The Da Vinci Code (Ron Howard, 2006)

As our opening thriller (Isignia) has a religious sub-genre to it I felt it was best to do an analysis of The Da Vinci Code the focus point being the sound and production titles. In the opening titles the sound we hear in the background is quite orchestral which sets up the film to be quite mysterious and give it that religious sub-genre. In our film we may decide to use a similar type of music e.g orchestral. The titles have their own logos which is very conventional and we will be using in our film. The titles are placed on the screen where the letters are placed individually. In our film we may use this or use something similar. Also the name of the film is after the production titles unlike some films where the name of the film is after a scene e.g James Bond films.

The rest of the opening shows a man being shot which is conventional as there is often a murder or an event which sets up the rest of the film. The camera is mainly free-hand which we won't be using in our film because it isn't very fast paced. The lighting is dark with lighting from torches in the set. The film will influence the choices we make to our film as we want to create a mysterious atmosphere where the audience will be left thinking.

First storyboards

Here are our first storyboards, since many of them are not accuratly drawn we are going to re-do all of the storyboards by taking photos of the shots they represent.

Derailed (Mikael Hafstrom, 2006)

Derailed beggins with scenes inside a prison, the mise-en-scen and sounds are typical for a prison with fairly relaxed music playing over the top.
There are quite a few shots looking down on the prisoners while they are outside from on top of the prison wall, which helps to represent the prisoners as low.
The movement round the prison finally settles down as a narrator begins to speak and you see a prisoner form inside his cell writing down his past, after this the main narrative begins.
This makes the audiance want to know why this man has been imprisoned and therefore follow the narrative.
We could use this technique in our film however I feel that beginning with a reflection on the past would not fit in very well with our current plans.
Instead we plan to make the shots of the wifes murder more of a cutaway to a past act, we may change them to black and white or edit them later to make the significance of this scene clear.

Audiance feedback

These are the popular films our audience chose from our survey. One of them was Phone Booth, although we couldn't find the opening scenes we've decided to blog the trailer instead.



In the opening of Phone Booth the film goes straight into the action, similarly to our opening scenes we will try to make our film get straight to the point.

The next film was The Usual Suspects which again we couldn't find the opening scenes so this is the trailer instead.

Audiance survey

We have surveyed a focus group of people withing our target audiance and also included a minority of epople not withing the target audiance to get an idea of what people prefer in thrillers.
The results have been processed using microsoft excel

Which genre of film do you prefer?:



The preffered genre was comedy however i don't think adding comedy to our thriller would enhance any of the thriller conventions, therefore we will probly not include comedy.
We then asked which sub-genre of thriller do you prefer?:



The preferred sub-genres where Conspiracy and action, we have already planned to include elements of conspiracy in our thriller opening, we now have more reason to include these. Since legal and medical thrillers were not popular we will try not include too many references to medicine or law.

We also asked what they prefer to see in thrillers:



Things that make you think was the most popular choice, in our intro we will try and leave the audiance with as many questions as possible but without a totaly confusing plot.

Here are the full results of the survey:

Film name

We have decided to call our film Insignia, because we wanted a name that would have somthing that relates to symbolism but not to be to obvious, it will relate to the symbol which will be seen on the dead wifes hand and feature throughout the rest of the film.
We have also set our filming date as thursday the 28th of January during the evening, we will film more on the saterday after if we have not obtained the footage we need.

Will & Matt

Roles

Storyboard artist-Matt
Camera Operator-Both
Director-Matt
Editor-Both
Sound design-Both
Continuity-Will
Acting-Matt, Nikki
Set Design-Will
Props-Will
Costume design-Will
Title design-Matt
Lighting-Will
Special effects-Matt
Make-up-Matt

Evaluation docmentry plan

Our evaluation will consist of clips made during the making process and a directors commentary over our main production.

The making process will include:
-Planning
-Soundtrack, using garage band
-Tour of location
-Costumes/make-up
-Showing filming taking place
-Editing

The commentary will contain our group commenting on aspects such as:
-mise-en-scen
-Sound
-Editing
-Narrative
-Camera
-Ideas

1st Script

(Woman screaming with titles appearing on screen)

(Car pulls up to drive - Man leaves car and enters the house)

Man - 'Hello, I'm home' (Moves around house whilst putting props down)

- 'Honey' (Walks up the stairs checking rooms)

- '*undecided womans name*

(Walks downstairs to the kitchen where he sees his wife on the floor)

(Crouches over his wife, then gets hit over the head by the killer)

(Camera fades out to black, then titles appear)

Analysis of past thriller openings

To get ideas of what works well ina thriller opening and what doesn't work as well we have analysed some of the past thriller openings from TCC.

