Saturday, 22 January 2011

Section 2: Red Eye Analysis

Narrative structure:
  • A young woman is travelling on a plane to an unkown detination to the audience and whilst she is away the hotel that she manages is being taken care of by her assistant.
Codes and conventions:
  • transformed city- the area that is in the clip seems to be a normal everyday working environment and because of the genre of the film the audience is mad aware that it will more than likely change
Camerawork:
  • close ups of the two women characters faces to show the differences in their levels of calmness and how professional they are
Mise en scene:
  • Girl behind desks actions and expressions showed the audience that she was nervous
  • girl in car was very calm and expressed her role as a hotel manager by being calm an showed the audience what her character is like
  • Father was persuasive over the phone to his daughter showed that he has control as a parent
  • both the women were dressed in suits which shows that they are business women
  • old couple were wearing classy old fashioned clothes which is a reflection of their age
  • dad was dressed in comfortable clothing which is a reflection of his homely setting
  • the settings were a hotel, airport, taxi and a house and this all came together to be linked because of the phone calls that were happening on screen
  • the house lighting was very soft and calm which showed that the audience that tis is a comfortable setting
Sound: 
  • Diegetic- car, airport background noise
  • Non diegetic- music in opening was like all thriller music dark and ominous and suggests that there was some deceptive acts taking place on screen
Graphics:
  • white text against a black background to make them stand out to the audience






Friday, 21 January 2011

Section 2: research into examples of comparable products: American Psycho Analysis

Narrative structure:
  • a man who lives alone and is also very succesful and has everything he wants is suffering from depersonalisation, which is a mental disease and he starts to become more and more insane as he kills people
Codes and conventions:
  • blood so that the audience have some idea about the genre of the film and that it does contain gore and violence
  • dark music that creates tension within the audience
  • transformed city- this is because it is a normal working class place and the scene is overshadowed by these murders
  • killer with a mental disease which is quite common within the thriller genre

Camerawork:
  • slow track in around the killers home which gives the audience a personalised view of the killers day to day surroundings
  • close ups of killers face so that te audience can see what his emotions are when he is in the normal state of his illness through the day and when he is about to kill someone, this shows the contrasts and hoe even though the audience can relate to him when he is normal we can easily be fooled by his posture on screen
Mise en scene:
  • when the character is getting frustrated he appears to get angry and says things that are disterbing to the audience
  • the settings are always the same places in a sequence to one and other- home, work, resteraunt, club and this shows the audience that his day is always the same as the day before
  • the costumes of the character are always suits which suggest that he is a succesful man in what he does
  • the costumes of the waiters in the start of the film suggest that the action is going to take place in a resteraunt
  • the lighting in his home is very bright and this is where he also kills a man and this is unsettling to the audience as most thrillers have very dark lighting and because this is bright at a death scene it kind of hightens the tension
Sound:
  • opening sequence has very dark ominous music which is setting the mood and creating tension before leading to a climax for the audience
  • the music at the death scene in the home of the killer is diegetic noise because it is what the character decides to play so that he cant be heard and this creates the tension for the audience but it also makes it more personal for them also
Editing:
  • foreshadowing
  • cutting from scene to scene and this makes the audience feel the lapse in time that the character feels because it is like the day is just flying by and only represents itself to the character as a sequence of events and not a continuous process, and this could also be considered to be elliptical editing
Graphics:
  • opening scene had dark drops of supposed blood against a white background which is an indication to the audience of genre and the tone or mood of the film
  • 
  • in the laundromats on the sign it said "you feel better when your clothes look better", and this relates to the characters attitude to the way he must look and the way in which he feels about himself

Thursday, 20 January 2011

Section 3: Brainstorm of content and classification of film








Ideas for film
Idea 1: Title- Who am i?
A student who appears to be a regular teenager liveas a typically normal day, gets up goes to college and comes home and goes to bed. This night though is very different because when he wakes to the sound of his alarm ringing her realises that he has no familiarity with any of his surroundings and then makes a shocking descovery that he is completely covered in blood that isnt his own. A full police investigation goes into place for a missing girl and the boy then realises that it is someone from his college, but he does not know that he isnt the normal guy he though he was because he has Schizophrenia and he must decide to hand himself over to the police or remain hiddedn to protect his family.

Idea 2: Title- Cellar
A young woman is screaming in a cellar and cant understand why she is there. She has been kidnapped by an unknown stranger who she met at the bus stop and when she got off he followed her to her home and then she cant remember her journey to this dark damp place.

Idea 3: Title- Ground level
A 16 year old wealthy girl has been told that she has a job interview at her local shopping centre, but when she goes to leave the lift to go to the interview the door wont open, then it is revealed that she is being watched by an unknown captor and little to her knowledge does she know that she is being held hostage but also at randsom by terrorists who want all of her fathers fortunes.

