Convention of Theorists Propp and Todorov

These are two theorists well known in the filmmaking world. They categorize films, claiming that they all, or mostly, follow certain patterns in relation to characters and plot.

Propp

Propp's list of character types states that 8 different roles are taken up. He studied Russian fairytales to find these roles, although they do apply very well to many films today. They are: 

• The villain
• The hero
• The donor who provides an object with some magic property
• The helper who aids the hero
• The princess, reward for the hero and object of the villain's schemes
• Her father, who rewards the hero
• The dispatcher, who sends the hero on his way
• The false hero

Although our thriller opening is only short, it is clear to the audience that we have a villain, but Propp suggests that the villain is always out to get the princess, a role we do not have in our film, and even if we did, the killers motives are unknown, and supposed to remain that way.
However the victim in our film is not the 'princess'  and is just their as a prop to show what the antagonist is like. This is the only relevance the victim has in the film, they are not a main character like the 'princess' or the 'hero'. However the rest of our film will probably establish these popular roles making it similar to Vladmir Propp's theory.

Todorov

Todorov's studies concentrated on narrative, and he resolved that every film began with equilibrium, which is then lost, and then a new equilibrium is found towards the end. Our film begins with complete disequilibrium, and the death of the main character is something very rarely done, although I believe it works well as a talking point so early on in the film. Also, most indie films end on a more realistic tone than "fairytale Hollywood endings" and so our thriller would be likely to follow the same path.
Our thriller opening starts off with equilibrium where a normal woman comes home from work and there is nothing out of the ordinary. It then changes to disequilibrium where the radio news report comes on explaining that there is a killer and then the reveal that the innocent looking woman is actually the killer. However, in our thriller opening we never actually go back to the equilibrium and we would like to think that if the storyline to our film ever did continue that at the end of the film the new equilibrium would be apparent. However when that would be revealed there would then be a shocking and unanticipated surprise to finish the film off. I think that this will make it a good film as a whole and will portray the thriller genre well.

Thriller Essay

With reference to 'Psycho' and other films studied discuss some of the key inventions used in the thriller genre

In this essay I will be writing about the main features in a typical film of a thriller genre. It will include all of the conventions of a thriller film for example, I will talk about how they build suspense, and tension and also how most thriller films have a shock or twist in the storyline. I will make reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s famous ‘Psycho’ and some of the other thriller films that I have watched of this genre.

Every well-conceived thriller is made to keep the audience on edge about what’s going to happen throughout the film. This is done by the enthusing storyline of the film, which most typically has an unexpected twist or either a shock during it. For example in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ (1960) that I am studying in class, there is an unexpected and also a shocking twist at the end of the film. The main character called Norman Bates owns The Bates Motel with his domineering mother who the audience never actually sees. He is a quiet yet lonely man who is obviously under the control of his mother. The audience finds out right at the end that Norman who seems quite innocent until this point, suffers from severe psychosis and has a split personality. He believes his other personality is his mother who is actually dead, this side of his personality is the murderer throughout the whole film and he is coincidentally covering it all up for his mum who never was alive in the film. Whilst watching this film I found the shocking ending very unexpected which made the film an all round success for me and that’s also the case with many other people. Thriller films are specifically made to make the audience experience suspense and tension all the way through, which creates excitement and scares the intended audience as well. I think that this film portrayed these very well as I felt tense throughout the whole film and the ending was especially exciting.

In most thriller films the main characters are just normal people who live normal lives like the audience. This is a good technique to use as the person watching the film can empathise with the character and also feel sympathy towards them. The audience will understand how the character is feeling or even the situation that their in because its possible that it could happen to the person watching and it may be something that they are familiar with. In some thriller films the audience is in the same position in the story as the character is. This meaning that the character finds out different things as the story goes on and so does the person watching it at the same time. However some thriller films let the person watching know what’s happening at the start of the film and the audience then watches the characters journey on finding out the information that the audience already knows. These are both typical types of storylines that are used in most thriller films.

