Thriller Stroyboard

Drawn by Leila Robertson

Created by Tom Payne, Leila Robertson, Mollie Duncan and Paige Brooks

Conventions of a Our Thriller

In our thriller, we have to show stereotypical conventions so the audience would know it is a psychological thriller. The wierdness of the props / setting etc are all parts of the conventions. The music would be eary or slow sounds, perhaps no sound at all to create tension. There'll be low key lighting in mainly isolated places which are dark and make people feel trapped. Another convention would be that everything would be unusual, something that the world wouldn't understand. Our male character creates an inigma, as he grabs the audiences attention by not knowing who he is or what he's doing. He represents evil by his dark clothing, which also colour codes. There's two vulnerable teenage girls which one is dressed as a doll, which connects with the props. The props we're using are things like pictures of clowns, dolls and red balloons. These create a contrapuntal feel as they're meant to be connected with happy emotions. The red balloons are also colour coded with danger and blood.
Overall, it's a psychological thriller with some conventions of a horror.

Leila Robertson

Our Character Choices

The Ideal Villain

Intimidating
Big Build
Tall
Dark Hair
Male
Large Features


The Victim

Small Frame
Vulnerable
Female

Tom Payne

Our Location

For the first part of our thriller, we had to film an instant messaging scene, this was done easily as every member of our group was seen as a possibility, as we could film at their house. All we needed was a computer to film Paige on and a laptop / other source of instant messenger for someone to type messages to her. We decided to use my house because it's closest to school and we could easily get the train to and from there whenever we needed to. Also, as we wanted Paige to come across quite innocent we thought my room would be the best choice because of my pink walls in the background, so we incorporated colour coding into our decision.

We found our main location by help of Mrs Cookson as it's in our school boiler room. Once we told her that we wanted something along the lines of a pipe / pole Paige could be handcuffed too, she asked permission for the school boiler room straight away for us. We wanted this because we thought it would be effective for the main character to be handcuffed to poles to make it obvious she had been abducted. We thought it would be a good setting overall for a thriller, as it's quite dark and we used effects to make it look eerie. It's an easy location for us to get to, as none of our group can drive yet, it will be easy for us to film during school hours and somedays afterschool as well. We always checked we could film there beforehand.

At the end of our thriller opening sequence, we have a shot of Paige lying dead on the ground, this was also easy for us to do as it was also on the school grounds. To find the shot we liked enough to use, we walked around the school grounds shooting various shots of Paige in different places / different positions.

Leila Robertson

The Brief

Our opening sequence will begin with a teenage girl on the computer talking on a msn to a man she knows under the name of 'Paul'. They make it obvious that they haven't actually met yet but are planning to soon.
Continuity editing is used as it then cuts to a series of shots revealing different images from around the boiler room. During these pictures, our credits appear in a white font. Suddenly, there's a shot of the young girl handcuffed to a pole. We would slowly reveal her condition and also will build up tension with the non-diegetic music in the background. We will then introduce more conventions of a thriller that includes using children’s toys to create an eerie atmosphere.
Her hands are trapped as they're tied by handcuffs to a pipe. We see the man pick up a bat and walk past her, which implies that he's a dodgy character and it was the man she was talking to dangerously on the internet.
Towards the end, there's a shot of another girl who is wearing a doll costume, who has clearly been there for ages after being captured by this man.
The end shot is of the victim, Paige, lying outside.

Leila Robertson

Setting

We threw together a few ideas together for location and where we would like to film, we started off looking at field in the Brentwood area, and we found a good location behind one of our houses. We felt this was too common and a lot of people from previous years had used this idea. Our final idea was to film in the school grounds in the school boiler room; this would have had a great effect on the genre as it has the thriller feel. When coming up with our concept for our thriller, the film 'Saw' had a huge influence on our location choice. Saw used a empty bathroom for the majoirty of its setting and we liked this idea because its quite simplistic and you cannot see the surroundings, or how the characters arrived there, so it leaves the audience questioning. We have asked permission from the Care taker, Mr Piper, and we are ok to film in the boiler room. The conventions of the boiler room have sense of darkness which would need low key lighting, its gives a sense of mystery because the location isn’t familiar with the audience.

Tom Payne and Leila Robertson

Characters

We have used 3 characters in our thriller. The first is the villain who takes the form of a psychopath. When choosing this character we decided to go for the stereotypical large framed man, as this would make the victims seem vulnerable and make the character more frightening. This characters identity is never actually going to be revealed but its his his body language and actions that will make him intimidating. We have made this character obsessed with objects and scenerios that would normally be associated with small children.

Our second character is a teenage girl who plays the victim in the thriller. We have purposely made this character quite naive and vulnerable for her age and this is shown by the different camera angles and shots. We chose a fairly typical way in which the man began to groom his victim which started with them talking over the internet and arranging to meet. This allows the audience to establish what kind of girl she is in the opening few seconds of the thriller.

