Story Board

Shot List

Shot List for Opening by Alex Price on Scribd

Actor Consent Form

3 Ideas

Job Roles

Pitch Video

Pitch

Pitch by Grace Ilett on Scribd

Typography Design

Opening Sequence Timeline

Thriller Opening Timeline by Grace Ilett on Scribd

Sound Effects

Production Schedule

Location Scouting

Production Ident

Actor Auditions

VoxPops Video

VoxPops Evaluation

What is your favourite thriller film?

There was a variety of respondents which tells us that people like a variety of different things about thrillers. Some respondents answered with films that are similar and are produced by the same production, this signifies that the audience prefers a certain type of thriller and links to the sub-genre question. We asked this question so that we could get an idea as to what type of thrillers our audience likes, it could also help us get an insight to title for our film as the majority of the titles were short and simple, and they didn’t give much away about the film itself.

 

What makes it effective?

We asked this question so that we knew what the audience finds makes a thriller effective. We wanted the audience to use media terminology so that it would be relevant to our findings. The majority of the respondents replied with soundtrack and the tension built. This is important to know so that we can include these in our opening sequence to make it as effective as possible and want the audience to continue to watch it.

 

What is your favourite thriller subgenre?

The most popular answer we got was horror. This tells us that we may need to include some elements of horror in our opening as the majority of respondents liked this specific sub-genre. We asked this question to find out if people liked our subgenre and if we needed to change it to another subgenre, or even add elements of the preferred sub-genre. We mostly expected the answer to be horror as it typically linked and sometimes confused with thrillers. Also the majority of the respondents favourite thriller film (Question 1) were horror subgenres. Therefore we guessed that the majority of the respondent’s answers would be this.

 

What conventions would you expect?

We asked this question to get an idea as to what the audience knows about the conventions and what they would most expect in a thriller. We wanted to know this because it would inform us to what the audience notices in a thriller and what they remember about it. The responses we got were similar to the answers from “Question 2: What makes it effective?” this tells us that once again our opening needs to include a good soundtrack and we need to create a lot of high tension scenes.

 

What conventions would make your ideal thriller?

This question is similar to question 4 however we wanted to know what the audience would most prefer in a thriller or in this case our opening. We needed to know this as it will depend

What conventions we will end up prioritising as the respondents favour them.

Similarly the main response was tension and low key lighting.

 

What makes a thriller thrilling?

This question is similar to question 2 therefore we expected similar answers. The answers we received were based around the general atmosphere and people expect jump scenes. From these answers we know that our audience find these elements thrilling and we should include them in our elements.

Mise-en-scene Planning

The location our group has chosen will be a graveyard. This location will work very well for us because it follow our narrative and because we want to make a spooky thriller trailer the graveyard will give an eerie atmosphere. Because our location is a graveyard we need to be able to set the scene and use this as a significant setting for the trailer as a reminder to the viewer’s where they are and its importance. This location adds a variety of mystery and danger to the setting and can create confusion to the audience whilst still trying to follow a narrative which the audience will understand and follow. This will also make the audience feel sympathetic to the protagonist because of this setting, we want the audience to feel the characters emotions to waking up in a graveyard confused and scared. Because we want to use an older cemetery it has gravestones which have eroded and become broken down which conveys the death of the people creating an eerie atmosphere. The setting also connotes the danger involved being in a place which has rumours for years which play in your mind where he is safe or not as well as a woodland area adding to the sceptical emotions of the protagonist.

 

The costume we will be using will be clothes that are suitable for the year we want to be set in. We are most likely going to set it in the 80`s, 90`s or 2000`s so the protagonist will be wearing jeans which we will add mud stains and rips to connote the mystery to why he has the run down clothes and what happened. They will also wear a long sleeve shirt which is splatted with blood stains and what appears to be a significant rip in the top. This will also connote the danger and mystery to why they have it and where it could have come from. This adds to the conventional clothing and marks from a thriller film.

 

For the make-up we will use latex to create scars and use fake blood which looks real to make scars on the protagonists face as well as their clothing. The scars add to the mystery of why this has happened. The main idea of our thriller is to create an eerie atmosphere and confusion to the audience and have them question why he has them but make it easy to follow so it doesn’t become boring to watch. We felt this time period of clothing and make up will give good effect and a sense of realism to the audience. The make-up we will do also will connote typical violence which is a typical aspect of a thriller film.

 

The lighting in this thriller trailer will need to be a grey day so it creates a dark eerie atmosphere but we don’t want it dark light night time so it creates this atmosphere as to why he’s there in the middle of the day only just waking up. A grey day is also very typical for a thriller and will connote the eerie atmosphere. The lighting will be natural for the graveyard but we will use a torch on one scene for some significant photos on the wall which will be shown individually with a torch to show their significance and placement. We want the graveyard scene to be natural because the dark grey sky will connote the mystery itself. Because we want our piece to connote mystery we will use titles which are very effective to the setting of our piece. Our main idea for a title is a shot of leaf and then the wind will blow it away and reveal the title. We thought that this would be effective because it’s a very eerie shot using a dark background and with the season being autumn the leaves will be very dark and begin to go brown which is a dark colour connoting the eerie atmosphere. Using different filters could also work for our piece using match on action in shots between natural colour and black and white which could be very effective with eerie music the black and white will connote the setting and mystery.

 

The props used in our piece will be photos of the protagonist which tells a story as the trailer goes on. It shows shots of the protagonist’s life and we took this idea from the conjuring as we felt it was very effective to create tension and an eerie atmosphere. We will try to add tea stains to the photos too which will make them look dated as well as edit some photos so they look like they were taken in the time period we choose. For the main prop we will use a gravestone which will be the most significant prop because it will mainly be shown the whole way through the trailer as it is significant to the protagonist as if starts the story off because it is his gravestone which he wakes up on and this creates confusion and mystery which we want the audience to feel the most.