This is my final evaluation.
This is my rough draft of my powerpoint.
http://debsidowu.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/135/ (Link to the blog entry with the powerpoint on it)
This our final cut of our thriller opening sequence:
The main changes we made, as stated in my Rough Cut blog entry, were adding more sound effects, increasing the level of sound continuity and making the titles more appropriate.
The one difficulty we came across was when we used Adobe After Effects to create a day to night conversion allowing the scene to look as if it was shot at night. We had trouble rendering it as the computers we used were not able to handle the memory needed to do it. We therefore decided to scrap that idea and produce it regardless.
I think our final cut of our thriller opening sequence has been highly successful and was a fun task to complete.
We got 28/60 for our rough cut of our thriller so we had a lot of changes to make to increase our mark.
Our rough cut:
The feedback we got from our rough cut that the visual continuity was good but the sound continuity was failing. The real sound we had also clashed with the sound effects as it was overpowering due to the noise in the background of other cars. We were told to scrap the real sounds completely and only use sound effects which proved difficult as there was a limited amount available to us. Adding these sound effects will create a more realistic scene as they are all the ‘little’ noises that people rarely actually notice but make a huge difference in the overall production.
Another criticism was how bad the titles were. They offered no relationship to the thriller in their font, colour or size so we decided to completely remake the title sequence.
We also decided to extend the time of our initial title sequence as our thriller currently did not meet the minimum time limit. Instead of re-filming to extend the time, lengthening our title’s was the most applicable option in our case.
We will try to extend the title’s to roughly 25 seconds. We will animate them and add digetic to make the 25 seconds not look extended just to make the time limit. We will have them introduced before any footage is shown to set the scene and give the audience an inkling of what is going to happen.
Overall we do not have much to change and should not take more than a few hours to complete.
Characters involved:
Anne-Marie Nicholson as the protagonist.
Barney Nash as the antagonist.
Outline of the thriller
The basic plot our our thriller is that the protagonist is driving home and comes across an oddly placed pram in the middle of the road, she inspects it but finds nothing except a doll. She pushes the pram to the side of the road and walks back to her car. As she reaches her car door she realizes it’s open, not the way she left it. She reluctantly drives on but within a few seconds the antagonist appears to be sitting in the back of her car. The thriller then blacks out leaving the audience on a cliff hangar.
How it meets thriller conventions
A crime at the core of the narrative is shown towards the end of the thriller as the antagonist has unauthorized entry into the protagonists vehicle. The audience also percepts that more crimes will come after the black out such as rape or murder.
Our thriller offers a subdued complex narrative structure, with false paths, clues and resolutions as before you even meet the antagonist there are clues placed in the narrative. The doll in the middle of the road heightens the tension as it’s an unusual item to find plus the stereotype of doll’s in thrillers will be in the back of the mind of the audience. It’s used as a false path as it is not directly linked towards the antagonist at first but towards the end a relationship is shown mainly through non-digetic sound.
The titles used in our thriller look as if they have been written in blood which reflect an aspect of the protagonists psychological state and give the audience an idea of what will happen. Although there is no blood in our thriller the ending leaves the audience of a cliffhangar and lets them make up their own decision of what will happen which the majority of will be centered around death. Therefore I feel that the titles were a good representation.
Costumes:
Ann-Marie plays a regular girl, so she will be wearing just a simple jeans and jmper, with a coat if it’s cold.
Barney, the antagonist, will wear dark clothes, though we probably won’t be seeing them at all.
Props:
1) Pram – She almost drives into the pram, this is what causes her to stop.
2) Blanket – the blankets covering the doll so she doesn’t know what’s underneath
3) Freaky doll – she finds the doll in the pram
4) Car – She’s driving
The props used are their to create anticipation within the audience. When they see the pram covered with the blanket, they will instantly be wondering what is underneath, why is it in the road, what’s going to happen next?
Setting:
The setting of our thriller is supposed Down a country lane at night, however due to filming restrictions and possibilities, we had to settle with the best setting we could find.
We filmed in quite a wide road, though it was very quiet. Also, we had to film during the day, and are planning on making it look like vening during the editing process.
Mise en Scene:
To make our thriller realistic, we have chosen to film in quite a realistic setting. A country lane is somewhere that anyone can be driving down, which makes it more naturalistic.
We’re making it look dark in the editing process, as we feel it would be more scarier in the dark as everything will be ambiguous.
In our groups we made up and discussed two possible ideas that we could use as our opening thriller sequence, once we’d made detailed notes on each idea we then chose which idea we would develop and use as our opening thriller sequence. Idea 1 The narrative is set in a country lane late at night. The narrative starts with our female protagonist who is driving her car down a country lane when she suddenly sees a pram in the middle of the road. She gets out of the car and looks in the pram checking if there is a baby inside. Seeing that there is only a doll inside the pram she moves the pram out of the road and goes back inside her car. Unbeknown to her the antagonist entered her car, we then end with her realization that there is someone in the car with her, who turns out to e a serial rapist/murderer. Our group discussed doing this idea because it is an original plot and is based on an urban myth. Also we avoided using any of the thriller clichés that our target audience recognized in our primary research such as the protagonist befriending someone who turns out to be the evil mastermind and also the protagonist falling for very obvious traps. We don’t think that our protagonist fell for an obvious trap as anyone would get out of their car if they saw a big object such as a pram in the middle of the road where they were driving. Another positive of us doing this idea would be that there aren’t a lot of props needed and it is pretty low production. A problem we may encounter if we did this though is that we’d have to shut down a road but this may not be necessary if we found a country lane that wasn’t used often and if we filmed late. Our target audience would be people aged 16 upwards as they would be the people most likely to watch our thriller as they would find it most interesting and also because we can identify with them more so we would be making a thriller with them in mind. Our target audience would like this thriller as it is jumpy and would have unexpected twists if we were to film the whole thriller. Thriller movies that helped influence our idea were thrillers such as the Skeleton Kid and Psycho. The trailers or scenes that helped influence our idea are embedded below.
The narrative of our second narrative is set in a church/graveyard. The opening sequence starts with a news reporter opening with the news of footage of a group of teenagers in a graveyard and before we see the footage the news reporter warns the audience that the footage is disturbing. The footage starts with a point of view shot of the graveyard and the girl holding the camera sobbing as screaming for her friends then we see a glimpse of a figure then the camera dropping to the floor and all we hear is the banging of knives and the girl screaming then total silence. The footage then rewinds and we see a group of teenagers talking and waving to the camera as they talking about their camp out in the church graveyard.
We discussed this idea as a possibility for a thriller opening because we thought that it would be popular with our target audience. Films such as the Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity helped influence our idea and these films have been hugely popular with the audience we are trying to target. We used the idea of the victims filming the experiences they go through as it makes it seem more personal as we think that it can happen to any average person. Though this would be a crime thriller we’d also put elements of a psychological thriller in it, showing briefly how the antagonist makes the protagonists emotionally weak before he/she attacks them. Our target audience said that the thriller sub-genre they’d like to see more of is a psychological thriller so we incorporated that in this idea. A problem we have with this idea is that some elements could be seen as cliché because of the group of people being killed off but we plan on using the camera in different angles to create suspense and tension. We’ll also focus on the silence at the end of the sequence when the antagonist has killed one of the protagonists. If we were to use this idea as our thriller opening we’d have to ask for permission to use a church with a graveyard attached to it and we’d also have to film it in the evening.
The thriller films that embedded our thriller opening were thrillers such as the Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.
