Research into film Institutions

We want to find a film institution which would be a good company to produce our film, we want this company to be a British institution, this is as, if our film was going to be produced it would probably be a British institution, and not Hollywood. We have looked at several films which follow a similar genre to our film, and and produced by British institutions.

We firstly looked at the film 28 Days Later which is a horror/thriller film made in 2002 by Danny Boyle. The film was produced by DNA films which is a British film company supported by The British Film Council. However the film was then distributed by an American company called Fox Searchlight Pictures, which is part of the well known institution 20th Century Fox. The director and producer of this film must have decided that it was best the film was distributed by a large American company, so the film would have got more publicity, ratings and advertisement. As this was not totally a British film, we will probably not use these companies.

Dead Man's Shoes was another British film we looked at, it was produced in 2004 and directed by Shane Meadows, it follows the same genre we want to follow, psychological thriller. It was produced by a British company called Warp films, and also distributed by a British name Optimum Releasing. These were both companies we considered using for our film.

The final film we researched was Franklyn, which is quite a new film released in February 2009 in the U.K, written and directed by Gerald McMorrow. This film also follows the thriller genre. The company that produced and funded the film was British, The Recorded Picture Company, also supported by the UK Film Council. The distributor of the film was again British institution called Contender Films. We feel that these are the film institutions that we would like to produce and distribute our film.

We have made this decision of using these institutions; The Recorded Picture Company and Contender Films as we like that both of the companies are British, which is what we want for our thriller film. As the film Franklyn is also like the psychological thriller film we want to achieve, we feel these institutions would be the best British institutions to produce and distribute our film.

Codes and Coventions for the thriller genre

When we decided on the genre of thriller for our opening sequence, we discussed the codes and conventions of a thriller film, aided by our questionnaire. Before writing and planning our opening sequence we had to decide what an opening sequence of a thriller film consisted of. When researching this we realised that there was different types of thriller films; there is action thrillers, horror thrillers and sci-fi thrillers.

However we found that in all of the thrillers the location of the opening sequence is usually hard to distinguish, this may be to make the characters feel more singled out and scared (such as Saw and The Bourne Identity), or so it makes the setting more mysterious which creates tension (such as The Machinist). This was something we considered when producing the idea for our film, as the protagonist character in our opening sequence is unaware of where she is, and so is the audience.

In all thriller films we found that there was a villain and victim character, like the Joker and Batman in Batman The Dark Knight. These two characters are most common and well noticeable in thriller films, as the thriller genre is produced upon the excitement and mystery between the two oppositions. We have used this idea of a villain and a victim within our opening sequence, as the girl who regains consciousness is obviously the victim, and her attacker is the villain. We also found that the villain character was quite often disguised, unknown, or had their identity hidden for the opening sequence of the film, for example in Saw and Se7en.

Another convention of thriller films we took into account when deciding on our opening sequence was the plot. The general plot for a thriller film is mystery and excitement surrounding good trying to stop evil. However we learnt that in an opening sequence it is usually evil which wins or appears to be winning, this is because this will attract the audiences attention and make them watch the rest of the film as they do not want evil to win the battle. In our opening sequence we have also achieved this, as the girl has been attacked at the party, showing that the villain is winning.

Iconography is another factor we considered, and have made great use of in our sequence. We found that in an opening sequence clues are given to what may happen in the film, or what has already happened in the opening sequence. These are achieved through the visual sector of a film, maybe through certain features of the opening sequence being highlighted. This can also be achieved through the use of camera angles in the opening sequence, as close ups and extreme close ups are very common in thriller opening sequences.

Equipment List

For our film we will need the following equipment:

FIRST LOCATION (FIELD):
* Camera
* Tape
* Battery
* Tripod
* Lighting - torches
* Makeup
* Music
* Protagonist character
* Plastic sheet (incase of rain)
* Umberellas

SECOND LOCATION (PARTY):
* Camera
* Tripod
* Battery
* Tape
* Characters including protagonist
* Lighting- dimmed lighting, disco ball, large lamps
* Not copyrighted music
* Props- drink bottles/cans, food

In order to make our film successful we will need to choose a good location, we also need to have good lighting as it will help when filming in darker scenes. We must make sure that we have our camera set up and that the battery is full. We will need to ensure that the camera is tightly secured to the tripod in order to get good footage. The music is essential in our opening sequence as we need to create a thrilling mood in order to attract our audience. We must also make sure that we have all of the props and extra characters ready for our film as we need to use them. If we do all of these things properly and get all of our equipment ready, we will hopefully have a successful opening sequence.

Storyboard for our opening sequence

Summary of our Thriller opening sequence

We find a girl abandonned in the middle of a deserted field, as she becomes conscious, confused about her whereabouts, the character begins to have various flashbacks of the previous night. As the flashbacks continue we see the character is at a party having a good time, until she gets assaulted by an anonymous person. The journey continues as she staggers off wondering what happened the night before, and who her assaulter was.

Spider Diagram showing our ideas for our opening sequence

Questionnaire and Answers for Research of thriller films

For our research, we asked 9 people the following questions, these are shown above along with the answers.

From our questionnaire results, it is clear that the many of the people who took part in the survey feel that an opening sequence to a thriller film most importantly needs 'strange', 'scary' or 'freaky' characters. In our opening sequence we have an attacker, who plays this scary, villain character, therefore we feel we have succeeded in this sector of a thriller opening sequence. The other top factor our volunteers felt should be in an opening sequence are scenes that make you jump. Looking at our storyboard we also feel we have succeeded in this also as the attacker in the sequence jumps out at the young innocent girl, frightening her and hopefully the audience.

Tension building music is another factor we had to consider, as this was the most common type of music our volunteers felt were found in an opening sequence to a thriller film. We are not yet sure how we are going to meet this need as we are going to have music playing at the party scene, therefore we do not know whether music over the top of this will spoil the effect. However we may use dramatic music at some tense sections of the party, like when the attacker springs upon the character.

We have also come to the conclusion that our thriller film will have the 15 certificate; as it was thought that this was the suitable age for a great thriller film. Therefore this is the age we have chosen to rate our film at, on the other hand we feel that the gender, race and socio-economic status of our audience does not matter.