To answer this question, I firstly took into consideration the research I have conducted throughout the production of my group’s thriller opening. The preproduction process, in general, allowed me to understand the current forms of media on the market at the moment and how we could challenge and develop conventions of the thriller genre. As a group, we took a large amount of our inspiration from the thriller Gone Girl conducting a vast amount of research into the conventions broken and developed within the film and how we can build upon this in our own opening.
We challenged conventions of a typical thriller opening in hopes to co-inside with our chosen sub-genre of a psychological thriller. We aimed as a group to focus on a unique subject that is rarely used as a foundation to AS thriller openings, mental illness is often seen as a sign of weakness. This form of the illness is also not reacted to and treated the same way as other health issues that directly involve the body and not the mind. Those suffering from mental illness also often think of it themselves as a weakness. this challenged various gender stereotypes, making our sequence very unique as we wanted to cross boundaries and portray a male (who are usually less vulnerable that females) with a mental illness to make him appear more vulnerable, showing that males are just as vulnerable within the media, meaning we challenged the convention of having a typical vulnerable 'damsel in distress' the main character, as the male has to be saved from his mental illness. As a group, we decided to build upon this and use it as a foundation to our opening. Looking into the representation of stereotypes within real media products and my own I notice both similarities and differences. One common stereotype is that women are portrayed as shy, passive and submissive they are also organised and clean, whereas men are portrayed as tough, aggressive, self-confident and dominant they are also lazy and messy. We have stuck closely to this stereotype as Ellie is shown in the short flashback sequence as submissive as she is the weaker in the argument between her and Lucas, despite Lucas' mental state he is still physically stronger than his girlfriend. He is also depicted as aggressive and dominant over Ellie in all of the flashbacks as he is always shown as being higher up as he stands and walks over Ellie as if she is irrelevant. In reference to the laziness of Lucas' character, this characteristic is shown through mise-en-scene, firstly with the makeup applied by Lucy (head of costume and makeup) which allowed Lucas to appear tired due to the use of dark pigment placed under his eyes. Also through the use of costume as the use of dark casual clothing gives the impression to the audience of laziness and also hints to the character being unstable due to his inability to dress in the correct clothing as it is evident by how Ellie is dressed that the occasion may call for less casual clothing as the makeup used on Ellie gives the impression of cleanliness and effort swell as time being taken on her appearance this is also shown through her smart casual clothing. Continuing to look into the effect of mise-en-scene in our thriller opening, Lucy's costume conveys a smart and feminine look.
The audience may find the prospect of a female detective investigating a dominating, overpowering, aggressive and ultimately unstable male character increases suspense and tension within the plot of the film. There is also a feeling of satisfaction provoked in the audience from seeing women, who have suffered so much from male arrogance and condescension, either outwitting men or demonstrating that they are just as capable as men of doing something that may have been seen as a male preserve. To further analyse the costume worn by Lucy, the blue top that she is shown wearing is a stereotypical colour that is worn by men, women are in contrast supposed to wear pink, the fact that Lucy is wearing blue sends a message that she is just as capable as any man of taking on a complex case such as the one she is investigating. A convention commonly found in thriller films is the weather is dull and reflects the fear in characters; skies are often depicted as grey linking to the mood of the plot. Our thriller opening breaks this convention as the trees are shown to be covered in blossom and the sky is blue, which normally reflects the moods of happiness and joy. The clear juxtaposition between the dark events that have taken place in the characters’ lives and the dark persona of Lucas shown in the clothes he is wearing when visiting his girlfriend’s grave does not break the common convention of dark colours representing dark events and personalities. Pathetic fallacy is shown through the weather in the opening, meaning the attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things and whether. The most important convention within the thriller genre I believe is the build-up of suspense and tension through the use of sound and camera angles and movements. I believe that the final outcome of our thriller opening develops this key convention through our use of soundtrack and a range of shots that build up suspense. The soundtrack does not begin to play straight away within the opening, this provokes a sense of unease within the audience, as the soundtrack begins to softly play this acts as a bridge which carries the audience through the opening and allows the shots to flow together. The sound is used in four different ways within our opening each acts as a step bringing the audience closer into the build-up of tension until the titles appear and the final sound effect marks the end of the tension build up (for the opening). The second form of sound is a heartbeat which builds the tension as the flashback sequence appears on screen this brings the audience’s attention to the flashbacks and shows their importance to the plot of the film. The third form of sound used is the second soundtrack which builds the highest amount of tension as the beats link to the shots being shown on screen, more questions are asked by the audience as to why the character who has just been shown is being investigated.
The final sound effect brings the highest form of tension as the eerie sound of what some may perceive to be the character's girlfriend (light eerie breaths) marking the end of the opening as the film title appears. Looking further into forms and conventions of thriller openings as well as following traditional generic conventions within the genre I found that the use of a voice over is unique and will separate our opening and the use of this striking dialogue away from other real media products. Voice-over narration is a technique commonly used in a variety of different genres that is generally non-diegetic. Voice-overs typically aim to educate the audience and give out certain information that the film itself may not be making clear. We used a voice-over in our opening as we tried to think about how we could bring Lucas’ mental illness to the audience’s attention subtlety, creating elements of structure and continuity. We aimed to use our voice-over in a way to recount past events and create an ambience. Our aim was to effectively plunge the audience into the mind of our film’s most terrifying character, through the use of an unnerving voice-over. This causes a significant predicament as voice-overs are usually used to make the audience empathise with the speaker, but we have presented a narrator that is a schizophrenic killer. The ending of the voice-over leaves the audience on edge as Lucas confesses “I don’t know what I’ve done” conveying to the audience he is not in his right mind as well as leaving them asking questions as to what he has actually done.
