Thriller storyboard

 These are the storyboards for our horror thriller:

This is drawn by Sam (me) and the ideas cam from the group

Target group presentation

http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/29173884

This is the embed code for our presentation that we presented for our target group to get ideas for our thriller.

Group work

First Draft for the Horror Thriller

                                                                  Script for Horror Thriller

Cast
Aaron – Central Antagonist
Nathan – Central Protagonist
Angus – Helper (Friend)
Sam- Dead body
Sam is also the lead camera man
Nathan is also the director

Horror thriller opening, set in present day, shot in a wooded area (Establishing shot of the woods). The two friends are walking through the woods having a day to day conversation (Long shot switch to tracking shot), when they stumble across a dead body (Point of view shot). The two friends check the pulse of the body, when they first see it (Close-up of dead body). One scans around the area, whilst the other one tries to ring for help (Close-up of phone) (He can get no connection on his phone).  Then a quick jump cut to the sharp object in the hand of the killer, then it cuts back to the two friends. Then we see a point of view shot from the view of the antagonist as he is walking towards the backs of the friends. We then hear a branch snap and the two friends turn around and run away. The killer does not chase them, but is seen in various places as they are running away, but the friends do not spot him. One friend falls to the floor, then as he gets up, is grabbed by the killer. The central protagonist carries on running away and takes cover to breath behind a tree. He then comes head on with the killer, which we can see from a point of view shot in the eyes of the antagonist. The screen then fades to black.

Dialogue

(Two friends walking down a hill in the woods)
(Nathan sees dead body at the bottom of the hill)
Nathan: Angus…Angus do you see that, down there?
Angus: Yeah, what is that!?
Nathan: Yeah, it looks like a dead body
(The two friends then run down the hill, and examine the body)
Angus: Yeah… it looks like you were right…
(Nathan then walks round, examining the area, and looking for a weapon)
(Angus tries to call for help, but can get no signal)
(They then here a branch snap, and turn around to see the killer)
Nathan: Run!
(The two friends run in different directions, Aaron chases Angus)
(Angus then falls over, and is caught by Aaron, and murdered)
(Nathan is then seen running away, and leans up against a tree, breathing heavily)
(As he then comes round the tree, Aaron is the stood on the other side. The two come head to head)

Nathan's work

Target Audience

Target Audience

For our opening 2 minutes of a thriller we as a group need to have a target audience so we can make the thriller for that specific audience.

We have chosen teenagers from the age of 11 to 16 year olds for our target audience. The reason for this chose is that our entire group is 16 years old and so we can specify the opening for what we want to see in terms of the action, characters and colours so we can achieve good levels of interest for our thriller.

Our classification for our thriller film would be a 12 age rating. This is because we would be able to attract more teens to watch our movie as it will have a lower age restriction. With our thriller being a 12 age restriction we include things such as:

·        Some strong language but it must be infrequent

·        Moderate violence but not too detailed as there should be no emphases on the blood or gory.

The way that we will achieve this age restriction is to have low levels of violence and do not show any blood or gore if somebody dies. Also we could have some to little amounts of swearwords and this could include the less offensive like (Pr*ck or Tw*t) to also keep the age rating low.

In our group we did research to find out:

·        What type of thriller do you prefer?

·        What do you expect from the opening first two minutes of a thriller?

·        How many characters would you want in the opening?

·        What time period would you want the thriller to be set in?

·        Do you want there to be a narrative theme?

With this information we could find out what people wanted from a thriller and then cater it to our target audience which is teens. We will do this by getting all this information from the survey questions and then doing the type of thriller which the audience wants.

Angus's work

Marketing and Promotion

Marketing and Promotion

A way of Promoting our thriller film would be by creating a teaser trailer, this would be a very short video that would be broadcasted in the cinema before other films of a similar genre, (as they would be our target audience) and after nine o’clock as we are not aiming our film at children as it is a horror thriller. This trailer would make the audience watching our trailer start to ask questions about it if it is short and sweet, not giving too much information away. The benefits of this would be that people will start talking about the advert and being publicised more. Another place to put our trailer would be online so adverts on YouTube before a video or on Netflix when somebody is about to watch a thriller film as they would be interested in that kind of film to help us build a larger audience.

