My Film Studies coursework consisted of me producing my own short film clip which I had to make from my own imagination. I played the roles of director, cinematographer and editor, of which consisted of me choosing a genre to base my film on, research into methods and ideas from other films with the same genre conventions as me, along withh the preparation and creation of my film. All of this has been updated onto a blog I made, which has the URL http://hannamoore.blogspot.co.uk. The aim was to create a psychological thriller which, with the use of camera angles, soundtracks and lighting, would manipulate the audiences’ emotions towards the antagonist and protagonist in a way that swaps who the sympathy goes towards in an uncomfortable way. By using Point of View shots, I tried to make the audience feel in the little girl’s position, which is a scary one to be in, as a way to create fear towards the audience; this is followed by high angled shots to create the look of weakness towards the other character; therefore created sympathy towards the murderer.
The target audience was the mainstream audience between 16-25 year olds, of bother gender. I set this age range as within ‘psychological thriller’ the main aspect of the psychological horror is to tap into the mentality of the audience instead of a regular horror where violence is the main feature. Therefore, anyone under 16 may become scared, and for people aged 26 and over, may see past the mental manipulation and not enjoy it. I found three actors to play in my film, all friends of mine that live within my surrounding filming area which made gathering them for filming easy. I chose Holly to play as ‘Bethany, the 10 year old girl’ as she has light blonde hair, which I saw as a very cute, girly hairstyle especially when put into bunches; and she has a particularly girly, petite figure in which I was able to put in little girly clothing to create a typical little girl character. I then chose George to play as ‘Damien, the hit man’, as he has a tall, skinny figure that contrasted against Holly’s. I put him in dark clothes, but usual day to day clothing like jeans and boots rather than a uniform or a suit, as to not look too sinister that I cannot then make the audience identify with him.
When I made a film last year, I noticed that it worked better with the fact that there was no dialogue, for that reason, I followed the idea with this film clip and only used a little bit of a monologue from Holly’s character, which I thought worked extremely well, and with the use of soundtracks, conversations weren’t particularly necessary.
I took inspiration from the film, ‘Road to perdition’ (directed by Sam Mendes, 2002), in the scene where the hit man and his boss meet. I liked the use of dark lighting between the two characters and the fact that there was a light in the room. When the camera is facing Doug Spinuzza, playing Calvino; the light was out of shot, therefore making his presence seem darker and more dangerous. However when the camera is facing Tom Hanks, the light is in shot along with the light bulb as to portray the idea that he is the more innocent character. I planned to use this effect during the swap between my two characters as they will be filmed under a light, I also tried and capture it so that Damien will be more in the light due to his guilt and his boss shall be darker along with Bethany in behind him due to her loss of innocence and life. However, due to the time of day that we filmed it, the light wasn’t there and the effect couldn’t be fulfilled [Figure 1].
[Figure1]
I also took inspiration from the film ‘Taken’ (directed by Pierre Morel, 2008) and the fact that he uses camera shots like these [Figure 2] to re-create the effect and tension Pierre Morel generates to manipulate the audience feel in this particular film. The POV shots from under the bed creates a claustrophobic emotion to make the audience feel like you are her position, therefore fear is created.
[Figure 2]
I began my project by first researching into the conventions of a typical ‘psychological thriller’, paying particular notice to the macro features, codes and conventions. I noticed that typical films of this genre follow certain rules in order to create the sinister atmosphere that is usually needed to create a psychosomatic film. I found that often the narrative structure is non-linear, either starting at the end, ending at the beginning; or a lot of the time, including flashbacks, which usually are shown in black and white, to follow the convention of it being a memory or somewhat disturbing. My film clip followed this structure as it started in the middle of the overall film as, at the end of my clip; the film is to take the audience back one year to find out why he did it and would then follow on to see how it affects him in a creepy manner as she haunts his life. I included ideas like dark/shadowy lighting to enhance the eerie, sinister situation and isolated locations to create tension and an atmosphere of solitude towards Bethany, particularly when Damien walks into the house and the camera cuts from his feet, to her face as he enters the house and towards her bedroom. I made sure to just show the feet of the hit man to make sure that the audience feel that Bethany is alone in the situation, although he is in fact there, we cannot see his face therefore cannot identify with him. This will compare to how the audience will feel towards him when his mask is removed and we see his face for the first time; giving his character an identity to enforce the idea that he is still a human being and is the key turning point when I hope that the audiences’ emotion towards Bethany, will swap to Damien. This point where his face is shown is reinforced with the use of diegetic sound being cut suddenly as he leaves the house, just before the audience sees his face, which is followed by a sigh, as if he regretted his actions; I used this particular technique to strengthen the audiences’ reaction towards him.
