Shooting Location

For our thriller we have decided to shot in the studio. Originally we wanted to have two sets, a secretary office and the detectives office but instead we decided to only have one, and place all energy and money into that one set to try and make it realistically close to a detectives office of the 1940's. We found this picture online of what we think is the ideal look of our office. Firstly we want our office to have big wooden furniture, a massive desk with many drawers, we think this will give the old fashioned look. The office should definitely have shutters because through this we can create an amazing light effect. We would really like our office to be quite big but look full of odd bits and pieces so therefor we want to fill it with many old books, newspapers, bit of paper, documents. The walls should have framed qualifications that the detective has gained as well as one of those suspect charts. The room should have a dark but smoky atmosphere. The picture is definitely the image we are aiming for.

Shooting Schedule

Our day for filming is Tuesday the 15th of January in order to stay productive during this day of filming we have come up with this schedule.

9:00 - 9:45- Brief our detective Steve on first couple scenes of opening sequence and do  a run through of all of the shots.

9:45 - 10:45- Shoot the tracking shots within the first hour but only the scenes with Steven walking into and around his office.

10:45 - 11:30 -The next 45 minutes we will do the mid-shots of steven looking at the board, we don't need much time to do this because there are not many mid shots at this point in the sequence.

11-30 - 12:30-The next hour will be the close-ups and zooming shots of when he is sitting at the desk and writing.

12:30 - 12:50- Lunch

12:50 - 1:30- Briefing Dyanna, Alex and Steve on the next part of their sequence, doing a run through of the scene

1:45- 2:45- Take the mid shots of when Dyanna enters the room and the low angles and high angles of her and steven, also including the over the should shots.

2:45- 3:45- Film mid shots of when gun is being taken out and pointed at detective, as well as shots of him looking scared.

3:45 - 5:00- Shot scene where secretary enters, checks on detective, All shots are either mid shots or medium close ups

Hopefully we can get all of our scenes done in this time, the plan should definitely help us stay on task and keep track of time.

New Thriller Plot: Welcome to Suddenly

The thriller opens with a tracking shot of a 1940s looking private detective going into his office, which is a very stereotypical PIs office. Then there are many close ups of the props that are in his office. We see the detective cast in a dark light placing his hat and jacket on the coat stand. We then see him observing his crime board which links to everything that happens in the crime involving the femme fatale. The detective then writes on a piece of paper “let the sleeping dogs lie” after this we see him typing on his typewriter just doing business. At this point we hear the diegetic voice of the femme fatale saying I need to see Mr Carter to the secretary. Then it cuts to the femme fatale bursting through the door of the detective’s office then there is a shot reverse shot and eyline match of the detective and the femme fatale.  The women elegantly turned out with a European accent says “I know what you did to Freddie you will pay for this” and before john carter has a chance to defend him self she whips out a gun and shoots him. As she does this the secretary rushes in and says “Oh my god what happened to Johnny” then we see the interaction between the femme fatale and the secretary and the last shot is of the secretary checking the detectives pulse.

New Narrative Action

1. Tracking shot of the detective walking into his office
2. A mid shot of the detective hanging up his hat and his jacket
3. See a desk with an ashtray, some cigars, papers…
4. Close up on what’s on the desk papers saying top secret
5. Silhouette of Man In the corner smoking billowing puffs of smoke
6. Man walks to the desk and picks up a fountain pen and a paper pad
7. Man writes on piece of paper with a fountain pen
8. Close up on the message he writes, “let the sleeping dogs lie”
9. Hear a voice saying, “I need to see Mr carter”
10. We see the detective’s reaction to the femme fatales voice
11. Femme fatale bursts into the office
12. She’s says “I know what happened to Freddie you will pay” she is frame with a low angle shot
13. Over the shoulder high angle shot showing the detective
14. She pulls a gun out
15. He gets shot in the head
16. High angle shot of the dead detective
17. Secretary runs in “what happened to Johnny”
18. Over the shoulder shot looking at the secretary
19. Femme fatale goes out the office
20. A medium close up of the secretary taking the pulse of the detective 