The first thriller opening i analysed was called "It Dies Today" The films consisted of a main image of a hooded figure sitting on a bench with other clips spread across the film for example someone lighting candles. I thought the low-key lighting and setting which was a church and inside a fairly normal looking house was good, although maybe not used to full effect.
The unkown figure on the chair did create an enigma which is conventional of thriller films however after a while it gets kindof boring, also the opening scenes didn't give much indication of a main character or where the narrative is going.

The second opening i analysed was "Walking backwarks" It began with someone in a dark room processing photos, there was some good use of camerawork for instance there was a shot where the camera panned across the photos then zoomed out. Another effect that worked well was the shot which zoomed into a photograph and then actually went into the scene that was in the photo, it clearly showed that the woman in the dark room was some kind of investigator. The only thing that was hard to understand was the relationship between the plot and the map of the london underground which was flashed up on the screen near the end.

The film "Craze" clearly established that it was part of the crime thriller sub-genre, one of the reaosns for this was the first shot was an establishing shot of a police station, and then there where some shots inside an interrigation room. One let down was the plain modern mise-en-scen, this is what a modern station would look like however it seems rather boring. Another thing that did work well was photographs of murder victims-when the camera zoomed in on them a black and white image with the camera tracking over the body was shown, inserts like this help to establish the reality of the events that have occoured. This helps to establish the verysimilitude, in our film we probably will not use any inserts however we are going to show a photograph of the characters in "the past" which will help establish their relationship.

"Third floor" worked well as a thriller opening, it was in black and white and showed a man in a suite about to walk into a lift, the next shot was a low angle shot of him walking out of the lift with a body on the floor, I thought this was a good use of ellipsis of time because it was made clear what the man in the suite represents. One thing that was slightly confusing was that after this the character in the suite was then shown getting into anhother lift with different people, it wasn't very obvious whether this happned before or after the attack on the other man.

List of what is needed

Props:

-Briefcase -Smart clothing

-Keys -Casual clothing

-Photo - Dark Clothing

-Gun

Characters:

-Man, wife, killer

Setting:

-Home of man and wife

-Set at night when man returns from work

Thriller Opening: Rough Plot

From our ideas we have come up with a rough plot.



-Starts with a distorted shot of a women being attacked with the sound of screaming in the background.

-The shot is constantly interrupted by cuting to a black screen with the film's production titles in white lettering.



-The shot shows a car pulling up to the house, from the inside, with curtains opened by a hand.

-The man gets out of the car and walks to the front door and inside. Once inside he calls his wife's name whilst putting his briefcase down and placing his keys next to a picture of him and his wife.

-The the camera follows him up the stairs with the man still calling his wife. He then walks down stairs when he can't find her. Goes into the kitchen to see her dead on the floor.

-The camera shows him walking up to her and kneeling as he notices a symbol printed on her hand. From behind he gets hit over the head and collapses to the floor facing his wife and the symbol on her hand with the shot fading out with the killer walking out of the shot.

Target Audiance

We have decided that our target audiance will be between ages 15-35 with some appeal to other ages. They will be mainly male but not by a large amount, they will like thrillers and be accustom to the conventions and also enjoy when some of the conventions are turned on their head.
They will be the kind of person who enjoys a film because it makes them think, although we will also include exciting elements so that the film does not bore the audiance.
They will mostly enjoy psychological thrillers such as Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000), Conspiracy based thrillers such as Eagle eye(D.J. Caruso 2008) and horror based thrillers such as Saw (James Wan, 2004). However they will also enjoy a variety of different genres of film such as comedy and action.

Deadlines

We will try and follow the following deadline for our production, however it will be changed if we need to for whatever reason.

5th-7th Jan-first planning/ideas, start storyboarding
12th-14th Jan-finnish storyboard, plan props costumes etc.
19th-21st Jan-Finnish planning/ start filming, will film sometime during the same week. Begin to plan evaluation documentry
26th-28th-begin editing
2nd-4th Feb-editing/ re-shoots
9th-11th Feb-editing/ music
23rd-25th Feb-Editing / music
2-3 March- editing, finalising film
5th March- Deadline
9th-11th March - evaluation
16th-18th March evaluation

Initial thriller ideas

We first decided to plan what sub-genre our production would be, we decided that either psychological or an action thriller.
We decided the Intro would have to involve some kind of crime since this is conventional of the thriller genre.
One of our ideas was a chase scene that ended in a murder, another involved someone watching a hostage tape.
The idea we decided to use was a normal looking man cominng home from work going into his house and searching for his wife but then finding her dead on the floor in one of the rooms, soon after this he gets knocked out by the killer who concealed themself.
For this we would need a fairly average looking house for a location.

