Characters

Within our thriller opening there are two main characters, an unseen character and a character with an extra's part.

Character 1:

(Holly Dove) Femme Fatale. This Character is played by Holly Delaney. Her role is one that appears to be quite helpless within our opening. However, her character is a victim of abuse and someone who has mixed with the wrong crowd and so there is room for her deviant, dangerous behaviour to come out.



Character 2:

(Jason Viper) The Killer. This character is shadowed and not fully visable throughout most of the opening of the thriller to create tension and fear. His character is involved in money and is a mafia type. he is seeking revenge on the femme fatale's lover and social circle.


Unseen Character:
Lover. This character is the femme fatale's lover. He is murdered by the killer due to involvements in gambling, money etc. He is a apart of the bad crowd that the femme fatale is connected with.


Extra:
Running man. This character is used as part of a red herring in our plot and merely runs by the femme fatale suspiciously, bumping into her.

Femme Fatale Character & Film Noir Conventions Within Our Thriller

In our Thriller, we have tried to make the femme fatale character conform to the conventional film noir femme fatale. In order to do this, we looked closely at the costumes used in existing film noirs that suggest a devient and glamorous woman. Looking into 40's costumes helped rather a lot. In the end we decided to put Holly in a faux fur coat, tights and slightly heeled vintage shoes. To accessroies this we made her wear a pearl necklace and a small black and gold clutch bag. As far as her hair goes, the group decided that she would look a lot more feminine with her hair down and the continuity when filming would be more precise because we were filming different parts on different days. The fur coat is very 40's and conforms to the film noir sub genre. Making her look very feminine created more of an illusion of the seductive, inticing woman that a femme fatale is defined as. A lot of inspiration came from the femme fatale in Once Upon a Time in America. Something we did not use was red lipstick, this is frequently used on femme fatale characters but we decided not to use it because when editing we are going to convert the footage into black and white.

Film noir primarily describes Hollywood crime dramas and they are filmed with a low key black and white iconic style. Both the narrative and cinematography of our Thriller opening conforms to this definition and there are certain generic convention that we utilised in order to create an authentic interpretation of the sub genre. The lighting, shadows and costume all have clear resemblences of the genre and the soundtrack that we are goint to use makes the era and sub genre even clearer. Elements of crime fiction are evident in our narrative and the inclusion of a femme fatale is something that solidifies the clarity of the genre.

Expectations of Characters in a Thriller Film

There are a lot of generic character types within the thriller genre. They make up tension and suspense and the development of their character and behaviour often is the main focus of the film. Conventional characters within the thriller genre include: criminal, stalkers, innocent victims (on the run), characters with dark pasts, down-on-their luck losers, defiant women, cops and escaped convicts, psychotic individuals, private eyes, femme fatales, terrorists, drug addicts and people involved in twisted relation ships.

A range of obvious characteristics are used to present the characters in quite a conventional and sometimes exaggerated way. Greed, jealousy, envy, pursuit, political conspiracy, murder and romantic entanglements are often the themes apparent within thrillers, relating to characters motives etc.

Shooting & Intitial to Final Ideas

As far as shooting goes, we got off to a bad start because of the weather. The snow meant that we could not film as we had scheduled; this created minor problems but has not affected the process. Everyone was able to make the filming however another problem occured when a member of our group quit sixth form. In order to resolve this, we have had to change around character parts and the cast list.

Our initial location idea was to have the opening to our thriller filmed down and around Elm Hill- this is somethign we have stuck to because it fits so well with the sub-genre of our film. The costumes and character planning has been followed and so the final outcome reflects our inital ideas quite well. We no longer have the 'lover character because of the problems that occured prior to filming- in order to keep our orginal plot we have just decided to leave him as an unseen chacter; he is still a key part of the story.

When finishing our filming, we are going to shoot at a slightly later time so that we can use lighting to create shadows. This is very important as it is a generic convention of film noir.

Investigating Sub-genres

Before the 10 participants of my questionnaire answered the question of their favoured sub-genre, I showed them examples of 5 different sub-genres to see which one the preferred. I also defined each of the sub-genres with a short description.

Crime Thriller: These films feature combined aspects of crime film and thriller film. They are based around successful or failed crimes and focus mainly on the criminal(s). However, there is often an important police/detective/inspector character. Murders, chases and robberies are common topic utilised in this sub-genre.