Change in Thriller Idea

We have decided to alter our thriller marginally instead of having two sets one of the secretaries office and one of the PIs office we have just cut it down so we just have the PIs office therefore we will save time and money which would be used making two sets. Having just the one set will enable us to do it more thoroughly concentrating on the extravagant Mise-en-scene which is integral to our thriller. The fact that we are going to have many close-ups on the materials such as cigars in the office makes the filming much easier and more accessible.  Then it would be spending time on building two sets. Seeing as we are not going to have a secretary’s office the first scene where we see the secretary typing at her desk has been discarded. But we have not taken the role of the secretary’s out of our thriller as you can see from the photographic storyboard she appears at the end as well as this in regard to diegetic sound we will hear her voice in the background when the femme fatale is asking to see the detective. We will then see the detective’s reaction at hearing her voice. This will therefore change our storyboard and our narrative action as well as our narrative plot. 

Analysis of Photographic Storyboard

This has helped a lot with the process of making our thriller it has helped us visualize what the action is going to look like as well as help us come to the realisation that the Mise en Scene is going to be the most important factor in making this thriller because we are going to have a lot of close-ups on the props as well this all the props will have some relation to the PIs work life involving the Femme Fatale and the plot he has been involved in this will therefore lead onto the rest of the movie that you will find out about what these props mean and how they have been significant to the case. We decided to edit our photographic storyboard and make it black and white because our opening sequence is going to be edited so that is black and white we feel this will make it more sinister and more thriller like taking influence from popular art deco inspired films such as Sunset Boulevard. 

Sound Inspiration for our Thriller

We like the non-diegetic opening music to Sunset Boulevard. Something along those lines as far as style of the music is concerned would work quite nicely in our thriller, maybe with a faster pace. Like Sunset Boulevard our thriller starts with a death and is from the perspective of the dead man, about his life and his death. In order to show this, we have taken the idea from the film to use a voice over from his point of view. Our detective (who dies) will open the thriller and set the scene for the viewers. The use of a voice over also helps to highlight that it is a 40s style film as this is a typical feature of that era. We will be using Mike from Canada (Image below) to do the voice over for us, because he's got the ideal accent we our looking for our detective to have.

Narrative Plot Walk Through

This is the video we made when we were walking through our plot of narrative action. This is just a rough plan which we made with a Flip Camera. As you can see this is set in a classroom because that was the closest space available to us when we decided to film this. On the real day we will be using the Studio to film and set two sets one of Johny's office and one of the front of the office where the secretary sits. As we did not have the real actors we are going to use when we were filming this we used the people who were easily at our disposal so one of the actors in this is our teacher Simon. Overall on the shoot day this will look much more chic and organised.

Story Board: Welcome to Suddenly

                                       Tracking Shot walking into his office

                               Continued Tracking Shot of Walking into office

                                    Tracking Shot showing office, following detective

                               Mid shot of detective hanging up jacket and hat

 Mid shot of detective looking at detective board, not showing his whole face, keeping a slight secret identity.

 Slowly camera focuses and zooms in on what detective is writing, still not showing his whole face.

 Continues to zoom into what is being writing.

 Fully zooms into paper to see what he has written

Medium close up still slightly concealing detectives face of him typing on typewriter

 Femme Fatal enters the room, mid shot of her

 Low angle shot looking up at her

 Wide Angle shot showing both the actors

 Low angle, over the shoulder shot of femme fatal

 Over the shoulder, high angle looking down at detective

 Mid Shot as she slowly starts taking out the gun

 Mid Shot and we see full gun has been taking out,pointing at detective

 Mid Shot of detective looking scared, with corner of gun within the shot

 High angle of dead detective

 Mid shot of secretary coming in behind femme fatal to see what happened

 Over the should shot looking at secretary

 Over the should shot of secretary as she backs away afraid of femme fatal.

Femme fatal pushes her ways and hurries out the door

 Mid shot of femme fatal walking out the door

 Medium close up of secretary checking the dead detective. 

