Psychological Thriller Research...

Research;

"Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the wide-ranging thriller genre. However, this genre often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre in addition to the typical traits of the thriller genre. Also, occasionally this genre will border into the also wide-ranging Horror genre.
Generally, thrillers focus on plot over character, and thus emphasize intense, physical action over the character's psyche. Psychological thrillers tend to reverse this formula to a certain degree, emphasizing the characters just as much, if not more so, than the plot.
The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying upon one another's minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the other's mental state.
Sometimes the suspense comes from within one solitary character where characters must resolve conflicts with their own minds. Usually, this conflict is an effort to understand something that has happened to them. These conflicts are made more vivid with physical expressions of the conflict in the means of either physical manifestations, or physical torsions of the characters at play."

The Definition;

Psychological – Elements that are related to the mind or processes of the mind; they are mental rather than physical in nature.
Thriller – A genre of fiction that attempts to "thrill" its audience by placing characters at great risk. This constant unease throughout the story makes the narrative suspenseful to the reader by creating a tense atmosphere.
Psychological + Thriller – By combining these two terms, the definition changes to a narrative that makes the characters exposed to danger on a mental level rather than a physical one. Characters are no longer reliant on physical strength to overcome their brutish enemies (which is often the case in typical action-thrillers), but rather are reliant on their mental resources, whether it be by battling wits with a formidable opponent or by battling for equilibrium in the character's own mind.

Themes;

Many psychological thrillers have emerged over the past years, all in various media (film, literature, radio, etc). Despite these very different forms of representation, general trends have appeared throughout the narratives. Some of these consistent themes include:
Reality – The quality of being real. Characters often try to determine what is true and what is not within the narrative.
Perception – A person's own interpretation of the world around him through his senses. Often characters misperceive the world around them, or their perceptions are altered by outside factors within the narrative (see Unreliable narrator).
Mind – The human consciousness; the location for personality, thought, reason, memory, intelligence and emotion. The mind is often used as a location for narrative conflict, where characters battle their own minds to reach a new level of understanding or perception.
Existence/Purpose - The object for which something exists; an aim or a goal humans strive towards to understand their reason for existence. Characters often try to discover what their purpose is in their lives and the narrative's conflict often is a way for the characters to discover this purpose.
Identity - The definition of one's self. Characters often are confused about or doubt who they are and try to discover their true identity.
Death - The cessation of life. Characters either fear or have a fascination with death.

Voice Over Recording...

We recorded part of our voice over today and it went well. We recorded the news report and part of the police interview but we need to add some more to that part of the script. We still have a couple of things to record and then we can edit it all together but we were happy with how it worked so far.

Ninth Draft...

This is the ninth draft of our film opening, we have experimented with using the clicking sound when the title appears and we also changed the role in front of Charlotte's name to 'introducing' rather than 'starring' because we felt it looked more professional.



On this edit, the sound is very loud and not very good quality because this is the one we recorded on iMovie. We have recorded and edited a better one on GarageBand but did not want to attach it to our film yet, as it would then become difficult to edit.

Eighth Draft...

Here is the eighth draft of our film opening. We have moved all of the names back into the right places and given each one of us a title, just as you would see in any mainstream film credits. We have also taken the iMovie effects off the shots of 'Leyla' after she has woken up, in order to show the difference between her sleeping and her being awake, this is not an error in our editing.

Blind Side...

Watched the film Blind Side last night and really enjoyed it! It was slightly longer than it needed to be but such an amazing, heart-warming story (If it hadn't have been a true story I probably would have hated it) and even though it was a bit too cheesy for my liking, I would recommend it! Sandra Bullock gave a good performance too, I think she deserved the award.

Examples of Sound...

I was listening to my ipod the other day and 'In Regards To Myself' by Underoath came on and the start of the song gave me an idea for something we could do in our film opening.

I thought the clicking sound at the start of the song would be quite a good noise for us to use right at the beginning of our film as the names are appearing on the screen. This way, it would sound like the noise of the policeman recording the interview.

I think this would be an effective way to start our film as the sound could be quite creepy.

Click on the link to see the video In Regards To Myself - Underoath

Reason For Name of Our Film...

