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