Planning: Costume

 The man, Adrian, is in a trilby hat and a long black coat - a direct reference to 'The Third Man' as both of the characters wear this classic 1940s Thriller costume. This is used to show the audience that we are referencing the classic 1940s Thriller and making a tribute to the cinematography of Carol Read. 

 The girl, Darcie, costume is a typical waitressing outfit - a shirt, black skirt, black tights and a black cardigan. This is used to show responsibility and reliability in her as a character because she has authority because she works at the café. However, she becomes the Femme Fatale when she puts on her leopard print coat and becomes slightly sinister and evil - taking money out of the till. 

Planning: Location

We thought this location would work a lot better than the previous location because it is more spacious, has more ambient lighting and is quite old-fashioned and unglamorous meaning it reflects the mood of the film and the genre of the Thriller very well. 

Planning: Titles

Casting - Why we cast our Characters

Adrian Doyle - We needed someone for this role who was an older male and could pull of the original 'Harry Lime' 1940s Thriller 'look' - gladly Lauren's Dad, Alan, kindly volunteered to do so. We thought that he definitely fitted the role and really worked well in the costume and also the acting. With Alan being an older male he worked in the role and gave the voyeuristic nature in his acting that we were hoping for. 


Beth Maplestone - We wanted somebody in this role who was a young, pretty girl that could also be seen to have a 'dark side', as the name suggests. Kaya kindly volunteered herself to play the part and we thought we worked very well. Her kind, timid nature and pretty face allows the audience to really connect with the character, but when she steals the money from the till for herself the audience then see her in a different light - becoming the 'Femme Fatale'.

Planning: Storyboards

CHANGES: 

• The over the shoulder shot of the man proved to be a challenge because the street was so narrow that we were filming on, so we did it as a mid-shot and filmed him walking through the door and into the café
• In editing we cut some of the shots of Darcie and Adrian to make them quicker and cut faster into each other to connote danger and a sense of urgency, but also to create a connection. 

FINAL Shotlist

• Close up shot of 'Darcie' cleaning glasses and knives
• CUT TO two girls sitting at a table talking
• CUT TO over-the-shoulder shot of man walking into café
• F2B* of Darcie making a cup of coffee
• CUT TO shot of her placing it on the counter
• CUT TO shot of Adrian putting sugar into his coffee
• CUT TO shot of Adrian walking over to a table
• CUT TO shot of girls getting up and walking out of the café
• F2B* blank screen and title of 'Angel Café'
• CUT TO Adrian sipping coffee
• CUT TO close up shot of mug being put down
• CUT TO POV* shot of Darcie walking towards Adrian
• CUT TO close up shot of Adrian's face
• CUT TO tilt shot of Darcie taking coffee mug
• CUT TO tilt shot of her walking away
• CUT TO Darcie walking into kitchen
• DISSOLVE to shot of Adrian walking towards door
• DISSOLVE to shot of Darcie getting her coat
• DISSOLVE to shot of Adrian bolting the door shut
• CUT TO POV* shot of Darcie walking back to counter
• CUT TO close up shot of Darcie turning off the light
• CUT TO close up shot of Darcie opening till
• F2B* Darcie takes money from till
• F2B* Darcie closes the till
• DISSOLVE to shot of Adrian watching Darcie
• CUT TO shot of Darcie pocketing the stolen money
• CUT TO shot of Darcie taking a pie out to the freezer
• CUT TO shot of Darcie opening freezer
• CUT TO shot of Darcie inside freeze
• CUT TO shot of Adrian shutting the door, thus locking Darcie inside.

*Fade to black
*Point of view

Naming our Thriller

After some thought we decided that we should call our film 'Angel Café'. This is used in irony because it is the man who makes the café non-Angelic, but also the girl, Darcie, has aspects of the Femme Fatale meaning that although she seems Angelic she has a 'dark side' and therefore it is ironic in that sense too. 

Final title to our film. 

