Presentation of Props, Location, Storyline etc...

Setting

• Starts at a college
• Follows journey home - bus/walking
• House - drive/hallway/stairs/bedroom

Character

• Teenage girl (17) - in college, looks like a normal 17 year old - Clothes: Leggings, boots, top, cardigan, scarf
• Mystery murderer

Story-line

• Camera following a young girl home, as if stalking her. 
• Out of college, on the bus, down her drive, into her house.
• As she approaches the door, it's already open to suggest someone is inside.
• Shadows created in the background to give the impression she isn't alone.
• Walks upstairs, hears a knock in the loft, follows the noise up there.
• Disappears out of sight...
• Scarf floats down the stairs (eerie) 
• Legs drop and swing to create the idea that she is dead.

Camera shots

• Starting with a mid-shot of the girls back, following her out of the college. -Being behind her gives the impression of spying.
• Long shot of the front of her, watching her walking towards it, unaware she is being watched.
• Skips back to behind her but as a long shot.
• Still following behind her but closer up with a medium long shot.
• Point-of-view shot from the girl walking towards the bus stop, appears to be alone.
• Long shot from the bus stop, so despite appearing to be alone, she is being watched.
• Another point-of-view shot to show 2 people, dressed in dark clothes with faces hidden, at the bus stop. This suggests they are relevant to the story-line but it isn't clear, this emphasizes mystery.
• A medium long shot from where they were standing of her getting on the bus. Point-of-view shot from them watching her? Mysterious.
• Point-of-view shot from the girl getting on the bus and being completely unaware that she is being watched/followed.
• Medium long shot following her walking from the bus stop to her house, appears oblivious to anything weird going on.
• Skips to a long shot from through a gap in the front door where it is left open. Watches her approach the door - Again she is unaware, looks for keys so isn't looking at the door.
• Point-of-view shot which shows her hesitation/suspicion when the door is already open.
• We considered using a medium long-shot as she walks through the door, peering through the gap first and slamming the door behind her, using this to emphasize the suspense and mystery of her being shut in the house with someone who has clearly broken in and/or been following her. 
• Instead, it cuts into the house with a point-of-view shot of her looking towards the mirror, where the reflection of a shadow in the other room slowly moves out of sight.
• This continuous shot leads to her beginning to walk upstairs, looking around for something but it appears empty.
• Next, dissolves into another point-of-view shot of her at the top of the stairs, where there is a knock and as we used a point-of-view shot, we see her sharply look to where the knock came from, revealing to the audience a loft door in the ceiling.
• Again, dissolving into the next shot. A mid-shot of the girl walking up the stairs to the loft where it appears to be dark and shadowy.
• This is a continuous shot until the end and as she disappears at the top of the stairs, almost immediately her scarf floats down in a ghostly way, intended the shock the audience but still leave them guessing what has happened. 
• It is then revealed that she has been murdered as suddenly her legs drop and just swing and slow to a stop.

Editing

Transitions

The transitions from shot to shot were very simple as final cut pro had a wide range of dissolve and fade effects that we could use. We experimented with lots out different ones for our preliminary and used the appropriate ones for our thriller such as dissolve as it created an eery, mysterious effect.

Credits

The credits were created on motion 3 on the apple mac’s and it was good as it gave us a lot of features that we could use. We tried to pick colors and fonts to compliment our genre and story-line. Red and black was perfect because it suggests crime, danger, murder and the darkness suggests mystery as 'being in the dark' about something means you don't know or aren't aware of it. The black background effect, 'Caustics', appeared eery and ghostly, like the scarf at the end, again representing death. Also, because it is delicate and dainty, it suggests and emphasizes the innocence of the victim.

Non-diagetic sounds

We customised an original track that had a section in it that we thought would be perfect for the thriller. The instrument we used to create our own melody was 'Grand Piano'. This was on top of the original track form GarageBand, 'Exotic Longing'. This all had to be converted to mp3 in order to imported to final cut pro and used in our thriller.

