Research of Thrillers.

[Saw. 2004]

Directed & Produced by James Wan and Gregg Hoffman

Saw is an American horror franchise that currently consists of five films, the first distributed in 2004 is the first installment of the Saw film series. The film's story revolves around two men who are kidnapped, trapped and locked in an industrial bathroom with a dead body between them and given instructions related to escaping. Police detectives investigate and attempt to apprehend the criminal responsible, the "Jigsaw Killer".

Saw begins with two male characters trapped and chained in a unknown room, or to what looks like a bathroom. An establishing shot is used to give an insight in to what the room is like while at the same time familarising the audience with the current location. The films often uses flashbacks to tell the story during the duration in which the characters are trapped. This helps to introduce other characters as they have a significance for the main part of the film later on.

URL for the Saw trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oNhcNxnhJ0

[SOUNDTRACK.]

The film’s soundtracks have worked to build on the films’ already grim but entertaining stylizations. This album opens quickly with some hard-hitting electronic score that laws some impressive groundwork for an album that turns out to be much more listenable than non-metal fans might think at first glance. This isn’t the type of hard rock that strives for screaming vocals and overly heavy guitar. Instead, there’s a general sense of anger and struggle running through these tracks that plays nicely under the surface of the music rather than straight up front. The music in the more electronic tracks even come across as borderline video game style, though the haunting vocals on both change that perception. The last track is a lot quieter and contemplative at first, though, before building into a pounding crescendo that ends the album. Saw's album is a solid mix of score and soundtrack.

[Internet Research.]
Site Description: With a dead body laying between them, two men (Whannell and Elwes) wake up in the secure lair of a serial killer who's been nicknamed "Jigsaw" by the police because of his unusual calling card.

[Synopsis of Film.]

Two men wake up at opposite sides of a dirty, disused bathroom, chained by their ankles to pipes. Between them lies a dead man loosely clutching a hand-held tape player and a handgun. Each finds a tape the perfect fit for the player in their back pocket. They play the tapes. One is threatened, the other isn't. But they have a task: One must kill the other by 6:00, or his wife and daughter will die. They find hacksaws in a toilet, and try to cut the chains, but it doesn't work. They are the two newest victims of the Jigsaw Killer. In a flashback, we learn of Amanda, a girl who falls victim to the Jigsaw Killer. On her head is a mask, which is hooked into her lower jaw. There is a timer on it. Only one key will unlock it, and that key is in the digestive tract of her cell mate who lies paralyzed on the opposite side of the room. If she doesn't unlock the mask in time, her lower jaw will be ripped wide open. She survives, but her cell mate doesn't. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn of more victims, and of the nearly-successful capture of the Jigsaw Killer, who doesn't actually kill his victims. Instead, he finds ways to make them kill either themselves, or each other, and he thinks the entire 'game' out perfectly, with no other ways out. Or so it would seem.

[Evaluation.]
"Saw", like our film, is a psychological thriller. We used and developed the ideas from saw and implanted them into our own media production. From the first "Saw" movie we used the short, mysterious name for our title. Likewise the title is a mystery until its true meaning is revealed near the end of the film. From the second "Saw" movie (Saw2, however, we used the 'numbers on body parts' idea. In the movie they all have numbers on the back of their necks which form a code to unlock the door to their survival. We used this idea but we changed the relevance of the numbers. The dead body has number 23 written on the forearm and the character who is captured has number 24 written on her thigh. These numbers are significant as in to show the order of which the bodies are captured and killed.
The music and atmosphere for this film has inpired the editing of our clip. The eerie, trademark "Saw" music keeps an audience locked on to their screens in anticipation of something happening. We tried to use and challenge this by using music in build up to action, keeping people on the edge of their seats, but we also challenged this by only using ONE sountrack throughout the scenes.
So we have used the film "Saw" (and Saw2) to our advantage in means of storylines and editing.

Soundtrack Research.

[Silence of the Lambs.]

Silence of the Lambs (1990) is regarded as one of the best psychological Thrillers ever made. it won Oscars for Actor, Actress and Best Film.

[The Opening.]
At the begining there is an establishing shot of a forest-like scenery. A woman is running through and is introduced as the first character which would assume she is the main character. Seeing a woman running would make us assume she is running away from someone or something, making her look vunerable. She starts to climb an assault-course by which we register she is not in danger and later realise she is part of the FBI.
The music from the begining is an eerie peice of classical music which is immediatly unsettling. In fact we are waiting for something to happen to the woman. The music makes us predict something in the visuals.

[The Interveiw.]
The soundtrack is playing through the course of her walking up to Hannibal Lecter in his cell. It is used to unsettle the auidence without going to its full tempo.

[The Escape Scene.]
The scene opened with diegetic classical music playing which later turns into part of the soundtrack. This suggests a peaceful scene. It joins two different sounds together to become a faster peice of music. A high tempo soundtrack creates immideat anxiety/tension. Then the soundtrack stops and the classical diegetic music returns to the scene.

[Buffallo Bill is Killed.]
As Clarice staggers around the darkness the soundtrack builds again to a crescento until she shoots him and then the music dies down along with the character or Buffallo Bill.
The audience is familiar with the soundtrack from its use of key moments in the film. It is very loud which can be draining.

