Our production is now finished and we have successfully made our thriller opening which is called The Journey to Possession. We came up with the name the Journey to Possession as our film shows how and why our main character was possessed. The conventions of thriller movies are the creation of suspense and the tension to create anxiety for the audience.
When a thriller movie is created it is there to create anticipation and to put audience in a state of unease. The brief that we received was to make an opening for a thriller movie that was two to three minutes long. The main focus of our thriller is on a teenage girl whose mental health is continually questioned throughout the film without people knowing her back story.
Alfred Hitchcock famously said a thriller involves placing an ordinary character into and extraordinary situation. The concept of our film would follow this if we continued to film, but when mapping out our ideas, we decided that completely turning something on its head created a somewhat overall different theme, therefore our film is back to front, the ending is at the beginning and vice versa. By following the quote of Hitchcock we intended to place the ordinary person in an extraordinary place at the end of our film, therefore creating a suspense that the audience can perceive as they will.
Our main plot line is based on the facts of the seven deadly sins: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. When contemplating ideas for our thriller we came across the seven deadly sins, this sparked an idea within our group. Our film would be split into seven subsections, and each section would represent a different sin. It becomes apparent during the course of the thriller that the main character (Lauren) is possessed, nobody knows by what, how or why, but she kills seven people that are close to her, either friends or family, on her birthday but has no recollection of doing so.
She is a danger to society and to herself therefore is confined to a mental institution which is where the opening of our thriller is set. We looked at the theory of Roland Barthes, he believed that in order to create a compelling suspense within a storyline the questions asked must remain unanswered, gripping the audience, who then foresee the action with a resolution.
For our thriller we wanted to create a narrative that would encourage our audience to continue watching the film in its entirety and also leave places in which the story could develop. Before we started making ideas and plans for our thriller we considered our target audience, we decided that it would be teens aged 15-19.This is because all of the members in our group are within the age range therefore we would have many ideas as the what people in this band would want, we also thought that it would be easier for us to find a lot of information out from people within the school. We surveyed this age band in order to find out what they look for within a thriller film, some of their answers included things such as: Scary music that creates tension - We included this by recording Lauren singing happy birthday, into garage band and putting an effect on it that made it echo. We slowed it down in order for it to have the eerie feel that we were trying to create.
Black and White - many people said that they found black and white thrillers felt as though they had more suspense. At first we did not intend to make our thriller in black and white, but after recording and starting to edit we made a few clips into black and white which gave a really good effect that we hadn't thought of.
Our thriller doesn't necessarily represent a certain group of society; it doesn't represent any socio economic groups such as teens or bands. I think at our thriller represents a deeper group of society, possibly even the people that are forgotten about on a daily basis or not usual members of society. I think that we broke certain boundaries when making our thriller, the story and plot line that we followed was vastly different to our piers. We break stereotypes as most teenage girls aged 17-19 are with their friends whereas our main character has an entirely different life.
For our research we looked at several different thrillers by different directors. We watched the opening sequence of the film Seven. The opening sequence was composed of only credits being displayed, the actors names in unusual lettering. Opening sequences like the one on Seven shows how simple attributes like music, colour and writing can establish a mood and set a scene for a film. The thriller Usual Suspects (Bryan Singers) is where we got our idea for putting the film in a different layout. Usual Suspects, unlike most thrillers that we watched showed the resolution at the beginning of the film enabling the audience to ask the question 'How did it happen?' Rather than 'What is going to happen?' We see Usual Suspects as not fitting the conventions that are usually associated with a classic thriller, which is a concept that our group were interested in recreating. We chose to use the resolution at the start as it immediately identifies and establishes the protagonist (Lauren).
Many thrillers by the Coen Brothers use semiotics and motifs; this is the case of using symbols or a recurring theme throughout the film. We used short shots to create a fast paced thriller at some stages. One shot that we tried to recreate was the shot in Barton Fink of the guestbook; we did this when making the shot of the Happy Birthday written on paper. Throughout the thriller we tried to incorporate the different ways of using happy birthday in order to keep it as a motif. The connotations of happy birthday and singing happy birthday are that it is childish, representing innocence and venerability. Another signifying idea that we used was to use quick shots at the start of the sequence of his eye, ear and mouth. This could be seen as a visual representation of the proverb of "see no evil hear no evil speak no evil" bringing a sinister and unsettling feel for the audience.
We looked into the theory of Levi Straus and the good and the evil. By only having one main character it was obviously hard for us to conquer some of the theories but by using the good and the evil we could represent it though different personalities of one person, this could also be looked at in the film Barton Fink which represents the schizophrenia of the main character.
Venerability was a key concept within our thriller. Our main character seemed to have no guidance or belief. We used different lighting and effects to help us create this feeling: Lauren was in pyjamas for the entirety of our thriller, we thought that this would give a sense of childishness and how she has no idea as to what is going on within her mind or body. We also tried to use different lighting to represent this: she sat with one spot light on her, this created focus for the audience but also acted within our theme of childishness, it could be perceived as a nightlight.
