1. INFLUENCES FOR OUR
A LEVEL THRILLER

2. How times have changed…
 Our main influence for our thriller was on “cyber-bullying” –
many children/teenagers are bullied in today’s society, and
instead of using a monster (Vampire, Werewolf etc.) we
decided to use technology. 30 years ago, an audience would
find an external threat such as a monster or a person dressed
up to look scary. When Halloween (1978) came out, the
audience were terrified of Michael Myers, yet if a teenager of
today’s society watches it, they wouldn’t be scared because it’s
30 + years old and they’ve probably heard of something worse
happening in the news. Society has definitely changed as well.
Sometimes, the news can actually be scarier than a film. In the
past ten years, audiences have read about cases such as
Baby P, Shannon Matthews, the rise in teen pregnancy and
when a man was killed by teenagers on his door step. We
decided after debating about all of this that we shouldn’t have
a monster. Instead we’ll have an antagonist, using technology
and the internet as his main weapon.

3.  Almost everyone in todays world has a smart phone, whether
it’s an iPhone or a BlackBerry. New technology has really
taken off and now everyone can join social networking sites
and talk to each other via Facebook and Twitter. Although,
this can be helpful when making plans, or catching up with
lost friends. It can also be very dangerous. In recent years,
people have made up fake accounts on Facebook or Twitter,
and groomed a child/teenager by pretending to be someone
they’re not. If you meet someone online, you never know
whether they’re real or not, and someone as young as 12
might not know. We decided that the young girl in our thriller
would have met someone online whilst on Facebook. Social
networking has taken off in the past few years and the fears
of the internet are out there.

4. In terms of getting ideas from a film, we used
psycho as our inspiration. The famous shower
scene is poignant in thriller history and by using
ideas from this scene, and mixing it with modern
technology can create an eerie scene, which
seems inescapable as almost everyone today uses
technology. We’re mixing classic horror
conventions, with technology to make our thriller
different from the original codes and conventions.