Certificate Classification
After discussion and planning the decision was that the classification of the film has to be 15, this is because some of the content of the film was decided to be to mature and adult themed for anybody under the age of 15. Also the reason the film is goin to be of 15 classification is because there is not alot of extreme violence and gore that makes it for 18 or above. Also because the characters in each of the film ideas are either teenagers or early 20's the audience that goes to watch this will be able to relate a little bit more to the characters.


Wednesday, 19 January 2011

Section 4: Audience research

I have conducted a questionnaire that will geive me the information needed to produce the opening sequence of a thriller that will meet the audiences needs. The questions involve what the audience expects to see, hear and expect. They do this by covering the music, plot themes and thriller sub genre.
Here is an uncompleted copy of the questionnaire:


1.       Age:

2.       Gender:                                 Male                       Female

3.       Which one of these types of thrillers do you prefer?
Crime Thriller
Conspiracy Thriller
Mystery Thriller
Political Thriller
Religious Thriller
Supernatural Thriller
Psychological Thriller

4.       Why do you prefer this type of thriller?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

5.       Do you want there to be a mix of more than one type of thriller?
Yes                          No
6.       If yes, which thrillers would you like to see mixed?
Crime Thriller
Conspiracy Thriller
Mystery Thriller
Political Thriller
Religious Thriller
Supernatural Thriller
Psychological Thriller

7.       Do you think anticipation, adrenaline and rush are all key elements in a thriller?



Yes                          No

8.       Do you want the music to heighten tension and suspense?



Yes                          No

9.       When watching a thriller do you prefer to be:



Intrigued                                Scared                                    Excited

10.    Do you think that every thriller has to have a plot twist?



Yes                          No                           Unsure

11.    Do you prefer to relate to the characters?



Yes                          No                           Unsure

12.    Why do you prefer this?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

13.    Which of these plots do you prefer to see in a thriller?
Plot Twists
Revenge
Kidnappings
Horror Personality
Obsession
Conspiracy Theories
False Accusations

14.    Why do you prefer this kind of plot?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

15.    Do you believe that every thriller has to have a tragedy?

Yes                          No                           Unsure

16.    Do you feel that the best thrillers are those that incorporate different types of characters?

Yes                          No                           Unsure

17.    Do you feel that there should be a romantic element in a thriller?

Yes                          No                           Unsure

18.    Do you feel that there has to be murder in a thriller?

Yes                          No                           Unsure

19.    What would you expect to see in a thriller?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

20.    Do you think that thrillers should have a sad or happy ending?



Happy                     Sad



I handed out 30 copies of this questionnaire to various people and here are the results that i have gathered from my research-





















Tuesday, 18 January 2011

Section 5: Treatment

The film idea that we decided to develop is idea 1-Who Am I? We decided to use this idea because it was a better suited idea to the results that we gathered from our research. The ways in which it was suited better was that the target audience and the classification of 15 were close in age to more than half of the people who completed the questionnaire, also because the more popular sub genre chosen by people was a psychological thriller suited this idea because it is of the same sub genre that people chose as their favourite.

FILM TITLE- Who Am I?

SYNOPSIS
For small town hard working student Stephen Smith, everyday is a formality of itself. The plain everyday life of a teenager...But this night changes his life forever. In this dark deep psychological thriller, Stephen awakens into his reality and shocks not only his town but himself.

TREATMENT
BEGINNING (opening sequence)
The alarm rings and Stephen Smith gets ready for school, he’s wearing his usual plain t-shirt, jeans and trainers, and he leaves the house after saying goodbye begrudgingly to his mother Janet Smith. After a hard days work like usual he arrives back home and goes upstairs (cuts to scene outside) and then a weird sound meets his ears, it wasn’t the alarm on his mobile phone, he was used to that it the morning, this was different,  he was cold and he could hear birds. He sits up and realises he’s outside, he then comes to the sudden realisation that he is completely covered in blood, panicking he jumps up and looks for the source of his bleeding but he cant find it. He comes to the realisation that the blood is not his own, he panics and he starts to run as fast as he can in the first direction he sees. (Opening credits, dark ominous music).