[Figure 3]
The particular diegetic sound is used when it goes to a black out and we hear Bethany’s’ character scream, the sound cuts to a silence and we then hear Damien’s’ footsteps move, and hear a click of a radio, where ‘tiptoe through the tulips’, by Tiny Tim is playing, however I used the version from Insidious (2010, directed by James Wan) as it made it more disturbing. This is because, as it sounds like a nice song, in juxtaposition to the situation it can make the audience feel uncomfortable, nevertheless, it also made some people feel like he was trying to make his particular situation seem less serious than it truly was, almost like he was psychotic, one individual wrote in the questionnaire that ‘when the killer was cleaning up the little girls blood, the music was noticeably disturbing when he was removing her ring’. This close up shot [Figure 3] was intended to be the most distressing as the audience sees her limp hand so close to them as he takes something that personally belongs to the little innocent girl, and takes it away with her. I included this shot to establish the rings importance, as I have used to connotate as her innocence, which is seen again when Damien takes it and gives it to his boss, towards the end of the clip, to show that the her innocence is being chucked around like it is of no importance.
This links to my aim of transferring the sympathy of my audience from Bethany, onto Damien as, due to the fact that he is giving his boss her ring, rather than her body, the audience can no longer align with her character, except when he sees Bethany, but as she has darker make up on and more mature, therefore she will seem less cute and vulnerable. I used this to enhance the concept that she is no longer alive and capable of feelings; therefore she is a more fearful figure. This was to hopefully help the audience feel sorrow towards Damien. However, for the audience to swap their alignment, they first needed to identify with Bethany. I did this in many ways; for example making her look as innocent and cute as possibly, and by using small dialogue to her mum on the phone, this tells the audience that she is home alone, and emphasises her youth by replying to her mum that she has done her homework. I also created identification towards her by camera angles and mise en scene; I did this by using POV shots from under the bed, looking at his feet and high angled shots of her to show her vulnerability. In the mise en scene I used her teddy bear as, whilst Damien is cleaning up her blood, her teddy has been flung, and eventually, is put in his bag along with the rest of is things, this, along with her ring, is symbolic of her innocence.
Within my film I also wanted to create a "Disruption of normality" (when the girl he kills comes back to haunt him) in the narrative; as this is the theme of the general narrative structure of horrors; this idea helped me to decide what to base my film on and in creating the synopsis. I use this to create tension as it is unexpected and will make the audience fear for what she may do; placing alignment towards Damien. This was successful as one viewer of the clip mentioned that, “Although the guy just killed the little girl, when she came back to life I felt a bit scared of what she was going to do to him”, showing me that the disruption swapped the alignment effectively.
I tried to create an ‘Easter egg’ within my film, that only a couple of people who viewed my film noticed. Near the beginning of the clip, whilst Holly is watching the film, Damien is actually stood in his skull mask outside staring in at her. I thought that it was quite effective due to the fact that some people actually saw him at a second glimpse; and I wasn’t intentionally trying to get everyone to see it. [Figure 4]
[Figure 4]
In retrospect, I would have made sure to avoid discontinuities when it came to positions of objects within the scene. In particular, when Holly jumps under the bed, when it changes to her POV shot, a red pillow was placed there that wasn’t in the previous medium shot. [Figure 5] However only a couple mentioned and wrote about them noticing the discontinuities.
[Figure 5]
Overall I am happy with my film and I feel that, all in all it came together quite well. I feel that I achieved my aims successively and that every goal was met. I am happy with the overall response from the film; however I would have liked more time to tweak the editing and perfect it and also would have liked to have more filming time to check for discontinuities. I also feel that I managed to follow the rules of psychological thriller conventions.
