Questionnaire

Thriller Questionnaire

1. What age category do you fit into?

16-18, 19-24, 25-30, 10-35, 36-40, 41- 45, 46+,


2. Are you male or female? _______________________________


3.What thriller sub genres do you prefer? (Please circle as many as apply)

Action
Spy
Romantic
Psychological
Crime
Supernatural
Drama
Political
Medical
Other


4. What do you look for in terms of story with a thriller? – E.g. Twists,



5. How much gore do you expect to see in a thriller?



6. What do you like about the thriller genre? (Please circle as many as apply)

Confusion
Suspense
Hero vs. Villain
Twist
Cliff Hangers
Mystery
Danger


7. How do you think a good thriller should open? (Please tick one)
Death
Chase
Everyday Life
Flashback
Other

We created this questionnaire, as a way of enabling us to see what the target audience look for and want to see in the thriller genre. Thus, the answers we received allowed us to create an effective beginning - with a good impact on the audience. For example, many people wanted to see a flashback in the opening, which was a big part of our final opening - so the questionnaire helped us establish what would be best for our audience.

The Shot List

This is our finished shot list. We will storyboard it and then create an animatic.

This is our final animatic.



Creating the animatic has contributed a lot in distinguishing what we need to improve, need to change or need to remove. Especially focusing on camera, editing, mise-en-scene and sound - the animatic enabled us to visualise these ideas and envisage how they would look in the final piece. From looking at the animatic, the areas in which we have used codes and conventions of the thriller genre can be seen; such shots as, the slow zoom towards the door and through the keyhole can be related to the thriller genre. What's more, the non-diegetic sound used also contributes to the codes and conventions; the background music creates a tense tone, and the music used with the flashback generates more suspense. Additionally, the editing used with the flashbacks — the jump cuts — make the sound of the flashback stand out even more, which also gives a 'jumpy' impact to the audience. Furthermore, one of the most significant thing that the animatic outlined was the changes needed to make to the sound we used; we were able to recognise how the music and sound needed to be layered. Also, the sound of the footsteps doesn't fit well with the music or the slow zoom, as the pace is quite fast when compared to the speed of the zoom into the door.

I believe our animatic is good, and really accentuated the changes we could make to improve our opening and underlined the positive and negative aspects of our narrative. Our narrative does work well, however it did get quite confusing for the audience towards the end, thus some shots will need to be changed to keep the audience engaged and understanding the narrative. It can also be said that the pace could be altered to be a little slower; this would be better for our narrative and would contribute well to the codes and conventions.

Overall, working together to create the animatic was very effective; we each had our own roles and responsibilities in the creation of the animatic. We each had different ideas towards the narrative, camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene and this meant that we had many ideas to work with.

Non-diegetic sound: Crescendo Music

As seen in the shot list, we came up with the idea of using a type of crescendo music for the flashbacks. This will give a 'jumpy' feel to the flashbacks and highlight that they are flashbacks. Additionally, I remembered the film Resident Evil and how a similar sound was used in the film. It can be seen at 1.09 of the youtube clip, as a character quickly moves her hand. It gives the same impact to the audience that we wish to create.

Initial Ideas

We chose to go for the crime thriller genre. We made quite a few changes to our initial idea of the crime thriller and these will be shown in the animatic and shot list.