Cast and Crew

Tim Wilkins - Crew and Cast

Stephanie Rees - Crew

Caroline Ullyett - Crew

Set:
For the set of our thriller we have chosen a graveyard. We feel this is appropriate as it sets the scene of a thriller, it gives the audience an insight into what type of thriller its going to be as its set in a graveyard and the use of graveyards could mean its going to be a crime thriller.

Lighting:
The lighting will be gloomy/dull to emphasise the emotions of the characters. The overall lighting throughout the film will most likely to also be dull and gloomy as it is a thriller and it reflects the mood of the characters and also what the film is about.

Costumes:
The costumes in our thriller will vary from normal clothes to costumes such as police uniforms to get this we will probably use a fancy dress costume as it would be impossible to get hold of a real police uniform. If this still proves difficult we will just use normal clothes for the detective.

Props:
some of the props thats we are likely to use are grave stones, police tape, which are typical props you are likely to see at a crime scene

Classification of our thirller

Our thriller will be clasified as a 15 as we will only hint at certain things, meance will be shown and there will be obvious threats but nothing too malicious or unnerving which would disturb younger audiences. I think a 12 or a 12a would not be an acceptable rating, this is mainly because they wouldn't necessarly understand and it could scare them.
An 18 was completley out of the question because we also wanted our clip to be available to a much wider audiences than just adults, also because we didnt intend to have any strong sexual refrences or drug abuse/ graphic violence. So a 15 rating was the best choice.

Mood board

We chose to use these pictures for the mood board because they all have a link with our idea.
Our film is called 'shallow grave' so we thought a picture of a dark gloomy graveyard would be appropriate, the statue of the angel in the top left hand corner was chosen to represent the creepiness and also possibly somebody overseeing the crime. Then obviously the detectuve picture is there to represent the solving of the crime or the attempted solving. Along with the detective we thought a fingerprint would represent clues and another representation of things being unknown.
the man surrounded in shadows is meant to represent the antagonist, which like many thriller or horrowr films there face or identity  is hidden for a certain amount of time so put the audience in suspense.
Last but not least our title 'shallow grave' is done in an unusual font which shows the genre of our thirller and posibly the types of things that would happen in the whole film.

Locations

We have decided that we are going to film the detective looking at the case in college in a classroom with a lamp and a newspaper article, photographs and a magnifying glass in room on a desk. This will give a big impact on screen if we use the right cinematography and will hopefully be really effective.
Off site, we will film a graveyard, Mill Road, Cambridge, because it is big and should be interesting and creepy to film.It will also make it more realistic and believable.

 These are some photographs we found on google of the cemetry;

Naming Our Film and Narrative

To decide on a film name, we had a look through a list of phobias to get an idea of creating a film where the main character has this fear.
A couple of interesting choices were
'Catoptrophobia' A fear of Mirrors
'Sciaphobia' A fear of Shadows

'Taphephobia' which is a fear of being buried alive or of cemetries is our chosen phobia for our film. We came up with a few film names to link our phobia of the main character into the title. These were;

-Buried

-The Cemetry

-The Graveyard

-Shallow Grave

-Awake 

Our final choice for our film name is Shallow Grave. We have chosen this title name because it links in well with our characters phobia of being buried alive but also is a catchy title.

Narrative

The base of our story will revolve around a murder of someone who was buried alive and the chosen detective has a phobia of this and so is not comfortable doing the case and wants to try and get over this phobia. During the film a second murder killing is made in the same way and the detective soon works out that the cases are linked and becomes more afraid that it will happen to themes their phobia is getting worse. The detective manages to find the murderer however they know that the detective has been following and tracking them down, and tries to kill the detective. The detective manages to escape and calls for back up and the murderer is captured.

Choosing Our Production Logo

We created two production Logo's for our thriller film, so that we can choose which one we would prefer to use. We made these logo's on Adobe Photoshop, using images from Google.

We think that both are effective because of the black bold background but we think that the Cheetah 'Pride Productions' works better because the picture not only adds colour unlike the first, but also seems to give a greater impact when looking at it.

Our Group Logo

We came up with many ideas for our production logo, such as;
- CTS Productions
- 2G1B Productions
- PRIDE Films
- AWOG Films
- Oak Studios

We have decided to go for PRIDE Films, because we think that this will give a positive and big impact on the viewers as a good and attractive logo name.

