Research into sound- Miss Miller

Sound is a very important element in thriller films. Sound makes a huge difference in the way a thriller film shocks the audience, without sound, thrillers would not have the same effect as they do with sound. Without sound in thrillers films the audience would not feel the emotions, that the film aims to give them when watching the film. Sound is used to create an understanding for the audience and to create a response from the audience and engage them with what they are watching. I researched how sound is used in the film Strangers Sound is used in thriller films to inform the audience of the different situations that the characters are going through and it is also used to help the audience understand the narrative of the thriller film.

One of the sounds used in the Strangers trailer are diegetic sound. It is an off screen sound because the audiences do not know where it is coming from. The evidence for this sound is when the couple are hugging and they hear a ‘bang’ sound. This sound obviously frightens the couple because they both pause in the moment and look around at the door. The sound shows that someone or something has been around and something bad is probably going to happen. The audience would expect this to be found in a thriller because it makes the movie more interesting for the audience. Because the sound is diegetic and off screen, the sudden 'bang' shocks the audience and the sound relates to the film because it builds suspense in the film as it is makes the audience on edge and jumpy, which draws the audience in.

The second sound that was used in the Strangers trailer was a on screen sound, this was when the swing was making a noise like someone had been playing around with it. It could also be seen as a parallel sound because the swing is making a noise, which suggests that there is a unknown presence around the house.  It shows that the audience know that something is there are they are ready for something bad to happen to the couple. This is a conventional sound in the thriller because it would be a jumpy sound that would be used in a thriller. This makes the audience feel more tense, scared, jumpy and on edge because they know something is going to happen and that also makes them feel more involved in the thriller.

The third and final sound that I will be analysing is the non-diegetic sound, the evidence for this is when they are in the car trying to get away from the strangers and there is creepy music in the background which shows that something unnatural is going to happen (which is normal in a thriller film). It shows that the couple and the characters that are being attacked by the stranger are in some kind of danger because they are going to be trapped in between there car, the strangers car and the house. It relates because it shows the audience that the main characters are in trouble and are very scared with what the strangers are going to do with them. This also then makes the audience scared about what the strangers will do to the victims, so the audience is drawn into the film. This is a typical narrative because it shows that something bad is going to happen and the main characters that are being attacked are in danger, so this would be typically found in a thriller film.

This analysis has taught me where sounds can be introduced in the thriller film and where would use them in different situations. For example I know when a diegetic sound is used, when you want to use a sound that is off screen, this may be used to create suspense in the thriller film.

Planning Mise-en-scene- Miss Georgiou

Settings and Iconography:

• Dark abandoned room - We decided to use a dark abandoned room because when the girl wakes up when she is tied up on the bed, it helps create an enigma to our story line. It hides the details of the surrounding making the victim and audience unaware of where about she is.
• We are going to film our clip in the dark to have low key lighting which is conventional to a thriller film we will use iconography items such as torches to be our light source. These will act as background and filler lights creating shadows make it seem mysterious. This scene also allows us to use low key lighting that hides peoples facial expressions. This is also a convention to the thriller genre and will be useful for hiding the identity of our killer.
• Iconography items such as ropes - We have chosen to use ropes to tie the victim up when she has been kidnapped and put in an isolated dark room. This is conventional because the audience can she that she is trapped and the killer has done this to her.

Lighting and Colour:

• Low-Key lighting - We decided to use low-key lighting in our thriller because it is easy to create shadows which keeps the audience in suspense. It also helps conceal the identity of the stalker which keeps the enigma of who is it.
• Colour black and white - The killer will wear a black hoody to highlight to the audience the character they play. This is conventional because the colour black connotes bad and death. To show the audience which characters are the victim they both are going to wear bright colours as they are going to be wearing bright Halloween costumes. This connotes there innocence highlighting that they are the victim in the situation.

