Evaluation Of "Psycle" (Thriller Opening)

A thriller film creates a thrill for the audience, hence the name of the genre. Within the “thriller” genre, there are many sub-genres, such as crime, psychological, supernatural, etc. A good thriller film creates tension at all the right moments, by using a combination of sounds, lighting, mise-en-scene, location, and setting; and, of course, editing. This constitutes the thriller conventions. A classic thriller opens with the camera moving, panning and tilting around a building, according to a documentary on film openings that we watched, called “Watching”. The camera then focuses on a window, and the audience instantly know that this window will reveal an important character or scene. A thriller film titled “Arlington Road” uses these conventions very well, and immediately throws the audience into a sense of confusion, with wild camera movements swirling around a boy walking slowly along a road. We soon realise there is blood dripping onto his trainers; and as an ordinary man drives home from work, he is thrown into the middle of this event with the boy by nearly running him over. Our film opening (“Psycle”) challenged the forms and conventions of the classic thriller. Rather than opening on a building, out first shot faded into an image of feet, limply swinging in the breeze. We then moved up to the top half of the body, and finally to a shot of the whole body hanging from a branch of a tree. This jumps straight into the story with the “instant arousal” effect on the audience, and yet doesn’t reveal too much. This means the audience have only watched a few seconds of the film and are already asking questions, which is good, as it will make them watch the rest of the film. We also used a technique billed as a “favourite trick of film noir”, whereby we started our thriller with a flashback, rather than at the beginning of the film. This throws in slight clarity to the immediate question in the audience’s mind: What happened? Looking back at the preliminary match-cut task, I feel that both I personally and my group in general have come quite far in all aspects of the film-making process. I am definitely better at storyboarding than I was, and my editing has certainly improved. Having said this, we ran into a few more problems in the coursework than in the preliminary, such as lighting, as we filmed the match-cut exercise inside, and the thriller opening outside. Filming outside meant that some of our shots were in the sunlight, and some were when the sun was behind the clouds; so in one sequence of match cuts, we had two or three different levels of light. We also had to develop our skills in post-production sound as we went along in the thriller opening, as only Fatma and I had used Soundtrack Pro before, on a different exercise.
Our thriller opening “Psycle” was targeted mainly at fans of the thriller genre aged 18 and above, because of the complicated storyline; however, a 15 certificate is appropriate in terms of the violence/language content; though, if we’d made the entire film, it would be more likely to be an 18. In addition, it is wise not to underestimate your audience, as they are often smarter than we give them credit for. All this allows our film opening to attract a wider audience range, which can vary from 15-year-olds to people in their mid-20s or even 30s. It is targeted at both a male and female audience, though especially girls, as we have a female lead role, whereas the villainous psychopath currently remains anonymous. I think the audience will be able to empathise with the characters, as well as relate to them, partly because we’ve gone for a very general, well-known main character: the stereotypically vulnerable, but admirable, 20-year-old woman, probably in a lower section of middle class, but definitely a lot higher than working class. She’s your average woman, with interests in her work, maybe part-time studying, she socialises with her friends. Therefore, the audience is more likely to be a mainstream one, rather than niche, as this current main character is able to attract different ethnic groups as well as age, class and gender. I think the very typical audience member would be about 19-years-old, probably working but not very high up the ladder, maybe a store clerk. I think they probably go to the cinema once or twice a month, but own a lot of DVDs. I don’t think “thriller” would be their favourite genre, but they like the occasional exciting thrill. They’re more likely to be fans of action films, and films that make you think very carefully about the plotline and what’s happening to the characters. So maybe philosophical action films, with the occasional thriller and comedy thrown in, because everyone loves a good comedy. They could possibly even be horror fans.

I think we could market our film through trailers in cinemas, on TV and via the internet; we could also use viral marketing to our advantage, and maybe use film festivals to promote it. As for the actors, I’m not entirely sure who we would use if we were actually making this film, although I’d personally love to see someone like Bill Nighy (Underworld, Love Actually, Gideon’s Daughter) playing the villain, and maybe someone like Thandie Newton (Mission Impossible 2, The Pursuit Of Happiness, Norbit) as the lead roll (Nicole’s character). Of course, using these two would attract certain groups that may not immediately want to see the film, therefore widening our audience range. For example, people who have seen “Underworld” may not intrinsically want to see “Psycle”, but as Bill Nighy played such a good villainous role in “Underworld” they may decide to see “Psycle” due to Bill Nighy’s presence. Similarly, Thandie Newton is famous for her vulnerable female lead roles, so would attract the audience that have seen her play that sort of character before, and liked it.