Production Logo's

This is the production Logo for Universal Pictures. We think that the logo they use reflects that they are willing to help produce many types of films due to their title name 'Universal'. Its bold and colourful so it stands out to the audience and viewers watching the titles of the film they are about to see. One thriller film produced by them is called 'Catfish'.

The Decent - Supernatural Thriller

The storyline of this thrilling film I found on http://www.imbd.com/. It says;
''A woman goes on vacation with her family and friends and her husband and her daughter encounters a tragic accident. One year later she goes hiking with her friends and they get trapped in the cave. With a lack of supply, they struggle to survive and they meet strange blood thirsty creatures.''

Our group had to watch a random clip from the film, and listen closely to the music that was used and sounds as well that help to make the clip even more effective because without sound, it wouldn't effect you as much as it does with it such as jumpy parts or when people are killed. Throughout the clip, diagetic sound was used which helps the audience to understand what the characters are going though in their fictional world. Suspenseful sounds were used to add a more dramatic effect to what the characters are about to see or feel, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. Sad music was also used in the clip to match the characters mood and feelings, empathetic sound, which was when one of the girls was explaining to the others that one of their friends had died, making you feel sympathetic for the characters and to help you understand their emotion. Lastly sound effects were used creating the monsters noises, which were very creepy yet unrealistic realism as though that is the sound that the monster would make, yet you yourself know that things like that do not exist.

Previous Years Thriller Openings

For this task, we had to watch two past students thriller opening and see whether it fell under the rules for a good graded opening.
They used good sound effects with their scene and a variety of shot distances throughout too, such as mid shots and close ups. They used a handheld camera, but managed to keep it very steady when filming. The titles were appropriate and the whole clip was edited well enough so that the continuity flowed. Finally, the material that they shot was appropriate to the task.
We think that some of the shots would have been better if they were shorter because it could have added a more dramatic effect to what was happening and they could have introduced the detective slightly more and had past scenes of how the girl died. We do however think that this thriller opening was very effective.
The link for this clip is below.

http://67thriller10.blogspot.com/  :-)

 For the second thriller opening we watched, we really liked the groups logo that they made, but we thought that the credits did seem to drag. The ambient sound in the background along with the title music worked well though, preparing you for what you are about to see next.
The voice over worked well and helped add effect to the clip as well as cause slight confusion as to who's voice it was and whether we were watching them running through the woods. They used good camera shots,  and the handheld camera worked really well also. Sound was used well throughout the opening and the filming was approprite to the task.
We think that to make this opening better, we would have put more suspenseful sound at the end to add a more dramatic effect to what we saw. It would have also have been better if they varied the shot types, although the shots that they did use worked well.



 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt8zQFhxdUc&feature=player_embedded

Action Thriller Conventions

As there are many different themed or sub-genred thrillers, conventions differ slightly depending on which one. Looking at an Action Thriller, you can see that the main character, or Protagonist, has more screen time and is usually outnumbered in a situation as they normally manage to isolate themself, as well as having a background weakness making them slightly vulnerable. They normally also have a talent, which they are very athletic at in their own way, such as shooting or being very strong.
As you can see in the picture below, the protagonist is in a very awkward situation as he has someone behind him and someone infront. The picture was taken from one of The Bourne films.

The antagonist, or bad guy, usually has some sort of high authority, being a good job for example, but terrible at running it, making them a 'false hero'. Locations in an action thriller normally vary quite a lot and you meet or are introduced to lots of new characters that you only learn about later on in the film meaning that anigma's are put into place making you want to watch the film to find out about the characters and understand them better.
The picture below shows Le Chiffre, the bad guy in Casino Royale, who has high authority in the film as he is very rich and contols a lot of people. You can see he is very sly looking and to me looks very devious and untrustworthy.

Finally, a lot of violence is involved and usually innocent people are drawn into the situation and are hurt either with verbal abuse such as threats or physical abuse such as punching, or both, just because these very small characters in the film know people that the main characters are after.