Facial Expressions and Body Language:

• Facial expressions of shock, panic, fear - When the victim wakes up and realises what has happened and that she is tied up she begins to panic. The audience will be able to see this through the facial expressions of the character. The victims eyes will be wide open to highlight her fear.
• Body Language - The victims body language shows the audience the hierarchy of power between the characters. This will be done through making the victim curl up with her hands and feet tied giving the impression the victim is smaller than she is. This is conventional because it highlights the fact the she is trapped and has no control.

Positioning of the character and objects in the scene:

• The characters positioning - The Victim will be positioned in the centre of the screen to show her importance and the killer will be positioned at the side. This make the audience suspicious of the characters and shows who is the protagonist and the antagonist.

Costume and Make-Up:

• The victims - The victims will be dressed up in cute Halloween costumes to make the audience see that they are innocent and can cause no danger but are the victims. However when the girl wakes up tied up on the bed the victim will have dark circle around the eyes to show exhaustion and struggle. This is conventional because women are seen as the typical victims because they are perceived to be the weaker gender.
• The killer - The killer is going to be wearing black clothes and have her face covered  to hide the facial expressions to create hidden identity which is a typical convention of a thriller film,. This is conventional because it prevents the audience from building a relationship with them and shows they are the antagonist.

Overall, i think our groups mise-en-scene is conventional because all five areas have been displayed in our thriller to help keep the audience in suspense. The audience will be able to tell who the killer is and who are the victims due to the colours they are dressed in and can build a relationship with the victims through their facial expressions. Each code and convention help contribute to the suspense making the film a good thriller.

Planning editing styles-Miss Georgiou

Editing is important within a thriller film as it helps to engage the audience whilst watching the film, it helps keep the audience interested. Editing helps build tension and suspense really well which grabs the audiences attention. Editors job is to organise the footage and arrange individual shot combining them into one continuous sequence. Every scene has dozens of different shots that have to be chosen and assemble from all of the film. The editor's choices about which shots to use and the order in which place them, have a profound effect on the appearance of the overall film.

Editing is important because it creates a certain atmosphere for the audience, editing can turn a normal boring narrative into a jerky, fast paced and suspenseful thriller. Editing is where you take the best camera shots and arrange them accordingly to create the story-line also editing helps you put different effects over the clips you have filmed to make them look better.

What types of editing styles will you include in your thriller and why?

We have decided to use a number of different editing styles in our thriller film to help build suspense, surprise and shock to the audience.

• Fast Editing - We have decided to use fast editing in our thriller film because it can show a large amount of information within a couple of seconds. By using the fast editing it will make the audience nervy. It straight away creates an enigma as it is fast paced and jumpy. We also decided to use fast editing to create a chaotic atmosphere which is conventional to the thriller genre.
• Projector effect- We have decided to use this effect as over the opening scene it makes our clip look gloomy and creates a mysterious effect for the viewers.
• Dissolve cut/Flashback - We are going to use this style of editing to show the audience a flash back of  why the girl is possessed.
   

How will your editing styles make your thriller conventional?

Fast editing will make my thriller film conventional because it is at a fast speed. The quicker the pace of the film the higher increase of anxiety the audience will feel. It is also conventional because it enables us to create suspense as the fast editing keeps going away from the narrative to fuzzy tv screens or radios. This creates an enigma and makes the thriller film starts of with an unanswered question.

The Project effect is conventional because it makes the clip look dark and gloomy this is elements you always find in thriller films, this effect will help create tension and mystery for the viewers, this editing will help the audience build a relationship with the female victim as this effect makes the setting look dark and gloomy so the audience will sympathise towards the female victim.

The dissolve cut is conventional to the thriller genre as it reveals what happened to the victim and answers how she got in that predicament in the first place. A dissolve cut allows the audience to see the disorientation and confusion the victim is experience as if it is answering the audiences question of what happened.

