Thriller Opening (Research): Testing out Camera Angles

Over the course of the holidays, I decided to test out different camera angles, recording small scenes and stringing them together. This is something to help us think through what sort of camera angles we would want within our movie opening and how much time we should spend on each. We also used camera angles that we've mentioned that we want to use within our opening sequence.

Thriller Opening (Planning): One Page Pitch

We did a one-page pitch to pitch our ideas of our movie towards a producer of some kind to look at.

Working title: Systems Down

Film Genre: Psychological Thriller

Length: 110 minutes

Target Audience: 15- 24 year olds

Why?: This is because of the genre of the film and content that’s within the film itself, the suspense and fantasy type of feel to it from the ghosts, an audience younger than 15 may think of it as something real, as though ghosts do genuinely exist. We believe that the audience will be all genders but it may appeal more to the males who typically like ghost and thriller movies more, stereotypically anyway. This is meant for an audience who’s not so much as a serious film goer but watches it for just entertainment and for those who enjoy movies like paranormal activity for example, just films that would keep the audience on edge.

Tag-line: Murder doesn’t stop when you’re dead.

What if premise: What if the psychotic thoughts of a woman drove her to destruction yet still lingered, even in the afterlife? What if the woman who sees ghosts, turns out to be the ghost?

Plot Synopsis: The protagonist is a beginner ghost hunter who has encountered an advertisement, asking for help about something ‘spooky’ occurring within the house. Taking up the job of investigating, he goes to the house to only come across the owner of the house and talk to her about the issues occurring, after hearing the information on the happenings within the facility.

He then installs cameras about several rooms that the owner reported the strange happenings occurred in, the cameras are known to pick up ghosts. He then travels back to the kitchen where he’d set up his ‘base’ before looking through the cameras at midnight, when the occurrences were rumoured to start, he then noticed the ghosts stood before the camera. Staring in awe, he then checked other cameras through the system and spotted them in different locations.

These ghosts seemed docile at first before gradually growing quite fierce and restless as they slowly noticed the man’s existence within the kitchen and slowly approached the kitchen as he could see through the cameras where they were and how fast they approached him.

One by one, the cameras start to go down, showing only static as he falls into fear and panic. Looking up though, slowly from the screen, he spots the three ghosts before him as they just seem to stare at him. Before they decide to take his life though, he catches a glimpse of their past and what had happened to them.

Statement of Intent: This was inspired by the game Five Nights at Freddy’s but has obviously taken a slight turn as we altered accordingly to not be seen as plagiarism. We wanted to tell this story because of it being chilling and it takes a twist of things, as some plot twists occur within it. The audience in the younger range of our audience may take a thrill of all the events that occur so we are hoping they will enjoy it. It’s a film over a TV drama because of it being cut so short as the main protagonist is *spoilers* ‘killed off’ by the ghosts with grudges, hence why it’s a film, also, it’d be difficult to figure out how to continue it.

Visual Realisation: We have realised that a similar thing has been done but with Paranormal Activity though ours isn’t a mockumentary style, instead it’s simply more like a point of view film. The Babadook is how we wish to portray our film as its recent and uses effects that we’ll be able to find now but in particular, how things are shot is good as well. The dialogue is limited to only a little as this is found during the opening sequence mainly with the woman explaining the events that have been occurring before the ghost hunter arrived on the scene.

Audience Appeal: We understand that our target audience may go for things that are visually scary and enjoy watching things to do with the paranormal, believing in the possibility of them existing, so we decided to add in some plot twists as well which would keep the audience on edge as that is what is assumed that the audience will enjoy, an example of the plot twist is that the woman who currently owns this house is actually a ghost.

We decided on some young actors as well, such as Emma Watson as an example as she’s a young actress who appeals to our young male audience that we’re hoping to gain, as well as popular actors such as Josh Hutcherson from the Hunger Games to appeal to a female audience and hopefully attract their attention.

Thriller Opening (Planning): The Original Drafting and Planning Process

This was the original ideas sheet we used to figure out what we were going to do for our thriller opening, let alone how we'd do it as we thought about certain things to do and went through a couple of ideas as well, for example, mannequins that would go about a house that was seen as an attraction.

 

Thriller Opening (Planning): Storyboard

Here is the storyboard for our thriller movie opening, we've decided to stick with this as it's a basic guideline so we have a rough idea of what to do during the filming process. It may be edited though as time goes on through the filming process so this may need to be updated later on.

