2. Christie Harris Bethany Johnstone JBH PRODUCTIONS Emily Batelle

4. Thriller Through The Ages Early Thriller: Harold Lloyd's comic Safety Last (1923), is one of the earliest thriller films made. From 1923 to 1949 some of the earliest thrillers such as; ‘M’, ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde’(1931) right to ‘The lady of Shanghai’. Safety Last

5. Thriller Through The Ages The most influence, critically acclaimed British director that was established after the earlier thriller, Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock, is a master of suspense and considered the acknowledged auteur master of the thriller or suspense genre. Hitchcock likes to manipulate his audience’s fears and desires and taking viewers into a state of association with the representation of reality facing characters. Alfred Hitchcock : Hitchcock's films often placed an innocent victim (an average, responsible person) into a strange, life-threatening or terrorizing situation, in a case of mistaken identity, misidentification or wrongful accusation (i.e., in The 39 Steps.) The Wrong Man (1956), and in North by Northwest (1959). Hitchcock utilizes various cinematic techniques such as; cross cutting, extreme zooms and montages.

6. Thriller Through The Ages Late Thriller: Present thrillers are much influenced by the infamous Hitchcock and some tend to steer right in the opposite direction. Many present thriller titles include; The Usual Suspects (1995), Se7en (1995), The Sixth Sense (1999), Signs (2002) and Memento (2000). The Usual Suspects The Sixth Sense

8. Analysis of The Black Dahlia Sound The sound in the film is mainly diegetic. It involves the sounds of things like: Smashing of glass People hitting one another Punching Screaming All of the above sounds mainly create tension and set the scene successfully. They mainly create the effect of realism for the viewer. The film also has elements of non-diegetic sounds which helps set the mood. For example: Eerie music Sounds of s trumpet Deep tone music A voice over I feel the above mainly creates tension. The dynamics of the music varies considerably changing the mood a lot throughout the film.

13. Analysis of Hard Rain Camera work and techniques The beginning 5 minutes: The shots at the beginning of the film are much the same in which are sweeping shots, long shots and panoramic views of the surroundings. The camera seems to have the affect of flying through and over villages, farms and towns. The next sequence of shots are a range of shots such as; long shots, mid shots to extreme close ups. The use of close ups and medium shots give the film a realistic feel and in which the audience will feel more involved in the plot.

14. Analysis of Hard Rain Camera work and techniques The middle section: (31.41) The middle section of the film consists of many of the same shots such as: mid shots, long shots and a range of close ups. However; the editing of this section of the film is fast paced which keeps the audience on the ‘edge of their seats’. The end 5 minutes: The editing of this last section is once again fast paced. The camera shots are once again not too risky and play safe with the same shots like long, mid and close up shots.

15. Analysis of Hard Rain Lighting The lighting within all the 5 minute sections are dull dark and slightly eerie. It all contributes to the plot and adds tension and suspense for the audience. The lighting almost promotes pathetic fallacy or foreshadowing of the films plot.

16. Analysis of Hard Rain sound The sound that can be heard when watching this film are both diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. The diegetic sound that can be heard are all tense, dramatic and eerie music which draws the audience in and adds the build up of tension. However, non-diegetic sounds are to the realistic side to the film with everyday sounds such as; thunder, rain, dialect, car engines etc.

17. Plot Summaries of Successful Thriller Films

18. Silence of the lambs Plot Summary: Young FBI agent Clarice Starling is assigned to help find a missing woman to save her from a psychopathic serial killer who skins his victims. Clarice attempts to gain a better insight into the twisted mind of the killer by talking to another psychopath Hannibal Lector, who used to be a respected psychiatrist. FBI agent Jack Crawford believes that Lector who is also a very powerful and clever mind manipulator have the answers to their questions to help locate the killer. Clarice must first try and gain Lector's confidence before he is to give away any information.

19. The Illusionist Plot Summary: A young boy falls in love with a girl that is way above his social standards along with the art of magic. Although the parents forbid them of seeing each other they cannot be split apart. Until one day they were found together and the boy was sent off. He became a magician and traveled the world. She fell in love with another man, the Crown Prince. The two got engaged but the boy, Eisenheim, finally meets back up with the girl and uses his powers to free her from the royal house in Vienna.

20. The Transporter Plot Summary: Frank Martin is hired to deliver a package to an American gangster known only as "Wall Street" in his BMW 735i. Breaking one of his rules, Frank opens the package, it is revealed to be a young woman tied up and gagged, by the name of Lai. Initially, Frank simply delivers the package, however when "Wall Street" attempts to kill Frank, Frank returns to the delivery site. Frank injures many of "Wall Street's” henchmen and takes Lai back to his house, where she explains that there is a large container full of people. Frank succeeds in an attempt to retrieve a truck full of immigrants. Frank is aided by a French Police inspector named Tarconi. Initially, Tarconi is assigned to investigate the path of destruction that Frank is leaving but ends up aiding in the recovery of the containers full of human slaves. Incidentally, although two slave containers are identified, Frank only recovers one at the end of the film.