Here are just a couple action thriller genered films that i showed a picture for above in this post. I got their storyline from the website http://www.imbd.com/;

Casino Royale; James Bond goes on his first ever mission as a 00. Le Chiffre is a banker to the world's terrorists. He is participating in a poker game at Montenegro, where he must win back his money, in order to stay safe among the terrorist market. The boss of MI6, known simply as M sends Bond, along with Vesper Lynd to attend this game and prevent Le Chiffre from winning. Bond, using help from Felix Leiter, Mathis and having Vesper pose as his wife, enters the most important poker game in his already dangerous career. But if Bond defeats Le Chiffre, will he and Vesper Lynd remain safe?

The Bourne Identity; Based very loosely on Robert Ludlum's novel, the Bourne Identity is the story of a man whose wounded body is discovered by fishermen who nurse him back to health. He can remember nothing and begins to try to rebuild his memory based on clues such as the Swiss bank account, the number of which, is implanted in his hip. He soon realizes that he is being hunted and takes off with Marie on a search to find out who he is and why he is being hunted.

Murder By Numbers, A Crime Thriller

The Conventions
Suspenseful music is involved throughout nearly the whole clip that we watched. This keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. As the first clip you see is a run down building on the edge of a cliff with ambient sound, this too makes what you are seeing look intereging to the audience. The first characters you see come across as quite young, until you meet the next main character, played by Sandra Bullock who, who plays an adult and the rest of the cast in her detective group are too. Sandra plays a clever police woman, who appears to become isolated quite soon after looking into things that maybe other detectives wouldn't. The story line also goes back and forth,  between the detective group and the younger characters, which makes the story line misleading as you begin to wonder as whether they committed the murder, making them to the audience suspects and Sandra the lead detective.
the characters are usually well known and good looking, and there is nearly always a contrast between younger and older characters. the protagonist will always have a father figure and a variety of settings within a certain area where isolated crime scenes are made which is very stereotypical.   


Filming and Editing
A lot of the filming and editing techniques are the type of ones  you would expect to see in a crime thriller. A jump cut from the titles to the first scene (an establishing shot) immediately creates attention and attracts the audience. Low angle shots are used to show importance of characters and long shots also help the audience to get a feel of being a voyeur, standing and watching what is going on from a distance but not being involved in the situation. Close ups are a common in a crime thriller because the audience always need to see the fine details to follow what the detective see's, looking at the small clues and realising how important these clues are to find who commited the crime. A less likely filming technique is panning, which is used in the film and helps the audience to see where the characters are and what is going on.

Characters
You are introduced immediately to two young main characters, who will obviously play a main part in the film and are shown attempting to kill themselves. As the characters are in an isolated house, it makes them seem as they are slightly weird to the audience, which also makes them seem quite isolated to their life. You are also introduced to a homicide detective who comes across as confident and a little fierce from the sort of comments he makes to other detectives. As you watch the way she works through her job, you realize that she is actually quite isolated herself as she looks into things that others wouldn't normally think about doing.

The Sixth Sense - Psychological Thriller

For the first 3 minutes of the opening clip, credits are being shown, with eerie music playing quietly but profoundly in the background, and when the title come a huge booming noise is heard to impact on the title 'The Sixth Sense'. After dark lighting on the first clip is used, and just a lightbuld is shown warming up, it automatically tells the audience that the film is going to be creepy. A mature cast is shown, as you are nearly straight away introduced to a middle aged woman, and then onto Dr. Malcom Crowe, a child psychologist. Slowly the music starts to build up again after the woman and man head up stairs to their bedroom, and they see broken glass, obviously being broken from the outside in, and after the woman screams a little after feeling and seeing a shadow move into their bathroom, the music gets louder and louder telling the audience that something weird and unusual is about to happen. A strange man is seen in the bathroom, who is hardly wearing anything and talking strangely to the main character, which makes the audience quiz why the man is there and when you find out that he used to be one of Dr Malcoms patients, it makes the scene even more strange and twisted to the audience. The music helps to build up the strange and awkward atmosphere and his mood swings make it even more mysterious.
Although the audience don't know it quite yet after watching this clip, it is soon realsied that this will be a clue as to something that the Protagonist must do to help the guy standing in his bathroom, and that he has already become isolated as no one else understands what and how this strange man will react and behave as only Dr Malcom knows what he is like.

