Chris Forrest 'The List' Thriller Opening Evaluation

A thriller is a type of film that typically creates tension and suspense in the audience, holding interest through certain techniques that I am going to discuss in this evaluation.
Enigma is probably the most common and effective technique used in any thriller product. Enigma is the word given to anything that raises questions amongst the audience about the narrative, an example of this would be if we are shown a character, but are not told or shown anything about them; Enigma would be raised as we begin to question their identity. Another example of enigma, in the film ‘Seven’ during the title sequence, we see a character writing and cutting the skin off of his finger tips, we never see his face, which makes us question his identity and whether he is a Protagonist or Antagonist. In our final product we have created enigma in various ways –
· Haven’t shown any faces, raising questions about his identity.
· Clashing soundtrack, raising questions about the genre and mood.
· No establishing shots are used, so questions are raised about where the characters are in relation to each other.
· Opening shot of a man on the ground raises questions like – who is he? Is he alright? What’s happened to him? Etc...

Another technique used in thriller products is Restricted and Unrestricted narrative. Restricted narrative is an effective way of creating enigma, as we are limited as to what we see in the frame, we don’t have a full understanding of what is going on. This creates tension and suspense as the audience doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. For example in the short film ‘Joyride’ – a character was locked in the boot and the camera stayed in the boot with him, the narrative outside was restricted, so the viewer wouldn’t know what’s going on outside creating tension and an urge to keep watching. We have incorporated restricted narrative into our final product when the Antagonist is on screen, we used close ups so the audience doesn’t know where he is or what his surroundings are like. Another use of restricted narrative is where we have kept the antagonists identity relatively hidden by not showing their face.

In our product, we have covered various aspects of mise en scene.
· Costume - The antagonist is wearing black which typically represents evil; this was our way of expressing that he is a bad person without giving too much away.
· Setting – Typical house showing that the protagonist is just an average person during his daily routine
· Props – The knife in the foreground of the medium long shot where the protagonist is buttering some bread is used to reflect the antagonist, as the knife is the only object that is in focus in the frame showing that the killer is in killer even though he isn’t in the house with the protagonist.
· Lighting and colour – in our group, I raised the idea that we should use low key lighting when the Antagonist is on screen so that the flicking between the two characters was clear, my fellow group members didn’t agree with this so we kept the lighting the same throughout, not showing a clear separation between the two characters, which may raise enigma in the audience, as this way it is unclear who is the protagonist and who is the antagonist in the frame.

We used various camera techniques and angles in our product. We used a high angle showing the protagonist leaving the house, the camera was placed so that you could see the character through the banisters, giving the idea that he is being watched by someone. We also change the depth of field in this shot, as we go from focusing in on the banisters to focusing in on the character, showing that someone is focusing on him and is watching him for some reason, which again creates enigma.

We did discuss the three stages of narrative as a group, but we came to the conclusion that if we involved all 3 stages, this thriller opening would appear as more of a short film, so we based the opening around ‘the set up’, showing both the antagonist and protagonist going about their routine before the inevitable ‘confrontation’ that would take place later on in the film.

It is clear that the protagonist in the picture is a student of some sort suggesting he is in his late teens, we understand this because he is shown picking up his rucksack, which is a typical prop used to express a younger age. The use of a younger character can suggest vulnerability due to immaturity, size and experience. In most films where people are victimised, the victims are usually teenagers, for example in films like ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’, ‘Friday the 13th’ and ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’. Teenagers are used as the victims because the films are aimed at a teenage audience, if the victims in the picture are of the same social group as the viewers, more tension will be raised as the audience will begin to think whether such a thing could happen to them in real life. It was hard to show a specific social group in our product as we didn’t really show much of the characters, the whole sequence was based around extreme close ups of objects such as light switches, a kettle, a knife, and a cup being filled with water, through the use of this, the narrative was restricted leaving any form of social group relatively hidden.

As a group, we discussed and researched which company/institution we would approach to distribute our film; we discovered that Alfred Hitchcock’s film ‘Vertigo’ was distributed by Paramount Pictures, due to the success and popularity of that film we decided that this would be the institution for us. Paramount Pictures is well known for distributing huge blockbuster films all over the globe, for example ‘Shrek’. We could also look into internet broadcasting and have the film streamed over the internet, meaning it is easily accessible for the viewer, which may draw more interest. Another way of making the film easily accessible at home is getting in contact with companies such as Sky and Virgin, and give them the rights to have the film played over their channels on the television so the viewer wouldn’t have to leave their home to watch it.

The target audience would be teenagers, as the victim in our film is a teenager. The audience would be able to relate to the victim as they are the same age, which would create more tension. An example of another thriller film that this target audience would enjoy is ‘Donkey Punch’ due to the late teens/early twenties cast making it easy to create a bond between the viewer and character.

I have learnt a lot constructing this product. I learnt how the basics to using a camera, for example even something as simple as setting the white balance, before we started this project I had no idea how important this was. I also learnt how to change the depth of field whilst filming which proved helpful as it added a nice effect to one of the shots in our final product. I learnt how to use iMovie and Final Cut. I learnt how to incorporate titles into a moving frame, and I learnt how to use fade in and fade outs effectively, compared to our work on our preliminary, our work on the hardware side of things was much more advanced.

If we compare our final product to our preliminary task, I believe we have advanced immensely, we have used much more camera techniques, such as use of depth of field and hard focus, and we were also tighter with the white balance issue, so that all the shots were the same colour tone. I believe editing ran a lot smoother this time as we managed our time appropriately to the task in hand. I believe the narrative in our new thriller was much better than the preliminary, as our first effort didn’t really create suspense in the way we wanted it to. When all of this is taken into account, I believe we have created an effective opening sequence that raises enigma appropriately and keeps the audience intrigued as to what happens later on in the film.