Thrillers are a big genre as a whole, however thriller films do have sub-genres. For example there are mystery thrillers like David Fincher’s ‘Seven’ (1995), there are also psychological thrillers like the obvious one, Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ (1960) and also Joel Schumacher’s ‘Phone Booth’ (2003) and there are crime thrillers like Joel and Ethan coen’s (brothers) ‘No country for old men’ (2007). Nearly all thrillers stereotypically have an antagonist and a protagonist where most likely a death or murder is involved. For example ‘Seven’ is about two protagonists, the detectives who are both put on a case about an unknown serial killer, the antagonist, who kills seven victims, each death to match with the seven deadly sins. This sets a feel of suspense through the whole film, as the audience never knows when the killer is going to strike next or whom he’s going to kill. This in a way, forces the audience on wanting to watch more as the unexpected murders unfold and the interesting storyline becomes even more exciting. This film also has a shocking ending to it as well as ‘Psycho’, and many other thriller films, which are all unexpected. Although these are completely different types of thrillers in their own sub-genres, both endings to the films match, which binds them both together as the main genre, a thriller. Many thriller films also have a plot twist in the storyline where the plot suddenly changes dramatically at a certain point in the film. These are used so that the audience doesn’t get bored or even gets lost along the storyline, this excites and ultimately shocks the audience because it’s not what they expected and therefore keeps them entertained.

In most thriller films I think that the sound is one of the most crucial aspects in making it successful. Almost every thriller film has a cutting soundtrack or sound effects. However there is one thriller film that I have watched in class where there is no music throughout the whole of the film and that is ‘No Country for Old Men’. If you took away the music in a thriller film, it just wouldn’t be the same or have the same effect on the audience. It’s the same if the wrong kind of music is put with a film, it won’t convey the right message or make the audience feel the way they should. The cinematography also plays an important part in a good thriller film. The lighting creates suspense most of the time and portrays the scene or character very well. The colour also represents a scene well by creating tension well. If there is dark lighting it shows its quite mysterious and unknowing. Whereas a brightly colour scene may seem more happy or optimistic.

Overall I think that thrillers are a very effective kind of genre towards an audience because they vary in so many different good ways. They are entertaining and exciting to watch which has to obviously be a key thing in any type of film. The audience never know what’s going to happen next in the story and it keeps them guessing throughout the film which makes them want to watch it more. In my opinion I think that the thriller genre is the best because it is extremely exciting and coincidentally, it’s thrilling.

Continuity Piece

This was our first practical piece of work in AS Media where we had to think of an idea, plan it, go out to film it and then edit it together. We didn't have much time or space to fully plan this work to our best ability, this unfortunately meant that we lacked in a good setting and costume/props etc. However we did feel that school was not a good enough setting for us as it had a lack of places to film, therefore we decided that we were going to film in a more appropriate place outside of the school premises. This made our continuity more realistic and better to work with.

For this practical work I decided to work with the same group I am working with for my Thriller Opening. I feel that this was the right decision to make as it made our relationship as a group progress further and the more we worked together the more we worked better together. This again made us work well as a team and to have the confidence to speak our own opinions when deciding on new ideas and whilst discussing aspects for our final piece.

I feel that we learnt a lot from working on this piece and our knowledge grew on the different thriller aspects like cinematography, lighting, sound and editing. As we were filming, we clearly understood the difficulties of working with only a small plan which lacked great detail as appose to a more elaborate one. This made us more aware so we knew for our final piece that every detail mattered and had to be planned out carefully. As a group we also learnt a lot about the computer software we were using and the range of effects it had whilst also learning the basic skills on how to edit our film. Whilst we were editing, we understood a great deal that music and sound effects have a huge effect on the outcome and the build up of a film and each soundtrack or just a sound can make any scene in a film seem different and all together better. We learnt that we had to plan out the sound we were going to use in detail so that it would fit well with the scene and most of all creates tension. If we had chosen a different soundtrack for our work it could have had a whole different affect on the audience and may not have even portrayed the right genre. However I feel that lighting was our downfall in this piece, this was due to the fact that we only used natural lighting so some clips were brighter or darker than others because of the inconsistency of the sun. We could have prevented this by using specialised lighting equipment or even finding another place to film.

I think that this piece, even though it was of a low standard, really helped us to learn the good and bad aspects of filming so that when it came to our final piece we knew what we would need to do to make it the best it could be. It also helped us to know what equipment was needed and how to use it properly and the aspects we would need to improve and develop on.

Initial and Final Ideas for Our Thriller Opening

As a group, we all worked together to think of different ideas and came up with some individually as well. We started doing this by thinking of what a thriller opening includes and how we would portray this. We came up with two ideas as a whole and decided to go with the second idea as this would be best for us.


