Thriller Evaluation

When our group were still coming up with initial ideas, we watched a few thriller films so that we could familiarise ourselves with the conventions of thriller movie openings. Two films that stood out most to us were “28 Days Later” and “Arlington Road” and elements from both films inspired us with our final idea for our thriller.
In “28 Days Later” the character is isolated in a hospital and is trying to work out where everyone has gone and why is he the only one left.

- Shot showing desolation from “28 days Later”

This element is similar to our thriller, as the character is in an isolated forest and the audience are unaware of why and how she ended up there.

In “Arlington Road”, the character is walking down an empty street, and effects are used to make the screen hazy to represent that the character feels like passing out and we, the audience, can clearly see this. The film also had a lot of great medium and extreme close up shots of the character. We used these in the bedroom scene when the character was tossing and turning and we think that the close ups of the character’s face looking distressed and confused are effective.


- Shots from that inspired us from “Arlington Road”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03668oTEoIQ

Here are a few intresting shots from the film that stood out; you'll notice the long hair in front of the woman's face is identical to the character in our film. This worked well to represent her deathly demeanour.

Because of this factor, our film was not a conventional thriller but more so a supernatural thriller as it is more horror than thriller. We wanted to break from clichés that we had assumed other groups would do, for example a boy in a hoodie following a girl down the road and ending it with him finally catching up with her. We tried to do something somewhat more abstract to make the audience wonder why she was dreaming of her own death, what did this mean, did it already happen because she didn’t wake up at the end etc.
The fact that there was only one character adds to the ambiguity of the history of the character and the reasons behind the dream which is a great factor as it allows the audience to creatively conjure their own reasons as to why she is dreaming her own death.

We then had to create a storyboard of how we wanted each shot to look like so that when it came to filming we didn't waste any time trying to figure what to film and what shots to use. We were supposed to create quick sketches of each shot but as nobody wanted to draw them, we decided that taking digital pictures of each shot would be beneficial for everyone and also clearer and precise to understand at a later date.

We then had to find a location that wasn't too far a distance but was still suitable for our product and decided that we needed to find a large park surrounded in trees low enough to tie the rope around. We ended up choosing Finsbury Park as our location and decided to film there on the 13th Feb and one of the group members went there to first of all find a suitable tree so that we didn't spend hours looking for one.

Here are some of the pictures:

Despite this tree being isolate from the other trees it doesn't have any other useful factor. It doesn't look menacing it needs to have more branches and be thicker.

This tree looked really good, however it was too close to a path and if people were walking by, they could interruot filming as well.

The branches on this tree are really good but as you can clearly see, a river is in the shot. However we could have shot it with the river in the scene but this may have moved focus if say for example a duck or boat went by

This tree was ideal as because it had thick branches, when you stood underneath it, it seemed very dark and gloomy was a great factor. It also wasn't near a path or any other distractions and the branch was strong enough for the character to hang herself from which was also useful. So below is the actual tree that we used.

Below is a close up of where the character is going to hang herself from

The filming process was quite difficult at times due to members of the group being ill and the unexpected weather that we experienced during the week commencing the 3/02/09 we were a week behind filming. However, we all decided to get together and film on a day that we didn't have college so that we would still be on task and avoid handing in our film late; also because we hadn't used Soundtrack Pro, we wanted to leave as much time as possible.

Here are a few shots of us during the actual filming process that we had taken

The character in the film is a clearly a teenage girl who, for some reason unknown, is disturbingly dreaming of her own death which anyone of any age, class or gender can watch, and even though they wouldn’t fully understand why it is happening, they can easily follow the story. The fact that she is a teenage girl, of an ethnic minority, this further breaks from the clichés of having a lead white male/female starring and her age creates sympathy because she must be from a disturbed childhood, youth or family background to graphically dream of killing herself.


