Thriller Inspirations - Miss Georgiou

Inspirations

Introduction

We need inspirations to be able to demonstrate where our ideas are from. Sometimes our imagination can be triggered by certain films or elements that we have learnt about.
Our thriller opening can be inspired to be better. Aspects such as cinematography, editing, and narrative.

Cinematography is how the camera can be positioned to manipulate the screen. After doing the Halloween essay, I have learnt that P.O.V shots can be used to keep the hidden identity of a character. This inspires me to consider using this technique in my own thriller opening sequence. It is conventional to a thriller as it relates to the enigma of who the character is. We are planning to use this shot when he initially stabs his mother. To take our own twist on this camera shot we are using this shot to manipulate there audience into almost feeling like the killer themselves. This results in the audience taking a liking to the character of Cameron. This is because they may envy his power.

Jekyll and Hyde is an old story that consists of a man having spilt personality disorder (multiple personalities) The fact that he is unable to distinguish himself as one person, causes him to have a 'nice' personality and very 'evil' personality. I thought about this story after learning that unstable characters where popular within the thriller genre. I thought the perfect way to display this would be contrasting innocence with sin.This character will be Cameron and he will be firstly ported as a very weak, vulnerable boy that is devastated with everything his 'other personality' has done. This is when he commits suicide as he feels this is the only way to escape from the hurt and a pain he unintentionally inflicts on people. 

Non diegetic sound such as soundtracks can be used to

create an atmosphere within a film. We plan to use the soundtrack 'Tiptoe thought the tuplics' - from Tiny Tim.

This is a very erie upbeat song that can immediately create a very child-like effect when listening to it over disturbing images and footage. It almost uses innocence to play with peoples mind and disturb them. This non diegetic will also act as a Parallel sound to the audience who watch our opening thriller as they won't be expecting this type of music. This originally found this piece of music from watching the film 'Insidious'. After suggesting this song to my group they agreed that this would be the perfect type of music to use when trying to display a very disturbed and unstable character. The song remains to sound very erie and childlike. The singer of the song is known for having a very childish mind. The fact that his stage name is 'Tiny Tim' supports remains to be a well known relation to to someone that wants to appear younger then what they are. The childish and silly behaviour on a grown man can cause the audience to feel very unsettled. This is because they are unable to trust someone that isn't able to come to the realisation that they are an older man.

Shutter island is a film that focuses on enigma and uncovering the truth. "The film grossed over $128 million in its initial domestic theatre release,^[2] as well as an additional $166 million internationally." This link remains very important in why this film gave me inspiration after watching this film awhile ago and it intriguing me it made me think about how I could add aspects of this narrative in to my own thriller opening. The use of the physiological character has away been a favourite of mine when watching a thriller as it would make me and the audience never knowing what coming next. In a film such as shutter island you are never able to guess what is going to happen. Some of the story lines and scenes in this film made no scene and caused me to have to piece them together with my own mind. This is what I hope to achieve in my own thriller opening. The fact that this film made so much money supports the fact that the audience also enjoyed the physiological factor of this movie. The ending of the movie remains to be quite shocking in the way that it is represented to have an ending that is left to your own imagination. This film leaves on a major cliffhanger and you are unable to tell whether the character 'Teddy' is in fact sane or actually mentally ill.

 Stereotypically a Disney movie is not really supposed to inspire you for your upcoming thriller opening, but the use of time is manipulated in a way that creates great emotional impact on the audience and the characters represented in the film. The beginning of Up show the a range of flashbacks of the protagonists life and his love 'Ellie' These flashbacks start at such young age and show little snippets of there life together. The way the editing as been manipulated in this sequence inspired me to do something similar in my own thriller opening. To have the end at the beginning and then add a transition that represents the flashback. The audience get a sneak peek of there life goals and struggles and this is ultimately what make them fall in love with the character them self. His portrayal of his love for Ellie through these flashbacks is what makes the story complete from the start. In our own thriller opening I hope to include a flashback after the suicide of our main antagonist/protagonist. This engages the audience straight away as it intrigues them into wonder what made him do this and what is it that causes him to take his own life the flashbacks then begin. The fact that Up muddled up the time scale is what makes the film successful. This is what will hopeful make my film different to other contestants as the film begins at the end rather then the beginning.

The film scream really inspired me when thinking about the types of mise-en-scene that could be portrayed in my thriller opening as they continuously use a knife as a motif in there thriller films. The use of a knife is a typical convention of a thriller. Although Scream uses it especially well. The fact that the lead up to the death is packed with chase scenes and characters stuck at dead ends with no where to run. Makes just one blade all that bit more powerful. The knife is one use of iconography that really stands out from other weapons as it continuously needs alot of close contact violence. The antagonist needs to get very close to the victim making the audience feel more tense and insecure about how the victims safety and life is going to turn out.

Conclusion

Overall without these inspirations I would have never been able to come up with the same unique finalised project. The time taken to analyse different films and the techniques used in them has remained very successful and helped alot on how I will produce my final opening sequence. I now know that I can add these 5 different techniques/ideas to my own thriller opening and this will contribute into making them different and independent as these are what have influenced me.