Our initial idea was about a teenage girl running through a forest, who obviously seems exhausted and had been there without food or water for a few days. The girl would of be running away from a man, but due to lack of energy, she started hallucinating things from her awful past and would of eventually ended up running from her childhood rather than the man. We wanted the rest of the film to show lots of flash backs from her unpleasant past showing how her life has developed and how she arrived in the woods running for her life away from the unknown man. We decided that we would not be able to pull this idea off and would only make sense if we had a bigger time space to fit the whole storyline into. We also thought that the chase scene may start to become a bit boring and stereotypical for the audience as many other thriller films use this effect.


For our second and concluding idea, the more we discussed it the more we grew on it and kept on thinking of better aspects to add in. We all thought about having a serial killer who had not been caught yet and had been killing different people in different ways. Our opening would be an introduction to the killer and would show their next victim being killed. This is the convention i talked about before where a not so important character is killed off straight away just to show the killer or to set the whole storyline. We then all suggested that the opening would be of the killer however the audience doesn't know this and will be revealed to the audience further on into the opening. We thought that it would be good to make the killer look innocent and to the audience, they will seem like the next victim. We then thought as a group that having a woman as the killer would have been much more of a shock as to the stereotypical male killer in most thriller films. We thought that the killer actually being a woman would be revealed at around half way through our opening, this would be shown by her holding yet another victim hostage. As our idea was starting to fit together nicely we thought that instead of using a lot of dialogue in the opening, we would have a voice over in the style of a radio news reporter This would explain what the killer is like and what they have previously done to their many victims. However whilst this is being explained on the voice over, the audience is shown the killer physically re-enacting the particular events. At the end of our thriller we decided that we would have the victim killed, however this wouldn't necessarily be shown on screen. When we thought about if we were making the rest of the film, we wanted it to be in the sub genre of an action thriller. This is because there would be the killings still taking place and also possibly the police chasing the killer throughout the film.

What My Thriller Opening Should Achieve

Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, and television programming that uses suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements. Thrillers heavily stimulate the viewer's moods giving them a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, surprise, anxiety and/or terror. Thriller films tend to be adrenaline-rushing, gritty,rousing and fast-paced. Literary devices such as red herrings, plot twists and cliffhangers are used extensively. A thriller is villain-driven plot, whereby he or she presents obstacles that the hero must overcome.

The aim for thrillers is to keep the audience alert and on the edge of their seats. The protagonist in these films is set against a problem – an escape, a mission, or a mystery. No matter what sub-genre a thriller film falls into, it will emphasize the danger that the protagonist faces. The tension with the main problem is built on throughout the film and leads to a highly stressful climax. The cover-up of important information from the viewer, and fight and chase scenes are common methods in all of the thriller subgenres, although each subgenre has its own unique characteristics and methods.

I feel that to make a good thriller you need the typical conventions of that particular genre. These include many different aspects like the ones said above; suspense, tension, anxiety and normally a twist or shock during the storyline. In many openings to thriller films there may be a dramatic start as this portrays a particular character or sets the atmosphere for the rest of the film. For example a character may get killed in the opening to the film. This is to show what the rest of the film is going to be like or to show what the antagonist is like. Therefore the central character (the protagonist) that is shown at the start of the scene actually has no relevance and is only there to show what the antagonist is really like and it also shows the concept of the rest of the film. 

Here is a youtube clip from the famous scream slasher movies. I have chosen to show the opening from the first scream film where the central character gets killed at the start. I have used this as an example because it portrays the convention that i previously explained about a character getting killed in the opening scene to show the antagonist or the concept of the rest of the film. I thought this was a good film to show as the protagonist is the well-known Drew Barrymore and its quite peculiar that such a big star is killed off at the start of the film. This as i mentioned before is to show what the antagonist is like and also the it tells a bit about what the storyline will be like throughout the rest of the film. 

