Music Ideas

When considering a thriller film, music and sound acts as a literacy device to create an atmosphere, suspending anxiety and tension upon the audience. So, when composing our thriller film we will add background music, replacing dialogue so that the audience will feel more anxiety. Therefore, I have been looking on youtube for suitable song tracks that are related to young children, that encounter a disturbing twist. For our first track I have found a creepy ice cream truck tune. This interlinks well into our thriller because an ice cream truck shows intertexuality with children, though at the same time the silence plays part in the background creating suspension. For our second track, we found a creepy music box soundtrack. This would be a suitable track to fit our thriller because each note gives an echoing sound. This creates mystery and a sense of lingering anxiety. The simplicity of this, replicates that of a children's nursery rhyme, creating intertextual references with our thriller synopsis, encompassing a young school girl. This track also suspends silence within the background representing the theme of loneliness.

storyboards

Skmbt c45112111410420 from jallard6cre

Skmbt c45112111410421 from jallard6cre

This is my group storyboard. Here, the original plot outline of our thriller is being portrayed. As you can see, related images are allocated with each broken down section. This allows us as a group to organise the scene of our filming through imagery. This will build a base for us to later build and construct upon as we explore deeper into our thriller.

Primary Research

For my audience research, I have used a secondary source to find out statistical figures. These figures have come from the British Filming Institute (BFI) website. Also, percentages on audience satisfaction have come from the Rotten Tomatoes website, rating a numerous amount of different thriller genre films.

Though for my thriller film to be successful I need to collect some primary based data. For this I have conducted and created a survey on an online website, 'Survey Monkey'. Here, I have composed ten questions about the thriller genre. I aim to ask both genres, all around the age of 16 so that my results are reliable.

Below is the link to my survey
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8PNB8JS

Preliminary Task

This is my first experience of filming an opening scene. Here, this is my groups preliminary task and the first task completed as a group. We decided to do a re-make of the thriller film; 'The Thing'. For this we used a teddy bear to be 'The Thing'. This is because a bear is seen to be related to young children or babies, representing innocence. This means that when our crisis occurs a huge amount of anxiety will be suspended upon our audience. As a group we experimented with a variety of camera angles and also enjoyed filming within the process.

Filming schedule

As a group of three, collected due to our closeness in locations, we plan to film on two days. These two days will be the 30th and 31st of October.

We plan on the first day to meet as a group at my own house. This is because the other two members of my group are easily mobilised due to each riding a motorbike and myself not. On this day we are aiming to capture all of our indoor footage. Planning to meet at midday, this will allow myself to dress up into character before the rest of my group arrive meaning that time will be managed and used efficiently. For the indoor filming I will be costumed in a school uniform representing the young school girl, Annabelle. The footage, we hope to fully receive on this day will be the opening to our thriller. We will be filming both the antagonist and protagonist in separate scenes using light as a device to alter the atmosphere in the same location.

If this all goes to plan and we are able to collect all our filming, then the next day we will be shooting outside. This day was chosen due to the clear, dry weather forecast that was predicted in the early evening.

 For this scene only the protagonist will be filmed within an enclosed woods. This means that again I will have to characterise and this requires me to change costume. I will be wearing a white dress, covered in red paint, replicating stained blood. Also, the other members of my group will have to help me customise by writing disturbed words over my arms, representing the mental scarring of the young girl. Planning to meet at 4pm, this will give us the optimum light being neither too light or too dark. If all filming goes to plan, we should be able to finish before it gets too dark meaning that we will have all our clear, visible footage that we need.

Questionnaire response

When analysing my questionnaire responses, some questions were revealed to contain mixed responses where as a small majority favoured one particular audience answer. My audience were all of the same age range being either 15 or 16 years old.

For my first question I asked my audience to specify their gender so that I have an idea of preferences by either gender. This may allow me to create a pattern within my results.

When looking at  my results above in a graphical format, this shows that all my audience were in agreement that both male and female characters should be included within my thriller. I feel this result came about due to the majority of films including multi gendered characters.

