1. Evaluation - Question 1
John Glen

2. Narrative
We have stayed very conventional when it comes to the narrative. Our
clip started with a dream sequence (Shown through black and
white), then the protagonist is brought back to reality, where he
finds that he is in an unknown hospital and does not know who he
is. Thrillers conventionally start with a crime being committed, this
is something used to attract the viewers attention, although we did
not show a crime being committed, we do open with a slow scene
that builds tension slowly, which leads up to an implication of a
crime (Suicide). Although we have not challenged the stereotype
we have altered it and so we have stuck to this convention but put
our own ‘twist’ on it, which I think that it works extremely well. We
have however stayed very close to the conventional narrative
aspect of a problem being identified and the protagonist being at a
disadvantage. The protagonist is unaware of his identity and his
location, this puts him at a disadvantage, meaning he needs double
the heroism and skills to overcome it.

3. The Protagonist
Our piece only had one character throughout it, and this was the protagonist
(Played by myself). Stereotypically protagonists are male and we have
stayed conventional with this aspect and used a male protagonist, we
decided to use this aspect because we think that males are portrayed to
be more heroic something that is essential for all protagonists. We
decided to stay partly conventional when it came to the protagonists
costume. When it comes to costume a number of different thrillers
portray their protagonists to be ‘normal’ (This is shown in ‘Taken’), and
some portray them to dress extremely well (Such as suits, like in
‘Limitless’), we decided that we would go with a sense of realism in order
to make our character ‘down to earth’ and relatable, therefore we chose
everyday clothing (Jeans and a t shirt) to show this. We noted in our
research that a lot of protagonists are at a disadvantage and so we
decided this would be a good thing to build our narrative around, we took
inspiration from the film ‘Unknown’ and decided our protagonist would
suffer from memory loss, this puts the protagonist at a
disadvantage, making him again a lot more relatable and likeable to the
viewer.

4. Fonts and Titles
We decided to name our thriller ‘Existence’, we chose this name in order to
stay conventional, in our research period we found that a lot of existing
thrillers had very ‘open ended’ titles (‘Unknown’ and ‘Taken’), and
therefore we felt that existence matched this profile and also was very
thought provoking. The font that we used in our thriller opening was
(********), we used this as we felt that it had a kind of gothic theme to it.
We researching into fonts we looked at existing psychological thrillers (E.g.
Seven), it was this that inspired us to our current font, the font we chose
had uneven edged, which created this gothic feel and the unpredictability
of the edges would be a key element in which people could gather the
theme and genre of the thriller. We knew from research that the order in
which we arranged our credits would be crucial, we found that in all
genres of film they had a similar sequence in which they appeared and so
therefore decided to follow this and stayed conventional
(Stars, sound, music, editing, casting, producers and eventually leading up
to the director).

5. Location
We used a number of locations throughout our thriller, the thriller
opens with a modern city location of top of a building (The
dream sequence), It then comes out of the dream sequence and
into a hospital location, which then goes to an unknown
darkened room. A lot of thrillers conventionally take place in
modern places like hospital (For example ‘Awake’), as this
location is often associated with life and death (A common
theme of thrillers), therefore we have stayed conventional with
the location aspect of the thriller. A lot of existing thrillers use
the setting and location to portray a sense of mystery, we have
also used this technique in the darkened room, by having little of
the room visible which combined with the static
television, creates an almost gothic and more importantly
stereotypically mysterious location that I think works extremely
well to build the tension that is essential for thrillers.

6. Sub-genre
The sub-genre that we used in our thriller opening was a
psychological thriller, we found that in psychological thrillers it is
often conventional for the protagonist to be well dressed (This is
present in Seven), however we wanted to challenge this
convention and add a sense of realism to our protagonist, this is
often done in other sub-genre thrillers, but rarely in
psychological ones, we felt that by doing this the protagonist
became more relatable. Although this meant wearing ‘normal’
clothing, we did have a few considerations in the costume
department, the colour of the t shirt was something we chose
because we felt that a white t shirt would show pureness and
innocence, and to make him more of a relatable character we
decided to have it grey as then it shows that the character is
flawed, which adds to the realism of the character.

7. Techniques used
Editing was the part of the project that we found took the most time, the hardest part
of the editing would have been making it clear that the dream sequence was a
dream. We first watched and put ourselves in the mind frame of someone who
had never seen it before, we concluded it was not clear that it was a dream and so
made a number of editorial changes to make it clearer. We turned the scene black
and white, in order to give it a timeless quality and make it clear to the viewer that
this was separate to the rest of the opening, we then made sure there was a
blackout at the end of it, which then acted as a pause for affect and let the viewer
digest what they had seen. We then used a close up of the protagonists eye which
combined with the Foley heavy breathing sound, ensured it was clear that the first
part of the opening was in fact a dream. The camera angles that we used
throughout the opening was very important as it is the main building blocks of the
thriller, in total we used a variety of shots, however my favourite shot in the
opening was the close up of the shoe, in the dream sequence. Having the shoe in
focus and the surroundings not, stresses a high importance about the
protagonist, and the hesitation and speed of which he walks up to the edge allows
tension to be built in this crucial and dramatic scene. I like this shot so much
because a juxtaposition is created from the quite modern shoes against the
historic buildings around them, this poses the idea of perhaps two worlds
colliding.