Group storyboard -Miss Miller

Storyboards are important because they tell me roughly what should be happening during my thriller, its puts a picture in my head at how we are going to do it and what we are going to do during the thriller film. This will help our group because it sets the scene for how we all want our thriller film to be we have put all of our idea together to help make these story boards. We used everyone's ideas as we don't want just one persons ideas we want to all to contribute the thriller film.Our group storyboard is easy to understand, all our group know what were doing to create our sequence and it will help us see what we have to do. This final storyboard has used all of our group's ideas as we used Domenico's idea of having a blonde female victim and used my idea as the setting was set in a creepy house and forest, finally we used Robyn's idea of using an unseen villain.  

 

 

Individual storyboard- Miss Miller

What is the purpose of a storyboard?

A main purpose of a storyboard is to illustrate to others how the final product is to be seen. As well as this, it's helps to present and clarify a vision to the rest of the production team and gives a basic outline of the whole production scene by scene.

What does it include?

A storyboard includes a graphic revealing main action of the scene, a scene description, camera techniques and audio. The audio can consist of narration, dialogue, voice over, sound effects and/or music.

How is my storyboard going to help me?

My storyboard allows me to create a clear presentation of how I would like my thriller sequence to be. It includes all the main features and main aspects  and conventions of a thriller that I want to obtain and include. My other two members of my group have also created a storyboard, which allows us to compare and use the best ideas to format a final storyboard that will be the basis of our thriller opening. A storyboard is an efficient way of doing this and combining our ideas.

Inspirations for opening sequence- Miss Miller

Inspiration is vital before you create something as it can give you ideas and in this case it shows you the elements and conventions you need to include to make your own thriller which will make my final product as successful as possible. You can take inspiration from other successful thrillers and throughout my planning for the opening sequence of my thriller I viewed various films which showed me what conventions is vital to include to make my thriller good. I got my inspiration by going on YouTube and watching various clips from successful thrillers. Throughout analysing many clips from various thriller films, I have found out how to use techniques such as; sound, conventions, cinematography and editing. From viewing other thriller films I used this information for my own thriller and I now know how to create a very effective opening scene for my own thriller film using the elements I found in thriller films I researched. By doing this research I have developed this knowledge and without out it the planning process of my scene would have been found a lot harder than what it was with the research being taken.

I got inspiration from Halloween in Halloween there is the use of hidden identity this is common convention I found in the thrillers I researched about, in Halloween the killer is wearing a mask in which covers his identity to the victim, this creates mystery and suspense. In our opening sequence our wanted to include a killer to be hidden we done this by having a killer as a demon so you can't see the killer at all this will help the audience feel even more tense. We believe this will help create an enigma which will entertain the audience as they are unaware of how the killer looks, therefore they will be curious and engaged as to what will happen to the female victim.

I also found that sound was really important  in thrillers as by watching a thriller clip with no sound and then watching one with sound, I found the one with sound was a lot more scary, I found sound can effect the atmosphere on audience hugely finding this out I wanted to make sound a major factor in my own thriller as I now know it can make the audience tense by having jerky sounds the research for sound really brought to life just how important sound would be in my opening scene. The clip I had researched about was from Sinister, the clip used music which really got the audience on the edge of their seat as it was sharp and quick paced and was very effective as the music created an atmosphere for the whole scene. I will use this in my opening scene to do the same but, also to justify and build up key moments to the audience so they are in suspense. 

I got inspiration From shutter island the inspiration I got from this was the use of Low Key Lighting. In this shutter island I watched a scene where it shows very clearly how the changing of lighting from High to Low can have a powerful effect on the audience, the use of low key lighting has a big effect on the audience by creating an enigma, the mood of the scene is transported from a average mood to a deeply depressing mood mainly due to the sudden change of lighting. So taking inspiration from this I should consider having a sudden change in lighting even more sudden than the one in the scene so I have a more thrilling effect on the audience. I also found in many thrillers that a use of a blonde female victim is evident in thrillers blonde females are shown as weak and vulnerable so I want to include this stereotypical convention into my thriller aswell.

