Thriller Film Project – Final Individual EvaluationMy thriller incorporates generic conventions in many parts of the opening two minutes. These conventions are things such as establishing the setting, the main character, the plot, themes, narrative and creating enigma.
In my thriller the setting is quickly introduced as in almost every shot the background can be seen. This clearly shows to the audience that the movie is set in run down toilets. The main character is also established straight away because he is in the first shot that you see. This shot is a close up of the mirror which shows the reflection of the characters face. Within the first two minutes enigma is instantly created. Enigma is formed by creating questions in the audience. The viewer will want to know what is happening and why it is happening. Near the end of the opening two minutes a close up panning shot is shown of a wall with numbers on it. These numbers help to create enigma, but also gives the audience an idea about the plot of the movie. My group and I made a narrative for our thriller by reversing dialogue from our original shots and playing it to create mysterious and delusional sounds. The conventions that are included in my thriller indicate a sub-genre, making it a crime thriller. This is because the film follows the life of a criminal and contains multiple murders. Other thriller films had an influence on my thriller opening. Movies such as Oldboy had an influence because of the immediate flashbacks that take place and the plot is quite similar to my thriller. The flashbacks in Oldboy and my thriller show the main character in both present and past. The console game Condemned 2 had an influence on my thriller as I based the appearance of my character on the main character from the game ‘Ethan Thomas’.
There are different social groups and stereotypes represented in my thriller. In the first two minutes a clear contrast is shown between social classes. For example when the character is in the flashback a stereotypical working class person is shown. However when the character is in the present time he is represented as being the lowest of the lower class. This gives the audience an idea that he is homeless and has few possessions. Different age groups are also represented in my thriller because when the characters sister died he was 19 and in the present time he is 22. My thriller therefore shows the difference between two age groups. The flashbacks help to create what a happy stereotypical family is like.
A small independent company would produce my thriller movie because it is a one off. This is because it doesn’t offer the opportunity to have a franchise or a follow on movie as the story line could not be continued. Another reason for it to be produced by a small company is because there is a low budget to make the movie with. Due to the low budget no big stars would be featured in the movie as they would be too expensive. Even though my movie does not offer the chance to have a follow on movie it could merchandise. The merchandise products that could be made are things such as clothing, like T-shirts and jumpers. Posters and mugs could also be another possibility as merchandising products.
My thriller movie would be aimed at 15 -25 year olds. The movie would be given the age rating of a 15 because it contains quite strong violence due to all the murders that take place and strong language. It also contains noises and disturbing scenes that would be inappropriate for people under the age of 15 to see. Other films and media sources are similar to my thriller movie. Oldboy is similar to my movie because it uses flashbacks to show past events. The punisher is another example of a movie which is similar to mine because of the theme revenge. In the punisher the main character is trying to get revenge on the criminals that killed his family just like in my thriller movie where the main character is trying to get revenge on the 6 people involved in the killing of his sister.
After my group and I had looked at the research from our questionnaires and interviews it helped us decide what to include in our movie and who to aim our thriller movie at. Results showed that people like flashbacks as they help to show the characters past. This is one of the main reasons why we included flashbacks within our opening sequence. I feel that particular points in my thriller opening could scare younger children because the noises are quite loud at some points and are also abnormal. When there are close shots on the characters face it could also disturb younger children because he looks menacing. My movie tried to capture a lot of shots showing the characters face and body to show the viewer what he looks like. Another way we used the camera was so the character walked towards the screen a lot of the time to make it look as if he is almost coming to get you.
The movie doesn’t try and make you side with anyone in particular because although the main character has lost his sister he is planning brutal murder on the criminals that killed her to get revenge. However I feel that there is a general tendency to side with the main character. We did not want to show any violence in the opening 2 minutes because we wanted to create questions within the audience, creating enigma. On the other hand violence does draw people’s attention to a movie as we found out due to the questions and surveys. We went against this though as our movie doesn’t rush straight into action because we wanted to create a suspense, enigma and establish the main character and his surroundings. Originally we had a soundtrack, but we later decided to change this to just sound effects as we felt it gave a creepier feeling to it. The reason for our choice of location being the toilets was because we wanted to pick a dirty and horrible place to fit in with the characters appearance that was rough and dirty too.
Storyboarding is to create a timeline showing the order of the shots you are going to film, the type of shot you are going to use and what happens in the shot. This proved a useful thing to do when it came to filming because we could go straight into the filming without having to think up ideas as everything was planned out.
I did not do much filming in the movie because I was the actor is almost every single shot. However I had to help transport the camera around when moving from different locations. I found this quite simple because I had practise at doing it from the preliminary exercise. The only problems we faced while filming was to do with the lighting, in some shots there was a glare coming off the lighting but this was resolved by just blocking out the light. In other shots however it was too dark to film so we had to use extra lighting to increase the brightness in the room we filmed in.
I did many things differently from my preliminary project for example the camera shots. I feel that in my thriller I have used a lot more different camera shots. Also when it came to editing I learnt new skills to change the appearance for some of the shots in my film. I added different transitions to give the effect of a flashback taking place. I learnt how to add titles to my production so we could include credits in our movie opening. The best skill I feel that I have learnt is how to separate the video from the sound on one shot; this meant that we could then reverse the sounds to give us the unusual sounds that we then used in our thriller. Learning how to make sounds fade in and out was useful because it meant we could add multiple sounds at once.
The main reason why I think my thriller will be more successful than the preliminary project is because of the planning and research that went into the genre of thrillers before we started making it. I watched lots of openings to thrillers to see the conventions used. I also wrote essays on the opening two minutes of thrillers for example Batman to help me practice my analytical skills.
Overall I am pleased with the video my group and I have produced. I feel that it has met the brief and the work is of a good standard. I feel that the editing went really well because I found it easy to grasp and therefore making it quite quick to do what I wanted. Some of the transitions between shots have worked really well making it a good transaction between two shots. I enjoyed the whole process of filming; acting and editing which I feel made me more enthusiastic towards the work.
