Initial ideas for thriller movie opening

During our lessons at school we formed our group for our thriller opening. My group consists of myself, Millie, Evie and Kate. We have been discussing ideas for what we want our thriller opening to be based around. We want to achieve the best grade possible therefore took a lot of consideration into which ideas we thought would be successful and which we thought wouldn't. 

We have decided that the narrative of our film will be based around a girl who gets kidnapped and is held hostage for numerous months. The kidnapper treats her extremely badly and rarely feeds her. She starts to physically and mentally deteriorate. Time passes and she uses all the limitless amounts of time she has to slowly form an escape plan. Eventually, she manages to channel all the strength she has within and breaks free. Of course, nothing is that easy, the kidnapper spots her and chases her - what will happen next? will he catch her? will she really escape? we will build our suspense through leaving the audience to decide what happens themselves. We plan to not feature any dialogue within the scenes of our opening and use a voice over instead, in which we will hear the girl narrating us through what is happening in her tape recorded police interview. However, again, as we dont want to give the whole film away, we are limiting the dialouge to a minimal amount.

Obviously before coming up with our final narrative, we had a few other ideas. However, when looking into them further we realised they would either be unsuccessful or would have been difficult to achieve. For example; we originally wanted to show the girl getting kidnapped and being driven away in a car. We later realised this is not possible seeing as we have no access to a car and we cannot drive. We also wanted to film a scene in which the girl gets quite badly injured however we realized it would be a struggle to create a successful scene as we don’t have high tech make-up or hollywood type editing software, therefore it wouldn’t look realistic, which could have an impact on how successful the overall opening would be. We also originally wanted to have two girls getting kidnapped but quickly rejected that idea as we feel for the genre of a thriller, it would have more of an impact if the girl was alone because she then becomes more vulnerable. We also want to show her mentally deteriorating and felt this would be hard to make happen if she had the company of someone else. 

After settling on our narrative we began  to think about mise en scene features such as costumes. For the main character of the kidnapped girl we want her to have ratty, un-brushed, filthy hair, ruined makeup, a withdrawn pale face and tattered clothing. We think using costumes will make the film look more professionally and it will be more believable. We plan on working on the costumes and make-up further.

We also began to think about music and sound effects. We decided on editing them in after we have edited our film so that we can see which ones fit it best and make it look realistic. We think music and sound effects are an important feature within thriller films and can either make or break them. We want minimal dialogue other the voice over because it creates the feeling of not knowing which will unsettle the audience.

Lastly, we discussed the titles and have thought that because our opening is a flashback, it is important for us to show a time shift therefore at the end of our opening we need a title to state that what the audience has just seen was 3 months earlier. As for the titles that state things like the director, producer and stars name we will place them whilst the clips are playing. As for the film company opening logos we are going to potentially put these in when we have finished editing so that we can get an idea on the length of the overall video. This will impact on whether we use one from YouTube or if we make one ourselves as only the ones we create will add to the time.

The Black Swan Review

The Black Swan is a psychological thriller directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman. It focuses on Natalie Portman's character 'Nina' and her struggles within both the prestigious ballet school she attends and also her not so subtle case of schizophrenia.

Nina is a very timid, fragile character and the head of the ballet company pressures her to step out of her comfort zone and to be bold and daring for her upcoming role in 'The Swan Lake". Nina worked so hard to gain the lead role therefore also puts a lot of pressure on herself to fit the 'perfect' template set out by not only herself, but also her peers, including her overbearing mother who treats her like a child. I think suspense is built through Nina's character as we watch her slowly start to deteriorate, physically and mentally. She challenges herself physically by trying to be perfect at her dance routine and just trying to better herself as a person and mentally because she doesn't know if what she is thinking/seeing is real or not, which must be extremely frustrating. This builds suspense because as we can see her getting weaker everyday, it foreshadows the idea that the worst is yet to come. We are left wondering what will happen to her by the end.

Suspense is also built by the camera angles and lighting. A large majority of the film is based indoors, with very little outside scenes. From this we can gather a feeling of enclosure, which we know has an impact on the main characters, they feel trapped. There is a lot of low-key lighting and hand held camera work, this helps to set an almost eerie tone and the sense of uncertainty, I think it also makes it appear more realistic. I noticed a large quantity of the scenes of Nina at home were particularly dull, enforcing the idea of her being unhappy there with her clingy mother who has always has a close eye on her.

Aronofsky uses a variety of fantasy scenes, these are usually found within Horror films so instantly will put us on edge as we don't expect to see elements like this in psychological thrillers. However, I found the use of these to be highly effective in order of creating suspense. An example of a fantasy scene within this film is the scene where Nina is in the bath, upon submerging herself beneath the water, blood begins to drop from above her, confused as to where the blood is coming from, Nina goes to jolt up out of the water when faint laughing can be heard and a creepy females face appears in front of her. I found scenes like this very successful because we can almost relate with Nina's character, we cant work out whether it is real or not. Is Nina imagining it or did it really happen?