Final Cut Pro

The shots were cut down and edited together using this program, including the transitions. Our thriller had to be converted from final cut pro into Quicktime in order to be put on Youtube and on our blog.  

Audience profile

The opening thriller contains male dominance, this being s

hown in an already patriarchal society is likely to attract a male audience.

We also attempted to attract a male audience by using a young, attractive 

female actress.

We wanted it to appeal to teenagers as this would make it more popular as the majority of people who go to the cinema are teenagers. To do this we used a teenage girl in college so they could relate to it. 

Props

The opening to our thriller doesn't contain many props as we were attempting to create a normal, everyday setting. We used Christ the King: St Mary's college, and the 269 bus back to the girls house. She was listening to her iPod, which is a prop used to add to the 'normal' teenage girl stereotype. She got her keys out to open the door, which emphasized the door already being open as she hesitated and put them down. As she enters the house the mirror on the right is used to see the reflection of a shadow. Then at the top of the stairs, the loft door creates more fear and tension as there is a noise from up inside it. The scarf first a

ppears to just be part of her outfit but at the end it drops in a ghostly way, this symbolizes her death.

Lighting

At first, during the journey home, natural outdoor lighting is used and not edited as it emphasizes the regular everyday setting. As she arrives home, we played about the lighting a bit to create a shadow in the mirror, this was done by just shining a light towards the wall where the shadow appears and having somebody walk past to cast their shadow onto this wall. The nearer she gets to the mysterious noises which has the audience even less in the know and even more curious, it gets darker to emphasize the idea of them being 'in the dark'.

PRELIMINARY TASK

Here is our final video for our preliminary task 

Our Opening to a Thriller

Research on what is a thriller and its content

Definition

It's a broad genre of literature, film, television, and gaming that includes numerous and often overlapping sub-genres. Known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. A fast-paced, frequent-action, suspenseful adventure. Thrillers often overlap with mystery stories, but are distinguished by the structure of their plots. Thrillers occur on a very grand scale: the crimes that must be prevented are serial or mass murder, terrorism, assassination, or the overthrow of governments. Jeopardy and violent confrontations are standard plot elements. While a mystery climaxes when the mystery is solved, a thriller climaxes when the hero finally defeats the villain, saving his own life and often the lives of others. 

Sub-genres

• Action thriller: In which the work often features a race against the clock, contains lots of violence, and an obvious antagonist. These films usually contain large amounts of guns, explosions, and large elaborate set pieces for the action to take place. These films often have elements of mystery films and crime films but these elements take a backseat to action. 
  
• Crime thriller: This particular genre is a hybrid type of both crime films and thrillers that offers a suspenseful account of a successful or failed crime or crimes. These films often focus on the criminal rather than a policeman. Crime thrillers usually emphasize action over psychological aspects. Central topics of these films include murders, robberies, chases, shootouts, and double-crosses are central ingredients. 
• Disaster thriller: In which the main conflict is due to some sort of natural or artificial disaster, such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, etc., or nuclear disasters as an artificial disaster. 
• Horror thriller: In which the main character is put in danger and their main enemies are unrealistic creatures in which they must destroy to achieve their goal. 
• Psychological thriller: In which (until the often violent resolution) the conflict between the main characters is mental and emotional, rather than physical.
• Spy thriller: In which the hero is generally a government agent who must take violent action against agents of a rival government or (in recent years) terrorists. 

Characters

Characters in thrillers include convicts, criminals, stalkers, assassins, down-on-their-luck losers, innocent victims (often on the run), prison inmates, menaced women, characters with dark pasts, psychotic individuals, terrorists, cops and escaped cons, fugitives, private eyes, drifters, duplicitious individuals, people involved in twisted relationships, world-weary men and women, psycho-fiends, and more. The themes of thrillers frequently include terrorism, political conspiracy, pursuit, or romantic triangles leading to murder.

Audience

The target audience varies from film to film depending sub-genre, rating, story-line, etc. Can be either male or female, the age is usually at least teens or above and can range up to any age.