We came to the group decision of having our film called 'Leyla' because the whole story of the film is that a girl goes missing and the audience sees her waking up in the middle of nowhere so we thought that seeing as the whole film is about her, why not just call it her name? We wanted a slightly out of the ordinary name so we searched girls names and came up with Leyla.

We also thought this would be a good idea because it is a similar idea behin the title to the film that has recently been out in the cinema called 'Chloe' so we have research to back up our reasons behind the name.

Seventh Draft of Our Film...

Here is the most recent draft of our film. After doing all our research on opening credits and where the names, etc. should go, we decided to play around with different ways we could place the credits.
We watched the opening credits to Step Brothers and really liked the simple way that the names of the production companies just faded up onto a black screen before any action was shown. We attempted to create something very similar to see how it would look with our film.
We also put all our names at the start which does not work well but we thought we would try it anyway.
I also like this way of doing the credits because it means we can have the voice over playing whilst the names come up which is an effective way of opening a film as we've seen from our research.

(We also added in a couple of extra shots at the end of the opening just to see if they looked good as they are shots of 'Leyla' when she was awake before she went missing. Still not sure if these shots work but I like the idea of them.)

Typography/Credits Analysis of Three Films...

After doing some further research into credits and the order they are put into film openings, I found three film openings that I thought would be significant in relation to our own film opening;

ALPHA DOG: I really like the opening to this film because it shows old childhood footage of some of the characters and lots of different names, etc. appear over the top of these images, then after that, the screen goes black and then an interview with Bruce Willis appears on screen. This is relevant to our film opening because we are using a police interview as our voice over, and it will be helpful to us when we come to record our voice over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk4Nalt3350

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: This opening is also relevant to us because of the use of a voice over and the random shots that set the scene. I like the fact that all the credits are right at the beginning of the opening, so that they do not interfer with the rest of the opening.


TWILIGHT: This film opening is significant because you hear her voice before you see anything and it gives us an idea of what our film opening would sound like with 'Leyla's' voice over the top of the action that is going on. The production company and title come in after the voice over and they appear after the music starts.

Opening Credits Research...

In class yesterday, we watched a selection of film openings in order to see what the most popular order of credit appearance was and to help us decide how we should position the names/title/production company/etc. in our own film opening.

Here are some brief descriptions of the openings we watched;

BABEL: Immediately the audience sees the name of the production companies. Black screen and sound of footsteps comes before the moving image.

DERAILED: Again black screen with sound (someone coughing) before any visuals are shown. Technical name of production company comes first then names and these appear over visuals.

BOURNE IDENTITY: Sound before visuals again. Sets the scene first. Lots of action/fast-paced editing , then a black screen and then the title.

IN BRUGES: Names of people involved and production companies pop up in between still shots that are setting the scene for the film (establishing shots).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilO75OmtUo

LIFE OF DAVID GALE: Title and production company come right at the start before any action is seen. Simple but effective.

THE MEXICAN: Sound before visuals again. Text appears very near the start. The title is in tiny red letters (contrast to the previous names that were in white).

ANGELS AND DEMONS: Title and production company names appear straight away, using the same fading effect on each one.

I think we should move the title of our film to the very start of the film opening so it appears just after the production company name and then our names can be spread throughout the film as they are now. This way, we can have the voice over of the police interview start up before any visuals are shown on the screen and I think this will be very effective.

Sixth Draft...

After watching our fifth draft a few times and getting other people to look at it, we have decided to make the present-day shots of 'Leyla' much slower and change the effect to an iMovie effect called Romantic which makes the shots much lighter, and slightly hazy around the edges. This definately gives us the dream-like effect we were hoping for and the slowed down shots definately make it seem much more like an actual film opening rather than a film trailer which is what it looked like before.

Also, when we were editing we decided that we wanted a black screen right at the start with sound over the top of that, before you even see anything happen on screen. Just as a trial run, we layered some walkie-talkie noises over the top of the very beginning of this draft. I quite like the effect this has, but we will obviously play around with this a lot more when we record our voice over.