Throughout the whole clip, the micro elements helped to build up suspense, the lighting being dark, the music being creepy and eerie and the camerawork follows the characters nicely, and isn't too jumpy at the start however when the creepy music starts to play building up the suspense, handheld camerawork is used to make the characters feel slightly uncomfortable at what they are about to see on the screen.

This is the clip i watched;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44VRhcFxFF4

Seven - Directed by David Fincher

At the start of the clip, dark colours are shown creating an eerie effect helping the audience to understand that what they are about to watch is not a childrens film or action film or comedy. The ambient music and naturalistic background sounds help the audience to get a feel of where the characters are first going to be seen and as a ticking noise gets louder, this also builds up suspense after which haunting music is followed.

The cast used in 'Seven' is more mature, and stars Morgan Freeman, who has been in films such as 'Bruce Almighty', 'The Shawshank Redemption' and 'The Bucket List' and is a famous well known actor, as well as Brad Pitt, who has been in films such as 'Fight Club', 'Inglorious Bastards' and 'Babel'. You soon find that Morgan Freeman is the Protagonist as he has more screen time and also showing that he is weak as he looks into things that aren't obvious to others, making him isolated.
7 people have died in the film, linking the title in well as to the happenings of this thriller. The whole film is based around a certain type of crime, murder.
The first person that the film introduces you too is the detective, where binary opposites are put into place for the two main characters. One character shows a sense of cleanliness and tidiness whereas the other is young, cocky and messy.
Montage editing has been used to help the audience understand what has gone on and is going on in the film, with suspenseful music and dark lighting adding to the atmosphere, linking in well with detective work.

Conventions of a Thriller

A Thriller always shows a scene at the start and an answer at the end of the film, and helps you to gather up information yourself to come to your own conclusion. There are binary opposite characters involved and the narrative does not always flow, sometimes meaning you have to really focus on everything you watch.

The narrative centres around a crime in a thriller genred film. The binary opposites are the 'Protagonist', the lead moral and the 'Antagonist', the villan. In a thriller, the Protagonist will always have a weakness, which is often shown in the title; such as 'Vertigo'. Vertigo is a fear of heights.

They will be shown in peril, there will always be a complex web of clues, questions asked and being answered for the protagonist slowly making them isolated, a themes of mistaken identity. There will often be mirroring illusions, objectification of females and makes you, the viewer, become a voyeur. Voyeurism is the pleasure of watching and looking, but not being involved in what is happening. Finally, Micro Elements always help to build up suspense in a thriller, from lighting, to sound.

Thrillers and Horrors, Whats the difference?

Thriller
A thriller often contains a more mature cast, mainly with highly regarded (or expensive) actors and actresses. The focus is mainly in crime, working out who did it, why and how. Finally, you often find that the detective is lead and the victim is not always known to the audience.

An example of a thriller genered film is Shutter Island, starring Leonardo DeCaprio.

Horror
A horror is a lot more violent than a thriller, often displaying blood and guts. A young cast is usually used; for example teenagers, and there are multiple victims. Adults are not normally present, and if so are not supportive. The focus of a horror, is usually the violence and lead 'victims' often become the detective, as they are the ones who escaped. A suburban setting is normally used to add to the eerie and creepy effect of the genre.

An example of a horror genred film is Saw.
                                     

Psychological Thriller

The conventions of a Psychological Thriller are:

• It always has a misleading story line
• Has unusual happenings
• Always has clever characters involved that always think ahead of everyone else
• The film builds up to reveal something shocking at the end
• The characters always have a fear of death
• There's a danger on a mental level rather than physical
• Characters are in conflict with their mind and finally
• 2 or more characters are preying on each others sanity.

 After watching a clip from 'Memento' by Christopher Nolan (which is a psychological thriller) we found many conventions that it covered. He has a long term memory and rememebers who he is and that his wife was killed, and after having the accident can not remember recent things that he does and has to remind himself of these things. His long term memory helps the audience to identify with him. The character is in conflict with his own mind, and tries to remember what has happened and avenge the death of his wife. From the clip, we see that the character shows him going back and forth between time, not only to give the audience an understanding of what happened in the past, but also so that we can see how the clues piece together to make sense of what we see. His flashbacks are in black and white and not linear making it interesting and easy for the audience to defrenciate between the two happenings of the film. Christopher Nolan is a common director for choosing a mature cast and for doing this genre of film.

