Ideas on our project

Ideas for our project

Idea no. 1 Two friends who are on a mission to kill someone but end up realising that they are asigned to kill eachother.

Idea no. 2 A man trying to escape a hostage situation who eventually escapes but ends up coming face to face with the terrorist who has held him in captive.

Idea no 3. MAIN IDEA CHECK PLOT

List of Thrillers in 2008

List of thrillers in 2008

Here is a list of thrillers in 2008 and their sub genres

• 21- Psychological thriller
• 88 Minutes- Psychological thriller
• Bangkok Dangerous- Crime thriller
• The Haunting og Molly Hartley- Supernatural thriller
• Vantage Point- Political thriller

From this list you can tell that there are sub genre's to a thriller they all involve different things but include the normal elements of what a thriller should contain.

Generic codes and conventions

Generic codes and conventions

GENERIC CODES AND CONVENTIONS OF A THRILLER FILM

• Prologue
• Secrecy-gradual unfolding deception
• A twist of some sort –unclear
• shoot outs
• tension
• bloodshed.
• Captivity
• Car chases
• Blasts

GENERIC CODES AND CONVENTIONS OF A ROM-COM FILM:

• Boy meets girl girl meets boy
• Fall in love usually at first sight
• Something unexpected happens usually involves another girl or boy
• A solution is found to the problem
• Have a fairy tale ending usually like the book Cinderella
• Two main characters - Boy and girl are persistently adolescents or young mature adults

GENERIC CODES AND CONVENTIONS OF A HORROR FILM:

• Young boy and girl - adolescents.-
• Night time - dark – dull and very cold
• Suburb - Middle class.
• Victim - Young girl - Pretty - for all time gets murdered before/despite the fact that /once having sexual intercourse with her boyfriend.

Christian Metz and his development of genre theory

Christian Metz was born in 1931 and died 1993. He was a French Film Theorist best known for pioneering the application Ferdinand de Saussure's theories of semiotics to film. During the 1970's his work had a great impact of film theory in France, Britain and the United States.

In Film language: A semiotics of cinema , Metz focuses on narrative structure- proposing the grand Syntagmatique of system for catogorizing scenes in films.

Metz applied both Sigmund's Frueds psychology and Jacques Lacan's mirror theory to the cinema, proposing that the reason film is popular as an art form lies in its ability to both be an imperfect reflection of reality and as a method to delve into the unconscious dream state.

Film Language represents essays from the early stages of Metz’ attempt to found a cinesemiotics. His later work has somewhat superseded this book. Language and Cinema , recently translated and published by Mouton, Belgium, is mostly a recanting of this earlier work. However, Film Language will undoubtedly be the most available and widely read, at least until his later work is also taken up by U.S. publishers. It is easy to take critical potshots at this book; it was a beginning book, opening a new field of inquiry. Cinéthique has already done an extensive analysis of the book and made many important criticisms concerning the relationship of Metz’ theory to his bourgeois ideology. However, it might be more fruitful to try to see what kind of space the book opens up for us in terms of thinking about aesthetics/ideology/cinema and to look at its mistakes as theoretical pitfalls to be avoided. For, even though Metz’ notion of a cinesemiotics and of what constitutes a cinematic code is not yet fully formulated in this book and is there even very misleading, it can still be helpful as a beginning for thinking about films in terms of a culturally and ideologically determined heterogeneity of codes rather than as original and unique expressions of certain “human” themes.

Christian Metz believed that their were four stages to the genre developement theory:

• Classical
• Experimental
• Parody
• Decontruction

Classical-structuring on narrative, mainly victorious/define era

Experimental- encircles generic codes and conventions of a thriller

Parody- Conventions have been deformised

Deconstruction- Generic essentials of thriller varied with current genres such as horror and thriller. Where other genres elements and sub genre's are introduced.

• Se7en- Frankenstein (1931) - Classy/Classical- Dracula (1931)
• Classy/Classical- Carry on screaming - Parody
• Nosferatu (1922) - Experimental-
• The cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919)
• Experimental- Scary movie - Parody-
• Abbot and Costello meet Frankinstein (1948) - Parody
• Blair witch project - Deconstruction
• Scream - Deconstruction-
• The sixth sence - Deconstruction

These above are examples of the various stages in Metz theory

Questionnaire Results

The majority of people we surveyed were male (60%). All participants were aged between 16-19 years old. 70% of the sample were White, 10% were African, 15% were Pakistani and 5% were Indian.

