target of the primary research into thriller films was to find out several things; what people enjoy about thriller, our target audience, people favourite type of thriller, and overall WHAT MAKES A GOOD THRILLER. This is our obvious intention when making our thriller as we plan to give the audience what they want as a thriller. This is what we did to gain this kind of information. We created an online survey, a blog poll on my blog (this one), and some camera illusion that we filmed and edited ourselves. We also made online research using the website IMDb.com to find out statistics about types of thrillers and the most popular. We used this information to conclude the best thrillers, and linked this with our favourite thriller.

From the research we made we found out our target age group is going to be around the same age as us. This is because the majority of our feedback is from teenagers, also as teenagers ourselves we figured we would know pretty well what people our age what or would not enjoy in a thriller. This has a big effect on our final film and we now know the specific audience we are aiming at. Also this research shows us exactly what people want in a thriller. For example crime and psychological thrillers are extremely popular among teenagers. This also brings us to another factor of research that has influenced the direction we are going in, in terms of thriller subgenre. From the online research we made on IMDb we found that CRIME thrillers and MYTERY thrillers are among the top thriller sub-genres voted for on IMDb. This also helps us define which thrillers are typically popular. We can also go deeper and use the typical conventions of a crime thriller and mystery thriller and add them with some conventions of our own to give our own personal touch. Also we noticed when getting the top ten films for both crime and mystery thrillers, that quite alot of the films in the list do not consist of expensive CG or special effects shots. For example The Shawshank Redemption is the top crime thriller on the IMDb polls (and also our favourite thriller) was made in 1995 and had no special effects. This is encouraging to us as we do not have the extensive resources needed for this, and want to use simple but effective camera tricks. These will however be used for more typical thriller shots. Overall the research we made here has influenced our final product greatly and we now know what direction we are going in.

Developing Higher-Mark Blog Entries

Thriller Conventions of The Matrix

In class we watched a thriller trailer to identify some of the main thriller conventions it included. The film trailer we watched was that of the cult classic film ‘The Matrix’. This thriller includes several very key conventions of a typical thriller genre film, which are apparent also in the trailer of the film. We have identified thriller conventions for a previous task, choosing a film of our own choice (I chose The Bourne Identity) but this time we all had to analyse the conventions in ‘The Matrix’. The Matrix is about a man living a double life as an ordinary man with an ordinary job, and the other as a hacker under the alias ‘Neo’. The film follows Neo’s progress in the “matrix” as the chosen one, and the struggles he faces on his path to freeing all mankind from destruction.

There are 3 main thriller conventions in The Matrix and all are established in the trailer. The main convention of The Matrix is the themes of identity it contains. As Neo lives a double life, his identity in the film is very important, and finding out what his true identity is. This is an enigma at the start of the film, and the start of the trailer as we the audience don’t know that Neo and the other hackers are actually protagonists. Something that adds to this is the fact that they all wear black, which is usually associated with antagonists as they wear dark and dull colours. This is part of the dark mise en scene that surrounds The Matrix.

Another convention is the themes of mirroring in The Matrix. The themes of identity and mirroring have a clear connection in this film and trailer as the black and green numbers and opening credits match up with the black suits and green tint to the glasses the characters wear in the film. In this respect the opening titles mirror the clothing and mise en scene of the film. Also the colour green at the start sets up the sci-fi feel of the film, as typically thriller sci-fi films are associated with the colour green. The green codes shown at 1.13 for example give the film a sci-fi feel.

Another thriller convention we see is the themes of voyeurism. This is obvious as we see that the antagonists (Mr. Smith) have been following the protagonist (Neo) and following his path of him seeing the ‘real world’. The protagonist doesn’t realise they know who he is and why he has been chosen to see The Matrix. The story of the protagonist being shown the ‘real world’ of The Matrix makes the audience question the true reality. In the trailer we are left with a lot of enigmas and questions we the audience need answering, which will be resolved when we watch the film. These questions are what draw the audience into the storyline of the film, and this is how the trailer plays on the human need to answer questions.

The narrative structure is quite complex from what we see from the trailer. We get the impression that the film is targeted at people interested in sci-fi films and complex storylines. To decipher the protagonist and antagonist, you will have to watch carefully as it is quite hard to keep up with the confusing and hard storyline.

The obvious convention that match’s the genre of a Thriller is the dark mise en scene. The dark lighting immediately creates a mysterious and eerie feel to the film. This mysterious feel creates a sense of anxiety and draws the audience in. The dark costumes match the lighting and the action of the antagonist. It is obvious the antagonist has a secret which adds to the mysterious atmosphere and his character. The editing in the trailer is very fast for action parts and is cut to the same time as music which becomes louder. The beats finish in Neo waking up breathing heavily which shows panic. This is one of the parts of the trailer we see voyeurism. This big build up of fast editing and loud music is a good way of intensifying what’s happening in the trailer even more.