Our thriller creates suspense through a fast-paced soundtrack and visuals that confuse the audience. It shows a woman in a vulnerable state in the opening credits but then appearing safe in her bedroom, though an intruder is present but does not harm her. The intruder's identity is not revealed, leaving the audience guessing about his motives and relationship to the woman. Gender is represented through the vulnerable female protagonist and mysterious male antagonist. The audience can relate to the normal-looking people involved and imagine themselves in the scenario, finding it scarier. The sequence could be shown at film festivals with better equipment but achieves its goals on a small budget through elements of confusion and suspense.

2. Our Thriller creates suspense mainly by the soundtrack that
we used. It builds up, and has a fast heartbeat style to it which
will naturally increase the audience’s heart rate when coupled
with the visual, as the audience does not know the exact
relevance of what they are seeing. Especially the photos and
the man that our protagonist is spending time with in the
photos and why the pictures of her beaten are flashed during
the opening credits. We use similar generic conventions to
most thrillers as we use darkness as a key factor, leaving the
audience suspicious. Along with quick cuts in our editing and
sudden flashes of images and light from the phone.

3. Our thriller confuses the audience
as the staging of the sequence does
not have a simple explanation. We
show our protagonist in a bad state
in our opening credits but then
followed by her asleep in
bed, however with an intruder in
her room but he does not harm her
at all, and the audience is left
guessing as to whether he comes
back another time or if someone
else harms her. As we see that she’s
fine in the next scene so leaves the
audience confused before the film
and making assumptions for
themselves.

4. Our representation of gender is shown through our antagonist
being a man and our protagonist being a girl, it also represented a
weakness as the girl is filmed from above to make her seem more
vulnerable. Filming our antagonist from the back and not revealing
his identity leaves scope for the rest of the film and so yet again
keeps the audience guessing about who he could be and how or if
he knows who the girl in the bed is. This is continued with our other
range of shots especially the over the shoulder shot as it still hides
the intruders identity but allows the audience so see where he is
looking, we used a similar technique with the point of view shot as
it gives us an insight as to how he is thinking and the audience is
kept questioning what he is looking for.

5. We used normal looking people to create a scene that most of
the audience could relate to and so making it more intriguing for
the audience as they could see themselves in this situation and
therefore making it scarier for the viewer. Linking with this our
use of Mise en scene with the photo’s of the woman and
another man, who looks as if he is her boyfriend or partner, this
means that the audience are given lots of things to process in a
short timescale forcing a state of mild confusion. As they would
be wondering what the antagonist is going to do/is looking
for/his relevance to the girl/what he is thinking and then with
the use of the Mise en scene the audience then has to think who
the man in the photo is which makes the situation change as
then new ideas put in the audiences head for them to try and
interpret themselves

6. Our opening sequence could easily
have a chance of being shown at an
amateur film function or arts seminar.
However we would have to use better
quality equipment compared to what
we actually used. Although still using a
very small budget, it would be possible
to produce a better quality of film but
still using our ideas and conventions.
Our use of credits merged with the
actual sequence such as the phone and
the letters on the front steps, along
with our choice of Mise en scene with
the location for the next
morning, giving the impression that
she has a level of class about her
linking back to the audience
wondering. When they evaluate the
situation and also wonder about how
the intruder got in to the building as it
looks very formal. The storyline for our
thriller could easily be incorporated for
a box office film, as there is lots of
scope for an in depth story to follow
what happens so far.

7. We were only able to use the Panasonic IX
series camera’s that we had available, this
meant that the final video quality of our
filming is fairly poor due to the low light
levels of most of our shots in the scene in
the bedroom and therefore this induces
‘noise’ in to the picture. As we did not want
to use the camera in night mode which
would have reduced quality even more as it
changes the shutter speed. We only found
out that the quality of the video was
reduced after the production had been
compressed to a .mov file and burned on to
a DVD.
If we had had access to an HD camera this
wouldn’t have been a problem as the low
light levels wouldn’t have been an issue and
we would get an overall better picture
throughout.

8. Our audience would hopefully be attracted to this particular thriller
because it is aimed to appeal to our age range of 15-30 and has
suitable attributes to keep our audience enthralled in our thriller.
Most people would be slightly on edge when watching a suspicious
looking character intruding in to a woman’s bedroom, especially
younger members of the audience and women in the audience to
as they may be able to picture themselves in this situation and this
would therefore be more likely to frighten them. However due to
the shots used the audience is put in to the view of the intruder
and so complicates how the audience interpret the scene and
because of this we feel sympathy for the woman in the bed as it is
still not known what is going to happen.
However the suspense is built up, and
then released when we see the girl
walking down the front steps of her
town house. But this then confuses
the audience again as they begin to
think if anything else happened after
the phone rang and makes them
doubt who the intruder actually was.

9. Because of our attracted audience our thriller would
obtain a viewer rating from the BBFC of a 15 and so we
would have to take this in to consideration if we were to
produce a full film we would have to stick to these briefs.

10. During making this opening sequence for our thriller we
have put in to use the following software:
Final Cut Express for editing the video once filmed.

11. Audacity 3.1 Beta for editing our soundtrack

12. Adobe Photoshop CS3 for creating props such as the
credits on the phone and altering the Mise en scene
photo’s

13. We also learnt how difficult it can be to work
alongside other corporations for example having to
gain permission to film the front of The Regent Hotel
in Cambridge and work in conjunction with what
suited them. Besides this issue we had to adapt to
using the Mac’s and especially FCE and learning
along the way that Mac’s and PC’s do not interact
well.
As well as this we also learnt the many important
attributes that a thriller must contain and how
important it is to plan how we were going to bring
these in to UNWRITTEN.