Practical production essay- thriller

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Shezaa Chaudry

Thriller essay

We were asked to create the first two minutes of a thriller film. The thriller has to be at least two minutes long and must contain tittles and credits it should also be original. It can either be certificate 18 or certificate 15. We decided to make our thriller a certificate 15. ‘A thriller is something that thrills especially a sensational or suspenseful book, story, play, or movie.’

To research our target audience we made questionnaires to see what sort of films they were interested in and what would their opinion was on the sound, camera shots, angles, characters and content of the first two minutes of an interesting thriller. To research our target audience further we made a blog on a website to get the views of different types of people from all around the world. We also researched other thrillers that were a certificate 15. Some of the thrillers that we researched were ‘When a stranger calls,’ ‘Silence of the lambs’ and ‘Halloween.’ These gave us ideas for beginnings of films and also enabled us to see what we needed to include. They also showed us what sort of music is ideal and gave us different ideas of how to present our credits. We also researched previous thrillers made by other a-level students. This allowed us to see the standard at which our thrillers needed to be and gave us ideas as to what we could include.

The researched that we did told us that not all beginnings of thrillers have to make sense. It also showed us that the storyline of the film should not be given away in the first two minutes as this makes the film predictable and boring. The research also told me that the audience likes to have music in the opening of the film as it builds tension and suspense. They also said that they like it when the opening to a thriller is confusing as later on you understand it and it makes the thriller more interesting as it gets your attention. I also found that the audience preferred thrillers which were gory and contained more violence than action thrillers or dramatic thrillers.

Thriller films are usually quite dull with low lighting. This is to create suspense and make the thrillers scarier. Thrillers also use a variety of shots and angles to create tension and to make the thriller more exciting. These are some of the features that are usually found in thriller films. Literary devices such as suspense, red herrings and cliffhangers are also used in thrillers extensively.

We started planning for our thriller by brainstorming for ideas. We did this by listening to each others suggestions and writing them down. We then looked at them and disregarded those which would be impossible to complete in the time given or those which would be impractical to film. We came up with many ideas. We considered making a thriller about a mad man who gets pleasure from murdering people and taking their body parts. We decided not to use this idea as it would be difficult to make it look realistic. We had another idea about making a thriller based on a stalker who follows a young girl. We liked this idea but thought we needed to expand on it. The idea we decided to go with was about a girl who had been kidnapped and abused so that the kidnappers could get money from her father.

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To expand on our chosen idea, myself and my group discussed what we could include or any other storylines we could make using the basic idea. We came up with a lot of ideas. We wrote them all down on paper and had a discussion to choose which ones we liked the most. We then linked these ideas together and decided what was to be included in the first two minutes. To help us plan our shots, we made storyboards and shot lists. These enabled us to plan each of our shots careful to ensure we used a variety ...

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