Actors.

There are only four charcacters in our sequence. They are the villain, and three victims. We see the two female victims before they are captured and when we see them tied up in the room they are with an additional male victim who is already tied up when they arrive. The villain is a male but is barely seen throughout the sequence. Victim 1 - Rosie plays one of the two female victims. She is called Rosie in the film and she is best friends victim number 2, Daisy. They get captured whilst walking through the forest one day. Victim 2 - This is Daisy the second vistim who is played by me. She is the bestfriend of Rosie and also gets abducted. The villain - This is Tom and he plays the villain, he abducts Rosie and Daisy and holds them captive in an old abandoned room.

Props.

We aren't going to use very many props in our thriller as we would like to keep it more simple and we don't need many anyway. The only things we may use are chairs, rope and if possible a portable tape recorder similar to the one above. We will need these things all in the same scene when the victims are being held hostage in a mysterious abandoned room.

Costume.

The costumes of the victims would be something usual like the clothes to the left. This would be to show that they are just normal people in their everyday life. We don't want them to stand out in anyway yet we don't want them to look strange.

This would be the type of outfit for the villain. Something very dark so that he would be hard to see and if he was to be seen people may fear him at night.

Location.

For our location we strongly agreed on an outside location preferably in the woods. We want it here because it's the type of setting that can be spooky and isolated. The woods that we have chosen to use is Bramcote woods as it is an accessible location and has space for us to move around and record. It will also look great when it is a bit darker and with the contrast changed after editing. We are also going to be using another location, this location is a room in Tom's Grans house and we are using it because it is a bare room with nothing other than a lightbulb in the ceiling. We think this will pass off as an abandoned building and suit our plot well.

Thriller Research.

There is a very fine line between a thriller and a horror movie. However there is more to a thriller movie as it is more in depth. There is always a lot of suspense to keep the audience on the edge of their seat.
More often than not the victim in a thriller would be a female and the villain would be a male as this is the stereotype.
A thriller usually starts off portraying a realistic day with normal things happening before something bad and mysterious takes place. The settings can be anywhere from a house to a field.
Some newer thriller films would be 'Inception', '127 hours' and 'I am number four'.

Storyboarding.

Today my group and I completed our storyboard. We decided on our final idea and created a detailed storyboard. To make it easier when it comes to filming, next to each picture on the storyboard we wrote a brief description of camera angle, what was happening in the scene and around about how long the scene goes on for. At this stage we are all happy with our storyboard and are going to try to keep it as similar to the storyboard as possible.

Brainstorming.

Here is an image of our brainstorm...

We brainstormed about all of the different aspects of what needed to be inluded in our thriller. We listed some sub-genres such as action, mystery and crime. We thought that we would like to use the sub genre of mystery as it is typical of a thriller. We included some different locations we could possibly use and I believe we are going to use the woods and also an abandoned type builing as we have access to these areas for filming and they will fit well with our ideas on plot. The most common ideas for the plot that we came up with were chase, torture and death. For our plot we would like to have a chase leading to being held hostage. We also thought as a typical convention of thriller it would be best to have female victims and a male villain. To make the sequence more dark and mysterious we would like to have little lighting and we may change the contrast during editing to make the film look strange. The costumes of the victims should just be everyday clothing and for the villain mainly black to represent that he is bad. For props we may need to include a weapon or an audio tape as these are very common in mysterious thrillers.

Questionairre.

1. Male or Female? Male-6 Female-4 2.How old are you? 10-20-6 21-30-3 31-40-1 3.Do you enjoy watching thriller films? Yes-4 Sometimes-4 No-2 4.What is your favourite sub genre? Action thriller-3 Mystery thriller-3 Psychological thriller-1 Crime thriller-2 Medical thriller-0 Sci-fi thriller-1 5.Where do you like opening scenes to be shot? Woods-3 Abandoned building-4 Streets-1 River/Lake-0 Unrecognisable places-2 6.What would an opening scene consist of? Crime-1 Murder-3 Mystery-2 Abduction-3 Other-1 7.What type of shots do you like to see? Short and fast-pace shots-4 Long and slow pace shots-2 Action filled beginning-1 Calm beginning-0 Combination-2 Other-1 In our questionairre we asked both male and female all of the questions to see if the answers varied depending on gender. When we asked what their favourite sub genre was, the majority said either action or mystery thriller, this means they like to have a lot going on in the film and like to be stringed along in a mystery and we will take these points into account when creating our opening sequence. We were also interested in which sort of setting was most popular so we gave some options and abandoned buildings and woods came out on top. We would like to try and incorporate both of these settings into out sequence. From looking at the results overall I think that we need to ensure our opening scene is in a mysterious location and there is plenty of things going on keeping the audience interest and fulfilling their idea of a thriller.

The Orphan opening sequence.