Character names - UPDATED

We decided to keep the name 'Adrian Doyle' because it suits the characters, however we wanted to change the name of the girl from 'Agnes' to 'Darcie' because Darcie connotes evil and danger because it means 'the Dark one'. We thought this was more appropriate for our Thriller because 'Agnes' was too boring as our character is not completely innocent - as nobody is ever entirely innocent. 

We have also decided to make 'Darcie' take money from the till after she thought everyone else had left - adding more depth to the character and establishing her more as a contemporary Femme Fatale. 

All Footage from Thriller shoot

Possible Music for our Thriller

Background Music

http://www.freesound.org/people/ERH/sounds/30306/

http://www.freesound.org/people/imaginaryband/sounds/79418/



Radio Sounds

http://www.freesound.org/people/cognito%20perceptu/sounds/38693/

http://www.freesound.org/people/Percy%20Duke/sounds/23503/

Key Thriller Conventions - Location

Locations are used in the Thriller genre to maximise the intent and connotations linked with the situation or sense. I think, after studying the use of location, we should make sure that location is used not only well, but also with meaning and strong connotation.

Examples of good use of locations:

Enclosed spaces:

    The location of a car is a generic location used in the Thriller genre. It is used to show the character in a confined space and show isolation and disassociation. It is also a lot easier for a person to commit a crime inside an enclosed space as there will be less witnesses, if any. Shown here in Essex Boys, in the opening we see Billy in the car. This is used to show his vulnerability and that he could be a target or involved in crime because he is young and naive. The car is also a very claustrophobic place and makes him seem very disassociated as he doesn't show much emotion even when he is being part of a violent crime.

Here in Witness an enclosed space is used as it is the place in which the crime is committed. The use of an enclosed space is to show the isolation and could perhaps, in this case, be used to show social and moral corruption in that crime is being done 'underground' and in enclosed, secretive places - showing the social corruption in America. The direct contrast between this idea and the Amish boy is used to show his innocence and idealism of how his life with the Amish community would be perfect with no corruption, just like originally how the 'American dream' would have thought to be.

Unglamourous Locations:

The murder scene in Witness uses a toilet as the location. It is used to show the pure realism of the crime and that you cannot make a murder a 'glamorous' event. The more realistic a scene becomes, the more eerie and creepy it becomes as it shows the pure realism of a murder/crime. It also shows that it can happen anywhere at any time of day and to anyone - reinforcing this idea of realism. I think this idea and connotations of realism make for an interesting scene and I think we should do something similar in our Thriller as it would be much easier to make the scene unglamourous and realistic rather than using a complicated or glamorous location.

Similarly in Essex Boys, the use of the Essex cityscape is used to show the realism once more. The weather is also a very key aspect in this shot due to it reflecting coming events. The use of pathetic fallacy is used to foreshadow that a crime is about to take place, but also it is used to show that a crime can happen at any time - even on a cold, rainy day in Essex. Although, the location itself cannot be used in our Thriller we could use a similar cityscape to connote more realism. I also really like the idea of using pathetic fallacy and the connotations of rain and overcast weather - being mystery, pain and sadness - to emphasise and foreshadow events to come in our Thriller.

How we are going to use this in our own Thriller:

    We are going to use it by our café location will be slightly unglamourous because the café we are using is slightly old-fashioned and 'run-down' - so it will reflect the mood of the Thriller and also add the conventions to the mise-en-scene. Also the space of a café is quite enclosed, meaning it reflects the girl as being vulnerable.

All Footage - Practise

    This is the practise shoot for the opening to our Thriller - however we will not be using much, if any, of this footage because we think that we can do much better with more time and more planning.