MIDDLE
After Stephen arrives home he locks himself in the bathroom and gets a shower, he tries desperately to get the blood out of his clothes with bleach from under the sink but it doesn’t work. The rest of the night he sits up wondering how he got out last night.
(Cuts to police station in detective’s office)
Detective inspector Derek Thompson walks around the office talking to his colleagues who are all professionally alert, he tells them of a 17 year old girl who was reported missing at around 7:15 earlier that night, he also tells them that he has a gut feeling that this case might be linked with the call that a body had been found in the woods just outside the town. He decides that he will go to the home of the missing girls’ parent and break this possibly soul crushing news to them.
(Cuts to Derek Thompson getting out at girls home)
Derek Thompson arrived at the home of the missing girls parents at precisely 11:45 pm, he knock’s on the door and apologises for the disturbance so late into the night but he has some potentially devastating news for them and he would like to come in as this news is not for the prying eyes and ears of the neighbourhood. He sits them down and tell them of the found body and that they need to come and identify if that’s ok, when they arrive at the forensic lab they are heartbroken as they see the distinctive tattoo their daughter purchased the day of her 17th birthday 3 weeks ago. Detective Derek Thompson launches a full scale investigation into the murder of the girl and tells her school. The next day Stephen arrives at school and is told of the girl who has gone missing and it was the girl he’d liked for his entire time at school but never plucked up the courage to talk to her, but it was where she was found that linked with his place of awakening the morning previously that bothered him so he starts to doubt his own non involvement in this issue. He also thinks about the weird event this morning when he was followed in a car by a strange bearded man, but he shrugs this off.
(Cuts to a week later)
Derek Thompson sits alone in his office pondering the papers in front of him, all depicting images of dead women all recently taken photos of the last few day’s events that had turned his once clean nice town into a media frenzy hell hole. He goes to the scene of the first murder to try to find some clues like countless forensics before him had tried. When he arrives he sees a tall man roughly mid 40’s standing at the scene, he shouts asking him what he is doing but the man turns and starts to run, Detective Thompson gives chase and calls for back up suspecting this man might be the one he’s after, as he rounds the corner he realises its quiet as he turns to leave the tall man he chased hits him with a thick branch from a tree and the last thing Thompson remembers before the black veil descended was the man stood over him.
(Cuts to hospital)
Detective Thompson wakes in a hospital bed surrounded by his family, he is there for 2 weeks recovering from what was a serious head injury, when he gets back to work he launches a joint operation to the one already in place and this time he has a purpose, an image to look for, a possible suspect.

ENDING
Stephen was on the run, on the run because of the now crushing guilt he was suffering from, he knew not why he was murdering and he could not remember doing it, it’s raining and he’s tired cold and hungry. As he walks along the motorway he cannot escape the feeling of being followed, this same feeling had been with him all month and he kept thinking of the man who had followed him to school a few weeks ago, tall and possibly mid 40’s. A few hours go by when a car pulls up in front of him and an arm appears out of the window signalling him to come forward, Stephen approaches slowly wondering if this is it, finally someone is going to tell him what’s going on, finally give him some answers. He wasn’t scared he had a gun in his pocket, he fingers the trigger not fully trusting his hidden “friend”.
Stephen gets in the car and he realises it’s the man that followed him to school a few weeks ago. Stephen pulls the gun on him and asks who he is and why he has been following him.
The man tells Stephen that he is his father, Paul Smith, and that he knows what has been happening to Stephen. ( music comes on emotional violin) Shocked and sickened Stephen exits the Ford Escort in complete and utter shock, he starts to walk down the road crying overcome by his overwhelming guilt and his new told apparent truth, Paul Smith gets out of the car screaming for his son to come back so he can explain things to him but Stephen persists on down the road wishing the voices in his head would be quiet for 5 minutes so he could start to make sense of it all, but they kept on screaming( music turns deep toned and ominous heightening sense of danger)  ‘kill him, he never cared about you!!!’, his father catches up with him and pulls him to attention but Stephen whips the gun round and points it in his fathers face. He starts to cry, he asks him why he left asks him what had he done, Paul Smith explains and pleads with his son to calm down. Stephen wants to know why, why he has been following him. Paul tells Stephen about their family history and that every generation of male has suffered from the mental disease Schizophrenia and they all started to do things at the age of 18 when it is said that the brain matures properly. Stephen cant believe it that all this time he was so perfect at everything he did and now he knew he was nothing more than a murdering freak, he points the gun at his temple and shouts at his father to leave because he doesn’t want anybody to find him his father pleads with him not to do it that there is a way out, he tells Stephen of his own illness being cured.
Stephen shouts and says that there is no way out, only death is the answer. The voices in his head were getting louder, they were blocking out the noise of the pounding rain, his head hurt he wished the pain would stop, and the voice was telling him “death will become our medication”.
(music stops and only sound of the rain can be heard, voices are still louder) Stephen pulls back the pin with him thumb
He looks his father in the eye “I’m sorry”
(Cuts to woods next to the motorway)
Derek Thompson is at the scene of the first murder when He hears a loud banging crack echo through the trees, he runs in the direction of the noise, when he arrives at the edge of the motorway he looks left and then right and in front of him is a body in the road and a tall man mid 40’s stood over it screaming, crying, holding a gun
Derek pulls out his own weapon and screams at the man to "put the weapon on the floor and raise your hand s behind your head!!!" , the man obliges, Thompson kicks the gun into the road and tells the man to "get on your knees!!!".
Thompson recognises the man as the one who put him in the hospital a few weeks ago, he asks who he is, Paul replies “I’m the man your looking for , the killer, this boy is my son”
Paul looks Thompson in the eye “I killed him”
(music returns and credits end the film)