I think our film would be somewhere between a big Hollywood blockbuster and a small independent film. It would be widely distributed, maybe as a Working Title/Working Title 2 film, so distributed by Universal and Studio Canal (Europe); but it would not go across the entire world. It would definitely be released in America and the UK, and probably most of Europe; other than that, I’m not really sure. I also think it would be in the cinemas for about a month, maybe two if we’re lucky, and then go to DVD, where it would be quite popular. Somehow, it would end up on YouTube, probably because of an illegal download and someone uploading the film in small 10-mintute sections.

From making this thriller opening, I’ve learnt how to use Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro, neither of which I had used before. I also learnt how to use the cameras properly, and the Dictaphone/voice-recorder. I have also discovered that I much prefer PCs to Macs, as the inability to right-click really got on my nerves a lot during the editing process. In addition, I learnt a little more about blogging, as this is how the entire process was “captured” as it were, and particularly uploading videos onto not only the blog, but Vimeo as well, which I have never used before. Blogging involves the use of passwords to access specific pages of a blogging site on the internet, as does Vimeo. It can be quite a good way of collecting information from each student about the lessons, but since anyone with the password can access all of the groups’ blogs, you’ve got to be able to trust everyone not to delete all your work, or copy it. The opening to “Psycle” follows a quick recap of a girl/woman who has committed suicide. Through another woman finding a tape player near the hanging body, the audience find out that the dead woman is apparently victim number four of a psycho who “plays a game” with his victims. The recording makes it clear that this woman probably didn’t want to commit suicide initially, but was somehow tricked into it as part of the “game”. Now, this woman who’s found the body and recording has been chosen as the next “player”, giving the eerie feeling that the psycho can see her somehow. We used match-cuts during the running scenes to tell the whole story of the fear, and to portray some sense of urgency. We also used quick cuts and jump cuts throughout the flashback to show the whole story in a short amount of time. This also gave the feeling of speed, like the character wanted it over and done with as quickly as possible. We tried not to show the face of the “victim” to give an idea of anonymity, i.e. she could have been anyone, just some random person you see on the streets, no-one special. This throws the audience out of their normal routine comfort zone and into the world of “Psycle”. This is also quickly outlined in the voiceover during the flashback. We also dropped a hint as to what the film might be about just before starting the flashback, where the new victim (Nicole's character) finds the tape recorder, and first sees the label as saying "Psycle". She then blinks, and it says "Play". This has two effects: she is already experiencing the villain's game, and she's almost being forced to play it. Having the victim’s feet bare is supposed to represent the slight madness of this “game” that the villain was playing with her. However, I’m not sure how well that message got through to the audience. We chose a spot by the canal as it had the right kinds of trees, and looked a little eerie. It is also a rarely-used pathway, yet still public enough for it to be likely for the body to be found. This is so that the villain gets just one new victim with each “suicide case” found. As previously mentioned, we didn’t have much control over the lighting; the only thing we could do was try to film at roughly the same times; however, sound was very important. We used a piece of piano music twice, at the beginning and end of the opening, to represent the cycle story that this film tells: find a victim, toy with them, the victim commits suicide, someone finds the body, there’s the new victim; so having the same piece of music playing at the beginning and at the end almost runs parallel with the story being told just in the opening. Obviously, we had various sound effects, like heavy breathing and running footsteps that add to the confusion and panic of the characters. Also, having crows at the beginning gives a nice, creepy feel to it already, and lets us know that what we’re seeing as an audience is definitely a dead body. The creaking of the branches and rope also help to add to this effect. There is also a general monotone undertone running throughout most of the clip, this adds to the suspense factor, and gives the audience a chilling feeling.

I think we’ve been quite successful, judging by the audience’s reaction to our thriller opening (ours got the most cheers out of all the thriller openings). I heard people talking about our thriller opening on their way out, and trying to figure out how we’d done certain things; which means that although we can see several mistakes in it, the audience can’t, and at the end of the day, that’s what counts. We ran into a few problems along the way; the weather was certainly not on our side for a majority of the time, we didn’t film certain shots that we need had storyboarded, which meant that we had to adapt and change our timeline during the editing process to make up for the missing shots by using other ones. I think, as far as continuity goes, the match-cut exercise was a lot better, as we went a little over the top to make sure that we had really spot-on perfect continuity for that one; but with the coursework we physically couldn’t do that, so there are several continuity errors, which no-one seemed to notice until we pointed them out. There’s also a shot that my thumb appears in by mistake, but again no-one noticed until I pointed it out. I think, in comparison to real films, our film is definitely not as good, but having said that, we must remember that we had quite a short time-limit, and missed at least one, if not two lessons due to adverse weather conditions. We are also not a professional film-making team, we’re still just learning, therefore our film is very unlikely to be as good as a real film.