21. Short Films Analysed

23. Narrative Structure VIRUS Virus has slight equilibrium at the beginning of the film although there is still an eerie atmosphere. A man is at work on the computer doing stereotypical things that perhaps a business man would do, i.e. checking emails, sending emails, drinking tea etc… It also has a disruption as he gets an email from his girlfriend where by she goes on web-cam to him which disrupts him from doing his work.

24. Narrative Structure 4:37 4:37 has an equilibrium as normal things occur at the beginning. A couple are in bed together trying to get some sleep. A disruption comes about when the male hears a noise from downstairs and goes to check it out. The audience assume that at the end there is a modified equilibrium as the male gets back into bed with her. Although we later find out that it isn’t actually him, its someone else and we are left clueless.

25. Narrative Structure OUR FILM In our film we will apply Todorovs theory to it with some adaptations. We will have equilibrium (the mother and child come home and follow a normal daily routine, i.e. boiling the kettle, putting child to bed etc…) We will also have a disruption (the adult figure becomes aware that there is something present as she notices things like shadows and hears noises.) We are going to construct an ending that will resist closure, the preferred meaning of which will be ambiguity and fear.

30. Costume The costumes signify upper class, wealthy business men. They don’t reveal their full outfits but we can see they are clearly smart wearing things like ties and shirts. It also has connotations that they are fairly westernized an traditionally wealthy. The colours are reasonably dark signifying perhaps importance. The male watching the CCTV cameras appears to be of higher authority as he is wearing a uniform and also has a badge.

31. Primary Audience Research

33. Audience research When trying to gain audience feedback, we decided to that it would be helpful to take a random sample of people in which we would show them three different individual images of film posters and we would ask them questions on all three individually. This would help us when creating our own film poster to promote our production. These are the series of questions which we asked our focus group. 1. (We flashed each images of the poster at least once and then asked the question) Write down 2 or 3 things that you can remember from the film poster? 2. What genre do you think this poster is for? 3. How can you tell this is a thriller film from the poster? 4. What would you conclude from the poster about the film itself? 5. Why would people be inclined to watch this film? (if not then why not?) 6. What would intrigue you, from the poster, to watch the film ?

34. Audience Feedback These were the results from the focus group: Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 P1:Dead person/face/side shot/white/blood/sideways face/lips/black background. P2: Butterfly/ The eyes/ Pale face/ White and dark/ blue. P3: woods/ men/ old fashion/ male/ globe/ forest/ 3 people holding a ball P1:Trail from lips/blood/black background/dead face/black and red colours together. P2: The toxic butterfly/ death/ eyes/ blue white face. P3: The men/ the crystal ball/ the forest/ the birds/ P1:Horror/ thriller/murder/love,horror/ P2: Horror/ thriller/ murder P3: mystery/ gothic/ horror/ not sure/ thriller/ P1: Romantic thriller/going to be a murder/ death based on love. P2: something to do with eating/ ghosts/ struggling/ mystery. P3:scary/ wedding/ unusual/ magical P1: no, because its too cliche thriller/ no too stereotypical/ boring. P2: yes looks interesting/ the eyes P3: yes unusual/ birds/ the crystal ball/ forest/ people P1:The name of film/ The actors or actresses/ the eyes/ blood and the dead body. P2: The butterfly’s significance/ the face and butterfly P3: i like the costumes/ the woods/ the birds and the magical imagery.

35. During and after research many different aspects in to the genre thriller, we have decided to make sure that all the thriller conventions are included within our production. The conventions that we decided to add in were; different types of lighting to help add suspense and a sense of tension to the piece. We also decided to have a domestic location in order to stay within our budget for the production and when looking at what the audience would want the majority expected to see a thriller film, filmed within a domestic house setting. When researching other short films we was able to come to a conclusion on the amount of characters that we wanted to have in our production. We concluded to have at least 2-3 characters because anymore or any less would inhibit the audience to understand the plot in such a sort amount of time. When researching types of audio that we would want to include within our production we concluded from other short films and questionnaire that natural dialogue would be the best approach concerning our production. We also found that dialogue was limited and we felt that other short films had ‘empty gaps’ in terms of the dialogue. So when creating our production we will have to take into account many of these aspects and try to produce the best thriller, suspense film that we possibly can. In Summary

36. Narrative Structure HERO Harry Potter HELPER Dumbledore VILLAIN Voldermort HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHERS STONE(2001) Dir. CHRIS COLUMBUS Propp Propp suggested that storylines naturally flow from different character types. For example, the villain, the hero and the false hero could construct a straight forward narrative. This theory covers various different films across the history of cinema. For example: