We based our final product on techniques used by Alfred Hitchcock.
One of which is the McGuffin, in our example the key used could symbolise an
ability to escape which the protagonist doesn’t chose to take, but later they
key is of no importance at all. Another inspiration which we drew from
Hitchcock is the choice to have himself in his films. We couldn’t have any more
characters in our performance, but to combat this we placed photos of all the
cast on the desk during the window scene.
We kept the typical characters of a general thriller with the
concept of a main male protagonist and a young victim. But in our case we
created the victim as also the protagonist of the cause, which challenges the
typical media narrative.
After a suggestion we changed the ending of product so it is left
on a cliff-hanger, with the audience naive to what happened after the
protagonist escaped. This allowed us to keep the audience guessing the outcome,
which in our case wouldn’t be shown until the end of the film if it carried on.
In many ways we kept to the codes and conventions of Thrillers,
especially through the use of costume and makeup. We dressed the antagonist in
black and browns, which is typical of a villain as it makes them seem dark and
threatening. While the female protagonist is dressed in an airy pink dress
which keeps her reserved and gives the impression of innocence. This is typical
of thriller due to the general dark versus light illusion.
We based our thriller very much on the more psychological thriller
genre to create a very uncomfortable and distasteful nature. We stuck to this
genre through the lighting as we used it to create a distorted and confusing
effect which is typical of psychological thrillers.
To contradict the usual spooky aspect to psychological thrillers,
the setting we chose was an empty room in a normal house, which was used to
make the audience uneasy as it is a typical scene in which the frightening acts
are happening. At first we wanted to stick to the genre by setting the scene in
a rundown building to connote a broken nature of the narrative.
Our protagonist is portrayed as a young, teenage girl who we tried
to make as normal as possible while also presenting her as innocent. The dress
and makeup selected was specifically chosen to make her seem as harmless as
possible. The pink dress connoted that she could have been from a middle-class
and loving background due to the cut and design. This aspect allowed us to keep
to the general stereotype of the middle-class, white, female of humble
background is perceived as the polar opposite of villainous.
The antagonist on the other hand is shown to use an old disposable
camera and the costume used suggests that he is from a rural community which
could also suggests that he lives alone and has no social awareness of how to
act around ‘normal’ people. Therefor we had the character wear hiking boots and
beige. This also suggests that he is a bit nerdy, which would connote
insecurity, anti-social behaviour and bizarre actions which aren’t seen as the
norm.
We used a lot of low-angle shots while the antagonist is on
camera, and high-angle shots while the protagonist is. We chose to use this as
it clearly represents the general stereotype of the male control and power over
females. The audience is seen to look up at the male and see him as threatening
while the female is looked down upon and looks weak and sheepish.
After doing some research into some of the big film distribution
companies and we concluded that the company Lionsgate would be the most suitable.
This is due to the fact that it is known for disturbing psychological
horror/Thrillers such as the Saw films. Most recently they have produced and/or
distributed films such as The Cabin in The Woods and The Hunger Games, some of
the best sellers of 2012. The fact that it is such a large and well known
company would create a lot of advertisement, as trailers would be shown during
other similar films produced by the same company. The use of advertisement is
extremely important in selling out a film, so the use of such a label would
help create interest for the film as it could afford to create posters and sell
on its own site which would draw in keen followers. This also means that it
could be advertised world-wide and not just in one or two select countries. The
concept for our Thriller overall could be shown on television but would be more
suited to the big-screen as it could be rated to allow those who wish to watch
it to decide whether they are comfortable to watch it or not. This choice could
be made through watching trailers on sites such as youtube, twitter and
facebook which have links with many of the big production companies who have
the funds to pay to advertise. This company could also use web 3.0 to sell as
trailers could be advertised to those browsing the internet through Google who
had already shown an interest in current films or the company itself.
The audience could be attracted by the dark and uneasy narrative.