    The main problem with this practise shoot was the mise-en-scene and some of the shots. We were quite rushed, as the woman who owned the café needed to lock up so we didn't have much time to get more than one of each shot.
    The lighting was a key part of why this shoot wasn't a success. The large torch that we used for lighting didn't work as it only lit up a small area of the café and not the whole area, and it also ran out of charge halfway through filming. Next time we will make sure to use different lighting and perhaps use a reflector (left) to bounce some of the light back onto the characters to make them visible on screen to the audience - as most of the shots in the dark cannot be seen on the screen.

    Costume was also a problem due to the man character wearing jeans and also taking his hat off halfway through filming and then putting it back on near the end - changing our continuity. When we re-shoot we will be using a different man for our character of 'Adrian' and make sure the costume is perfectly sorted before the shoot goes ahead.

    The character of the man was also a problem due to him being too young for what the character would be, realistically, thus on our next shoot we will be using Lauren's Dad to make sure we have a reliable person to film with and also somebody who is much older to make the character of the man much more believable.

    The only other thing is that we needed to use more close-up shots to show more detail to the audience.

    When we re-shoot we are going to use a different café which will be much bigger and we will have much more time to shoot and get the shots we need.

Location Shots: Angel Café

    These are the location shots for the 'Angel Café'. We think that the 'quaintness' and 'uniqueness' of the café will mean that we are able to have a different feel to our Thriller, different to other people's.

Characters Names

The male character in our thriller is named Adrian Doyle. After researching the meanings of names, we found that 'Adrian' means 'The Dark One' - which we decided this fits well with the character, he is anonymous at the beginning as you only see the back of his head. The name 'Doyle' means 'Stranger'. This implies that the main female character does not know Adrian or that she has never met him before and he is a stranger to her. 


The female role in our thriller is named Agnes Maplestone. 'Agnes' means 'purity' and 'innocence', this reflects her character hugely and she is very gentle. After deciding not to chose a complicated name we decided that this would be suitable - however just a 'innocent' and 'gentle' main character may be boring as it shows her to not have much personality, so this is subject to change if we decide to change the girl to have a more complex personality.

New Shot List: Opening to Thriller

• Longshot esablishing locations, scene and characters. This introduces the two characters to the film.
• Cut to a tracking shot of the girl walking towards the man, sat at a table.
• Cut to an over the shoulder shot of her approaching the man, and the man putting his newspaper down on the table.
• Cut to a high angle/Close up shot of the girl picking the empty mug up, close up (using the rule of thirds) showing the newspaper headline. (Relating to rape/murder)
• Cut to an extreme close up of the date, showing this part is in a flashback.
• Cut to a zoom out of close up into a high angle shot of the man and girl.
• Cut to a point of view shot of the girl walking away, using shot reverse shot between the girl and the man to connect them. Girl goes into the kitchen.
• Cut to a tracking shot of the mans feet as he gets up and starts to walk.
• Cut to a low angle shot of the man approaching the door.
• Cut to a worms eye of him opening and closing the door.
• Cut to an extreme closeup shot of him bolting the door.
• Cut to a panning shot of the man walking towards the counter and crouching, out of sight from the girl. The girl comes out of the kitchen, scans cafe and switches most of the lights off and walks towards the door.
• Cut to an over the shoulder shot of man walking towards the the girl whilst she's looking for her keys.
• Cut to a man standing directly behind her, cut to transition/panning shot of the girl to man, in a different scene/location.
• Cut to a transition shot continues to over the shoulder shot of the man attatching photo of the girl to a wall.
• Cut to a close up panning shot showing all the photos of different dead girls.

Further Development to our Thriller Idea

     As a group, we decided that our idea would be too complex just for an opening, as from our case studies we can see that a lot of Thriller films that conform to the genre have very simple openings with minimal changes to setting or characters. Therefore, we have taken our original idea of the cafe, but focus more on the interior of the cafe itself because a dark, ominous cafe will work very well in the Thriller genre. Also that if we keep to just one location, the audience will not be confused and it means that the audience can connect with a character more closely in one settings before it is changed - also just having one location will make it easier for us to maintain the 2 minutes we need.  