Target audience results- Miss Miller

I will use these results we collected to help us plan our thriller film, it will allow us to understand what age group and what gender want to see in the thriller film, it will also help us understand what age group we would want would want to target for our thriller film. I feel as if the research will help us understand what the general public want to see in a thriller film.Within this post I will be discussing and analysing why each questions results are relevant for my research into making an opening sequence for a thriller film. We will use our feedback to help create an opening sequence which will attract to our target audience. We interviewed 40 people and concluded their result to form series of pie charts with the results in. Although our questionnaire had a mixture of open and closed questions, we decided to only conduct the closed questions mainly because they are the easiest to make graphs from as they give a specific number of results.

This pie chart shows the majority of the people who completed our questionnaire was 16 years or older, 10% of people who done our questionnaire was 10 years or younger this could affect our results as our intended target audience is around the age of 15 and older as we want our thriller film to have an age rating of 15. As our target audience is around the age of 15 and older we will take the results from the age groups 16+ and 11-15 years old more seriously than the results from the 0-10 year old age group.

The second question that we asked is 'Are you male or female?'. The main reason why we asked this question was to see if our results would show the typical thriller audience which is predominately male. These results show that the majority of people who completed this questionnaire are males with 60% of the people doing our questionnaire being male. This could mean that our results may have a ‘typical’ thriller aspect as men are more likely to enjoy films that belong to the thriller genre, and are therefore more likely to choose the conventional options provided. Furthermore this may give us a different idea for our thriller, something that is very conventional. Our results showed: 

 

Our third question was about a preferred age certificate that the individual would like to see. Initially we thought to ask this question because it would provide us with the content that we would put in our thriller clip such as we would make it more gory if people wanted to see an 18. It would provide us with the vital information needed to get our clip done. These results will be useful when our group decides on the age certificate of our clip. As we can the majority of people asked would like it to be rated 18 certificate, but it is closely followed by the 15 rating. I believe even though the majority voted for the 18 certificate our group will still go for the 15 age rating to have a wider audience and the themes we are hoping to use for our narrative are not gory. The results collected were:

The next question that we asked was to see if we should include any sub-genres in our thriller clip. This question would have helped us to know which direction our thriller should go in to make our thriller clip successful. In these results we can see that drama was the category which most people chose with 35% this was closely followed by physiological with 30%. This showed us that we would need to incorporate some elements of both drama and physiological in the clip to make it as successful as we can because we can see this is what the public like most

The fifth question that was included within the questionnaire was 'What makes a thriller film effective'  the intended affect of this question was to gather a vague idea of what we should needed to included within our thriller clip. The results show that both hidden identity and camera shots were the dominant results, this would suggest to our group should use a combination of both different camera shots and a sense of hidden identity.

Collecting this data has been beneficial as it has given me and my group some help with choosing what aspects such as conventions to use in our opening clip. It has reminded me that I don't have to limit myself by using only one convention, but can use as many as I wish to. It will help me and my group when planning, as it has told us how important each aspect is, and the amount of detail we need to go in, if we want out clip to be effective. A target audience is important because then you can plan and film your thriller film aimed towards them. When planning our film and researching the genre at the start of this project we had to make sure that our story line ideas were suitable for the audience that we wished to target. As the chosen genre was a thriller  and from our questionnaire which showed that the people who watch thrillers most is 15+ so we knew straight away that we were targeting the 15+ age range. This meant that the first two minutes of our film opening needed to be suitable for a teenage/adult audience and which would also get the audience’s attention for the rest of the film.

Preliminary task- Miss Georgiou

My group consists of me, Robyn and Domenico. In the preliminary task Robyn and Domenico were acting in the preliminary task and I was in charge of the camera. Throughout this task we experimented with many different camera angles which we could possibly use in our opening sequence of a thriller movie. We used angels such as reverse shot, high angle shot, P.O.V shot, close up shot, over the shoulder shot and a wide shot.

