Our opening sequence follows similar forms and conventions of already made media products, however, in many ways we have adapted ideas and made them our own as well as confront the normalities of the genre to make our film original. The film is a psychological thriller and we hoped to communicate this through the opening without giving away too much of the plot as we obviously want the audience to be intrigued enough to want to continue watching. In order to analyse what elements of a psychological thriller we have incorporated, I needed to have a broad understanding of the genre and what themes to include. As a group, we decided on numerous themes to flow throughout the film:
- Neglect
- Redemption & resolution
- Obsession
- Revenge
- Lack of mental stability
We used the idea of a creepy Toymaker as one of the protagonists and we presented him in the opening sequence taking care of the doll he is making. We felt that by showing he truly cares for his work, we could give the audience an insight into his obsession with dolls and the fact that it has extremely close characteristics to a little girl who he has been stalking. This is similar to the male character in the film One Hour Photo (2002).
The character, played by Robin Williams, works at a photo development booth and over the years has stalked a family who always get their pictures developed by him. The character felt so much love and kindness for the family his actions seemed acceptable to him and this is what we used in our own film. Someone who thinks his actions are beneficial for everyone but in reality he is very mentally disturbed.
Our original idea for our opening sequence consisted of the main focus being neglect. We decided to use a little girl fending for herself one morning, making her own breakfast as well as walking down the street by herself; her parents barely even realising her existence. To create the most sympathy for the girl we wanted her to be aged around 6 or 7 years old but obviously it was going to be a challenge in itself to find a girl available for filming. When we had thought of every possible way around this problem we went back to the drawing board and devised a new storyboard and script, basically changing the entire opening although this, in hindsight, worked better then we could have ever hoped. A major inspiration for our film opening was from the opening of the film Se7en (1995). We used a lot of similar shots from this opening in ours however we developed it into our own by incorporating the doll, and making this the priority of most shots. Another development we significantly used was the narrative from our inspiration. One of our many researched folk tales was about a Troll switching their offspring for a human child so the troll baby can be cleaned, fed and taught well as a human would. As a group we elaborated on this idea and decided that in order to make our film more chilling and not so fairytale; we would use a doll as a replacement for the kidnapped girl. This is similar to the idea of the actual film Changeling (2008) which is about a woman who's son goes missing and another child is returned to her - her biological son has actually been murdered.
Another theme we wished to enforce in our film was redemption. This is relevant because one of the main messages we want our film to carry is the idea of trying to prove or redeem yourself of the wrong doings that have been committed. In relation to our film, the parents of "Amy" realise that they did not pay enough attention to their daughter and the phrase "you don't know what you've got till it's gone" certainly applies. This is a very significant theme in the film Saw (2004) as the key message is to cherish your life because you have it better than many others.
As far as i can see, there were not many points in planning, producing or editing where i can pin point a challenge to the genre. However, the idea of making a doll the priority of the film didn't remind me of any other film i have seen. The only film i can compare it to is Dead Silence (2007) where a woman makes her ventriloquist dummies her own adopted children.
Even considering this film, we have still developed the idea because the meaning behind the doll is different.
We used sound in our opening sequence to make the feel of it a lot more interesting and we challenged the typical kind of diegetic sound from the psychological thriller films i have studied. We used twinkle twinkle little star but played it higher than it's meant to be and slowed it down so it sounds eerie and parallel to the on screen images. The actual sound itself contrasts to films i have studied due to the fact that a nursery rhyme isn't a typical soundtrack to use for a thriller yet it worked very well as children plays a big part of our movie. So we used the idea that the soundtrack had to be eerie however we challenged it by adapting a well known nursery rhyme.
The setting of our opening sequence used the forms and conventions of a thriller film perfectly because we made a set to look like a work station for a doll maker. This used the typical setting because even though it was clear to see what was happening and that the shots were filmed at some kind of workshop; the actual location of the work station remained unknown. I find this to develop what some films have already done but at the same time challenge certain forms. For example, the film Se7en (1995) keeps the location completely secret and obscure which adds to the suspense that this genre promises. Although, other psychological thrillers such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) makes it very clear in the opening that the film is set in Chicago and the characters are in some sort of apartment or hotel. Both openings are appropriate to the genre however they are still very different; so we used the same ideas as Se7en and challenged those of Psycho. We definitely challenged the lighting of most psychological thriller opening sequences due to the fact that even though we wanted to keep a creepy essence to it, we had to have a well lit set to be able to capture the detail of the shots! This was tricky because we had to make a decision whether to have a dark room with just one desk lamp, or to have further lighting to make our shots clearer. We decided that seeing as the content of our shots were focused on detail the more lighting we had the better our final sequence would look. Also, for our main prop (the doll) we used the idea from Coraline that the doll should have button eyes and should look as much like the real character as possible. Even though we used this idea, we still managed to develop it into our own as we are focusing on older audiences with different lifestyles. As opposed to Coraline that was made for children.
No comments:
Post a Comment