Our third character is another teenage girl who has previously been a victim of the villian. We wanted to create the persona of a mentally disturbed person as she has been under his captivity for a long period of time. We decided to make the girl's costume like a dolls, as it ties in with the theme of a small childs party. This character has been under his control for so long she is 'brainwashed' and is no longer struggling to escape or frightened unlike our main character.

Tom Payne, Leila Robertson, Paige Brooks and Mollie Duncan

Our Target Audience

To choose our target audience we needed to think about the demographics of age and gender. As most people who watch thrillers are aged 16 - 30 and the genders are generally mixed.

So it made sense for us to make this our target audience.

However, the audience may be more between 15 - 20 as the characters in the opening sequence are quite young, therefore they could relate to the audience more. It may be that more females watch this as the main character is a teenage girl, although there is an older dominant male.

Leila Robertson

BBFC Guidlines

Our thriller that we are planning to film would contain moderate violence and disturbing images, this would be rated at a 15. [need to complete]

We feel that our main film company that we would want produce the film would be FOX although they don’t predominantly produce thrillers although, TimeWarner would be a good company to produce the thriller.

Film Rating System
U – Universal - This is the lowest film rating and should definitely be suitable for audiences age four and above. “U” films should have a positive moral framework and counterbalance violence, thriller, threat and horror.

PG – Parental guidance – An unaccompanied child of any age is able to watch films under this rating and it should not disturb children ages eight and over, but younger children’s parents are asked to consider whether accompanying them would be necessary.

12 – This means that no one over 12 can view the film

12A – This rating is for cinema films only, it means that children under 12 can watch the film as long a they are accompanied by an adult

15 – This means that the film is only suitable for children aged fifteen or over, it is illegal for someone under the age of fifteen to rent or buy a video work given the rating “15”

18 – It is illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to buy or rent a video work rated “18” this can often due to graphic material.

R18 – Films with this rating may only be shown in specially licensed cinemas, and only supplied licensed sex shops to people over the age of 18. The rating “R18” is a film classification primarily for explicit works of consenting sex or strong fetish material involving adults.

Leila Robertson

Initial Ideas

• Girl drowning
• River becoming red - colour coding danger
• Flashing images of a slapping shaddow - fade to black
• A man chasing a women
• Hand held camera
• Scramble for clothes on floor, terrorised.
• Running through forests, over a bridge, a shot of man standing under it?
• end- extreme close up of eyes, suddenly opening.
• chained to a boiler? escaping from a bedroom?

Our initial ideas, when trying to addapt these to the storyboard we realised that some of them are unrealistic to try and do for a amature production, if we continued with some of these ideas such as the hand held camera, it could appear cheap and unprofessional. When discussing our ideas with others and watching previous videos, we noticed that a young girl running through a forest is not very origional and wouldnt really stand out from the rest. This is when we came up with the idea of the girl being chained to the boiler, but not actually knowing how she got there. This helps it seem asif the chasing has already happened but isnt necessarily needed to be filmed. This way we could build impact up in other areas seeeing as it is just the introduction to a thriler and not the entire thing.

Tom Payne, Leila Robertson, Mollie Duncan and Paige Brooks

Se7en & Other Thrillers

We watched the first couple of minutes of the film 'Se7en' and analysed what makes a good thriller. We found out that in a typical thriller film, in the opening scene, usually introduced in the first few minutes is police / detectives, a city setting (therefore making it more realistic), set in modern day, perhaps a twist in the story already and something that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

We realised that a thriller needs to create certain feelings such as suspense, fright, mystery and exhilleration rather than more sensitive / emotional feelings such as tragedy. However a thriller does make people feel a combination of feelings. Just like a rollercoaster makes us laugh and scream, the thriller often works to double emotions, feelings, sensations and suspense, fear and excitment, pleasure and pain. These double emotions pull the viewer in opposite directions - between anxiety (troubled and uneasy) and pleasure, masochism (pleasure in suffering pain) and sadism (pleasure from inflicting pain / watching cruelty). Identification on detachment and this tension is a great part of what gives thrillers their kick.

Tom Payne

Influences for our thriller- Saw

We have all seen some, if not all of the saw sequels and decided that we could use some of the ideas used in these films for inspiration for our own. For example we liked the idea that is used in saw when the actors are trapped in a room and have to solve a riddle or question in order to escape. We liked the fact that they were trapped in a room which created tension and made the audience question what was going to happen. We also wanted to use the genre of physiological-thriller as we felt this was a good way of keeping the audience engaged and would be exciting to produce and watch. We also liked the idea of the mask being a key feature throughout all of the films and have decided to use this theme in the form of clowns in our thriller.


Mollie Duncan