Thriller Research: How it's influenced our thriller construction

 I've conducted a fair few pieces of research that I've posted on my blog, but I wouldn't say much of it would be worth anything if I hadn't used it to develop ideas for our own thriller project. So here's a post on the ways in which my research has influenced my ideas.

 This piece of research (click here) was conducted very early on during my AS media course and was quite important in our group's development of ideas. The information on composition allowed us to create shots that were in balance and appropriate to the atmosphere of the scene. There is a particular shot at the end of our opening in which Rhys (Jos) is to the right third of  the frame and is walking towards the camera, the view of the track in the wood in the background is in the rest of the frame and is then added to as the Lady in the Gas Mask appears on the track some distance behind Rhys. The rule of the thirds helped us to compose shots like these well resulting in clarity and balance of the shot - and in our satisfaction. The knowledge of digetic and non-digetic sound also helped us create the atmosphere we wanted in our opening. We decided to mute all of the digetic sound and only use non-digetic sound. We thought this technique would make the soundtrack seem more applicable to the feelings of the audience and make them feel like they were really there. In a way it depersonalises the characters on screen or makes them seem more far away, which could also make the viewer feel like they are pursuing/stalking them (also adds the convention of isloation..).

 The notes made from these thriller openings have contributed to our thinking of editing our thriller opening. I believe I made comments on all them regarding hue and darkness. Most of them had fairly dark frames with high contrast of small amounts of light and large amounts of dark. The hue was also often blue to give a sense of unwelcome and cold. We'll most likely follow these existing thriller examples in order to conform to thriller conventions and audience expectancy.

 My case study on Ginger Snaps didn't provide too much insight for me into our own thriller as it's a fairly different sub-genre. Although, there is a point in Ginger Snaps where the two main girls are attacked in the woods and our thriller opening sequence basicaly consists of Rhys being attacked in the woods. Therefore you could say we're using a classic basis for a sequence in a thriller, an example being in Ginger Snaps. The characters in Ginger Snaps also seem innocent but fairly liable to being attacked or victim to unfortunate circumstances. Such is the same for our main character.

 My analysis of The Coin Toss scene from No Country for Old Men was based on semiology, this let me understand the importance of objects and signs in thrillers. We used props such as the gas mask to invoke mystery and uncertainty about one of our characters. The trees on location also symbolised bars and hence entrapment of the main character.

 And of course the research into what a thriller actually is provided us with a general feel of film that we wanted to give to our own. By using all the different aspects of thriller conventions (locations, iconography, themes and plot lines) we have created our own version of a conventional psychological thriller.