What people think of thrillers and my idea

What people think of my thriller idea and thrillers in genral

Overall I have gathered from my research into my potential target audience that I need to show more of the motivations for my characters actions if I want to make a film about a high school massacre. Therefore my next target will be to work on the ways in which I can develop my characters psychological profile to show his motivations for his actions.

In the first interview I interviewed two teenage girls around the age of 18, which on the whole is my secondary audience. They tend to like thrillers although the high pitched reply suggests a hint of uncertainty. The girl at the back said she doesn't watch too many thrillers but the girl in front seemed a little more sure. They said that they like to feel adrenaline and jump when they watch a thriller. I think that in some ways this suits our thriller as you may jump when the killer kills one of the students. They really liked the idea of our high school massacre as they thought it was very relatable. 

The second interview was also at our target audience of teenage girls, however these girls were slightly younger than the previous ones. They seemed to enjoy thrillers and showed a good, honest understanding of thriller films as they didn't hesitate when asked what their favourite was. One of the girls even suggested 'We Need to Talk about Kevin' which is a thriller quite similar to mine. They said in a thriller they look for a good ending. I believe that this backs up our thriller even further because we have a good ending which is left on a cliff hanger. They liked my idea for the same reason as before which is because it has a good ending. 

My last interview was of a teenage boy who is part of my primary target audience. He didn't like thrillers which was surprising, but his favourite was Taken because of the action and suspense. He liked my idea of a high school massacre because it includes action.

We asked our target audience questions such as "do you like thrillers" and "what do you think of the idea of a high school massacre" to get an idea of whether thrillers are a popular genre in our target audience. It is important to check that your target audience like the idea of your thriller because you want them to go and see it and if you get negative feedback from your target audience, it is likely your film won't sell well.

Completing title credits in the right order with an example

Completing title credits in the right order with an example
In order to gain some ideas about how to create title credits for our opening sequence, we took a look from the opening sequence of 'Ae Fond Kiss'. The credits are shown at the beginning which is how ours will be. As you can see from the first 30 seconds of the video below, the font changes when it shows the company this draws people to the credits and you notice the change and therefore, I want to try and implement this in our thriller. From the first seconds of the film you can see the order is quite good as you show the companies that have worked on the film and then the title and actors. This is quite a logical order that many films tend to follow.

You can view the video by clicking on the following link: Ae Fond Kiss (Watch 1st min)

Changes and developments to my thriller

Changes and developments to my thriller

We wanted to make sure our thriller would be effective and our audience would understand the plot. This is when we began to question how we would approach our thriller. We thought of a second idea which would include a similar idea of a high school massacre but we thought of other ways to film the opening sequence and how to end the sequence.

For our initial idea, we were going to film a variety of shots which would follow the killer around the school filming from different angles. This would be effective because it shows a wide use of shots and a clear understanding of our target audience and what they want to see in a thriller. We came up with a different idea in which we would use the school cafe. We would have children sitting around tables having fun with their friends filming each other on phones and then the killer walks in and kills them. We would therefore use point of view shots from the victims which would give a realistic emphasis to the sequence. However, we thought that this  would limit us to the locations we could kill people in. Therefore, we decided to stick with the original idea and push it really hard by using a number of locations around the school and paying close attention to the angles we were using and the shot type.

Another vital part to our opening sequence that was disputed was how we were going to end the sequence. We wanted to use the effect of leaving it on a cliff hanger as this keeps the audience guessing and makes them want to see what happens next, or in our storyline who? and why? Our initial idea was to have a guy playing basketball and the killer walks into the sports hall where the guy is playing and the guy says something similar to "is it done?". As this shocks the audience because they are likely to think the killer is about to kill him but then it turns out they're working together. One of my group members is a basketball fanatic and is quite forceful and not the easiest to get along with. He was adamant that basketball had to be included. Personally, I thought the second idea we came up with was better. I had the idea of instead of the killer walking into the sports hall, in fact he walks into a classroom and a teacher asks "is it done?". The only problem with this is that it puts the teenager in more control that the teacher, which is not believable.