Next, the question asked was; 'Which characters portray a thriller best?'. Here I am accounting for the actions of both the antagonist and protagonist. For this, I gained a variety of different answers, with a male psycho and female victim coming out top on pole. I think this result was gained due to most thrillers consisting of this concept and the fact of the male gender being generally much stronger than the female.

When asked; 'Should the assassin be...' the majority of my audience answered with, your normal everyday person. In opposition none of my audience answered with a past criminal. I think this was the result because this convention would build anxiety and suspense due to the mysterious characteristics of the antagonist.

My next question was; ' what sub genre to a thriller do you prefer?' For this question I gave my audience three options to choose from. Out of these, two battled close to appear on top. Though, the favourable of my pole was a psychological sub genre. Psychological thrillers are popular due to the suspended anxiety and tension that the genre creates upon the audience within the mind.

Looking at my next question displayed in a graph, it is clearly visible that the preferred location for my thriller to be taken out is within an unknown location. By this I mean a location unidentifiable by the audience. This means that mystery would be suspended upon the audience due to consolidation.

For my seventh question I choose to ask a multiple choice question. Here, I offered a choice of 6 possibilities to the question; 'What elements do you like within a thriller film?'. From this only half proved to be popular with my teenage audience. Top came mystery, jointly followed by suspense and death showing that horror could possibly be a popular sub genre.

My next question targeted my audience more specifically; 'What is your favourite thriller film?' For this, I gave a list of possibilities to avoid the question of having to define the thriller genre. From this, the thriller, Inception was most popular. Following this question I asked my audience to explain why. Answers such as, 'It plays with your mind' and because 'It creates tension and suspense' were given to back up this favourable film. This was closely followed by the 2010 Dark Knight.

Finally my last question was; 'Which use of sound do you think creates more suspense?' Here I aimed for the literacy device of sound to see what makes my audience more anxious. It was revealed that twisted children's nursery rhymes did the job best. I think this is because nursery rhymes are related to young children who are of pure innocence, so having them twisted shows disturbance.

Review of our first thriller shots

When collecting our first clips for our short thriller film opening, this was seen to be successful. Though, this did not all go to plan originally and we had to change some of our locations the film we collected was admirable for our thriller. The filming was specifically taken to capture tension and anxiety through the literacy device of lighting. Though, with all or filming the main problem we encountered was the natural light of day. We planned to go out at dusk around 4pm, through as time went on with our filming the day of light darkened so our end clip of filming will have to be re captured due to the bad filming quality.

Another problem is seen when coming to edit our footage. This is the diegetic sound within the background of our indoor scenes. The difficultly with this is, is producing a constant flow of music without it having jumped gaps between individual clips. The result of this means that as a group we will have to separately record the music and lay it under our original clips, detaching the existing audio.

Although, as a whole, we are pleased with our captured video shots due to the high quality they are presented through.

Filming locations

When filming, we used a variety of different locations so that different atmospheres were created along with emphasis upon the audience.
For the start of our thriller, we filmed within a house. This location set an everyday, normal scenario for the base of our thriller, suspending anxiety on the audience when our crisis and climax occurred. The mass of an inside filming was taken within a small study room. We decorated this location with objects such as pens, pencils and teddy bears representing a scene associated with a young girl. We also used this small room so that the thriller narratives of isolation and entrapment were present. An inside location was again needed due to the adjustment of light. This was used when filming the antagonist, using Helmet Nickel's theory of black hats and white hats, though through the use of lighting within the setting. This same room was used in two different scenes but with the adjustment of light and surrounding objects this created the base for two different atmospheres.

We also used the location of a woods. This was used for the climax of our thriller. The protagonist was filmed here and encompassed the theme of loneliness within the scene due to the surrounds almost creating an arc around the young girl. This creates emphasis and tension within the audience due to the disturbed location of which the young school girl stands alone. This location was used in the dusk of the day so that the darkness effected the sentiment of the scene towards the audience.