   

Developments:

• It will begin with the young girl working in the cafe, however the difference is that the man will be inside the cafe sat down having a drink, instead of being outside watching her.
• The man will be sat at a table reading a newspaper with 'murder/rape' headlines on it.
• The girl will go to collect his coffee and the camera will catch the headline of the newspaper - foreshadowing the rest of the plot.
• She will take the coffee from him and begin to close the cafe for that evening.
• The date on the newspaper will imply that the scene is a flashback once the audience has established the date later in the film.
• The girl will then return to the kitchen with the coffee cup - during this the man will approach the front door of the cafe, open and close the door to imply that he has left, leaving the girl to continue to lock up.
• An extreme close up of the bolt sliding across the door will be next - to show she has been locked inside the already small/claustraphobic space of the cafe.
• He will then walk to crouch behind the counter, so that the girl does not see him.
• Once returning from the kitchen, the girl will switch off all of the lights and slowly walk toward the door, searching for her key in her bag/pocket.
• We will show a shot of the man stood closely behind her, slowly closing in on her in a threatening way.
• We will then use a transition shot to conclude to the next scene - using the back of the girls head, fading into the back of the mans head. He will then place the girls picture on his wall of many other pictures of young girls.

We will have a shot of the man pinning up photos of girls and also the girl in the film, much like in the image (left) - portraying the man as a sadistic killer - the influence coming from 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo'. Thus the rest of the film will be an investigation into the murder/disapprence of the girl from the cafe and perhaps having the man as a very onmisent and enigmatic character in the film.

Overall - I think this idea is much simpler and will be able to fit into 2 minutes a lot easier as we have less to film rather than having to film a lot and then cram it into the time limit - which could confuse the audience because there is so much location change. Therefore, with only one location, possibly two if the man is filmed walking into the cafe at the beginning, the audience can see the narrative structure and characters much easier.

Key Thriller Conventions - Camera

Camera Angles - The use of strong and visually interesting camera angles is essential in encapsulating an audience and adding tension or mystery to a scene. I think we should utilise camera angles with utmost priority.

Examples of good use of camera angles:

Close up:

   The close up here in Witness is used to add to the tension and suspense of the atmosphere of the scene at this time and make the audience sympathise with the boy as he is struggling to close the door and could be killed if he doesn't - making the audience fear for his life. This is used to great effect and makes the audience feel more connected with the character of the boy.

   The close up used in Animal Kingdom is to make the audience directly associate with the main character, 'J'. As the film progresses, more and more close ups are used to directly associate the action with 'J' and to make the audience feel as if they are experiencing it from his perspective.




Long shots/Landscape shots (used to establish location):

    This long shot of the Australian landscape is used in Animal Kingdom. It is used to reflect the character in the scene as a morally corrupt, in that the landscape seems endless and limitless - reflecting that his morality, or lack of such, has no boundaries or limits and he will continue to do whatever he wants without consequences. Also the desolate wasteland that is shown in this image shows that his mind is in the wrong place and his judgement is wrong and he's gone insane with worry and anxiety. This kind of representational image could be used in our Thriller as we have the facility and idea to use a limitless landscape of the countryside.

 

This very barren landscape in Essex Boys is used to connote very similar meaning, in that the man is beating up a 'friend' as it is describe by the voiceover, although we can tell this is not true. The limitless landscapes reflects his limitless personality and morality in that he's just come out of a sentence in prison and the first thing he does is nearly kill the person who meant he went into prison. Although this is very graphic, the idea and connotations behind it are very strong and could be used in our thriller.

    Planning:

    In our Thriller I do think that we should focus very clearly on trying to use some of these generic camera shots as it would add more to the film rather than just having simple camera shots - as we only have 2 minutes so every shot and every detail must mean something, as I think that we should use clever narrative techniques, such as foreshadowing and connotations.