Preliminary task: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. This will last a maximum of one minute in length.The purpose of the preliminary task was to help us understand how to use a camera, to get use to the different camera angles that can be used and also how to upload our clip onto the computer and use the editing software. It allowed our group to understand what we would have to do in our thriller film to put it all together using the editing software that is provided, this preliminary task was vital to me understanding the editing software because the software was alien to me and it gave me a chance to play around with the tools and get used to it which helped as when it was needed to edit our thriller clip I was familiar to the software.  It also allowed our group to learn how to apply the different camera angles by using the camera for example we thought a close up would work well when we left the hall but found out the mid shot was the best to show the facial expression. We learnt that we would have to have the location of our thriller film in a quiet place because we filmed ours in the hall when people were walking past you could hear them in the background, as you can hear slight sound that was unwanted in our thriller film.

In the preliminary task I learnt how to use the camera and tripod which helped in our thriller clip this was vital as it helped me to get straight into filming our thriller clip as I was already use to the complicated camera and tripod. In conclusion I think that I was able to take some essential pointers from the preliminary task. By the end of the preliminary task we were familiar with the equipment that we were going to be using when filming our final thriller clip. The preliminary task also helped my group with our thriller film we learnt how long it would take to film our thriller film because it took us about 30 minutes to film a 1 minute clip, we had learnt various strengths from this task one of them being the first shot we chose to use may not always be the best and we did have difficulties when doing the preliminary task that we will did not do in the actual filming of our thriller film for example one of them being the noise in the background.

Group Narrative - Miss Georgiou

The three theories that were proposed are by three men Vladmir Propp, Tzvetan Todorov and Aristotle. Vladmir propps was a soviet formalist. 


Vladmir Propps theory is that characters in the sequence provide a structure for the narrative. Mainly in fairy tales the characters set the narrative. 


The typical characters he found were:A Hero- A character that seeks something.The Villain- Who opposes or actively blocks the hero's quest.The Donor- Who provides an object with magical properties.The Dispatcher- Who sends the hero on his/her quest via the message.The False Hero- Who disrupts the hero's success by making false claims.The Helper- Who aids the hero.The Princess- Acts as a reward for the hero and the object of the villains plots.The Father- Who acts to reward the hero for his effort.

His theory of narrative seemed to be mainly based in a male orientated environment and some critics would often dismiss the theory when regarding to films. Some critics may argue that Propp's strict and restrictive order of events may be an false representation of the film. 

Tzvetan Todorov theory simplified the idea of narrative theory whilst also allowing a more complex interpretation of film texts with his theory of Equilibrium and Disequilibrium. A simplified list of his theory is this:
The fictional environment begins with a state of equilibrium (everything normal, how it should be)
Then it would suffer some disruption (example of disequilibrium)
New equilibrium is produced at the end of the narrative.
There are five main stages that the narrative progresses through:
1. A state of equilibrium.
2. A disruption of that order by an event.
3. A recognition that the disorder has occurred.
4. An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption.
5. A return or restoration of a new equilibrium.

The narrative is driven by attempts to restore the equilibrium. However, the equilibrium attained at the end of the story is not identical to the initial equilibrium. Todorov argues that narrative involves a transformation. The characters or the situations are transformed through the progress of the disruption.
Finally Aristotle observed that all films have a beginning, middle and an end. He also believed in stages in film and they were:
Exposition - Setting a scene and introducing characters.
Development - situation develops, more characters introduced
Complication - An event takes place which would disturb the life of the characters.
Climax - Involves high amounts of suspense and decisive moment reached.
Resolution - Matters are resolved and satisfactory end is reached.