Thriller Opening/Theory (Research): Representation of Disability Within Media

In media, we were looking at disabled people and how they are represented by the media once more, looking at different articles for research on how they are represented and reasons as to why this may be occurring. I looked at this as well because it may also help me with thinking of ways to represent disability within my thriller opening if I decide to do so and how to represent them as such as well as how the audience may see our thriller opening.

From what I have read in the "Unlimited" source, they are aiming to assist people who are disabled, whether they want to go into acting or into filming, to achieve their goals and be more noticed as they state that the "first disabled character portrayed by a disabled actor on British television did not appear until 1992" which means that before then, disabled characters were played by those who weren't disabled to start off with and this could be seen as showing them differently to how they actually are. A source of misrepresentation.

The second article, "Women, Old and Disabled and Still Under Represented", tells us of how even gender and age is an issue as well as disability when it comes to them being represented in a series. In this study of "small screen diversity" showed that men and the younger generation along with the healthy are presented more within series over women, the elderly and the disabled.

Reading more into the article, it appears that even sexuality is under represented as well; "Lesbian, gay or bisexual people compromised 1% of the overall TV population" stated the study. Another thing is ethnicity is being under represented as well according to the study in this article, making it seem that young men or men in general are seen more or often and are, in most cases, white.

The lack of representation of disabled people though is second to none as just below that is indeed the sexualities as disabled people seem to be represented at least a little bit more, if not, inaccurately.
In a third article that's about Ricky Gervais' character "Derek" and disability portrayed in it, tells me about the fact that Ricky believes that Derek's actor was disabled or not in actuality would make no difference to the character at all, hence why Derek's actor is not disabled.

Even the character itself was assumed to be autistic before the show was written despite Ricky saying that there had been no hints towards disability within this character of his. This can tell us that the assumptions of people who view the series have different ideas of what disability is represented as.

For example, Derek was rumoured by many to be autistic and then everyone started to think he was yet Ricky did not intend to portray him in such a way. Instead, he wanted to create a character that was different and the fact that people put a label on him of being disabled because of how he acts and speaks, dresses, behaves, it tells us that disabled people have been labelled as someone like Derek, someone who's different and odd, out of place.

Looking into some articles of my own, I found out of a piece that was called "The representation and portrayal of people with disabilities on analogue terrestrial television", within it stated that people with disabilities that are noticed most within TV dramas are ones that are easily recognisable., for example; "mobility, sensory impairment and disfigurement/physical impairment."

This can show us that it's difficult to show someone with a mental disability, or even if the media class it as a disability. Another thing that's stated is that the representation of disabled people within TV dramas has dropped since 2004 and their belief for it is "stereotyping" which leads us back to Paul Hunt's 10 identified stereotypes within media for disabled people.

Thriller Opening (Research): Audience Theory

During media, we looked into theories on audiences and why certain audiences react like they do to certain genres of film, these are examples and theories of why audiences will react in such a way that they do.

Hypodermic Syringe
There is a theory known as the hypodermic syringe model which is where it is believed that media is like a syringe and will 'inject' ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the minds of the audience who are seen as powerless and have little choice but to be influenced by such a thing - for example, if you were to watch something violent, like a murder movie, it is suspected that this will lead to that person going out and murdering someone. This theory is most popular with violent movies though as people believe that anything that's seen as violent can easily be repeated by a member of their audience. This goes to show though, that it may not effect everyone in the same way, showing that this theory isn't concrete. This theory was created in the 1930s by a group of German Marxists.


Identification and Sensitisation
The idea of identification is that violence that is portrayed within media can relieve the tension and/or desires of the audience through identification with fictional characters or events. This helps lessen with how many murderers there are in the world as they would identify themselves with a certain character for example and could imagine themselves doing such things that a certain character would do and that would sometimes take their mind off of it.
Looking on the flipside, sensitisation is where the violence can be so shocking to some where it puts them off it altogether and can also make them more aware of the consequences. It's also argued that sensitisation could make people more aware and more likely to report cases or incidents of crimes.

Thriller Opening (Planning): Thought Process 1

Thriller Opening (Research): Practice Lighting Shots

I decided to practice different lighting shots to create different moods that I could use within the thriller opening that me and Milie will be making. I really like the 1st and 3rd picture with the lighting shining up on the face and the lighting shining down. The light shining up gives a thrilling sense for the audience in my opinion and is quite the cliche lightning style. The light shining down shot gives a little bit of chills.