The whole sample was categorized as Working Middle Class citizens in the social grade. They all expected to see blood, suspense and explosions in a classic thriller. Only a minority (20%) expected to see some sort of love interest in a thriller. When we put the question across of what genre would you prefer the people's immediate reaction to answer thriller. Hence this would reflect on the amount of males we surveyed for our questionnaire.

Most people have seen the movies Scary movie, Jaws and God father these are typical common thrillers. Scary movie is a Warner Bros production this could also have some sort of impact on the success of the film as Warner Bros are a very huge American film company.

People felt that God father, Jaws and Scary movie were the most successful thrillers of all times. Jaws was chosen as the all time favourite prouduction this is still classed as the best in today's generation. The results are a reflection on the popularity and success of the film it won alot of awards and made alot of money. The number of people are visting the cinema has increased alot of people prefer watching films on a big screen they like the whole theatre effect. There are alot of pirate copies of DVD'S around but still the increase in sales of cinemas have not been affected by this.

Overall the genre thriller was most popular amongst all the people we surveyed. This gives us a reflection of what our target audience would expect to see in a classic thriller. This has helped us alot in our planning of our production of the three minute sequel tas we are given.

Character analysis

Main Characters

Name: Sheniya Dixon
Age: 22yrs
Status: Engaged
Occupation: Fashion designer

Role: Sheniya is a bubbly successful designer who love life she is high spirited and is highly respected. She is loved by everyone and is very well spoken and comes across as really confident. She is in love with a guy named Amir who she thinks is her fiance from the previous life because he has the same face as her fiance but she is mistaken it is actually a guy named Jay. She ends up trying to kill the guys girlfriend who she believes is taking her fiance away from her.

Name: Amir Khan

Age: 22yrs

Status: Engaged

Occupation: Business man

Role: He is engaged to Sheniya in their previous life. He is the sort of man who is very much business minded. He is not besotted with his wife as much as she is he is too much into making money and loves to do his own thing. He loves to have a hand on projects such as he loves buying old houses and making them new it does not matter how bad the damage is but he treats it like a challenge. He loves being challenged he hates it when things comes easy to him he is a grafter and only relies on himself.

Name: Jay Ali

Age: 18 yrs

Occupation: University student

Status: Has a girlfriend

Role: Jay is very much a heart throb in University all the girls want to be with him. He has the car the money the looks and most of all a good heart. He comes across as very vain and arrogant. he is very much a player. He is quiet cocky and thinks the world revolves around him until he meets a girl named Aayza who does not fall him and tells him to stay away. He realises she is not like everyone she is one in a million as she did not respond to him and his looks. He starts to date her and become serious.

Name: Aayza Zidan

Age: 18yrs

Status: Has a boyfriend

Occupation: University student

Role: Aayza is a very much geeky looking girl. She is very much into her education she loves her books. Aayza is not into fighting with people for no reason but she is someone who would stand up for herself if someone came up 2 her wanting to fight. She knows her limits and has values and principals. Aayza has never been with anyone in a relationship and never gave the upper hand to guys in terms of if someone approached her she would tell them straight im not interested. She didnt believe in love she thought it was very bollywood unrealistic. She changed her mind until she met Jay it wasn't love at first sight they started goin out after 2 years of knowing eachother.

Questionnaire

Questionnaire

Please tick whickever is appropriate to you

1. What is your gender?

• Male
• Female

2.What is your age?

• 12.15
• 16-19
• 20-23
• 24 +

3. What is your ethnicity

• Pakistani
• Bangladeshi
• Indian
• White
• Afro Caribbean
• Chinese
• Other

4. What is your social grade?

• Upper middle class
• Middle class
• Lower middle class
• Working class
• Underclass

5. Which of the following would you expect to see in a thriller?

• Blood
• Action
• Car chases
• Suspense
• Love interest
• Explosions

6. Which genre would you prefer?

• Thriller
• Horror
• Romantic comedy
• Violence

7. Which of the following have you seen?

• Scream
• Scary movie
• The sixth sense
• Godfather
• Jaws
• Se7en
• Leon

8. Which of the above do you think were the most successful?

_______________________________

9. What is your favourite thriller?

_______________________________

10. How often do you go to the cinema?

• Once a week
• More than once a week
• Once a month
• More than once a month
• Other______________please specify

Thank you for completing the questionnaire!!