Questionnaire and Results

Molly and decided to create a questionnaire/handout which we asked our friends and family to complete. We did this to get a more complete and refined idea of what people wanted from a thriller, by asking questions like which music they prefer, the content they would expect (e.g action or gore), or more specific things like if they would prefer a male or female protagonist.

These are the results we obtained from our questionnaire above. We have chosen the most relevant answers to put into graphs, as some of them we had already asked in our online survey.

Would you prefer to see a male or female protagonnist / antagonist ?

The graph shows that the majority of people would prefer a female protagonist to a male i.e the one that gets kidnapped, conforming to the age old 'damsel in distress' plot. The majority of people also said they would prefer a male antagonist i.e the kidnapper, however this option was quite closeThe dynamic of weak-female-strong-male is overused, so we are deciding whether to challenge this and surprise the audience by casting a male protagonist or a female antagonist.
However, if this dynamic is what people want to see, and is what would generate the most ticket sales in the real world - it seems counterintuitive to do the opposite.

What kind of music would you like to see in the opening of a (psychological) thriller?

These results show that the majority of people chose suspenseful music that builds up, with most of the people that chose it being female. For us, this is a good answer as we were leaning towards making this choice for music anyway. Many people didn't know what contrapuntal music even meant, but after telling them how it was happy/cheery music placed within a scary/suspenseful scene - most were enthused and said that would be a good choice. These two favourites suggest to us that maybe we could employ both into our opening, careful not to have too much of a clash of music however. Eerie children's' music was the third choice, an outcome that relieved us because we feel sometimes this type of music with a horror scene is overused. Classical got no votes, but it wasn't an option we were leaning towards anyway.

What would you like to see in a thriller?

The most common option circled here is 'twist' which is something me and Emma both agree makes, most of the time, an interesting and thought provoking film. 'A sense of being followed' and the general 'moody scenes' choice were second. These are two things you could expect from a thriller, especially a psychological one. It is interesting that the 'car chase' was chosen 80% by males, and being joint third, shows that a lot of males that we asked thought this was a key concept that a thriller needed. Violence and gore were less popular and chosen mostly by males, with gore conceding the least votes - 1, and 100% male.

Social Media

Facebook Page-

We created a Facebook page to promote our media project and invited our friends. We then posted updates about our work and ideas, to allow people to join in and explore. We even received 142 likes on our page!

Audience Survey

We carried out an audience survey using www.surveymonkey.com and put together seven questions to try to achieve an idea of what our possible audience may be interested in.  In total we received 58 responses to the survey.

These results show a balance of male and female answers, which is good because it meant we had less bias than if they were mainly one or the other.

From our "other" responses we found that people also watch many movies on their own TV , using platforms such as On Demand and Sky movies.

The data shows that 45% percent of people visit the cinema 5-10 times a year.  This is a surprisingly low number suggesting that the films may be more popular to view online

most people showed interest in Action and Comedy, however the genre Thriller was placed third and so is still very popular out of the seven options available

this data shows a good result, that most people like the psychological thriller genre

the greatest interest was in Black Swan; Se7en and Donnie Darko, which was , much like the kind of psychological thriller we were interested in making 

Vox Pops

As part of our audience research, me and Molly went and interviewed different people; asking them about films in general and more specifically the genre of psychological thriller (which we want to explore).We created sheets using Word and then printed them out to ask the questions: 

We then asked people these questions and filmed them. This was our final video:

Research and Planning

Psychological Thriller

Pitch 

• screen is black 
• sound bridge, creepy children's music/classical music starts to play 
• fast fade into low angle perspective shot of office block. night time
• mid shot of woman leaving the building 
• camera dollys around her until a mid shot of her back
• long angle shot of her walking down an alley, contrast at night 
• close up of her feet as she walks down train stations steps
• close up of her hand on the flashing button 
• cut to depth of field mid shot of her standing isolated on the train - music fade out
• super fast jagged cross cut to an extreme close up of a girl screaming 
• shot back to her on the train
• wide angle shot of her walking home 
• close up of key opening the door 
• enters house
• whistle of kettle
• extreme close up slo-mo of water pouring in the cup 
• gets into shower
• close up of plug hole, sound of turning the water off
• high angle shot looking down the stairs, woman walking towards the camera
• closes the bedroom door, sits on bed in her bedroom
• lies down, moment of silence, close up of woman closing her eyes
• bedroom door knocking (3 times) 
• extreme close up of her eyes wide open 
• low angle shot looking up at door as it slowly creeks open
• screen goes black - titles appear

I for my pitch , i wanted to propose a psychological thriller, where no blood or gore is actually seen but the audience still feels uneasy in their seats. This can be achieved by skilled camera work from a series of angles such as asymmetrical framing to give a distorted feel, and creepy music .
A possible title might be 
"blackout"

Narrative

a woman is haunted by her childhood memories 

Style/tone

• edgy, London at night 
• dark moody , lots of contrast- low key lighting
• back lighting when walking along the streets

Characters/costume/props
Woman

• minimal design clothing, simple 
• all black smart attire
• young age 18-25
• no props needed when outside
• in the house:
• kettle and mug

Graphics
for the graphics, i would choose a simple, 'clean' font that was made up of all capital letters to emphasise the title of the film. i believe by having a plain title to a psychological thriller, will almost evoke a creepiness itself. It could also reflect the perfect look of the characters life yet scary meaning. The three below caught my eye for this:

Or i would chose a font that looks as if it has been handwritten, inspired by the opening credits of the psychological thriller, "Se7en". 

