1. Within our Thriller studies we analysed and noted features/conventions from many
Notes 1
different texts. All of these have influenced our product but in different ways. Our most
profound influence for the thriller opening has always been the ITV drama "A Mothers Son".
This mainly influenced the location as A Mothers Son opens to the image of a young person
running along a rural seaside area- we thought this image was extremely effective and
applied it to our own thriller film. In our thriller opening there is a series of establishing,
wide angle shots that mirror those in A Mothers Son.
Here are two screenshots from our opening and A Mother’s Son’s: I have pointed out
features that we were influenced by within these opening shots.
In to white’s opening shot A Mother’s Son’s opening shot:
We would have liked to Our location also matched
We used the expansive horizon line
have shot later in the this shot in the
to emphasise the desolation and
evening to get this In this shot we surroundings, the track we
isolation of our character within
stormy, atmospheric sky have included the chose featured similar
this setting.
but our technology vanishing point of reeds which swayed in a
meant we had to film at the long path to ghostly way either side of
a time with more light. add a sense of the path.
We did however film on a depth and
day with a heavy,
seclusion into the
brooding blanket of cloud
scene.
that provides some
atmoshphere.
The gender conventions we used in our thriller were predominantly male; but this was due to our
opening featuring only two characters. Had we developed the film further, we would have
introduced a wider range of gender into the plot. However, in the opening we chose to represent a
young boy as an innocent, naive victim and an older male as a sinister, threatening character. We
chose to use a young boy instead of the more commonly seen young girl to challenge this thriller
convention. All the films we took influence from, for example the thriller “Hide and Seek” featured a
young girl and we felt the convention needed to be changed as the audience have seen it so many
times.
The young girl
from thriller “Hide
and Seek”
Our actor
Thomas

2. Our reasoning for dressing our protagonist in white was that we wanted to represent the epitome of
innocence and purity within this character. We also dressed our protagonist in this colour, as his
costume was a coroner. Also we wanted the “colour of the film” to be white, featuring
consecutively throughout the opening to link in with our title “In to white”. The title was also
influenced by thrillers such as “The Walking Dead” and “Zero Dark Thirty” who use the three word
effect as three words is a common amount to feature in a title because it remains memorable and
effective. We also added a sense of mystery to the title as In to white leaves questions trailing as to
what or how one would go in to a colour. The colour white also represents a sense of stillness or
death, of pale skin and emptiness or blankness, a sense of loss- all images that link well into the
thriller genre.
When I chose the graphics for the film title, we were limited with our use of technology but decided
we wanted the text and font to be simple and clean-cut, with white on black writing. I had been
influenced by the very effective title of the sci-fi thriller “Alien” who’s title and font is spread out in
white, bold letters. I spread the font so that there was maximum space between the letters to get
this effect, also the use of a large dark space made the letters stand out and seem isolated against
this vast and expansive abyss.
In our characters we represented the difference in age in a stereotypical way, with the older
character as the antagonist and the younger character as the victim. We wanted the audience to
recognise the familiar convention of the age difference to secure the opening into the genre. Also
we felt that this representation of age difference worked well within the genre and did not need to
be challenged as it has proven to be effective throughout many successful thrillers, for example “The
Killing”.
Notes 2 In our planning production we researched the facts, figures and statistics on how our audience
receives the media and what kind of media distribution methods there are available to us. We
researched from the BFI’s Industry Statistical Yearbook which showed us that the highest percentage
of film viewing was on Television. If we were provided with funding we would look into having our
film shown on Television, probably on “Film4” or “ITV” later at night to reach this wide audience.
Ultimately we will be only sharing/posting our thriller to YouTube and to social networking sites such
as Facebook which will be viewed by 5.5% of the audience (Downloaded/Streamed).This is evidently
a higher rating than the film would receive at the cinema (3.4%) meaning that ideally the film will
gain more views from a wider audience.
This research sufficiently aided our decision as to where to distribute this, also having the option of
posting to the internet is extremely useful to us as it instantly connects us to the widest audience
possible, and ultimately for free. Access to the internet also aided us to research the market-
searching films in our genre that have already been released, analysing them and their
successful/unsuccessful attributes, and taking influence from features that we could apply to our
own product. We were also able to use websites such as www.blogspot.co.uk, to easily record the

3. process and upload videos, slide share presentations, pictures etc. Throughout the planning we have
also used www.surveymonkey.co.uk and www.slideshare.com to aid the presentation of our work.
Looking back to our preliminary task, I feel that our camera shots and use of angles have greatly
Notes 3
improved. This is due to throughout this product we have carefully chose the individual shots we
wanted, whereas on our preliminary task we aimed to just include as many different shots as
possible, disregarding of how they looked as a sequence. We also chose shots that were
conventional to the genre such as the establishing shot which emphasises isolation.
Our choice of soundtrack has also improved as we spent a very long time choosing the two pieces of
music for our final product. We looked at the tempo and style of the music and edited them in to fit
the visuals and add the essential tension building. Our advance in technology between the two tasks
(from moviemaker to final cut) meant that we were able to use advanced editing methods to create
further complex effects. However this did create some difficulties, as we were unused to the
software and struggled at first.
Notes 4 We have all completed a survey to question our audience on their preferences in film. We used
SurveyMonkey and distributed our survey via email, word of mouth and social networking sites such
as Facebook and Twitter. From this survey we learnt that; the majority of people questioned prefer a
thriller with aspects of psychology or action, that lighting and location are very important, and that
we should take influence from thrillers such as the “Bourne” trilogy and “Tinker, Taylor, Soldier Spy”.
We have chosen to focus upon the areas of lighting and location heavily in response to this
feedback, we also studied the two thrillers mentioned and produced our thriller in such a way that it
will easily lead of into many different plots, e.g an action packed thriller or a more psychological
thriller.
Here is a screenshot from my survey that shows question
one to three. Question three asked what particular
traits/aspects are enjoyed the most. As this was an open
ended question I decided to make a word cloud on
www.wordle.net to show the most common words in the
answers. This gave me a beter idea of the aspects my
audience enjoyed the most.