The purpose of a narrative is to create an engaging entertaining experience for the viewer that will grab the viewer attention some narratives are used for different purposes and used on different themes in particular ways. They contain various characters, dialogue and also descriptive language.
My narrative-
My narrative idea is three school children go back up to school (Media class) when the students enter the class and go on the computers all the computers will switch off and start fuzzing - there will be a high angle shot of this to make the students look smaller and vulnerable. When the door shuts I will use a close up shot to show the emotion of one of the student to show they are scared which will make the audience feel sorry for them. I will keep using high angle shots on one of the students more than the others to make him look more vulnerable and suggest to the audience he is in the most danger. I want to include a establishing shot in my thriller film to show the view from the camera to give a perspective of what will follow as there will be a man outside the window wearing a mask creating mystery. When the lights turn off and on it will create tension as you expect something to appear and scare the audience, but I want to add a false sense of security to my thriller film by not having anything appear so when the audience become calm after watching the lights turn off and on and nothing happens then I will scare them by having a hand covered in blood slam against the window. Also I want to include handheld camera movements for chase scenes to create jerky images which will produce a sense of urgency and chaos making the audience know they are in danger and running for their lives.

We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of my narrative and as a group we felt the advantages of mine is we can use conventions of a thriller easily by using a blonde female school victim however we felt as a group filming at school was too lazy and would not have looked good in our scene, we decided as a group filming outside of school in two separate locations would look better and give us more variety of shots.

Domenico martinis idea-
The idea for my opening sequence is to be set in an urban area unlike many other opening scenes mainly 
because otherwise I think it will just be a stereotypical thriller film and will be boring for the audience. The plot I was thinking of a house in the city at night, they're experiencing a power cut so the lights are out. The parents are asleep and one teenage boy is still awake watching TV on the sofa, he keeps hearing movement that he can't see. He ignores it and tries to sleep on the sofa. He hears a constant peculiar knocking so goes to the back door looks out in the garden and then he sees a young girl dressed in a white gown, then she screams and it ends… The conventions that i would aim to have within my clip would be shock and tension that will continue to build throughout the progression of the clip.
The advantages of this idea is that it had a good plot and defies the conventions of the thriller by having a male victim and a young girl as a killer this could make the narrative more scary and build more tension, as a group we also liked the idea of having paranormal activity where you can not see the killer when noises are being made this has been very popular in recent films such as Paranormal Activity however as group we felt we could not have got a variety of shots using this narrative and because another group had a relatively similar narrative we did not want to have something similar so decided not to follow this narrative

Robyn Tansleys idea-
My idea of the opening scene is that this young six year old girl gets bullied at school or at home as a result she tries to murder the person therefore she ends up in a mental home. A month later she escapes and comes back to haunt the family/school and ends up killing the whole year/family.

The advantages of filming Robyn's narrative is just like Domenicos idea as it defies the conventions of a thriller by having a young female being the killer this would help create more tension for the audience however when we discussed this narrative in our group we believed it would have been too hard to film and would have needed to include a lot of actors which we were not sure we could get.


We spoke as a group and after discussing all our narratives we decided not to follow any of our narratives as we came up with a complete new idea which we felt would follow the conventions of a thriller film but also give us a chance to use more variety of shots.

Our final narrative idea was to have a blonde female become possessed by a devil this follows the conventions of a thriller film as normally the victim is always a blonde female, our narrative would be the blonde female waking up and doing her normal routine so the audience would be unexpected to what will happen, then suddenly she drops a glass of water and walks from her home to a forest- here at the forest the audience will realise something bad is going to happen but we hope we have used a twist as instead of the usual chase scene through the forest, our victim does not get chased instead she walks up to a lake and jumps in killing herself; we done this hoping to create shock for the audience. Our narrative shall follow the theory of Aristotle because there is a sense of hidden identity within our clip which would mean that our thriller clip follows that specific proposed theory. Also it builds enigma amongst the audience as they're unknown about why and how the female girl became possessed and kills herself.