This document summarizes the process a film group took in creating their short thriller film "Sommer White" for a class project. They decided on the thriller genre to explore its conventions. In pre-production, they researched films like "Kill Bill" and "Hard Candy" to analyze how directors used and challenged conventions. Their 5-minute film followed Todorov's narrative structure theory of equilibrium, disruption, restoration. It developed conventions like costume design and sound effects through intertextuality and alluded to "Snow White." They challenged feminist film theory by having two strong female leads rather than portraying women as inferior victims.

2. For our A2 media my group decided to make a
short film.
We chose the genre of our film, ‘Sommer White’, to
be a thriller because this allowed us to explore
many different forms and conventions and decide
how to use develop or challenge these in order to
make our film interesting and engaging for our
audience.

3. In our pre-production stage, we researched
many films such as Kill Bill and Hard
candy.
We looked at the conventions of these
films and how the directors used these
conventions, for example; in Hard Candy,
David Slade used a lot of red in the poster
and in the film which represents evil and
blood, he also uses the convention of using
male and female characters.
However, he challenges the typical
convention of the female being the victim
and instead the male is the victim. In Kill
Bill, Tarantino uses mainly woman who are
all portrayed as powerful strong women.

4. We followed the conventions of a thriller based on Todorov’s theory of narrative
structure. His theory states that a film starts off with equilibrium, followed by a
disruption of the equilibrium and then restoration of the equilibrium.
In ‘Sommer White we started the film with
everything seeming normal, the
equilibrium…
Followed by the disruption of the
equilbrium which was Sommer getting
bullied and killing Alexia ….
And finally the restoration of the equiblrium
which was Sommer being put away in a
mental hospital.
Unlike other 90 minute thriller films, our film only lasts 5 minutes therefore we had to
follow most of the forms and conventions of a thriller because we had to introduce the
action faster than a normal film would, make sure the audience would stay interested
throughout the 5 minutes and make sure we didn’t waste time on unnecessary shots

5. We developed forms and conventions of a thriller film mostly by the Mise-en-Scene
We looked at the Mise-en-scene that was used in most thriller films, for example;
the costume, lighting, locations and so on.
We noticed that most thriller films use the conventional colours; red, black, grey
in order to represent death, blood, danger or to give the movie an eerie feel; the
characters costumes usually being black or dark colours for example in Hard
Candy, the girl wears a red hoodie and the man wears mostly dark colours.

6. However we decided to not challenge, but develop this convention. For example,
Sommer’s costume; instead of having her wearing black and red, we decided to have
her wearing blue and yellow and incorporated a but of red into her costume; this was
not only to the develop the convention of the dark gloomy clothing characters wear in
thriller films but also to show the audience clearly that Sommer is representative of
Snow White.
We showed this mainly by using
intertextuality; we incorporated a lot of
things from Snow White into our film; the
poison apple, the evil step-mother who is
Alexia the bully, the costumes and the
basic storyline.
We were inspired by Tarantino using
intertextuality in Kill Bill as he incorporates
comic books in the film to tell part of the
story in an interesting and creative way
which is a clever device to engage and
attract a wide audience. In our film, Snow
White wears a blue and yellow dress with a
red bow so we modernised her costume to
incorporate traits of the character Snow
White, into Sommer White.

7. We also looked in more detail at the film Kill Bill by Quentin Tarantino. One thing
we really enjoyed from this film was the sound. Tarantino uses a lot of folly in
relation to sound in Kill Bill, for example in the fight scene between ‘Black Mamba’
and ‘Copperhead’, when ‘Black Mamba’ jumps over the table there is a sound
effect of a jump that almost reminded me of a cartoon.
Another interesting sound he used was whistling; When the woman, also the
villain, in the nurses outfit is walking through the hospital towards ‘Black Mambas’
room, there is a loud distinctive whistling sound following her; it is very eerie and
puts the audience on edge, almost giving them a clue that something bad is to
come. We decided to incorporate something like that into our film as we wanted
to create the same eerie on edge effect on our audience.

8. We developed this idea into our own and found a very low pitch, deep humming
sound that would follow Sommer as she was walking home from school; we were
hoping this would give the audience some clue that Sommer was not as innocent
as she seemed and also make them feel on edge.
We also layered the sound by having her dragging a stick over the school gates
which created a loud effective sound. By layering these sounds we not only created
the effect we had wanted to create for our audience but we also successfully
developed Tarantino’s idea of sound.

9. We challenged the forms and conventions of a thriller film based on Laura
Mulvey’s theory of feminism.
Mulvey states that in films, woman are seen as inferior, mainly to a man, or
used as sexual devices/ seen in a sexual way. We challenged this theory
using not only 1, but 2 female characters.

10. Typically, in a thriller film, there is the main character; a woman who is
typically the victim of the villain; usually a man. So, by using 2 female
characters we already challenged this convention
In ‘Sommer White’, the audience are fooled into believing that Sommer
is a sweet innocent girl who is inferior to the bully, Alexia. However,
later on in the film we see that in fact both of the girls in the film are
strong, powerful and even sinister characters that are not portrayed as
victims or in a sexual way, therefore challenging the theory of the
‘inferior’ woman.