The opening sequence for The Orphan is very simple yet very effective. The production and distribution company logo's have been personalized to fit in with the film. By this I mean that each shot of the different companies flickers between ultraviolet and normal, there is splatters and strange drawings revealed in the ultraviolet light, this is to incorporate things that happen later on in the film and to play on the minds of the audience so they will have ideas flowing through their minds about what could happen later on.

The sound throughout the sequence is disturbing and strange, it is incidental and the sound changes as the pictures cut between ultraviolet and normal. When the picture turns ultraviolet the sound becomes slightly louder and is more high pitched and scratchy. This is to make the audience feel anxious and build the atmosphere. The transitions between the shots are fades to black and this could make the audience feel nervous of what is about to appear on the screen.Finally the title appears with a black background as it is the whole way through, it is a plain white font and it flickers with the ultraviolet light and we see a hand print and various other splatters. It is shocking and frightening for the audience to watch and it sets them up perfectly for the rest of the movie.

Research and storyboard.

Monday 7th February Today I did some research into an opening sequence, I did my research on the film 'Seven' (David Fincher 1995) I presented the research in a blog. This is to inspire me for my opening sequence. When I finished this me and my group started to come up with some ideas about what we wanted our thriller to be about. We all had ideas along the same line, something going on in a forest setting and we ellaborated from there.

Codes and conventions and opening sequences.

4th February 2011

Today in this lesson, we looked at a number of classic thriller opening sequences. Some of these were 'Vertigo', 'North by Northwest', 'Psycho', 'The Shining' ans 'Seven', these were shown to us so we could see the conventions of thriller and how some well known directors used them like Alfred Hitchcock. We then had some time to discuss what we thought were good typical thriller conventions.

Typical codes and conventions:

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  A narrative pattern that establishes enigmas in which the viewer expects to be resolved.


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  Quick pace with camera movements and sound.


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  Extraordinary events happening in an ordinary situation.


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  Titles often reflect pro/antagonist's psychological state.

Also we watched a opening sequence of our choice and annotated the location, props, mise en scene, plot, shots/editing and conventions used. Me and Rosie chose to annotate the opening sequence of the recent film 'The Black Swan'. Each of us in the class then travelled round the room reading eachothers annotations of thriller openings and then added to our own.

This lesson I feel that I learnt a lot more about what makes a movie into a thriller, some great thriller directors and also have some ideas of my own that I may like to use for my own thriller. Next lesson I shall choose a group in which I will create my thriller and begin to plan.

Alfred Hitchcock's opening title for 'Vertigo' (1958)

'Seven' opening credits

Seven Opening Sequence.

The first word that I would use to describe this opening sequence would be distorted. There is fast pace editing and cuts throughout the sequence and that create a sense of anxiousness and mysteriousness. So it sets the right tone for the rest of the movie. All of the credits, which appear between other more unpleasant shot, have been made small and the words are in different fonts and sizes. They are put on a black background which looks effective when watching it. I think they have been shot like this to show that something is not right and the black background gives a darker, negative feeling.

In the many shots that we see between the credits there is a lot of worn down machinery. Most of the things we see such as a close-up of somebody peeling off their finger skin and also a desk with a book and various other items on it tend to look very dirty and grotty. Amongst these very extreme images we also see a teabag being put into water and just a normal cup of tea being made. This makes me think that all of these messed up things that we see are part of somebody's normal everyday life.

The sequence most definitely creates tension. The audience can clearly see that something of great depth is happening but they have no idea what, it makes you want to know who, what, where and when and it very successfully does this through the opening sequence.

The editing has been thought into very much. There is a lot of overshadowing for example there are pages of a book and with the screen jolting around there is a shadow of something over the page. Another common thing used in the sequence is super imposing, a lot of shots overlap making it seem more sadistic the contrast is also lower whilst this transition takes place. The screen jumps around all the time so it's never just a still shot of something and I find this creepy and strange. The very first shot of the sequence is a huge old looking book. The book is the main feature of the sequence and the background is blurred with some hands turning the pages.

The fact that we see a person scraping off their fingerprints does not only seem brutal to us but it also perceives the idea that a crime has committed and therefore somebody really doesn't want there to be any finger print proof. There is also shots with very strange images such as some very aged and deformed hands I find this very random but fitting to the sequence. We also see somebody putting lines through random words on a sheet of paper full of writing and over the face of somebody in a picture. All of these images put together create a worrying image in the audience's head and they would start to imagine a very insane and mental character to behind all of this stuff.

Throughout the sequence the lighting is very dingy and dark. There are some images which appear very clear and easy to see however there are also a lot of blurred images that are darker and I think that this may be because the darker blurry things are what they don't want you to see and be sure of but the clearer things are important for you as the audience to be aware of.

Prelim Final Piece.

Friday 28th January 2011 Here is our final sequence... Overall our final piece turned out well, We got it completed and it met the basic requirements. It could have been better if we had a more functional group and spent our time more effectively on it. When we make our actual thriller opening I will slightly change the peopole I worked with and ensure that I manage my time properly.