The story itself can make the audience feel uncomfortable and frightened –
typical of a thriller. To create this effect we used many techniques to
increase and then decrease the tension to keep the audience on the edge of
their seat. We have a soundtrack playing through much of the main action scene,
which eventually drowns out to nothing with heavy breathing – at this point we
made a loud banging of a door closing. We used this to make the audience jump
and keep them anxious for anything else which could alarm them. A technique
used through the soundtrack is the contrast between the eerie and childish
nursery rhyme and the sinister quick paced music creates an atmosphere which
shifts between spine-chilling and thrilling. This could attract the audience as
they could be constantly waiting between the change for action and more emotional
scenes.
Our target audience for our final product is mature teenagers to
young adults, between the ages of 15-25. We think this because the characters
in the Thriller are between these ages allowing the audience to relate. While
most Thrillers are stereotypically watched by a male audience we believe that
our Thriller could be aimed at both genders.
This is because we have a female protagonist as our main character which
could contrast with the ‘norm’ of the narrative of a thriller in which the protagonist
is a strong male figure. We did not portray the main female as a femme fatal,
which could suggest that the Thriller is not aimed at a male audience but that
of a young female audience as they can connect and sympathise with her
innocence. But on the other hand the
strong male antagonist could allow the male audience to want to protect the
younger, delicate protagonist.
I think we have learned a lot about technologies while making this
task. Before creating this I knew very little about the effort of creating and
then editing a short film which allows me to appreciate the technology given.
We used both an HD camera and a SD camera and we were able to contrast how good
the quality of the picture appeared, and we could decide which was the most effective.
We chose to use the HD camera to film as we could use such big files on the
editing software Pinnacle Studios, and the quality was far stronger which
allowed us to film smaller details which could otherwise go unnoticed, it also
made our final product seem far more professional.
The editing software which we used to create our final product was
Pinnacle Studios and we also used Final Cut Express. We found that the HD
camera wasn’t compatible with Final Cut Express but was with Pinnacle studios,
so we decided to use this instead, though the software wasn’t any stronger or
weaker than the Mac’s. Though the software’s were difficult to use at first I
found that we became much stronger at using them through practice and are much
more confident now then we were before.
To create our soundtrack we used the software Audacity and we used
the same software to create the sound effects such as the camera shutter and
the ‘chopping’ noise. We used a microphone to get the best results in all these
aspects. We found that this was much like the system Garageband which we have
used before so it wasn’t hard to get our head around. It was an extremely
helpful and simple system to use which had great results, especially while
creating the ‘Oranges and Lemons’ soundtrack in which we had to sing for.
After creating our preliminary task during the first months of the
year we found and were advised a few improvements to consider when creating our
final product. Something which we learned from our preliminary task was the 180
degree rule. In our preliminary task we broke this rule many times and we
thought that it affected the flow in our finished product. We made sure not to
beak this rule in our full product by storyboarding exactly what we wanted the
outcome to look like and thinking of ways to work around the shift if the
setting didn’t allow us to film in this way at first glance.
We also found that we needed to work on our technique while
building tension; we thought that the Preliminary task didn’t use any
techniques to build tension and the results were quite snappy. We took this
into account for the final product and used an increase of music, sharp sounds
from silence (eg. The door slamming), and increase then decrease of pace and by
fooling the audience into believing a character is there. On our first cut of
our final product we found that we needed to add more tension by adding
appropriate music while would speed up the pace.
We also used the storyboard to keep track of how long our final
task was. We found that while filming our Preliminary Task we went over the
expected time a lot. And it was till overtime after we had finished by thirty
seconds. To combat this we kept strict
measure on how long each scene should be, and with only a slight bit of
narrative which we found took up most of the time in our preliminary task we
managed to keep each shot as short as possible. The addition of quicker paced
scenes also helped combat this.
Though we found that the lighting was very good in our Preliminary
task we wanted to make it as strong as possible, this time using a stronger
lamp, instead of a torch on a phone. We found that this also lit up the room
more so the shadows weren’t as distorting as the first time, but still created
shadows and the desired effect.
By Rebecca Gatfield