[Internet Research on the Film.]

Tagline:

Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Brilliant. Cunning. Psychotic. In his mind lies the clue to a ruthless killer. - Clarice Starling, FBI. Brilliant. Vulnerable. Alone. She must trust him to stop the killer.


[Evaluation.]
We liked the way this film had only used one soundtrack through the key moments so we decided to do the same, we researched music and found one that fitted in with our scenes and the genre of psychological thrillers. we felt this was powerful in getting the audience familiar with the significance of the music to the scene.

Begining The Filming.

We chose our locations,actors & props, & then went out to start filming. When we familiarised ourselves with the camera and surroundings we started to get to work.
We went over the storyboard and decided what things we should change/tweak then started with the visuals. We started applying make-up & fake blood for the authentic Thriller element.

Group Blog:
http://number24-coursework.blogspot.com/

Group Filming

There was six, people including me, in my group. Me, Elena A, Elena C, Anna, Natalie M & Natalie N.

Firstly we all sat together and started to think of ideas for our opening scene for our Thriller.

We drafted three ideas which were:
.Woman waking up with blood on her hands/clothes confused as to how & why.
.Woman chained in basement by attacker/husband and left there.
.Woman outside mystery house - walks in & gets attacked.

We then concluded the idea with joining ideas 2 and 3 together to create our opening scene. A woman is outside a mystery house holding a picture of the house in front of her, she then enters this mystery house, following the trial of blood which is leading to the basement door, she looks around suspiciously, then gets attacked by a mystery figure and locked in the basement where she later awakes to find herself chained, bloody and confused of her whereabouts...

Research Into Thrillers: Momento.

[Developing knowledge of a Thriller.]

A thriller works by creating an air of suspense and mystery. The audience must be kept guessing the story.
Music is used to reflect mystery, the speed and nature of the clip build suspense and mystery. Non-diagetic music and sound effects are important.
Narrative Enigmas are questions in the audiences mind that need to be answered, including these in a film makes it effective and mysterious. Equilibriums build these enigmas straight away.
Having a clearly identified hero is usually blaitent in a film, but in some thrillers the hero may not be clear and they could be a hero in not acting as a normal hero would, such as having flaws.

[MOMENTO - Christopher Nolan.]

The title "Momento" makes me think of memories, objects or importance, and reasons/reminders, what has happened in order for a momento?
The protagonist in "Momento" is a character called Leonard. He may be seen as the hero of the film, but he has flaws to him, so he is seen as a confused hero. He has a condition which stops him for making new memories. He seems to be on a mission or a quest to reveal what he doesn't remeber. His character makes the audience feel sympathetic towards him as he is unaware of his day to day life. We are immediately put into a story of him killing Teddy so we are unaware of why he does this and if he truely is the hero.
Because of his condition he is vunerable, so we cannot fully trust him enough to see him as the hero, he looks like he would do anything for his revenge. Revenge for something he doen't remember and may not be fully aware of.
When watching the opening questions were raised, like what has happened to Leonard for him to have caused this condition? Who is Teddy? Who is Natalie? Is Leonard justified in killing Teddy? The film has created an air of suspence and mystery in the audience so it fits into the Thriller genre.

[Evaluation.]
As a group we decided to take the ideas of "Momento" into consideration when planning, filming and editing our media project. The short title gave us the idea for our title, "Number 24". As "Momento" has done, we plan to keep the audience guessing from the off, starting with the title, because the significance of "Number 24" is not fully explained until the end of our clip, mirroring "Momento" in a sense.
From it's storyline, our group was attracted to the idea of polaroid pictures for memories. We decided to try and fit that into our storyboard and developed the idea of using this polaroid with a picture of the house the actress was approaching with the address of the house written on the bottom. In the end this did not prove successful due to the lack of equipment and we apted for the used of an address written on paper.

The Bourne Identity.

["Thrillers" by Martin Ruben.]

He label Thriller is widely used but highly problematic. To the foolhardy writer setting out to define the subject, it might seem impossibly broad and vague. A genre is a set of conventions and shared characteristics that have historically evolved into a distinct, widely recognized type of composition within an art form. One cannot consider the thriller a genre in the same way that one considers, say, the western or science fiction a genre. The range of stories that have been called thrillers is simply too broad. Films are diverse as the stalker horror movie HALLOWEEN, the hard-boiled detective film THE BIG SLEEP, can all be considered thrillers. The concept of "thriller" falls somewhere between a genre proper and a descriptive quality that is attached to oter, more clearly defined genres - such as spy thrillers, detective thrillers, horror thrillers. There is possibly no such thing as a pure, freestanding "thriller thriller". The thriller can be conceptualized as a "metagenre" that gathers several other genres under its umbrella, and as a band in the spectrum that colours each of those particular genres.

[THE BOURNE IDENTITY.]

Genres that work in this Thriller are..

1. Action/Adventure - car chases & fights
2. Romance - a love intrest for main character James Bourne & woman becomes a target
3. Crime - identity crime & CIA

Camera Shots

• shows the man over the other (body)
• establishing shot of the boat and main character in the water
• underwater shot; low angle looking up floating
• camera movement unsteady; makes audience feel part of the scene; rocky motion of the boat