    The use of a long shot to establish a location could definitely be used as the girl is walking home as it would show her location, and it could be used again to show the man's house. We have already decided on using an establishing shot near the beginning of the film to show the girl in the café and establish the location and the whole café to the audience.

    As we develop our shot list further we will be able to establish which camera angles we are going to use and why we are going to use them. Such as a long shot to establish location or a high angle shot to show dominance in a scene.

Thriller Planning

Changes to our Thriller Idea

We have had a change of ideas, but not a complete change just tweaking our initial idea to make it work much easier and to make the narrative be able to continue into a whole film rather than our old idea would have cut at 2 minutes and looked like a the whole film and then would've had nowhere to go onto the rest of the film. However, our new idea flows much easier into a whole film idea.

Our initial idea was to:

• Have a girl working in a café
• Soft music playing
• Shot of her initially so the audience can associate with the girl
• Shot of a name tag to show her name is 'Summer'
• Over the shoulder shot of a man watching her
• Flash of a shot of a wall covered in photos of the girl
• The man then follows the girl
• He follows her into her house*
• Shot of padlock on a gate unlocked
• Shot of man walking into gate
• Black screen showing title
• Girl scream on title screen
• Shot of man driving
• Shot of girl in back of truck in bin bag
• Close up of girl’s bare foot, twitching

*Changes to our idea (blue):

·  He stops and watches her walk into her house

• He then gets back into his car and drives home
• He gets home
• Hears a noise upstairs
• Music changes to more dramatic to add tension
• Girl in found dead on the floor in front of the wall of photos
• Flash of title 'Summer's End'
• Panning shot of man's face

            We wanted to do this because we thought that our first idea was not sufficient in that it had nowhere to go from the girl being abducted as the only two characters would have been used and there would be no mystery. However, if the girl dies it leaves the audience wondering why she was killed and by who.  Also it leaves the audience to figure out who the man was and why he was ‘stalking’ the girl.

            We have already thought about music and that we wouldn’t use any diegetic sound in the first scene apart from maybe a scream when the girl dies, but it would add to the tension if no diegetic sound was used for this part and only non-diegetic sound was used in the way of music to compliment or contrast the mood of the film. We thought of using calm, but quite eerie music to begin with – we thought maybe using something to do church bells. Then as the man walks up to the dead girl the music would turn a lot more dramatic to compliment the scene and also foreshadow the death. After the title shot is flashed up on the screen the music would turn back to calm to directly contrast the horrible mood.

            The use of the girl being called ‘Summer’ is because then we can make it relate to the title. If the title is ‘Summer’s End’ it shows a direct association between her and the film, meaning she is the main character. The word ‘End’ is used to show the final moment of something, in this case it’d be her life that would be ending.

Locations for Thriller

We could possibly utilise this old warehouse/farmhouse for a scene in our thriller to add to the tension of the killing scene.

Our group had the idea to use these big iron gates to add to the tension and mystery of the thriller. The direct contrast between the large gates and the small girl could represent the male dominance in society and the male dominance in our thriller as the man is appearing to stalk the girl.

This shot would be used when the girl is in the pick-up truck as the road is long and eerie.

We would use this shot when the girl is walking home from the café. The vanishing point towards the house shows that a dramatic moment is in the near future.

This is an eerie location and could also be used when the girl is walking home. We thought this could be used as the location for when the second girl finds the shoe of the victim.

Use of monochrome

We thought that the use of monochrome or black-and-white would be a good idea in our thriller due to the fact that the original 'noir' thrillers were in black-and-white, the term 'noir' coming from the French, meaning black. The use of black-and-white is to make the 'dark' ambiance of the more sinister and creepy, but also due to the fact that colour technology wasn’t yet invented in the 1940s when the ‘noir’ thriller was first utilised. However, I thought the use of black-and-white would add to the tension in our thriller and make the suspense more prominent if noir lighting was used also to create harsh shadows and silhouettes, meaning we can hide characters in the shadows and use light to concentrate the audience on one thing in particular.