Examples: Se7en, Reservoir Dogs, Inside Man, Kalifornia

Action Thriller:

Action Thrillers are fast paced and sometimes prove to be a race against the clock. They contain a lot of violence, guns and use of special effects to create explosions etc.

Examples: Bourne Ultimatum, Bad Boys, The Transporter, James Bond

Gangster Thriller:

Gangster Thrillers usually include aspects of Action and Crime. They involve money, guns and vivid violence.

Example: Lucky Number Slevin

Film Noir:

Film Noirs are classically known to be black and white hollywood crime thrillers. The film noir period stretched from the early 1940's to the late 1950's. However, aspects of them are often utilised in contemporary thrillers.

Examples: Kiss Me Deadly, The Third Man, Citizen Kane, The Glass Key

Horror Thriller:

Horror Thrillers usually involve the character(s) being put in

danger but unrealistic creatures. Generally, their goal is to

destroy the creature in order to protect themselves and others.

They often incorporate elements of science fiction and fantasy also.

Examples: Children of Men, Cabin Fever, The Amityville Horror, Blade

Audience Research

Proposal:

I am going to look into the audience's age and lifestyle

and find out about the relationship between them and how they consume films (and where) and how they hear about films (and what makes them want to see it)

I will create a questionnaire and analyse the results to find out how the use of audience segmentation can help us see how exhibition and marketing effects the audience. Also, how differences in the needs and wants of the target audience effects the way the product is marketed and exhibited to suit them.

Questionnaire:

Here are some pictures of the questionnaire and the results.

Analysis:

After looking at the results of my questionnaire it is clear that age and lifestyle determine how films are consumed and marketed.

Young people usually go to the cinema or watch DVD's. They are targeted differently to adults when marketed because they are a modern generation. Merchandise is used to win over really young children because they always want the latest thing out and adverts promoting this merchandise will cause children to craze their parents for such items. Tv and trailers appeal to all age ranges really as the majority of people watch television for several hours a day or week. I have found that music and supermarket choice were less influential when marketing for children, however fashion, culture and music seem to be taken into a lot of consideration when advertising for young men, young women and adults. This could be through things like the type of marketing or features that they include to grab the target audience's attention. For example: the soundtrack used on a trailer.

Young adults seen to have the largest intake of marketing types. 16-20 year olds have heard about films through a large selection of marketing methods, however the most successful appears to be the use of trailers. Magazines are another successful way to market films to the young adults apposed to newspapers and reviews which are likely to catch the attention of an older audience.

By asking people their favourite/ preferred supermarket to shop in, I can try to loosely determine their "class"- this is something else that might inform marketing choices. This would be done by catagorising the methods of marketing but futhermore, the catagories within the methods of marketing. For example: Magazines- what kind of magazine a certain film will be advertised in.

Social groups would influence the genre of film that people favoured. Genre wasn't something i looked at when creating my questionnaire, so the inclusion of social groups did not make much of an impact on the results.

All in all, from looking at my questionnaire, i have found that different age groups consume films in different ways and find certain marketing techniques more effective than others, meaning that audience must be segmented in order to meet the needs and wants of every group. The wide range of marketing options are there to cater for different individuals; age and lifestyle are definitely factors that influence this. However, there is a lot more to think about when it comes to audience. Exhibition runs in the same way, by segregating groups to market and exhibit films to. There is also a clear overlap in some group: marketing: exhibiting methods because there is always going to be people that do not fit the stereotype of the group and therefore a 12 year old could watch a film in the same way as a 32 year old and they could both find the same marketing method the most effective.

Location Shots

These photographs were taken by Ryan Mills and Sam Rogerson, both members of my production group.

All of these images were taken down Elm Hill in Norwich. We chose this particular location for our Thriller opening because it is quite a dark, narrow street meaning that crime could easily happen there. Also, the cobbled road is appropriate for our Film Noir genre- it is something that was inspired by the streets in The Third Man. The bars across the bottom of the church window could also show entrapment or imprisonment. The lack of lighting may be a problem, so when shooting, we must ensure to bring bright torches; This aspect is crucial for creating surgery. The old houses down Elm Hill are also very suitable for the genre. Ideally, we would like the cobbled road to be wet, something generic of the thriller genre, however the light that reflects off of the road creates the illusion of a wet street.