Taken - Pierre Morel

In the opening sequence of Taken, we are introduced to main character and some other characters that play important roles later on. First off, we see the titles in white on a black background, which is conventional as it has also been used in other thriller films. In the background we hear non-diegetic music which is sort of mysterious as we're not sure what is going on. We can then see a recording of a girl at her birthday party. This goes on for a minute or so where we see an older woman who is most likely to be her mother. At this point we think that these characters are connected to the main character. Next the recording cuts unexpectedly to a close up of the main character in the present. This cuts to a long shot of him sitting in a dark living room on his own. Holding a picture of the same girl. We realise that the girl in the recording is his daughter, althought we don't actually see him with his daughter in the recording. This opening is quite conventional as you sometimes watch someone's memories or a dream and that you see the present.
The camera then changes to a close up of the picture with the titles of the film 'Taken' next to it. This suggests that she is the one who is going to be taken. The next shot is of the same man walking into a shop where he is greeted with the words 'Hello, Mr Mills' this tells the audience the character's name. This is again conventional as we get to know something about one of the characters in the opening sequence. The shots throughout the dialogue are often high angle shots to make Mr Mills seem more powerful because he is wearing smarter clothes or because he has a higher authority. Mr Mills purchases a karaoke machine, probably for his daughter. As he wraps it he wraps it carefully, which suggests he is a perfectionist and cares for his daughter. Later on we see him at his daughter's party giving her the gift. We have now met another character and we also meet the mother who doesn't seem to get along with Mr Mills. This suggets they are divorced. This opening is conventional to other thrillers as it introduces us to our characters and tells us a bit about them without giving too much away so we want to watch more to find out.

Saw (James Wan, 2004) analysis

Saw begins witht the titles which are a blueish white with a plain black background, this is fairly common in some horror/ thriller films. The audiance are introduced to the main character (Adam) right at the start when he there is a close up of his face underwater, he then climbs out of the bath into a room with very low key lighting.
While the lights are turning on the camera tracks backwards while looking up at them, this helps show that the room is quite large.
During the first scene the audiance find out that Adam is trapped in a large bathroom like room with another man called Laurence who also has no idea how he got there. There are white tiles and many pipes on the walls which help to show that it is a bathroom.
One way that it is conventional is that it is based round a crime, which in this case is kidnap, there are also many enigmas become apparent, for example "why have they been kidnapped?" There is alos a dead body in the centre of the room they are in which raises even more questions.
Adam wears jeans and a shirt, these help to show that he is a fairly average person trapped in this unusual situation which is conventional of thriller films, this also applies to Laurence. The pipes in the bathroom are all various browns and black colours and look very dirty, this helps to make the room feel unpleasent.
Another convention of thriller films is that the antagonist has power over the protagonist, since Adam is locked in a room with no obvious way of escape the antagonist has ower ove rhim which is conventional.
The editing in the opening scene of saw is continutiy editing which heps to enhance the verysimilitude of the situation and make it more realistic, which is conventional of thriller films. Shot reverse shot is used when Adam and Laurence are talking, which means that most of the time you cannot see anything else in the room other than the two corners they are in, this keeps the audiance wanting to know what else is in the room which creates tension.
The camera slightly zooms into some of the shots of Adam and Laurence from a high angle which gives the feeling that they arn't veyr powerful and are being watched.
When Adam and Laurence are talking there are mainly long shots (or at least medium long) shots used, in most of these the camera is looking slightly down at Adam, which shows his lack of power, they look slightly up at Laurence but not all the time, which shows he does have slightly more power than Adam.
There is some music during the bathroom scene although it is quite and not heard much, it is ambient sounding with parts which sound electronic and orchestral.

Some of the ideas we could use in our thriller opening are: An unknown antagonist, uncertainty over who the protoganist is and continuity editing to make the verysimilitude believable. We could also use high angle shots to make the character seem less powerful. In saw the situation the characters are in is made clear but the reasons are not-these become the enigmas that make the audiance want to keep watching, we could also do this in our thriller intro.