Storyboard of my thriler and what I learnt from it

Storyboard of my Thriller and what we learnt from it

Creating a story board for our thriller opening sequence has helped give us a clear idea of how it was going to pan out. It also gave us an idea of what shots we were going to use and the duration of it. It is similar to a script in the idea that if we forget about shots we can look back at the storyboard which will show us how we set it out.

We tried to draw each shot as similar as possible to what we want it to look like in the thriller and the scenery behind the character. The good thing about doing a school massacre means it is hard to make the scene look fake when you are filming in a zoo whereas if you were filming it on an island, a lot of the scenery would be fake. 

The storyboard also made our story easier to understand as it helps when it is broken down. When doing the story board we weren't 100% sure how the character would be standing so we gave a rough idea of how we wanted it too look.

Real life incidents similar to my thriller

Real life incidents similar to my thriller
1. Virginia Tech Shooting (32 killed, many more injured) - The Virginia Tech massacre was a school shooting comprising two separate attacks about two hours apart on April 16, 2007, on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. The perpetrator, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people and wounded many more, before committing suicide, making it the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

2. Columbine High School Massacre (15 died, 24 injured) - On April 20th 1999, two students stormed Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and murdered 12 other students aged 14 to 18 as well as a teacher. A further 24 people were injured before the attackers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed themselves.

3. Dunblane massacre (18 killed) - Unemployed former shopkeeper and Scout leader Thomas Hamilton walked into Dunblane Primary School armed with two 9 mm pistols and two .357 Magnum revolvers. He killed sixteen small children and a teacher. The subsequent police investigation revealed that Hamilton had loaded the magazines for his Browning with an alternating combination of fully metal jacketed and hollow point ammunition. This event led to the banning of handguns in the UK.

Possible names for our thriller

Possible names for our thriller

"Blacksburg 32" - Our thriller is made on Virgina Tech's high school massacre. It took place in a town called Blacksburg which is something not many know and the 32 comes from the amount of people killed.

"Virginia 32" - We could use Virgina instead of Blacksburg as it is more mainstream as it is a much more well known city and less mysterious and more to the point.

"Is it done" - We are keeping speech to a bare minimum in our thriller and the only speech we may have is the boy playing basketball saying "Is it done?".

"The Baller" - In our thriller there is a mysterious boy playing basketball and we only learn why he is in the opening sequence until the end.

Evaluation of run through

Evaluation of run through

There were many good and bad points to our run through but there were mostly bad which means we can now film our opening sequence adding in all the parts we missed out or did wrong. 

Firstly, we filmed the whole run through incorrectly. We used an iPhone where we should've used a professional camera, with a dolly and tripod. Also we didn't do enough cut scenes or walking scenes to the next killing. As a result of this, our run through didn't flow very well as we see Itamar in a different part of the school just after killing someone. By adding in scenes of him walking to the location of the next killing it adds more suspense and makes the scenes flow better. By using a phone we sometimes recorded in portrait which meant that it looked distorted. As well as this we didn't include any classical music as it would've created a more comical effect as it acts as a juxtaposition to the murders. By not using a camera with a tripod it means that when you are tracking the walking of Itamar, the camera shakes a little as the phone is a lot more sensitive as you can't balance it as well. Also when we film the real opening sequence we will use an actual gun and special effects to make it more realistic so the audience believe the people are really dying rather than Itamar's hand. We can also add more editing techniques like blood and we will be more careful that when people fall and die they will make it more realistic. On the topic of actors, we will recruit a better main antagonist rather than a 17 year old boy which again makes it look like a real high school massacre. However, when we chose the people to die in the run through we chose some good actors. For Example, Mrs O'Connor was a very good actor and made her death more realistic. We also left out a scene where after the massacre, the main antagonist walks into a classroom where it looks like he is about to kill the teacher (who is on their own). When we film the opening scene we will make sure the main killer is fully dressed up in his suit and gloves again to make it more real. We are also gonna include a wider variety of camera shots such as over the shoulder. close ups and wide shots. Lastly, regarding editing we are going to enhance the gun shot sounds to add more tensions and make each killing more dramatic.