Final Thriller opening

Identity - Mary Pegasiou

Identity is a film directed by James Mangold. He uses different ways of creating suspense and a sense of mystery; these are the ideal ingredients for a thriller. Firstly the location is set in a rundown motel in Nevada, where there is no sign of civilisation for miles. The beginning of the film sets up that there is a heavy rain storm and the characters cannot go to their original destinations; therefore are trapped at this motel for the evening. The director has cleverly set this up to show us there is no escape and they are isolated which adds to the suspense, a perfect beginning for a thriller. The film progresses and slowly each character is killed off in different unexplained ways. What makes it even more confusing is that after every death the body vanishes from the scene and there is no sign of a murder. One murder which stood out to me was when the pretentious character is walking out in the rain trying to get signal on her phone. We don’t witness her getting murdered but the director builds up the tension with eerie music and camera angles from behind gates and bushes which are handheld to create the affect that someone is watching her. The director uses techniques like this throughout to gradually build up to the unveiling of what really is going on. Later in the film we discover that this motel is nothing but a figment of a mental patients imagination. This massive twist adds to the genre ‘thriller’ due to the fact it was so unexpected. All and all Identity is a great example of a thriller; the director uses every technique possible (sound, camera angles, mise en scene, etc) to ensure we as the audience are on edge constantly. This could however be confused as a horror due to the vast amounts of gore but I personally would class it as a thriller as I did not find it scary. I found it enticing and jumpy which I think is exactly what a film needs to be a thriller. I definitely recommend this to film lovers.

Roughcut feedback

We received some feedback on our roughcut to add sound to different perspectives to make it easier to follow. als to edit one of the scenes in two to give more time between the two people in the scene.

How else might you advertise your film (apart from in a cinema)

we would advertise our film by utilising adverts in magazines, posters in bus shelters, tv and radio.

Roughcut

how we are going to use our feedback

We are going to take into consideration these constructive criticisms given by our classmates. We will give more indications on the development of our thriller from the planning stages to the thriller opening scene. Previously we were unaware of the issue and having this brought to our attention will help us to improve our blog.
Furthermore we will add more technical language and overall detail (photo's, captions to compliment other media) to make the blog more informative and user friendly.
We have also decided to use a background image for our blog to make it more appealing to read and more appropriate to the thriller theme.
We will add a foreign thriller analysis to make the blog complete.

Blog Assessment

Variety of Relevant Blog Posts
Relevant posts
- need to add some more analysis of foreign thriler openings
- Could add a few more posts

Appropriate Visual Aids
- Good use of video clips/pictures when needed
- More writing/captions to go with the photos
- Good use of video clip to give us an idea of how they are going to put together their thriller. Good use of - picture to show planning
- Good visuals

Appropriate use of technical vocabulary
- Yes
- Kind of Mentions protagonist/antagonist.

Quality of posts: content explanations and clarity
- More detail needed
- Have detailed analysis of ideas and reasons for using it
- Very detailed and clear
- Good detail but could use more technical language in explanations

Development
- does go through stages of what they have done but could give more info on their process of their thriller opening
- Needed to be more
- "Need more"

Analysis of Hidden/Cache

This film was created by a French Director.
The film has a slow start which helps to build tension.
The setting is an ordinary situation which then bares witness to an extraordinary circumstance.
The antagonist has power over people by watching. This is a convention which is common to thrillers which make use of stalkers.
The antagonist also leads the protagonist into a situation they have no control over. This use of a loss of control is very key to the building of a thriller since it makes the viewer feel uneasy.
The film has a slow start which can seem boring but it also makes you wonder what you're looking out for as the audience begins to realise that something isn't right and they expect something to suddenly happen. This creates and air of confusion.

Target Audience Expectations

Our target audience will be ages 15 and above, because thrillers tend to have much darker plots than a 12 or PG classification. There will likely be strong language which is not appropriate for people younger than 15.
It will be aimed at people who enjoy thrillers as it will not innovate in such a way that it will incorporate other genre or subgenre's to the film.

It doesn't contain enough Gore or jump out scares to be considered a horror and not enough on screen for it to be an 18. A lot of the scary aspects are from purely atmospheric and tension building techniques.

Classification of Films

U - Suitable for All

PG - Parental Guidance

12 - Suitable for 12 years and older
12A - Under 12 with parental guidance

15 - Suitable for 15 years and older

18 - Suitable for Adults only

R18 - Only available for Adults

Test Thriller Sound

Potential Thriller titles

Our thriller is about people disappearing so these are our idea's for names.

Presence - We thought of this name because it contains supernatural undertones, and hints to the idea that someone else is there.

Lost - We liked this idea but because people were going missing due another being, lost implies that it was their own fault. Also there is a TV Show called Lost

Missing - We like this one because it's so neutral in the idea of whether it's someone else's fault or whether it is to do with the people themselves.

Fade - Fade was also in our top three favourites, we liked it as it suggested people missing in an unusual manner, not the ordinary way (murder, kidnapping etc..)

Thriller poster Analysis

The poster is effective as it uses a lot of themes from the film. The image itself is of a polaroid photo, which is a key theme in the film Memento. They are how the main character records memories. As the photo's go in it shows an image of the female Antagonist.

The poster also shows the audience some of the main actors in the film so that they can see faces who they may know from other similar films

The font used in the Poster is a handwritten style and so it makes it look more personal. The handwriting is also connected to the main film because the main character only trusts his own handwriting.

Our thriller poster

Our poster is laid out so that the left side is full of happier and cheerful images. Whilst on the right there are far more sinister and distressing faces.

Across the top we've used letters from magazines to make the title look more traditionally Thriller styled. There are gaps in the poster to suggest people going missing.

After we had finished the physical elements of the poster, we decided to edit it further using digital applications such as Photoshop. Using this we edited the Hue to make it look red, with the red tint the differences between the magazines we got the images from is less glaring, and it adds a sinister tone to the entire image.