In conclusion, I would like my finished thriller opening to:

• Create suspense and tension throughout so that the audience stay interested

•  Use an extensive variety of different camera shots/angles, cinematography, mise-en-scene and sound

•  Be continuous and to flow well; meaning the storyline and the editing

• End on a high, where the audience will eagerly want to watch the rest of the film and enjoy it

BBFC - British Board of Film Classification

British Board of Film Classification

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is an independent, non-governmental body funded through the fees it charges to those who submit films and video works for classification. Here, and throughout the Guidelines, video works are taken to include video games, and films and programmes released on DVD or Blu-ray, or distributed by means of download or streaming on the internet. The BBFC classifies films on behalf of the local authorities who license cinemas under the Licensing Act 2003. The BBFC classifies video works which are released as video recordings under the Video Recordings Act 1984. (The video games covered by the VRA are those whose exemption is forfeited under section 2(2) because they depict human sexual activity, gross violence or other matters of concern.) The BBFC classifies video works which are distributed other than as a video recording (for example, by means of download or streaming over the internet) under a voluntary scheme called BBFC.online. The BBFC will not classify material which it believes to be in breach of the criminal law. Where possible the BBFC will carry out its responsibilities through appropriate use of the classification categories, particularly in order to protect children from any harm which may be caused. If necessary, however, the BBFC may cut or even reject a film or video work. In line with domestic administrative law principles and the requirements of the Human Rights Act 1998, there is a particular need to make the classification criteria clear. This is fulfilled by the publication of these Guidelines and their availability on the BBFC website or directly from the BBFC. (Contact details can be found on the back cover.) The BBFC Classification Guidelines reflect all these considerations and are the product of public consultation with children and adults, research and the accumulated experience of the BBFC over many years. The Guidelines, and the BBFC’s practice in applying them, have particular regard to any changes in public taste, attitudes and concerns; changes in the law; or new evidence from research or expert sources; and will be reviewed periodically. The Guidelines, however, are not a legal document and should be interpreted in the spirit of what is intended as well as in the letter. They cannot be a comprehensive account of everything that may at any time be of concern. Should issues arise which are not specifically covered here, they will be dealt with by the BBFC on their merits and in line with the standards expressed and implied in these Guidelines. Responsibility for the Guidelines and for their interpretation rests with the BBFC and is subject to normal considerations of fairness and reasonableness. The BBFC undertakes to provide guidance on the interpretation of these Guidelines on request. Before allowing a child to view a work, parents are advised to consider carefully the classification, together with any accompanying Consumer Advice.

U - Universal

Suitable for all. It is impossible to predict what might upset any particular child. But a 'U' film should be suitable for audiences aged four years and over. 'U' films should be set within a positive moral framework  and should offer reassuring counterbalances to any violence, threat or horror. if a work is particularly suitable for a pre-school child to view alone, this will be indicated in the Consumer Advice.

PG - Parental Guidance

General viewing, but some scenes may be unsuitable for young children. Unaccompanied children of any age may watch. A ‘PG’ film should not disturb a child aged around eight or older. However, parents are advised to consider whether the content may upset younger or more sensitive children.

12A/12

Suitable for 12 years and over. Exactly the same criteria are used to classify works at ‘12A’ and ‘12’. These categories are awarded where the material is suitable, in general, only for those aged 12 and over. Works classified at these categories may upset children under 12 or contain material which many parents will find unsuitable for them. The '12A’ category exists only for cinema films. No one younger than 12 may see a ‘12A’ film in a cinema unless accompanied by an adult, and films classified ‘12A’ are not recommended for a child below 12. An adult may take a younger child if, in their judgement, the film is suitable for that particular child. In such circumstances, responsibility for allowing a child under 12 to view lies with the accompanying adult. The '12' category exists only for video works. No one younger than 12 may rent or buy a '12' rated video work. 

15

Suitable only for 15 years and over. No one younger than 15 may see '15' film in a cinema. No one younger than 15 may rent or buy a '15' rated video work.

18

Suitable only for adults. No one younger than 18 may see an '18' film in a cinema. No one younger than 18 may rent or buy an '18' rated video. In line with the consistent findings of the BBFC's public consultations and The Human Rights Act 1988, at '18' the BBFC's guideline concerns will not normally override the principle that adults should be free to choose their own entertainment.

R18 - Restricted

To be shown only in specially licensed cinemas, or supplied only in licensed sex shops, and to adults of not less than 18 years. The 'R18' category is a special and legally restricted classification primarily for explicit works of consenting sex or strong fetish material involving adults. Films may only be shown to adults in specially licensed cinemas, and video works may be supplied to adults only in licensed sex shops. 'R18' video works may not be supplied by mail order.