Kirsty - AS Media

One of the reasons my group and I decided to create a two minute film opening of the thriller genre is because we all agreed that the conventions of this would be the most fun and interesting to recreate. Having done research and analysis of different films within the thriller genre, we came across themes we thought were effective, and some we decided to challenge.
 The title of our film is "Hide and Seek", as our film starts with two characters playing hide and seek - it's pretty straight to the point. We had seen this in other thrillers, such as "Lights Out" (which features a demonic phantom that appears whenever the lights go out), and "Seven" (which is inspired by and based on the seven deadly sins). We thought this was especially effective as the game hide and seek is often connoted to ideas of fun and innocence, luring the audience into a false sense of security.
 Our story is about to female friends who decide to break into a derelict building and play hide and seek. Whilst playing, the girl hiding, Tyler, doesn't reply to Charlie, the girl seeking's shouts. Growing in concern, Charlie asks Tyler to stop playing and just come out, fearing the worst. Her phone rings, and our antagonist says, "I've found your friend..." Charlie tries to leave the building, but finds she is locked in. As she explores the building for a way out, she notices drag marks. Following them, she grows into an even greater panic. Our opening ends as Charlie stumbles, before looking up in concern, at which point her face becomes covered by a moving shadow.
 In order to set this up, we used a series of skills and conventions. Our characters were introduced at eye level, so that the audience automatically related to them. This was inspired by the introduction of Teddy and Chuck in Shutter Island. Tyler and Charlie had strong, contrasting personalities, their characteristics shown clearly from the very beginning by use of exaggeration. Tyler was bold and daring, and Charlie was timid and unsure. Though the characters are almost complete opposites of each other, they both represent weakness - additionally, by using opposites, we're able to have more of the audience relate to our characters.
 Though we wanted the audience to relate to our protagonists, we also used high angled shots to represent our character Charlie at some points. This was to express her vulnerability and fear within camera work, which I realised was incredibly important after watching 'Inception'. When being introduced to characters in that film, we instantly know how powerful they are by the camera angle used to present them.
 When it came to camera work, we conformed to most aspects of it. However, one area we challenged is how we presented Luke - we used an extreme close up at eye level. Often, an antagonist is introduced with a low angled shot, as this emphasises their power and danger. However, by using an extreme close up at eye level (alongside Charlie's face), it came across as distorted and odd - a risk to try an attempt on screen, but justified by the fact that we wanted the audience to feel confused and uncomfortable, so that again, it was easy to relate to Tyler. People see thrillers for the thrill - we wanted to somehow evoke an uncomfortable emotion within our audience even though we only had two minutes to do it in.
Another convention that we didn't conform to when creating our thriller was location - often, in thriller films, the location is urban, based in the city or streets. We challenged this by using a derelict barn on a farm, in a rural area. Initially, the locations we were looking at (abandoned hospitals and asylums) would have led us to more urban locations, however, the loactions were either too far away, bulldozed down, or were practically impossible to gain permission for (as most were not safe to film in). We had to develop our idea by keeping the theme of abandonment and deterioration for atmosphere. but in a place that was easier to gain permission for and travel to. After going through a couple more rounds of location scouting and asking for our target audiences feedback through a focus group, we were able to select this barn as the most effective.
 When looking at the cast of our thriller, we both conform and challenge the conventions. Most thrillers have male and female leads in, which ours conforms to. However, often, these characters are both protagonists, and the male is the hero whilst the female is the victim/damsel in distress. This is where our film begins to challenge the conventions of casting in a thriller. We used two female protagonists, whilst our male was the antagonist. This is because we wanted to use severe binary opposites to represent good and wicked, not only representing this through gender but also in looks. Our females are blonde with light eyes, whereas our antagonist is dark haired with stubble. We thought that as young women are within our secondary audience bracket, we should encourage and empower them within our film, crushing gender roles and stereotypes (an increasingly popular topic and very spoken about subject within our target audience's generation).
