Media Perliminary task

Costumes for psychological thriller opening

This is the type of costume Alice will be wearing in our opening sequence:

Alice is originally portrayed as an innocent victim in our psychological thriller, because she is a young girl who is being bullied and harassed by her teacher and class mates as a result of her academic underachievement. Therefore, we have chosen to dress Alice in white for the opening sequence as this conveys her innocence to the audience.  The psychological thriller Black Swan uses similar costume, as the main character (played by Natalie Portman) is shown in white in the beginning of the film when she is originally portrayed as innocent, but characters she has imagined are dressed in black to show that they are her “dark side”. We want to create the same distinction between the characters that are real and imagined in our opening and convey who the villain is so we will use the same technique. This dress we have chosen also appeals to our target audience because our film is targeted mainly at girls between the ages of 15 and 18, and this dress is targeted at the same gender and a similar age range.  This dress is also suitable because it is a conventional daytime outfit for a student like Alice and our opening sequence is going to be filmed during the day in a school.

Natalie Portman dressed in white in Black Swan:

This is the type of costume the villain will be wearing in our opening sequence:

The villain is going to be dressed in black so that he is dark and mysterious to the audience.  It also suggests to the audience that he may be the villain, so the audience is intrigued to continue to watch the thriller to find out if their initial suspicions about this character turn out to be true. Because the hoodie is plain it does not give the audience much information about this character, so the audience wants to learn more about him. The villain being dressed in black also differentiates him from Alice as she is dressed in the opposite colour.  The hood also may be useful in filming as it could be used to hide the villain’s hair and some of his face, which will create more suspicion about this character and make him more mysterious. If the villain is always dressed in black it may also indicate to the audience that he is not real, which is useful for our thriller as this villain is in Alice’s imagination. Another reason the hoodie is suitable for our opening sequence is because it is conventional for teenagers, so it is suitable for the character as he is a teenager will also appeal to our main target audience aged 15-18.

The villain in Black Swan, dressed in black:

Actor shots!!!

Our Villain...

David: (left) nuetral (right) in character. We chose him because he is white, appealing to our target audience and his face isn't the conventional villain as he is blonde and has quite rounded cheeks, but this allows him to be ambigious on whether he is a threat to Alice or not.

Alice, our heroine...

Chloe: (left) nuetral (right) sad and worried, in character. We chose Chloe because she would appeal to both our white and mixed raced target audience as she is tanned and has white features. Her cheeks also resemble those of Davids, link the two characters and implying they may be similarly minded.

And these are the actors that will play our dead extras. We are still looking for two more willing people to do it. We chose these actors because they will represent the rest of our target market as they are different nationalities and will appeal to a wider target audience.



Test shots!!!

We needed to test where the dead people would be laying and whether the jump down from the ledge by our villain would dramatic enough, so we did test shots.

We decided in order have a couple dead people hanging on the brick ledge as it establishes it is a school and also has a rough and drab look as the bricks are stained and there are the wire fences behind, implying Alice is 'caged in'.

 We also wanted to use part of the playground equiptment to create a more dynamic shot of death. We tested one of our actors laying on the apparatious and it broke down the body more, so the actor has to do less acting, making it more believable when tangled on it.

We also tested how our villain would land from the ledge. The natural but dark lighting when he was standing up on the ledge makes him look more dominant and imposing, but also hides his identity from the audience more. This also allowed us the test our low angle shots in order to make him look imposing and scary toward the audience and more importantly the character 'Alice'.

Location shots!!!

We chose to set it in a school because most of our target audience are in education. It's also a good, brown setting with the leck of grass, making it lok run down and replacing our dark lighting as it's set during the day.

Our character Alice is running past this are to get to the bike racks, which has a perfect raised area that our villian can dramatically jump off of...

Bellow is also our first attempt of having a high angle shot of the set, to emphasise shes taking a journey and establishing where Alice is running.

One problem that we have to look out for is we need to make sure we shoot this part of the scene on the same day to ensure that there is continuity, as the number of bikes chained up will vary.

Momento research on opening

Momento is a confusing opening that is very powerful in how it intrigues the audience. It uses strong conventions of dark and shadowy lighting, uses very traditional detective sartorial codes and emotive music. Momento uses slow violins that gradually gets louder and creates a tense opening. The melody also starts and stops, creating a jolted and disturbing atmpshere which doesnt correlate with the stopping and starting of the diagetic sound of the man flapping the polaroid. This makes it even more uneasy as there are slightly awkwardly timed acoustics. We are planning on not having that much background music, but we could use this technique of having jolted acoustics, maybe juggling between silance and sound to create tension.  It is also silant during the montage of detective scenes, such as when it cuts to the glasses and the blood. This creates tension and a sense of anticipation which then is emphasised by the rising whooshing sound to imply the mans actions are fast and swift. This rise to the point of tension is the effect we are aiming for when Alice looks back at the dead people, to create a sense of panic and tension, so we could try find a swooshing sound to also emphasise and dramatise Alice's action of turning back looking shocked.

The camera is also a clever use of backwards scenes to create confusion and intrigue. The opening starts with an extreme close-up of a polaroid that cleverly gets lighter instead of darker, implying that the scene is going backwards. This creates and enigma and confusion through a slow scene without having to use loads of cuts. This is a great and simple technique that we could use as we are doing a similar beginning of out opening of shooting the ending as the beginning. We also want to make it ambigious about whether its the beginning or the ending until the very end of the scene. Momento do this effectively as they use slow long scenes and then have the camera speed up at the moment of action, allowing the audience to only see a glimpse of the man on the floor, creating an enigma and forcing intrigue and confusion. We could also use this technique when by using quick editing to build tension or an enigma in the same way.

