Suspense and Thriller research

Here is an example of a good suspense short film, that I feel conveys the codes and conventions of a short suspense film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALGA6UclVd4

This is good, because althought it is in daylight, it is very fast pace this is because of the camera movements and shots. The music used is not an obvious suspenseful type of music, at the end there is a twist which is quite comedic.

Thriller genre research

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Pictures and idea for our advertisement poster

Since the main plot of our film is about someone feeling as though they are being followed by someone behind them, we decided that we wanted to do an other the shoulder shot of the youth behind our main actor, this would give the audience a sense that our main actor is being watched by the youth behind. We first started to take pictures of our actors inside our school building, and turned the lights off. We liked our images, but there were green doors and a tv above our actors head, and we felt that these would be too difficult to edit. also our whole film is outside so we thought it might be weird having the poster image inside. This is how our first attempt of images looked like:



After looking at these photos, we decided to take pictures outside of our main actors, this is how it looks below:



As you can see the image is in daylight, and does not look really scary, however we then uploaded our image on to photo shop and started to experiment with the contrast settings.

Treatment

Film title: Stalked

Synopsis

On Scott's way home from work, he stops by a shop to buy himself a drink, everything seems fine, as he exits the shop he goes to put his wallet in his pocket, but doesn't realise he actually drops it on the floor. He continues his journey home, and then sees a rough looking man that gives him an intimidating look. Scott feels scared and is worried he is going to get robbed, as he remembers being mugged before. So his gut instinct makes him walk quicker. The man sees Scott's wallet and picks it, he tries to give it back to Scott by following him. Scott panicks and runs down the next road he sees in an attempt to get away, however he gets trapped in a dead end. Scott sees the man, and starts preparing to defend himself not realising the man only wants to return his wallet. When Scott realises this he feels better and thanks the man for returning his wallet and go their seperate ways ... But are things really ok.

Scene 1
Scott's on his way home from work and comes out of the train station, then he goes into a shop and buys a drink, when he comes out he drops his wallet without realising and makes his way to the busstop, passing a rough looking man, who gives him a menacing look. As he's waiting for the bus, he turns back and looks at the man, who is staring at him. The man picks up his wallet.(but the audience doesn't know)

Scene 2
Instead of getting the bus, Scott starts to walk after a while he starts to look back and notices that the man is following him, Scott gets scared and starts to quicken his pace. Here is the break in the equilibrium, taunting music emphasises and gives the effect of mixed feelings of fear, despair and panic.

Scene 3
Scott being desperate to lose his follower decides to cross the road. He doesn't look before he crosses and doesn't notice the car coming at him as he crossses. As the lights of the car are shining bright at Scott's face, he life starts to flash before his eyes, particulary the time he was robbed. He goes into a flashback about when he was mugged and held up against the wall and fears this will happen again. He returns to his senses and now starts to walk faster to the extent that he almost running. The man carries on chasing after Scott to return his wallet.

Scene 4
Scott realises the man is running after him, and fears for his life, with his gut instinct he turns down the next road he sees, in hope that he would lose the man. However he is stuck in a dead end, he starts to panick. He sees the man appear, adrenaline rushes through Scott's body, he realises this is it, the man is confused and gives Scott his wallet, Scott realises the error of his ways and says sorry to the man.

Scene 5
The man walks off, Scott is calmed down and opens his wallet. To his surprise he finds his wallet is completely empty, he runs out the dead end trying to find the man, but he's long gone. Devastated he throws his wallet on the floor and the film ends with the credits up.

Character Profiles

Man 1 (victim) Scott - This character is a typical sterotype of a victim of getting mugged, he's well dressed and is seen as a target, he doesn't show much confidence, he doesn't seem like a macho man, so would be easily targeted by "tough guys". A reason for his lowered confidence is that he has been previously mugged on the streets, so he does not enjoy walking alone. He is dressed in business wear with a shirt suit and tie. In the film he drops his wallet and is worried he is going to get attacked again, when he realises a tough guy is following him.

Man 2 (Tough man)- This character is following is following Scott, he seems intimidating as he's dressed rough with his hood up and seems streetwise, he looks suspicious and menacing a typical sterotype of a mugger.

Below are images of how the characters might look like.

Location Research

Train station - The starting shots is of Scott leaving the train station, this gives the impression of him having finished work and on his journey home.

Roads - The main part of the film takes place in some simple pedestrian roads. The character Scott is walking through these roads trying to try and lose sight of the the man following him. It will be preferable for us if these roads are not often busy for filming reasons which is why we have looked at the areas we have shown in pictures.

Mood Board

Research on existing products

I would say the genre for our film is thriller, because the man who is being followed, and the audience also do not know straight away why he is being followed, so this will cause a lot of suspense like a typical thriller film, it wont be completely this genre, we would try and add some comedic value to the film, to make our film different.

Audience feedback

Questionnaire results

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Above is the results of the questionnaire, it shows that our main target audience is 21 to 30 year olds and the majority of the people that took the questionnaire watched more short films then documentaries, so we felt its good to our short film idea. The results show that the genre they were most interested in is comedy with action shortly behind, however danielles suspense idea got the most votes, so we are going to do her idea.

The audience came up with some interesting ideas that we did not think of to make the plot more interesting, this included making it humorous by making the man so scared he wet himself, a murder or even a gay kiss.

The audience came up with some interesting ideas