 We also conform to an extent with the male gaze theory, as our lead, Charlie, who is followed throughout the opening, is beautiful. However, she is tall and naturally muscular, and forced to be somewhat strong throughout our film - without a male romantic interest. Should we have continued our story past the opening, I believe this would have set us up to conform to the final girl theory, which supports the empowerment of women within the thriller and horror genres. This was inspired by films such as "Alien" of the thriller genre, and more recent successes (especially for our target audiences generation), "The Hunger Games" and "Divergent".
 When it came to costuming, the most obvious convention is the use of our red jacket on our character Tyler. The jacket alone foreshadowed danger, and represented Tyler bringing the terrifying scenario upon herself.
 We used a couple of props, a puzzle box and a mobile phone. The use of technology was thought of after our group member, Lauren, watched "Friend Request". As our target audience is a generation that uses technology every day, and the thriller "Friend Request" was made scarier by using technology, we decided to also conform to this idea.
 We wanted to represent an element of noir in our opening, as not only a convention but a tribute to where thrillers originated. We show this by using the black and white effect at the beginning of our film. We've developed it however, by including one other colour: red. Inspired by "Sin City" and "Schindler's List", we thought the impact this had on a scene was incredible. Though it's used to differentiate between a flash forward and the present, the isolation of the colour red foreshadows the danger our characters are about to face. This was the most difficult effect to master, but absolutely worth our time.
 We also manipulated the speed of clips, something often done in thriller films as the unnatural speed makes the audience uncomfortable. As it was, by speeding certain clips up, it made our character Charlie look more dramatic and desperate to escape.
 I took inspiration from 'home video' thrillers such as the "Paranormal Activity" films when creating a glitch effect on our opening. I felt like it added tension to clips that otherwise, weren't as effective as I wanted them to be. In combination with the music, I think the glitch effects worked incredibly well.
 A problem we had to overcome through editing was the dimensions of our film opening. Originally, our dimensions were 4:3, which meant that when we exported the video and watched it back, there were big, empty columns at the sides. We wanted to fill the entire screen, but if that wasn't possible, we wanted a cinematic effect at the very least. By having the 4:3 dimensions, it meant that our opening neither filler the screen or looked cinematic. I was luckily able to solve this problem by editing the settings of our project, and altering the dimensions to 21:9, which is standard for films. Some cameras filmed in this anyway, but the footage of others had to be transformed to fit the screen, which sometimes resulted in a lower quality clip. We wanted to conform to the cinematic dimensions because it looked for professional, and watching a film opening in an almost square dimension makes it seem like a bit of a joke.
 Another way we conformed to conventions when editing was by using quick cuts. When seeing this in the openings of other films, we realised how efficiently they carried the pace of the film. We also believed that quick cuts helped the audience see from the characters point of view - in a way, it represents blinking, and when you're nervous/anxious, you tend to look around and blink more.
 Another example of conforming to the thriller conventions is by filming in low key lighting, and editing some clips to make them appear darker/less saturated/colder. These elements of mise-en-scene are common trends in thrillers, and when not used, the atmosphere and mood of the piece doesn't seem quite as effective (unless used to contrast movements of the film, such as equilibrium and disruption). An example of this is in the film "Prisoners", whereby the beginning of the film is in high key lighting with saturated, warm clips, representing the equilibrium of the moment. When two children are kidnapped, the lighting, tone and saturation of the piece instantly changes, telling the audience something bad has happened before it's necessarily announced or shown.
 Another film inspired element is our font selection. We wanted to conform to using a font that appeared hand written after watching the opening of "Black Swan",which used a chalk-like font effect.
 A further convention we conformed to was adding in music and sound effects. This added atmosphere to our piece, and made it seem much more professional. Without it, our thriller almost seemed a little boring. By building texture, our piece felt more emotionally stimulating.

Overall, I think by conforming to so many conventions, our film opening can be successfully identified as a thriller. However, by also challenging certain conventions, we've made our film individual, and specific to our target audience, hopefully meaning that we'd be successful when releasing our film.