The Prestige

After watching the first Ten minutes of the film, I was able to pick out many specific Media Techniques used to grab the audience's attention without the audience realising. I could straight away pick out the themes of The Prestige as it was only one that stood out; that the film was to be a Thriller.This was because during watching the clip it was easy to see that the film was to be mysterious, suspenseful and interesting as you had to pay close attention to the narration at the beginning of the clip.
The Narrative of the first 10 minutes told the viewer a lot. Cutter (played by Michael Caine) opens up the film with the words 'Are you watching closely?' immediately grabbing the audience's attention as it is a rhetorical question in which the audience already knows the answer. Cutter starts to then talk to the audience about how a magician performs a magic trick - first is The Pledge, the second is The Turn and the third and final is The Prestige. After having been explained, you are then thrown into a room in which a trial is taking place, which turns out to be a murder. After this short clip, where the second main character is introduced, Alfred Borden (played by Christian Bale), you see Alfred in jail being spoken to by a solicitor, blackmailing him for his magic tricks to keep his little daughter safe. You are then thrown back into the past and slowly watch as the tale unravels, meeting Robert Angier (played by Hugh Jackman), the guy who has been murdered. All of these clips link together as you watch closely, explaining the narrative of the film.
There are really only two main characters, with the exception of one, who appears a lot, making it almost three. Alfred, who plays a magician and is being accused of murder in court that from what the 10 minute clip tells the audience, Robert, who plays the second magician, The Great Danton, who is dead and the trial is running to find his murderer due to an accusation, as well as watching what happened during his life leading up to his death and finally Cutter, who plays a witness in court and appears to play the story teller to the film as well as knowing the two magicians as he works with them both.
Looking into the Mise-En-Scene of this film tells the audience a lot more about the individual characters and the theme of the film.
The Lighting:
The lighting in the film appears as rather dark or dulled down and mysterious, creating an eerie and creepy effect, however the lighting is natural meaning that the audience know that the film should be based to reality, but to the era that the film was set rather than modern times today. When a spotlight is shown on Robert Angier, you immediately realise that the film revolves around him as this is the main focus that the director has portrayed to the audience from the first few minutes of the clip.
Make-Up:
Throughout the whole 10 minute clip, the make up used is natural and realistic, also helping to represent the era of the film and to help the audience know that the film is not going to suddenly become a sci-fi themed movie, as the make-up is not mad and unusual.
Colour:
The colour used in the film is natural, however toned down slightly to give similar effects as the lighting in the film, to make it appear mysterious and strange, however this attracts the target audience because they would be expecting to see this sort of use in colour in a thriller genre film.
Costume:
The costume in the 10 minute clip from what i can see is old fashioned, period set, but classy and smart, obviously representing a wealthy class of people as the more different the clothes are to one another, the different personalities that a character will have in the film.
Sets:
Lots of sets have been used in this 10 minute clip, from a court room to a huge performing stage to the reception of a hotel. Each helping the audience to follow the story and to know where abouts a character is a certain point in the film. All of the sets used were portrayed as busy or packed, and so gives a sense that the characters locations were popular and interesting places to be during their eras.
Props:
The props used in the clip were none out of the ordinary, they were items that would have been used during the time, however maybe slightly classier or expensive showing the audience a wealthy era that the characters lived in. The only item that was out of the ordinary was the big 'magic trick' that was being shown - The Transported Man - which of around that time would not really have been something that people would have seen, however, it was supposed to come across as something out of the ordinary and so i think that the director managed to place this prop in really well.

Shot list and Story Board

Preliminary Task

We found this preliminary task alot easier than our childrens film preliminary task because we knew how to use the camera and the different shots that we learnt and were able to do these a lot more efficiently having practiced before hand to make it more interesting. Our preliminary story task is about a boy who did something wrong and a girl confronts him about it when he tries to hide away. We had 6 main scene's however, made more shots in between to break up the short scene's.
The only thing that would have made our preliminary task better would be to use sound to add to the atmosphere, however we ran out of time to do so.