The long drawn out scenes also makes the opening dramatic and tense, as the audience is then left waiting for something to happen but also given time to really take in the mise-en-scene. However, the flapping of the polaroid breaks it up, distirbing the long scene and building tension as they get more frequent and increase along with the violins. There are then fairly quick cuts between the montage and then a quick or fast paced motion back when the main character shoots the man. These contrasting techniques of pairing the slow scenes and then quick into the shooting, making it more shocking when the 'detective' persona of the main character shoots. We can use this contrastint technique when playing around with our sound and our editing of having longer and short scenes together, to create tension and an uneasy feeling, when Alice is running.

The picture in the polaroid is also shocking and intruging for the audience. It creates an enigma around the character and presentss him as a detective. There are also other clues such as the mac beige coat and the close ups of the objects in the room, impying that he is a detective, but this convention is converted as it then unveils he is the killer at the end, creating confusion. This emphasises the importance of the sartorial codes when trying to represent our characters, so we need to make sure we dress Alice: our main character, in something that implies she is a confusing and slightly mentally unstable character. There is also the conventional dark shadowy lighting used in the opening and the detective implication is also conventional in psychological thrillers. We ourselves won't be using dark lighting, but we will have to make sure the sky is either grey or unconventionally sunny, creating confusion and also establishing and making it believable that it is a school setting. The title is also at the very beginning, ensuring that it doesn't seem like a trailer for a film and the credits such as the director etc is in the middle of the screen, ensuring that they get noticed but also drawing attention to the lightening of the polaroid, giving a very big hint the story has something to do with time. This is a clever technique in drawing attention to certain things on the screen, and we can use this by drawing attention to maybe the idea of social networking sites; an issue that we have to incorporate in order to appeal to our target audience.

Donnie Darko research on opening

Donnie Darko presents a mysterious opening using the strong thriller conventions of dark lighting, deep chilling sounds and long opening scenes to create an enigma about the story and the characters. As like Momento, there is strong sense of intrigue around the beginning setting and the situation that the character is in. This is portrayed through dark mountainous area a wide shot is looking over on. There is then a contrast in scenery as after a blacked out flash of the opening titles, the main character is seen to be riding his bike again but to a suburban area. This creates a sense of intrigue and captures the audience’s attention right from the beginning.

           

There is also deep emotive non-diagetic sound used to create a similar effect. The opening begins with almost a pathetic fallacy of thunder sounds giving the scene a dark mood. Then there are deep base sounds that underlie the opening music sequence, which is interrupted with a higher pitched piano melody and semi-angelic voices. When the two are together it suggests that Donnie could have a secret or has something wrong with him, as the piece of music is quite disturbing. This is a technique we could use in our opening, making the music a statement about her disturbing tendency of having a split personality. However, to also keep the upbeat tone that comes with the comedy brief from our questionnaire, we could also use the latter faster paced sound of the music when he’s in the brighter suburban area, to attend to that part of the brief.

The camera uses mostly panning and tracking shots to create a sense of an enigma around the character. There is more intrigue implied than suspense used at the very beginning. There is also the technique of using slow motion to draw attention to certain things in the scene, such as when a young girl was bouncing on the trampoline. This not only creates a sense of hysteria, a convention often used in thrillers but could also be used in our opening to draw attention to certain objects that hold meaning such as when it comes to the main characters computer of when the guy that she is imagining shows up. These small hints could imply a lot about our character toward the audience by using this technique.

Another technique often used in most thrillers is the use of side lighting. This mise-en-scene technique is used in American Psycho, Momento and Donnie Darko when Donnie stands facing out of the camera just before the transition back to the suburban neighbourhood. This suggests he has a split personality and works very well with the disturbing sound to create an overwhelming sense that something is defiantly wrong with him. This is defiantly a technique we should use our opening to imply our character is slightly deranged also. The bare foot, pyjama wearing teenager similarly creates the idea that something is defiantly odd about him and the situation he is found in on the floor on a mountain top. This then draws in the audience and appeals to the teenage market because of the characters lifestyle.

All of these conventions then imply that there is something wrong with Donnie implicitly and creates intrigue and mystery; all the things we would like to feature in our opening, all while appealing to a teenage market and making it believable as a thriller.

Analysis of thriller openings

The thrillers I am going to talk about are fight club and the sixth sense.

Right from the beginning fight club shows the typical conventions of a thriller. You can hear a loud unnatural sounding piece of music which accompanies the camera on a journey through Edward Norton's mind.
The film starts at the primeval center of Norton's mind where a spark flashes and starts to move through his brain, this spark shows his mental state of mind which relates to our film because our main character is mentally unstable. Fight club also relates to our film because Edward Norton's character imagines that he is talking to 'Tyler Durden', but it turns out that Tyler Durden is not real. In our film our main character also thinks they are talking to someone who is imagined to be real.



The sixth sense shows signs of a conventional thriller from the start. The opening is set at night in the bedroom of a large American house, the wife of the main character walks into the room and notices that a curtain is being blown by a small breeze. A shadow flashes behind both of them and they find an insane man in their bathroom. This can relate to our film because the way we want the 'bad guy' to move is similar to the way the insane man moved.
The sixth sense also used music to create tension, when Bruce Willis is slowly walking towards the bathroom, the music crescendos and gets louder. We have decided to use a piece of music which uses high pitched tones to build tension.