 

Another way of promotion would be too have a large poster made and put up on a billboard of the main character looking sinister on a billboard; these posters would be put inside the cinema so it will attract the attention of “movie buffs.

For example,

Aaron's work

Infogram time and equipment

Sam's work (me)

Well known directors

This is a link to the work on well known directors of thriller films


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxhKCrZ-rVegS1dmdGRHbkhsTk0/edit?usp=sharing

Nathan and Angus's work

Time and Equipment planning

Time and Equipment

 

Equipment

The equipment needed:

Panasonic Video camera to record the film

A Tripod to keep the camera steady when recording

External microphone to record sounds and gets a lot better sound quality when recording the film

The bad guy should wear dark clothes in the film which would connote to the audience that he/she is the bad guy and know who to be fear full off

The two people running away from the bad guy should wear bright clothing to show that they are pure and innocent in the whole scenario

The weapon to be used would be a sharp object as they are commonly used as murder weapons in thrillers and can add a certain fear factor in the film

 

Time

The film will be recorded in an evening between the times 4 o clock to 6 o clock the reason for this is that it would not be too dark all the time when recording as it is winter while we are recording the nights will be colder and darker this will work to our advantage as we are recording a horror thriller so they tend to be darker as that makes them more horrific.

We want the recording to all be finished by the 7^th of February so we have plenty of time to be able to assess what we need to edit possibly re-record certain parts of the video and edit the video  to make it as good as we can.

 

 

 

Aaron Baskerville (group work)

Classification of Films

Classification of Films

U stands for ‘universal’, the films are suitable for ages 4 and up.

·         U’s don’t contain any nudity, discrimination, drugs, horror, imitable behaviour, language, nudity, sex or violence

·         They only contain very mild language (e.g. damn, hell) and the occasional ‘bloody’ or ‘bugger’

·         A U film may include brief fight scenes, and any emotional stress is resolved quickly and the outcome is reassuring. Horror is the same; it will be resolved quickly and broken up with comedy or music

·         Examples are: monsters university, the Smurfs, Cars 2 and Diary of a Wimpy Kid

·         I think this is a correct classification and has valid reasons for not including violence, horror etc.

                           PG stands for Parental Guidance, the films are suitable for ages 8 and up.

·         This means a film is suitable for general viewing, however, some scenes may not be suitable younger children and parents should consider whether it will be suitable for their children.

·         Not all PG films are made with children in mind, films like the artist are rated PG because they are suitable for ages 8a and over, but it was mostly grownups that enjoyed it.

·         No theme is banned from PG’s, as long as it is treated appropriately to the rating. Smoking and drinking won’t be glamorised, and if a child is seen to be smoking or drinking then it will be emphasised to look bad.

·         It may contain mild bad language such as ‘shit’ or ‘son of a bitch’ however; frequent use of bad language or it being used in an overly aggressive way then it will be passed to the next category.

·         There should be no detail of violence in a PG, blood may be seen but the way the wound is inflicted should not be covered in detail. Horror is allowed in ‘jump’ moments and scary scenes, but scenes showing significant horror should not be very long.

·         Actions that children may copy like playing with electricity or climbing in a washing machine are not accepted, especially if they are seen as safe or fun.

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12A means anyone over the age of 12 can go and watch the film, and anyone under the age of 12 has to be ‘accompanied’ by an adult- someone over the age of 18.

·         The 12 certificate is used for videos, DVD’s and Blu-rays only. 12A is used for cinemas.

·         12’s are seen as appropriate for people over 12, but parents can take younger children if they feel it’s appropriate.

·         It is stated that 12 or 12A’s may contain strong language (eg f***) but it must be infrequent. The context of strong language is important, aggressive uses of strong language may cause the film or DVD to be placed in the 15 category.