In real media products, the members of the cast such as actors and actresses are auditioned and studies in order to produce the type of character that is exactly what is wanted by the director. Obviously as a smaller institution we had a very limited choice of actors, and the make-up and clothing had to be done by ourselves, it was based on what we think would look the best when filming. The lighting that we had was created by a lamp, of which we took the lamp shade off of in order to give a plain and deprived feel. The outside lighting that we used was really good for our thriller as the clouds were thick and grey which was the exact effect that we were trying to create.
Following the BBFC (British board of film classification) we thought that our thriller would be rated at a 15. If we were to lower the age it would possibly bring in a wider audience range as it would be classed suitable for more, but we thought that if it were to be a 15 it would entice the 15+ audience as they would think it was more thrilling and have a stronger story line. In order for a thriller to be rated at a 15 the film has frequent use of strong language, or sexual activities have very little details, violence is apparent but is discrete and brief. Drugs may be used but not promoted and horror is allowed but not a detailed infliction of pain. Out thriller deals with abstract details such as possession, anger and pain being inflicted throughout.
The film Paranormal Activity was a bigger success than I think its creators could have asked for. If our film 'The Journey to Possession' was made into a main stream film I think that it would be made maybe by a lottery funding, if we were to aim bigger then Hollywood. Lottery funding has helped many small time film producers and directors such as Noel Clarke who wrote, directed and starred in the Adulthood and Kidulthood films. I feel that The Journey to Possession would benefit from a funding such as this in order to reach main stream cinemas. If we were to keep it as a small institutional film then it would be produced for sites such as YouTube, facebook or tumblr.
To attract our audience we used everything that we could that was included in the survey answers from our target audience. Our thriller is about a girl being possessed, at the moment there are several films about possession and how/why people are possessed, therefore I think that our film would attract a large audience/fan base. The shots that we used varied: we used short, quick shots in order to allow the audience into the personal space of our main character. One shot that we used was an extreme close up of Lauren's eyes; I think that this allows the audience to look straight at her rather than the surroundings that she is in.
The initial filming of our thriller was a success. We managed to film everything that we wanted in one day, which allowed us to get straight into filming when we returned back to school. We improvised many of the shots, rather than planning them all, although we did plan some, for example: the close up of the paper, and the long shot of Lauren running to the door. The camera that we used was Nikon LSR camera that belonged to me. It was a fairly easy camera to use therefore making our filming a lot easier for us. We decided to use this camera because during our preliminary task we firstly used an iPhone 4 to record our clips which worked well until we started to edit, and the clips were not in the correct format to use. During our main thriller filming we did not use a tripod which worked well for some scenes and not so well for others. When filming a fast shot some of the clips went slightly blurry, on one shot in particular this made a good effect: when we filmed from the wall to Lauren biting her nails and then to the lamp, the lamp blurred but this did give an effect that worked really well. The software that we used to edit our clips was Final Cut Express on the Macs. It was useful to use to have our preliminary to play around with on the software as it gave us a chance for find out how to use all of the different tools that it is equip with.
In comparison to our preliminary task, we as a group have found out what our strengths and weakness are. We have learnt to use different technologies and ways of making our thriller look far better than the preliminary. During the prelim task we used mainly the same shots: face or whole body shots. This did not create the best effects or portray what we were trying to achieve in the light that we had hoped. When it came to making our thriller, I think that planning was a key aspect. We made story boards and mind maps for any ideas that we had including: plot lines, camera shots, editing and sound. For our main task we researched in detail about the seven deadly sins and mental illness. We looked at how things were dealt with a few years ago and based what we did around that. It was important to us to find out what it was that we were trying to portray and that we did it in a way that was correct. When we made our preliminary we left a day to edit it which was clearly not enough time therefore our prelim did not end how we intended it to. For our main task we used three weeks of editing time in order to get our thriller completed.
The preliminary task continuity was poor and the transitions between the clips were jumpy and not well edited. It was important to us that our main task was far steadier and well put together with the correct transitions covering the clips. We used different transitions including dissolve and dip colour in order to create the change over from clip to clip smooth and in time. We used music in our thriller where as we did not in the preliminary take, I think that this was another obstacle that we overcame to make our main task far better than our preliminary.
I think if we were to do some things differently we would make better use of characters, although having one main character is increasingly effective, using more than one character would help us stick to more of the theories that we looked in depth to. I also think that by making the film the right way around would help us stick to the Propps theory etc. I also think that we could have made more use of flash backs in the film, as this may help to interpret earlier what we were trying to achieve.
The outcome of our final piece of work was remarkably close to the ideas that we had. We made some alterations along the way but we managed to create the suspension that was need for a thriller and not only meeting the criteria but exceeding it. I think that some of our shot were extremely effective, shots such as Lauren coming up the stairs or filming into her eyes. Also the shot of film from Laurens lap to the top of her head was a brilliant shot. I think that our thriller opening provided a brilliant foundation for a thriller film.
Jae Bennett
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