Monday, 17 January 2011

Section 6: Character outlines and shooting script

Character Profile
Stephen Smith:
Stephen Smith is a hardworking, 18 year old, student who lives in a typical suburban area with his mother. On the night of his eighth birthday his dad silently packed his bags and left. Ten years on he’s set for one of the most prestigious universities as he has spent most of his life working towards a goal yet unknown to himself.
Also unknown to him is his mental condition of Schizophrenia which has been passed down to him genetically; generation to generation.
Janet Smith:
The mother of Stephen Smith, who suffers from depression and has done ever since her husband disappeared ten years ago. She is 36 and works two jobs. One as a cleaner at a factory and the other as a gym receptionist.
She met Stephen’s dad at the age of 17 but just after her 18th birthday she found she had fallen pregnant. Realising she would neither be able to give it up or get rid of it she kept the baby and dropped out of college two months before she was set to graduate and married Paul, Stephen’s father.
Paul Smith
The father of Stephen Smith and former husband of Janet Smith. Ten years ago he left and went to live in Canada, in the hope that his wife and son could never find out about his terrible mental illness. At 42 years of age he has become lonely and bored of his solitary life away from his family. Now cured of his own mental condition it pains him that he had to leave his son and wife behind without the knowledge of his sons impending mental state, but he doesn’t want them to carry the burden of his past.
Detective Inspector Derek Thompson 
A 49 year old veteran of the police force still chasing his one big catch. He lives a nice family life; a wife and two children one of which has left home and doesn’t want to know him anymore. He has worked in the police force from the age of 20 and slowly worked his way up through the ranks. He has worked on many different cases which have hardened his heart and left his wife feeling unloved, something which he has failed to detect.



Shooting Script

Scene 1- INT (Stephens home)
Shot 1
Sound- only diegetic no effects or music (phone alarm)
Big close up high angle shot – phone on desk and then the alarm goes off, Stephens hand come into shot and turns it off. (Still cam)
Shot 2
Sound- diegetic again (Stephen movements and noises)
Low angle Mid long shot- Stephen gets out of bed and puts on a shirt over his nightclothes and then yawns.(still cam)
Shot 3
 Sound- diegetic again (Stephen movements and noises)
Low angle long shot- Stephen walks down the stairs ready for sixth form (camera pans left and tracks out to low angle long shot) and he walks out the door waving by unenthusiastically to his mother Janet.

Scene 2-EXT (Stephens street)
Shot 1
Sound- diegetic whilst Stephen shuts the door (door closing)
Big close up- Stephen’s hand closing the door (still cam)
Shot 2
Sound- Music comes on after Stephen shuts the door (light but ominous)
Worms eye mid close up- Stephen walking up street to school (pans right until camera is behind stephentrack)
Shot 3
Sound- music starts to go low toned and ominous (heightening the sense of danger)
Ped down - camera behind Stephen as he walks down the street to school(turns to an extreme long shot and turns to low angle shot)
Shot 4
Sound- music low droning tones
-          Stephen movement noises  (walking)
Eye level long shot- Stephen walking back home down the path, then camera peds down and tilts up into worms eye mid shot to look at stephen walking through the gate
Scene 3- EXT (Woods outside of Stephens town)
Shot 1
Sound- birds, phone alarm (no music)
Extreme close up- Stephen’s hand holding his phone. Stephens phone alarm goes off and his hand stops it
Shot 2
Sound- same as scene 3 shot 1
Birds eye close up- Stephen lying on floor waking. Rubbing his eyes with hands covered in blood
Shot 3
Sound- music (high pitched tones/droning)
High angle mid close up- Stephen sits up (shot angle transitions into eye level) looking at hands confused and scared
Shot 4
Sound – music continues but extra noises (slight musical tune)
long shot eye level- Stephen stands up into camera field of vision, and sees that he is covered in blood. Track out to mid long shot eye level- Shows Stephen covered in blood from head to toe
Track in to high angle shot- Stephen turns and runs down hill.
Shot 5
Sound- music (choir voices- high pitched)
Pan left into eye level big close up- Stephen looking around wildly, then Stephen runs to the right out of the shot
Pan right and ped down to low angle shot extreme long shot- Stephen comes back into camera field of vision whilst he is running away.

Scene 4- opening credits  
Sound- music drum beats high pitched sound