Our thriller would be a small independent UK release as it isn’t a glossy, clichéd Hollywood blockbuster; it’s more of a gritty, dark film. Because the idea of dreaming of your own death is quite sinister could be critically acclaimed by critics as it’s unusual for the lead character not to live a “happy ever after” as it is favoured in Hollywood movies. Being an independent UK film, gives more power and freedom to the director, editor, screenplay writers and actors to create a film exactly how they pictured it without fear or conforming to conventional Hollywood endings. The motive of the film is not to solely entertain, but to give the audience a rare insight into the dream of a stranger which couldn’t be possible in reality; this escape is significant to all audiences as this is the reason why people watch films, or read books because at that moment they are in the world that somebody else has created for them.

A typical person to fit the target audience for the thriller is Lily who is 20 years old and is studying Contextual Studies at University and one of her favourite past times is watching independent art films with up not necessarily mainstream actors or directors but with an interesting and sometimes controversial plot. Couple of common independent films that may be intereseted in showing "Death Walk" would be The Rich Mix in Bethnal Green or The Curzon in Soho.

The marketing process of the film I think would be done best by TV adverts, Internet pop ups and advertisements in newspapers. Internet pop ups will be effective as they are a quick and easy way to drill the name and release date of the film into people’s heads and most people are now used to the Internet and use it frequently; a small clip could also be shown on the pop-up as a taster of the real thing.

The company best suited to distribute the film would be as they are well-known to release British films and could promote it on and as well. The best times to advertise it would be during one of their highest rated programs, for example, during to appeal to young people or during a documentary to appeal to an older audience.

A familiar British actress should play the lead role, for example Larissa Wilson (who played Jal Fazer in Skins series 1-2), would be ideal as she is familiar in the public eye and most people are wondering what happened to the original cast members from the first and second series.

We are familiar to the success of Dev Patel (who played Anwar Kharral in Skins series 1-2) in Slumdog Millionaire and fans of Skins are waiting to see where the rest are as well.

Also, because Skins was shown on and , advertising “Death Walk” with Larissa Wilson on the same channels would instantly capture a loyal audience.

During this process of constructing this product I recorded our lessons in an online weekly blog and included what worked and what didn't and what I had learnt and the goal for the next lesson. I had to learn how to use Soundtrack Pro and Film Cut Pro which I had previously used. The first time that I had to use Film Cut Pro was when we had to make our preliminary task and it took a while to familiarise ourselves with the new program and like I stated in my blog (Lesson 21/01/09) because we spent so much time trying to perfect our preliminary task, we didn't have enough time to use Soundtrack Pro. Because of this, when it came to doing the real Thriller project, I wasn't confident in using Soundtrack Pro; this meant that I had to spend a bit of my spare time getting to grips with how the program worked.

Obviously, as our product is a thriller, we wanted to create eerie, suspenseful soundtrack which would cause tension. I initially used a soft piano combined with two different types of violins to create a high pitched sound and then added a synthesizer and a drone.

Looking back at my preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt several useful skills which I believe that I effectively applied to my full final product. Firstly, the key factor in making the full product work was planning, if we didn't make our storyboard and choose our location beforehand then after the unexpected weather and illness of group members, the task would have been more stressful than it needed to be.

Also, because we had planned what we had planned what we were doing, we didn't waste time improvising with shots and angles and the filming process didn't take long at all. I've also learnt that if you want to make things look continous by drawing the audience's attention to something you need to film shots at different angles to do this successfully. I learnt a lot when it came to making the soundtrack, as I mentioned before I wasn't familiar with using Soundtrack Pro so I needed to experiment with the different sounds that the program had to offer and have learnt that different film genres require different genres of music to successfuly create their desired effect.

For example an action film may have sirens, and fast-paced upbeat percussions and electric guitairs whereas a romantic drama may have slow, acoustic piano playing of somesort.

Overall I believe that the dynamic of the group, the planning, commitment and skills that we had learnt combined together made the product as succesful as it was. Watching all the thrillers of the other groups at the Vue Cinema in Angel was also a great experience as I believe that we all learnt new ideas from watching everyones and if we had the opportunity to do the task again, I'd be excited to try out new ideas that inspired me from groups.