Sound
for the sound, i would chose a primarily instrumental piece that under normal circumstances would sound calming, such as a piece of classical music or a children's song. However when this style of music is played with the images on screen, become quite terrifying.

• Eerie/creepy children's song or classical music plays from sound bridge at the beginning to flashback/dream on the train
• screeching as jagged cut flashback appears
• sound of whistling kettle
• sound of water in the shower
• 3 knocks on the door

Textual analysis – Opening of Casino Royale (2006)

1.     Camera shots , Angle, Movement and Composition

When the opening sequence of the film begins, there is an establishing low angle shot looking up to a building. This immediately makes the building feel imposing and gives you the perspective that you are smaller than the other objects in the frame. As the car then pulls up, the shot changes to a low angle close up from the characters shoulders. The camera tracks the characters movements slowly, as if you’re following with him.  This is followed by another low angle shot looking up to a moving elevator at a canted angle.  This composition has an open frame, giving you the feeling that the building carries on out of the shot. The next shot contrasts the previous, as it is a high angle close up shot looking down at the character at a canted angle. This flicks to an extreme close up of the changing elevator floor numbers.  Then there is a tracking dolly shot, with depth of field, having shallow focus. We then change to another still low angle shot of the door, which then rapidly changes to a fast moving dolly shot to a point of view shot of another character in the room which is also over the shoulder.  There is then an extreme close up followed by another point of view shot. These shot give you the perspective of the characters in the scene and give the audience the feeling that they are in their position.  The next shot is a mid shot followed by another low angle with an open frame, both of these shots use the rule of thirds, having the characters, or the main interests in the shots, in the right then left hand side of the shot. A wide angle, two shot is the used to show the position of both characters in the room. There is then a close up of the gun, which immediately alerts the audience.  In the following shot, the rule of thirds is used again with a wide mid shot.  We then switch to another scene in which contrasting camerawork is used. The frames are much more shaky giving the feeling that you are following the action. Mid and long shots are used to give greater perspective. An aerial shot is also used when Bond is pushing the other character through the toilet walls, this emphasises what he is actually doing and gives you a clear view whilst its happening. The scene changes back to a mid shot of the original character and then switches to a close up of the character holding a gun, as the gun is out of focus, you concentrate on the man himself.  After the realisation that the gun isn’t loaded, we see a low canted angle shot of bond, emphasising the twist. More close up shot are continually used to keep the audience in the action. We then see the bathroom scene again which continues to have wide-angle shaky shots. Yet we then get close ups of points of interest in the scene, such as the character picking up a gun; Bond’ s stern face as he holds the man in the sink; the man in the sink and his legs showing his struggle. After the death of the man, the camerawork become steadier and hold the frame for longer. We then change back to the steadicam of the original characters, which again quickly changes to a close up of the gun then a high angle shot of the man falling of his chair. This emphasises how fast this moment has happened and keeps up the action of the previous scene.

2.     Editing

The opening scene begins with a fade into the first shot with a long take of the outside of a building.  We follow the primary character with multiple match on action shots, following his journey up the building.  An eye line match is used when the character is looking up at the numbers in the elevator, which is then followed by another when he looks into the safe. Crosscutting is used a lot in the scene between bond and the primary character to allow the audience to see both perspectives whilst they are talking. In the fight scene short takes are used with crosscutting, to make the scene fast paced

3.     Sound

The film begins with an ambient sound of the wind and crunch of snow under the tyres using diegetic sound, which slowly increases in volume. However, in the following scenes, the majority of sound used is non-diegetic as it does not match the atmosphere of an office. There are multiple uses of Foley sound such as the elevator rising, and the mans footsteps on the glass floor. When the man enters his office, low boom is heard, this marks the realisation that he is not alone in the office. The background sound quietens as the dialogue begins. In the action scene the sound is much louder and is synchronous to the occurrences in the scene, and a sound bridge is used as the next scene begins with the carry-over sound from the previous.

4.     Mise-en-scene

When the film begins we notice it has a filter of black and white, which continues through the whole sequence. This creates great chiaroscuro in the beginning as the light reflects off the glass and steel of the building. The use of black and white is later successful when close ups of character faces are used as it creates visually stimulating contrasts of it features. The use of black and white could also imply to the viewer that the sequence is in the past, which we later find out is true, as it gives it a vintage feel. Furthermore, in the action scene, the lighting is much brighter, creating less of a contrast of black and white, giving it a starker feel. The location of Prague in the Czech Republic is emphasised by the look of cold weather, created by the steam rising out of the vents, however the look of the building also tells you it could be anywhere, and so leaves space for the audience to question.