Location

For the location of our opening we originally wanted to set it outside by a canal, we then thought about this more and listening to the feed back from teachers we realized that our story-line is already quite cliche, and by setting it outside we are adding to this. We came up with the idea of setting it in a bedroom, we all had roughly the same idea of what the bedroom would look like, so i went home and took pictures of my spare room, what i thought would be a good place to set it.

Props

For our thriller opening we want our room to look different from what would usually be associated with a thriller film. After we thought about the location, we then thought about what props we could use in the room to make it look different, we looked in the art cupboard and got some ideas to push us forward in our planning stages.

Location

For our opening we have been thinking about where to film it. We wanted a location that isn't cliche but also that is associated with a thriller. we came up with the idea of locating it by a canal, we haven't seen or heard of a thriller film that is located by a canal, because hannah lives near one she offered to go and take pictures of it so we could see if it was suitable for our opening.



I think this would be a good location, i think that it would be more effective if we shot is either in the morning when it is still slightly dark or in the evening.

Brainstorm

We did a brainstorm in lesson to come up with ideas for our thriller opening, we thought the most important thing to think about was the basic story line, from that we could figure out the events that would take place. We thought that a flash back would be a good idea, this is because form past experience of watching films danni, hannah and i all enjoyed this sort of interesting openings of films and from our research we found out that our target audience prefer films that involve a bit of thinking. Our idea was to zoom the camera into our characters eye, giving the effect that it was going into her brain we then were going to create a montage  of pictures of her past, we also thought about having something in every pictures that connects with each other, so at the end of the film the audience can relate them together. We also thought about deaths, because we want our female character to die, we were thinking of different ways this could happen, originally we wanted to have it as a stabbing but soon realized that this had been done many time before
and we wanted to do something different.

Mise-en-scene

1) Lighting and colour -  Lighting helps the audience assume what type of genre the film is through the way the lighting is displayed. for example there is low key lighting (which is usually used in thrillers) and high key lighting. In my group we are going to be using different levels of low key lighting as this creates a mysterious atmosphere. Colour is also a convention for mise en scene as it associates emotions with different colours. For example:

• White typically represents purity and innocence
• Green typically represents envy 
• Black represents evil or danger through the darkness 
• Red represents lust or love, anger or danger, blood or violence
• Blue represents coldness, sadness or depression
• Yellow-represents sunshine or happiness

In our thriller film opening we will use colours such as red, black and white to symbolize love, violence, blood and death.


2) Costumes and make-up/hair - The use of costume and make up make actors develop more as a character which creates a forced judgement  on how the audience perceive them. The costume may include things like style of dress, garments, accessories and hairstyle. Make-up can make characters either seem more appealing/glamorous or normal (without makeup). Make up in the earlier years of cinema was used to highlight facial features as black and white films could not show every detail. In thriller films make up is used to create a fearful effect, for example by smudging their make up it will make women look more in need or in danger. Ripped costumes give the impression that something bad has happened, suits can make a character look more important and black clothing can make someone look more sinister.

3) Setting and props - Location is key when it comes to mise-en-scene as it sets the tone of the film. This can be an outside location or an inside location. With a thriller film the typical conventions of setting would be a dark ally or woods. However these conventions have been used to much making them become cliched. Props  can help determine the narrative, identity of character and genre. Semiology can come into this as well such as by using to a gun to symbolize violence. 

4) Facial expressions and body language -  By using this the camera is able to capture the emotion of the characters. This includes hand gestures, postures, and facial expressions which is shown clearly by the physical, mental, or emotional actions. With the non verbal communication the audience is able to assume characteristics about the character on how they are feeling by not being directly told. For example, if a character is scared we can tell by their worried facial expression.


5) Position of characters and objectives in a frame -  The way characters are positioned within a frame can tell the audience a lot about the character. This includes levels of social status by which how the characters are centered and angled. In thriller films, a murderer usually the dominates the scene and the victim  which can be displayed by staging the levels of the characters.

Thriller Questionnaire

Our thriller questionnaire overall got us back some good primary research. The questions we asked were more related to our idea and the feedback was good although some of the questions were hard to understand if you didn't know alot about thrillers which caused us to sometimes influence the answers that were given or otherwise they were left blank. When we asked our audience wether they preferred 18 or 15 rated films the majority of them said 18 because the content is not limited, they also said that they would not expect to see anything explicit in the first two minutes even in an 18, this tells us that we should just build up the suspense and atmosphere in the opening. Further more we also found out that our audience would rather the setting be somewhere unsuspecting like a normal day-to-day scene. Rather than a woods or a usual aery atmosphere because it has been done to many times and it is typically associated with thrillers. For the protagonists and antagonist we found out that they would prefer the protagonist to be normal looking and attractive, and the antagonist to look normal too, this creates the effect that the antagonist could be anyone.
We also found out from our research that the titles should be black or red this ties in the the thriller feel. We associate black with darkness, and red with danger or anger. We also asked what their favorite thriller films were, although some people were unsure of what films classified as a thriller this enabled us to go away and watch these films to get ideas of story lines. We also found out that are audience like to be in suspense for the first part of the film, to keep them interested and thinking.
I think we gained some good information from our questionnaires although some of the information was vague, I think we could have done a group discussion to improve this that way we could have gone into more detail.

In thursdays lesson we looked at some thriller openings that previous years had created. After watching them we had to think about what grade they would be given, this helped me to focus on everything that happened in the clip, including camera, mise-en-scene, sound, editing and titles. Some of the clips had really good ideas and pulled them off well but some didnt, this made me realise that it was going to be difficult to get everything perfect. When we graded them we had a mark sceme to help us, I found this helpful to look at as it had everything you need to include to enable you to get top grades. I noticed when watching previous openings that some of the same story lines had been used variuos times this made me think that our opening needs to be different.