1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our thriller opening uses many of the same codes and conventions which real thriller openings use. We had a choice between shooting the opening of a horror movie, or a thriller movie. We toyed with the idea of doing a horror opening; however I am far more interested in the thriller genre and so was my group member, Nafisat. Therefore it just made sense to do a thriller, as well as being easier to film than a horror. My group member and I each did our own individual research on all the different types of thriller movies and realised we had a broad selection of sub-genres to choose from. Our final product could be put into many of the sub-genres. I feel that ‘The Teacher’ is a crime/mystery/psychological thriller as a whole.
My group member and I took a long time deciding on the title of our movie, whilst we did not want to make the title too obvious, we wanted the audience to know the movie was a thriller. The main character of the movie is a teacher, so we eventually decided to make the title simple – ‘The Teacher’. We felt that, by having a short, snappy title, it would be both easy for an audience to remember, but also that it would have more of an impact. Alfred Hitchcock, the master of thrillers, did this quite regularly, some examples are ‘Psycho’ ‘Rebecca’ ‘Vertigo’. I gave out a questionnaire to ten people, and six of them agreed that the title ‘The Teacher ’was befitting of the ‘thriller’ genre. The other four people felt the title could apply to a different genre, for example comedy or drama, thus the title did not make it clear that our movie was a thriller. I took this into consideration and spoke to my group member; we both decided that in order for out movie to clearly be a thriller, we’d have to make a theatrical poster so as the genre was clear.
We decided to film most of our opening sequence in our college, not only because it was the easiest and most convenient place to shoot, but also because it just made sense as the title character of our movie was a teacher. We filmed in various areas of the college, starting off just outside of ‘H’ block and following our character as she eventually enters a classroom. We chose to film in this particular block because it was very brightly coloured, and we wanted to make a contrast between this and our other settings. For the latter part of our sequence, we filmed in ‘B’ block, this is because ‘B’ block has a colder, more metallic feel to it and we thought it would suit perfectly with the scenes. The ‘weaponry’ cutaway shots were filmed inside of my house; obviously we had to do this as we wanted to show knives, axes, hammers etc. Clearly we could not take these objects to college as it would have been dangerously unsafe, but also illegal. Therefore filming these shots inside of a house was a must.
Mise-en-scene plays a huge importance in all thriller movies, as it did in ours. I had to dress smart for our opening shots as I was playing a teacher, so I had to wear a blazer, shirt, skirt etc. I also had to wear my makeup in a more mature manner, so that I could actually pass for being older than 17. The props we used were also quite important in these early shots, for example when I enter the classroom and take out some notepads and a red pen, suggesting I’m about to mark some work. My co-star, Natacha, also had to dress the part and look like a student, which obviously was not hard for her as she was a student. For the latter scenes in the sequence, I had to dress in all black so that we could achieve the dark atmosphere we were going for, so I had to wear a hooded black jacket, black jeans and black shoes. The most important props for the sequence were, in my opinion, the weaponry laid out on the dining table. Without the cutaway shots to the knives etc, I don’t think there would have been as big a sense of tension and confusion for the audience. I laid the weapons out on newspaper purely because of the mess I was going to make using the watered down ketchup as blood, and I did not want them to stain the table. But I also felt that, since we were going to be using a black and white filter over these shots anyway, the black and white newspapers would merely act as a hardly noticeable prop in the background in comparison to the weapons.
We wanted to have a variety of different shots in our sequence to portray that we know all the different types. The first shots of our movie are quote slow and long, the cutaways are much quicker. As the sequence goes on, the shots get quicker and the movie has much more pace. We edited it this way on purpose, we wanted the audience to feel more and more tense as the sequence went on. Starting slow at the beginning suggests that something is coming, and we follow through on this, having the main event take place right at the end.
We chose to use quite regular font styles for our sequence, Tahoma, mostly because we had the credits running over our shots and didn’t want the audience to be distracted by obtrusive text instead of watching the sequence. I created our ‘logo’ in paint, as I felt it’d be easier to use paint rather than photoshop, which I have very little experience with. We used a red font for our logo so that it would stand out, and we used white coloured font for the rest of the credits, apart from our last credit which was the title itself. For this, we had white block capitals in Tahoma, but it had a black background instead of running over the shots.
Our movie would follow a teacher as she gradually descends into insanity, tired of her work and students. The opening presents us with this idea already, when her student comes in asking for help and our character suddenly gets very annoyed and slams her pen down on the table, exclaiming she cannot help the student with anything. Obviously, a normal teacher would never do this. Therefore we can easily say there is something wrong with this teacher – the constant cutting to knives etc suggests something is not right as well.
There are only two characters in our sequence, and it is clear who our main character is – I would say protagonist, but the person is not a ‘hero’. The main character is the young female, ‘the teacher’, who is given the most screen time – the edit. The secondary character is ‘the student’, who plays a very small part in the film, and is killed off very quickly. This is conventional to most thriller openings; they start off with a death.
Our thriller has quite short, quick cuts and we have included some black and white shots, we have done this partly so that those specific shots stand out, but also to pay homage to older thrillers, e.g ‘Pyscho’ directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film was made in 1960, and Hitchcock could have easily filmed it in colour, but he chose not to, and it gave the movie a very eerie effect – just as we wanted our film to have.
We had thoughts about doing a horror opening at first, but we decided to go with the thriller genre. Generally, a horror movie has to scare you quite early on. We knew this would be hard to achieve, and by doing a thriller we would not have this pressure. However, there are obviously typicalities that a thriller opening must have. It has to thrill the audience, make them wonder what is going to happen next and fill them with questions. I feel we achieved this in our opening thriller. We open with a shot in a dark room of an unknown person looking over the body of an unconscious, possibly dead, girl on the ground. We cut to a character walking and entering a classroom then. Already the audience are wondering ‘how are these two stories linked?’ All throughout the video we are cutting to shots of weapons, again making the audience question what they are seeing. Our last shot shows the same shot we showed at the beginning, but in reverse. This makes the audience aware that what they have just seen was a flashback. They are still filled with questions though, and we hoped that, by the end, they would realize that this hooded character is the teacher. However, that could just be their assumption – they haven’t been told this yet, so nothing is sure. This is what we feel the opening of a thriller should do; confuse and hook the audience.
The picture below shows 9 images which I feel sum up our opening sequence perfectly:
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