One other feature that I found helped to build suspense was the choice of music. For example, near the end of the movie when the final show of The Swan Lake is taking place, Nina's schizophrenia becomes quite severe. She imagines that Lily (Mila Kunis)has come to hurt her in the hope that she can steal her spotlight, the two get into a fight and Lily begins to strangle Nina. Frightened, Nina smashes her up against the mirror and uses a shard of glass to stab her. Whilst this scene is taking place, loud, overpowering orchestral music can be heard. It picks up pace as the drama unfolds. I think this was successful as not only did it relate to the theme (A grand, high end show) it increased the level of suspense and tension, as the music's volume increased and sped up, we got more involved and were sat on the edge of our seats. Sound effects were also regularly used, for example the sound of the glass smashing. I think this made the film even more realistic as we didn't even have to be watching to know what was going on.

As a whole I thought this was a really cleverly planned film which had an element of surprise to it. It was not predictable at all and kept you wanting to watch till the end. It was able to give its audience an insight on a type of life that they may never have experienced themselves in a sharp, precise way.

Preliminary Task

For our preliminary task we had to film a scene in which a person enters through a door, walks over to a person already in the room and start a conversation with them. It had to show a variation of shots and angles and we had to make sure we stuck to the 180 degree rule. We worked in groups of four, my group consisted of myself, Millie, Evie and Kate. Our scenario featured two teachers, one of whom set to get married but confesses she cannot go through with it due to the fact that her fiancé beats her.

Camera Work

On a whole I think a majority of our shots were precise and successful. Some more than others, for example...
  

This close up shot was used when the bride to be stated that "she couldn't do it" I think the use of this shot was effective because it allowed the viewers to see her facial expressions clearly and sympathise with her. Even without the use of a tripod this shot was steady which I think helped make our preliminary video more professional as a whole.

This two person mid shot was also successful. It makes it clear who the conversation is between and we can get an idea on how they are feeling because we are able to see their body language, for example, the bride to be who gets beaten is slouched and touching her face, suggesting a dull mood and anxiousness. Similarly, we can see the other teacher she is confided in is sat upright and fiddling with her hands, suggesting she is worried for the bride to be. 

One not so successful shot is this extreme close up of the bruise. I think it needed to be even closer to show finer detail of the bruise. The fact that it isn't as a close as it needed to be also means that a bit of paper is visible in the bottom of the screen which I think looks a little bit unprofessional. However, we have learnt from this and now will make sure to check shots over on the camera and possibly re-do them before uploading them to the computer.

Editing

We didn't go too over board with the editing on our preliminary as it was our first time using iMovie therefore we decided just to use the basic tools to get a feel for the software. We did however trim down some of our clips to remove any unnecessary parts such as the 5 second count down before filming something and after. We also added in 2 soundtracks and placed them on appropriate areas of our video. We faded the entrance of each song and the end of each song to get a smoother finish. We spent a lot of time focusing on our continuity editing in scenes such as when Millie opens and enters the door, we wanted it to look as realistic and smooth as possible. However, there is a scene in which Millie is walking up the stairs and then it quickly cuts to her at the top of the stairs, this was an error of ours with the continuity editing. Although this was a little disadvantage on the video we now know for next time to look very closely at each shot and make sure it matches up correctly.

Mise en scene

We used a few mise en scene features such as makeup to create a realistic looking bruise and we also ensured our clothes were business like to ensure we fit the roles of teachers. I feel it was important to pay attention to small details like this because it made our video more believable and managed to show things without us actually stating it. For example, the bride to be didn't actually have to say "look at my bruise" she just showed it which I thought was effective because it built tension and allows viewers to see it for themselves, potentially shocking them.

I feel we were able to build suspense in numerous areas of our preliminary video. One good example of where suspense is visible is when the bride to be says "I don't know how to say it, it's easier if I just show you" prior to this we have no idea she is being abused or what is making her second think the wedding at all so when the idea of the audience being shown something arises, we begin to frantically wonder what she is going to show, we wonder what is making her want to call off her wedding so badly.

Did we forget to do anything?

We did forget to do a few minor things such as use artificial lighting. Some scenes are noticeably darker than others and I think this takes away from it running as smoothly as it could. Although we  did enhance the darker scenes, you could still tell there was a slight difference. The use of artificial light may have made for an overall better video.

Feedback from teacher 

Whilst editing, our teacher came round to watch our video. Whilst she said she thought the overall video was successful and ran smoothly, there was one part which showed a slight continuity error. We took this constructive criticism on board and will pay closer attention to our continuity whilst making our Horror Film.

Own feelings towards the preliminary video

Overall, I was very pleased with our final preliminary video. It was our first time properly editing a video and it really helped us in being able to film certain shots correctly. I think my group worked very efficiently together and we all took each others ideas into consideration, I would definitely work in the same group again. I think if we were to do it again, we would ensure that we had good lighting and also keep a close eye on all the editing to make sure that the video runs smoothly as a whole. We stuck well to the brief which I think helped us as to create the best piece possible. The soundtracks used fit well with the general theme of the video and was able to help the audience understand it if they didn't already.