Our Detective Genre Research

The detective genre in film is hard to define because the content and conventions of the detective film can be seen as crossing over into other genres, and it can be regarded as a subcategory of crime films (along with gangster films and thrillers). Detective films have two main features, these are; A narative that follows an investigation and a protagonist who functions as a detective figure. Usually the investingating hero defines the detective       film and sorts it into a subgenre. The subgenres                    Touch of Evil
include; The Classical Detective, The Transitional 
Detective and Noir Detective.

We are looking at the Noir Detective genre, here is a bit of background information we collected;  In the 1940s, the hard-boiled detective came to the screen as the hero of Film noir. Film noir is said to have started with "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) and ended with "Touch of Evil " (1958), it is a group of films that were visually and morally dark. The films were set in the seedy underbelly of American society and followed a general progression from protagonists with questionable morals like Philip Marlowe in "The Big Sleep" to detectives who were borderline criminals themselves like Mike Hammer in "Kiss me Deadly". Film noir were a comfort for the veterans returning from World War II who struggled with feelings of displacement. American society had changed in their absence and upon their return they faced unemployment, changing gender roles, alienation, and often disablement. These films, with their hard-boiled heroes and anti-heroes, presented audiences with traumatized but tough men that could express and work through America's postwar disillusionment.  

                                                      Our Private Detective  

StoryBoard

This is our first story board, drawn by Imi and I. As you can see we have crossed out some of the shots we decided, as we developed our idea further, that we did not want .

Femme Fatale

A femme fatale is a mysterious and seductive women who can easily charm men aswell as getting them into dangerous and tricky situations. The phrase is french and ultimately means deadly women. A 1940's femme fatal icon is Veronica Lake of whom we are trying to get our lead actress to resemble. 

Cast List

Dayanna
We wanted someone who firstly looked older then us but with a sultry look to her as well as having someone who gives of the feel that you wouldnt want to mess with her. Most importantly we think that she fits the idea of a femme fatale.







                              Anna Subbotina      
We were not sure if we wanted a blond or dark haired actress so we decided to look at two leads who are completely different. We think that Ana has a matureness about here and is more innocent than Dyanna but would also make a great femme fatale because she does have a sort of strongness about her.










Stephen Paxton

We needed a male lead who looked like a stereotypical 1940's looking private detective who was also older than the female lead so that he could be easily charmed  by her in our scene. We have this shot of Stephen looking exactly the part we want him to play in our film. This is one of the looks we are considering for him.

Alexandra Warner

We want Alexandra to play the secretary in our thriller opening sequence. Alex is American and therefor has the perfect accent. In my opinion she looks very innocent which is perfect for the role of the secretary in our short sequence. As well i know that she is a good actor so she should be able to do a great job for us.

The Skin I Live In: Trailer Analysis

We can tell that this film is a thriller because in the trailer it uses words like obsess, abuse, fight, violent all sorts of words which can make people uncomfortable. We can see signs of stalking as well when they are looking at the security cameras at people who we can assume are trapped. The tone of the film is quit dark, using more earth tones and not making it bright which can also suggest it’s a thriller. We see people running and fighting for what I can presume their freedom because they seem to be in a struggle. The trailer also consists of people being tied to benches while scientific experiments are being done to them, we can see the lines of where the person will most likely be cut open and also a man tied with metal chains being strongly hosed down in the dark, these are all things which leave us feeling uncomfortable therefor we can assume it’s a thriller. Overall the people within this trailer both look scared and frightened or focused and in command which tells us that there are the good and the bad people, Through the trailer I would say this is a scientific based thriller because of the strange experiments that were taking place.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: Trailer Analysis

One of the many ways we can tell that this film is a thriller is because at fist we see a lot of secrecy, we know that the person that we are following is the main character but we don’t see many key features of her in the first few moments of the trailer. Secondly she seems to be sneaking around a lot which suggests that she is in danger of some sort. In the sequence we can see things like stalking from when they are looking at the security feeds, torturing when we see the pictures of the disfigured people, murder where we see the girl in the barn covered in blood and presumably rape  when the man in the office is touching her and she is looking uncomfortable, these are all things that can suggest that this is a thriller. The colours of the trailer are also very grey and dark, no bright colours are used at all. The trailer also starts to quicken the pace as it gets towards the end of the scene by showing many action full quick cuts.