Prodcut research (Donnie Brasco)

We decided to analyze the opening of Donnie Brasco because it incorporates aspects of stalkers and voyeurism which we plan to apply to our psychological thriller.

The extreme close up of the eyes implies that someone is watching the characters depicted and being watched, this creates an uneasy and tense atmosphere among the audience. The eyes look angry which creates connotations of violence within the movie; the audience expects the movie to contain violent scenes as it has been foreshadowed in the opening.

The dissolve to the next shot creates a line between the eyes implies a split personality or hidden secret, the dissolve between images connotes to a movie reel suggesting that the characters every move are being watched, in detail.

There are quick cuts between the movements of the characters this suggests that someone is taking pictures of them and showing implications that they are being spied on. This also creates a movie real effect.

The wide shots in reels suggest the characters are being watched, which reinforces the idea that someone is taking pictures of them and watching their every move even when they having a private moment i.e. when they are in their house by the pool.

The circling of the characters suggests they are targets which relate to the gangster theme of the opening, it is suggested to the audience that they may targeted to be killed or spied on, connoting to danger and violence within the movie

Product Research - Se7en

Seven (stylized as Se7en) is a 1995 American thriller film. The story revolves around two police detectives becoming deeply involved in a case of a series of sadistic murders. Each murder corresponds to one of the seven deadly sins including Envy, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony, Pride, Lust and Sloth.

Through out the opening sequence of Se7en, viewers are only able to see a pair of hands that is continuously writing, cutting and crafting. This creates a sense of mystery as the audiences are unable to see the character's face. The entire opening sequence is very rough and raw. Continuity editing is used to keep both the pace and tension as high as possible. 

● Birds eye view shot
● Strangulation Gesture
The bird’s eye view of a pair of hands is drawn and shown in clear detail; viewers can clearly see the detail of the pair of hands such as his veins, this correlates to the implication of strangulation along with the actual gesture of the hand which implicates violence.

● Extreme Close up shot

● Attempt to hide his identity?

The fact that the mystery character is using a razor to peel the skin off his fingertip creates a shocking response from the viewer. This suggests that the character may be a criminal, perhaps trying to hide his identity by stripping away his fingerprint.

● Defacing an image

● Eliminating target?

This shot suggest that this may be a victim or a target victim of the mystery character as he uses a marker pen to cross out his face. This implies to the viewer that the character may want to eliminate him by the gesture of defacing the image.  

●Red photography chemical
●Connotes to blood (murder)
The shot is saturated in red photography chemical, this connotes to blood, suggesting murder and violence which creates tension and suspense. 
  




The opening sequence uses non diegetic sound to engage the audience by creating tension using white noises and creaky instrumentations such as an old vinyl scratching. These sounds are deliberately used to make viewers feel uneasy and uncomfortable. 

Treatment

Passionate ballet dancer Chloe Taylor had it all; popularity, beauty and the perfect loving boyfriend Matt. Her life was perfect, until one day she received an anonomous text. At first chloe took no notice of it, assuming it was a prank from one of her many "Frenemies". However as time went on, the texts which Chloe has been receiving has progressively worsened to a state of which it shows photos of Chloes whereabouts. This leads to Chloe becoming more and more paranoid, thinking there is someone out there watching and stalking her. Chole seeks help from her trusted loving boyfriend Matt but he reassures her that she is probably over thinking and so ignored her pleas for help, however this did not put Chloe at peace. Chloe decided to put an end to this as she trys to find the origin of the threat. It turns out to be her current boyfrind Matt which have been sending the texts all along. He originally attended the same school as Chole, and had attempted to commited suicide when his love for Chloe was not returned, whats worse is that he was actually one of Choles victim of bullying and now he is back for revenge. This ends in Chloe going mental and is sent to a psychiactric hospital.

Audience Research 5

We wanted to know what our target audience like to do in their spare time, this would allow us to include themes that relate to the audience and would make our psychological thriller popular among our audience.











Our target audience prefer to watch mainstream thriller movies, this a problem for us as our psychological thriller will be independent to entice our audience, we may have to inculde elements found in mainstream thriller movies.

Audience Research 4

This wordle shows the different types of music and which ones are more popular among our target audience, to entice them to watch our psycological thriller we would include similar styles of music, this also will help us attract a wider audience.

Audience Research 3

We wanted to know what our audinence would prefer to watch in a thriller to create a character that our audience would have strong emotions for i.e. sympathy or hatred, this would make our psychological thriller more appealing to our audience.

Audience Research 2



 

These results are from our audience research questionnaire, from this we can tell that that our audience expect tension and psychopaths from a thriller, to atrract a wider range of an audience we would include these in our psychological thriller.



Audience Research

What would you like to include in a thriller movie?
This is one of the questions we asked in our questionnaire which we handed out to our target audience, the results show is that Blood, Suspense,Psychopaths and Suspicion are among the most popular factors in which our target audience think should be included in thrillers,this shows us that for our audience to enjoy our psychological thriller these main factors should be applied within our own psychological thriller.

Other factors that the target audience highlighted as a major factor to include in the psychological thriller are Tension,Mystery and Murder  which we could also consider applying to our psychological thriller.

We chose to display our findings in a wordle because we thought it is a different way to present qualitative data, information is concentrated and presented as individual key words; the more popular words are seen in a greater text.

Prelimnary task

This is our Preliminary Task, in which we have experimented with the use of continuity editing. The principles of continuity include match on action, shot reverse shot and 180 degree rule. The techniques of match on action is used to create a sense of continuity as the action in  shot is completed in the following shot. Match on action is used to generate a smooth transition between two shot when an action is taken. 


The 180 degree rule is used when filming two elements such as the interaction between two people, the camera should always stay within a 180 degree field and does not "cross the line". This is to establish realism and verisimilitude, to make sure that the world of the film is believable. The 180 degree rule tells us that one person should always be facing camera left and the other should always be facing camera right. This is a visual clue as to who's talking.


In relation to the 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot is also used parallelly. This is a technique in which a character is shown looking at another character and then the second character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are presented to be facing in opposite directions, the viewers assumes they are looking at each other.