Q5

Our audience told us that they wanted action and mystery in the thriller, they wanted to be engaged in the action whilst still not knowing everything that is happening and having plot twists that kept them interested. So we had to make sure that we added them into our opening along with some other themes and ideas we thought of ourselves and that we thought our audience would like. From our questionnaires, which we did in the form of a vox pop, we learnt that our audience wanted action and mystery whilst not being too cliché.  

 

A common convention of the action and thriller genre is cars which are used for the soldiers to get to the location and find the man, masks which hide the identity of the soldiers and they make it so that the man and the audience don’t know who they are and guns which are used by the soldiers to attack and kill the wanted man. The shot shows the group of hired men coming into the area where the wanted man is. The all arrive wearing similar clothing which is what the audience wanted, it gives them the impression that the men are professional and know what they are doing. Also the car has blacked out windows which hides the people in the car giving the audience something to think about as they don’t know how many people are inside the car going after the wanted man. Having the two people on the side of the car also tells the audience that the car is full so it gives them a small idea about how many people are coming after the man. Having a lot of people after the man makes the audience wonder what he has done and how bad his crime is. The camera angle we chose was a low angle shot, this means that you can see the entire car and it makes the men on the side of the car look more powerful and it makes them look like they are in control of the situation. Having the men look more powerful gives the impression that there are more of them and that the wanted man is outnumbered, this is common in the action thriller genre and it is what our audience wanted us to include.  The ligting is fairly lit as there is a light directly on the front of the car so it gives the effect that the car is bright and like a becaon for the men. The men on the side and in the car however are dark as they arent meant to be seen and it lets the audience know that they are evil and villains. The setting shows that they are in some kind of construction yard and it is quite protected as you can see a gate in the background of this shot.

 

The soldier has a small gun and he is wearing dark clothing, black coloured clothing symbolises evil and death. He looks like a professional killer as of the way that he moves and with the hand gestures that he uses, it makes the audience think that the soldiers know what they are doing and that they can do their job well. The lighting focuses on the soldier and the objects around him are dark compared to him. The location is by some bags or blocks of concrete, this shows that the location of the man is a construction yard. This is a common location of thrillers and gun fights as there are a lot of places in the yard that can be used to hide behind and fight from. The clothes that he is wearing symbolise a villain as is wearing dark colours which shows the evil and darkness of the character and of his intentions.  The lighting is dark but there is a light shining on the man which shows that he is the subject of the shot and it makes it easier for the audience to identify what he is wearing.

 

 

In this shot it shows a silhouette of two of the soldiers that are searching for the man, the shot is from inside of the hut looking through a window, you can see the lights and the outline of some of the guns, this shot shows that the men are still searching and they are looking everywhere for the wanted man. The audience wanted us to add mystery into the plot of the film so we did that in this shot. We framed the shot by making sure that light was in the centre and not too high and not too low. Because the light was in the middle of the shot it is the first thing that you see when the shot comes on. It is a mid-shot of the doors on the hut and it shows the lights on the guns. This shows the audience that the men are well trained as they have good equipment and they search everything so they are well trained, however the question of what the wanted man has done will still be in the audiences minds. The lighting is dark apart from the big floodlight coming through on the left of the shot and the flash light in the middle of the shot. The lighting suggests that someone is searching the building without going into it, they are shining the light into it to see if they can see the man inside of the building. The location of this shot is by a shed, the camera is in the shed and the men are on the outside.

 

This shot is a close up of a gun. Guns are a common convention of the action and thriller genre, they are often used and they symbolise action and violence which is common for thrillers and action films. For the framing of this shot we decide that the best place for the gun was in the very middle of the shot so that it is the first thing that you see and it’s the thing that the audience focus on the most. The audience wanted us to make sure we had some common conventions of the genre to make sure that it was recognisable and that they had definite something to look at and enjoy. They also told us to add our own things into it and make it original. So we have used a mix of common items and non-common items.  We made sure that you can only see the gun in this shot because it shows that that is the focus of the shot and it makes you think about what the man who has the gun will do next or to the other characters that you can see in the previous shots. This shot is very light as this shot doesn’t contain any characters it is just a close up of the gun, however it is very light as it is focused on the gun and it shows that this gun is the hero’s as it is inside in the light whereas the villains are outside and are in the dark. The lighting symbolises the different sides of the characters and the roles that they play in the story.

This shot is similar to the previous shot however this time the gun is being loaded by the wanted man, this symbolises that he will soon have to use it. This shows the audience that a gun fight will happen in the film somewhere, it symbolises that the man is ready to fight the men that are coming to get him. It still keeps the question in the audience minds wondering what the man has done, however it helps them to have a guess as they know it must be something bad as he has to fight them off, it makes them think that he has probably killed someone. For the framing of the shot we decided to frame it in the centre of the shot again because that is the first thing that the audience see so then they get to see what we wanted them to which keeps them engaged in the action. Our audience asked us to include some action into it as it keeps them on the edge of their seats wanting to know what will happen next. We only made sure that you could see the gun and the bullets so that you know exactly what is going on and you only have to focus on one thing. We also included an element of mystery into the opening so that the audience are more likely to want to watch it as that is what they asked for. This is another close up of the gun and again it shows that the gun is in possession of a hero as it is light throughout the shot and the gun is lit up which shows it is the main focus of the shot. Once again the lighting symbolises what side the character that has the gun is on.

This shot is a close up of one of the men that is coming after the wanted man. He displays the common clothing and features of a bad guy in action thriller films. The bad guys always seem to wear dark clothing and masks to hide their appearance and to make sure that people don’t know who they are. Our audience told us that they wanted to see villains that you don’t get to see till the end of the film, we added this into four characters by hiding the identity of the bad guys its adds the element of mystery that audience asked for. We framed it so that the soldier was in the middle of the shot and it is a close up so you can only see the front man and you can’t see the other men coming from behind him. The lighting is quite dark however the main lighting focus is around the character which gives the impression that the light goes around him and he is the main villain. The lighting around the character is very light and this shows that the location of the hero hiding spot has been lit up by his era of good. The costume that the character wears is a balaclava, a jumper and a vest, this is typical of a soldier and a villain as he is prepared for battle but he is also hiding his identity. He is wearing the clothing that symbolises he is a villain, he is wearing all dark clothing and he is staring into the camera with an evil look in his eye. The setting is in a construction yard, we picked this location as if a man was running away from being chased he could go into a construction yard to hide easier. We took the scene from the film Skyfall as our inspiration, in the opening scene of this film James bond chases his target into a construction yard, and we chose to have the wanted man hide in a construction yard so that it was similar to Skyfall but no completely copying it.

This shot is a close up of one of the soldiers running through a puddle, it shows that the weather has been raining and this symbolises that having bad weather means that a bad event will occur, this gives the audience the impression that the man, or one of the soldiers will die. The lighting can affect the mood of the scene and in this shot the lighting is dark to show the splash of the foot in the puddle and to show the flood lights shining into the puddle. As the man runs through the puddle quickly you can see that his is in a hurry to get somewhere which could mean that he has spotted his target and is chasing him. The soldier is wearing boots which is the conventional footwear for soldiers as it shows that they are ready for any situation and they are ready for any ground and weather conditions.  In the questionnaires the audience wanted us to add different angle shots and unusual shots, so we decided to do a side angle close up of the soldier running through the puddle as that isn’t a standard shot in thriller films. You can’t see the location from this shot however the audience are to presume that it is the same location as you can see a little bit of the ground around the puddle which suggests that the location has not changed.