·         Sex may be briefly and discreetly portrayed in 12 and 12A’s. Verbal sex references should not go beyond what is suitable for young teenagers.

·         Moderate violence is allowed but should not be too detailed. There should be no emphasis on injuries or blood but occasional gory moments will be permitted if they are justified by their context.

 

·         No one under the age of 15 is allowed to watch 15 films at the cinema, or buy/rent 15 films.

·         15 films can contain any of the following:

-          Strong violence

-          Frequent strong language (eg ‘f***’)

-          Portrayals of sexual activity

-          Strong verbal references to sex

-          Sexual nudity

-          Brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence

-          Discriminatory language or behaviour

-          Drug taking

  18 works are for over 18’s only and contain strong issues such as:

-          Very strong violence

-          Frequent strong language (eg ‘f***’) and/or very strong language

-          Strong portrayals of sexual activity

-          Scenes with sexual violence

-          Strong horror

-          Strong blood and gore

-          Real sex

-          Discriminatory language and behaviour

Sam's work (me)

 

 

Interview video questionnaires

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5xTOt0FhGs

This is our interview questionnaire where we found out what audiences expect from the opening of a thriller.

Group work

Thriller planning video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ-UhOiJecw
This is the link for our planning video, where we discussed various issues that we'd have to deal with.
 
Group work

Interview Questions

These are the questions we used to see what the audience wanted and expected in a thriller:

1.      What type of thriller do you prefer?

Horror                      Spy                       Conspiracy

2.      What do you expect from the first two minutes of a thriller?

(E.g. main character to be introduced, building up of tension)

3.      How many characters would you want in the opening?

1                     2                  3                     4+

4.      What period of time would you want a thriller to be set in?

5.      Do you want there to be a narrative theme?

 

My work

Risk Assessment

Risk Assessment

This is our groups risk assessment for our location that we are filming in, for our main media thriller task. The first picture is Aaron on a slope which when it is wet it is very slippy and it could injure somebody the way we would get around this problem is to onto the platform and walking around it to avoid any injuries.

The second picture is of barbed wire which is lower than picture five and again this could cause injure to a member of our group. The barbed wire is located around the outside of the wood and is there to show people that past this place is danger and so we as a group will have to respect that and will not go past this boundary. This is the same for picture five but the barbed wire is higher and so could cause injure to the high part to the body but we will be doing the same as the second picture.

 








Moving onto the third picture and this is two logs which are over a small stream. These logs could be slippy and someone out of our group could fall and hurt their selves or get very wet if they would fall into the stream. The way that we would avoid this is to go a different way or look for a small bridge over the stream which would be safer.

Finally picture four, this is a small root of a tree which is very oddly placed and could cause some injure if someone would to trip over the root and then sprain or even break their ankle. The way we would avoid such injure is to warn our group beforehand as we have a picture of the location that the root is placed and then nobody would be injured.

Angus and Aaron's work

 

Top 5 thriller reviews

This is the review of the top 5 thrillers on film 4 by our group.


Top 5 thrillers on film4

·         I have done a personal review on the first 2 minutes of these thrillers

·         These are all existing thriller products

 

5 – Reservoir dogs (1992)

Link: http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/reservoir-dogs/

Review

This movie starts out with people sitting around a table and narrator is talking about a song and then that song starts playing with the titles coming onto the screen. After there are the main people walking down a street in black clothing and smoking cigarettes which could represent that these people are bad characters and the camera shot is an establishing shot which shows all the characters walking with a car in the background next, the titles continue with the main characters names and moving image of them the shot of the characters is moving like them are moving. After all the main characters are shown it shows a shot of them with the back to the audience and one of the characters is wearing blue which could represent that he is a key character in the following movie. This continues for all the characters and then the titles come up with the name of the move while the same music is still playing with is happy and joyful. Then the screen is black and the titles of the rest of the people come up in orange which contrasts with the black screen to make you interested with the names.