We also made the 'Filmed and Edited By' a bit longer as we got told it was not on screen for long enough and the audience would not have been able to read it in enough time.

Fifth Draft...

On this draft we put a new effect on all the present day shots of 'Leyla' in order to try and seperate the past and present shots. Also, the effect we tried (iMovie effect called Vignette) was a circular black border which gave the effect that someone was closely watching her.



Unfortunately, I do not think that the effect worked in the way we wanted it to, so we will need to play around with other effects, etc. It didn't work because it made the shots look too dark when we wanted them to have a very light, dream-like quality.

Script For Voice Over...

Here are some rough ideas of what we could use as a script for our voice overs...

Policeman/woman: This is PC Smith interviewing Mrs.- concerning the disappearance of her daughter Leyla -. Time is 12:43.
(possible questions he/she could ask)

Mrs. -, when was the last time you saw or had contact with your daughter?

What was her mood like?

Did she say or do anything that you consider out of the ordinary?

Is there anyone that you know of that would have a desire to harm your daughter?

etc.

Mrs.-: (possible answers)

She was at home yesterday, we had a cup of tea and lunch together. Just like we always do.

Well she's a typical teenager, how do you think her mood was?!

She was on the phone for a long time, probably to that boyfriend of hers, and she wasn't paying me enough attention. I shouted at her for getting all tarted up in those heels and she stormed out. That was the last time I saw her.

No. Maybe you should be talking to her boyfriend, not me.

News Report;

Concerns are being raised after the disappearance of a 16 year old girl, Leyla -, who was last seen a week ago in North London. The police have stated that the case is becoming more serious than they initially thought it would be. Mrs.-, Leyla's mother is urging people to come forward if they have any information on the case. All those closest to her are being questioned but so far the police can't seem to find any suspects and no-one seems to know anything about the mysterious disappearance of Leyla -.

Discussion on Voice Overs...

Yesterday, after editing we had a group discussion about what we were going to do about our sound/voice over for our film opening.
We wrote out a spider diagram of all our possible options about who would be talking in the voice over (i.e. police interview and who's talking to them - 'baddie', Leyla's friends/family, Leyla herself? just narration by Leyla? news reports on a missing girl? etc.), people we know who have suitable voices for our voice over, when and where we could record the voice overs and what the script would be.
Eventually we came to the conclusion that we could do a mixture of all these things, so that the sound was just lots of different sound clips put in sequence to emphasize the chaos that is created when somebody goes missing.
Below is an example of the kind of sound clip we want. It is a song by Plan B and can be heard at 2:58-3:24. It is a news reporter reading out news of a girl who was murdered called Suzanne. We all thought the way they had edited the sound clip to blank out certain words was very effective and quite creepy. (The song is extremely graphic and horrific but he definately gets his point across).

Fourth Draft of Our Film...

After having a few technical issues with our film on iMovie (and thinking we would have to edit everything again!) we managed to get on with editing again and this is our fourth draft of our film opening.
We discussed the name of the film again and decided it would be most effective to name our main character and then just use her first name as the title of our film and we ended up calling it 'Leyla' as we wanted something slightly unusual to reflect the odd situation the character finds herself in.
We took out the shot of the necklace at the end because we felt that it didn't really work with our initial concept. We also added in a couple more shots of 'Leyla' in the woods to emphasize her situation to the audience. We have also sorted out the credits now and made sure that they are all timed correctly, etc.

'Alice In Wonderland'

I went to see Tim Burton's latest film last night at the cinema and was really looking forward to seeing it because of how much I had heard about it and because it was a Tim Burton film and I generally love all his films but after the film I realised that it was very different from what I had expected. I enjoyed the film quite a lot but it was not what I thought it was going to be. I think that they could have made it more obscure and it didnt seem as odd as the average Tim Burton film. There were some very funny parts of it and I thought the effects that were used on the film were incredible but I still left feeling that it could have been slightly more interesting but that is just personal preference. Having said all that, I would still recommend the film and Johnny Depp gave an amazing performance as expected!

'The Bank Job'

Watched this film the other day and really liked some of the fast paced camera shots of the cars as they speed off and they reminded me of the shots that we have in our opening.