4 – The silence of the lambs (1990)

I could not find the original start to film, so have done a review on the part 1 on YouTube here is a link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5dA92wqmME

Review

At the start the camera shot pans around to the show the bad guy in the film just standing there in blue clothing which could show that he is dangerous and also the fact that he is in a prison. After this pan shot the two characters start some dialogue and the camera shot starts reverse shooting between both characters so you can fully understand what their conversation is about. Then the main character in blue asks the women to see I.D. and the shot changes again and the main character cannot see so he moves closer to the camera which gives us a close up shot and so from this we can see the characters facial expressions. After the main character in blue asks the other character to sit down but this is odd as the other character is FBI and she should be asking the prisoner questions.

3 – The usual suspects (1995)

Link: http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/the-usual-suspects/

Review

Within the first 10 seconds the tension is high as the screen is black and the music is very tense and spooky. Then a title comes up on the screen which is coloured white which again contrasts with the black screen. The next few seconds are more titles going across the screen and then the title of the movie comes onto the screen but also with dark water ripples which take your attention for a while .This repeats itself until the whole screen is rippling with them movement of the water. Until the end of the 2 minute clip the water ripple repeats itself but it gets faster with the music because the music picks up speed and gets quicker and so does the water ripples and then at the end the ripples go and the music gets slower.

2 – Rear window (1954)

Opening found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ncHqP_CsrY

Review

At the start it shows the film title in orange letters to sand out and also in the background it shows three blinds and they are going up to show you something and the music is pretty cheerful but very high pitched, after all the blinds have gone up it shows you the outside and the streets with people walking about and doing daily activities. After all the titles have done the camera moves forward to show outside in further detail and to zone it on a certain house which could be linked to the film. After this the camera movement changes and pans around the location and shows a cat walking a certain direction and people sitting up in a balcony, the camera continues to pan showing more and the music has changed to a more upbeat but spooky tune. After the camera has paned the whole building location it comes back in the main characters house where he is sitting down sweating, the camera shot is a close up as it wants you to see the sweat on the character forehead. The shot then quickly swaps to a close up of a thermometer showing that it is hot and so leading to the main character sweating. The final camera shot is a man saving and then the radio says “are you a 40 year old man” and then the character responds which is a certain type of sound because the audience and the character can hear it.

1 - The third man (1949)

Link: http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/the-third-man/

Review

At the start of the clip is shows you a certificate to show you that this film is appropriate for viewers to watch. After this it shows a picture of the big Ben in London and then plays the bells from a church to go with the big Ben church whilst the opening titles are going. The clip then transitions into the strings of a guitar and then a guitar plays which are the same as the big Ben church as the guitar is playing more titles of people come onto the screen this happens for the rest of the clip and more titles come onto the screen. The tempo of the guitar gets quicker and so does the speed of the titles coming across the screen.

 

Sources

·         Art of the title

·         Film4 top 30 thrillers

·         YouTube

 

 Angus's work

Thriller Company Logo

This is our company logo for our thriller task

My work

Audience Theories Research

Audience Theories

·         Audience- who watches it and who it’s aimed at

·         Surveys

·         See what people are interested in watching

It’s hard to find a target audience because of the various types of media and genres and when people watch it (cinema or at home)

What Types of Audience?

Mass audience- large audiences, broad and wide, consume mainstream popular texts. E.g. the audience for Eastenders or a Premier league football match

Niche audience- small but very influential. Often very dedicated and loyal (often targeted by advertisers). E.g. BBC four is aimed at a niche audience.

Uses and Gratifications of media

·         Diversion and escapism- to escape from everyday life

·         Personal relationships- going to something because your mates are going

·         Personal identity- create their own identity from characters/celebrities

·         Entertainment- as a means of relaxation, enjoyment and emotional release

·         Surveillance- to gain knowledge and information

Media producers have always been interested in:

-          What effect a media product has on an audience?

-          What the audience ‘does’ with a media product?

-          What the audience want from it and how to target that ‘want’

My work