Film synopsis & Aims and Context

Aims and Context

For my FM3 creative project I’m going to produce a short film, called ‘Obsessed’. The genre is Film Noir with elements of Thriller and I intend to use the codes and conventions. This is to appeal to my target audience of males and females aged around 15 to 25 who will be categorised as a mainstream audience.

My aim will be to introduce the learning about the creation of meaning by the five micro-features (Mise-en-scene, cinematography, sound, editing and narrative) developed in FM1 to explore the codes and conventions of Film Noir. I will be using these codes and conventions of both the thriller and the film noir genre in order to achieve creating a tense and enjoyable cinematic experience for the audience. By creating an anti-hero as a protagonist there are elements of an enigma throughout the film, as the audience will be wondering, almost in fear, what the protagonist will do next. Similarly to David Fincher's 'Fight Club' 1999 the protagonist will be causing conflict and disruption in the equilibrium so that the audience can see how much damage he causes and they see how much he needs to be stopped.

In order to assist with this project I have been studying films which have used experimental narrative methods, such as ‘Buffalo 66’ 1998 directed by Vincent Gallo and ‘Fight Club’ 1999 directed by David Fincher, and Film Noir films, such as ‘The lady from Shanghai’ 1947 Orson Welles and ‘Psycho’ 1960 directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

I intend to direct, edit, write and manage sound on this piece and I have used the directing styles of Alfred Hitchcock as an influence for my directing style.

·         Mise-en-scene

A clock, a knife, a chair, an empty car park, photographs of rose, a television, mobile phones, light room(Rory’s house), Dark room (Mickey’s house) Black and dark clothes(Mickey), Light clothes (Rory), girly clothes(Rose).

·         Cinematography

High angle shots, low angle shots, tracking shots, point of view shots, close ups, long shots, extreme close ups, mid shots, steadicam.

·         Editing

Fast paced editing, slow paced editing, shot reverse shot, continuous editing, cross cutting editing, flashback sequence.

·         Sound

Diegetic dialogue, non-diegetic music, no-diegetic sound effects (items dropping, clocks ticking)

Alfred Hitchcock Interview

Within this interview with Alfred Hitchcock the topic of frightening audiences and especially focusing on the women, avoiding cliches and pure cinema. This interview is greatly inspirational for my film. Also he Mentions how his famous piece of work 'Psycho'  was mostly a big joke when it came to the horror element.
The clips include one and two so that the interview can be fully appreciated.





"I believe in putting the horror in the mind of the audience and not necessarily on the screen"

Alfred Hitchcock techniques

In order to investigate how a perfect thriller film is created one man must be turned to for advice.

Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock is the ultimate director of thriller films he knows how to twist an audience and how to reach in to their hearts and get them racing. I looked into Articles dedicated to his work so that I can use some of the techniques that he used to create so much emotion in his films.

This article is entitled...

How to turn your boring movie into a Hitchcock thriller... 

Written by Jeffrey Michael Bays


The link to the article is: http://borgus.com/hitch/hitch2011.htm

Some of the main themes of the article I have found most useful I copied and pasted from the article to this blog.

"Change everything in your screenplay so that it is done for the audience.  Nothing is more important than how each scene is going to affect the viewer.  Make sure the content engages them and reels them in.  Use the characters to tease the viewer and pull them along desperately wanting more. 

Hitchcock knew why people are drawn to a darkened theater to absorb themselves for hours with images on a screen.  They do it to have fun. In the same way people go to a roller coaster to get thrown around at high speeds, theater audiences know they are safe.  As a film director you can throw things at them, hurl them off a cliff, or pull them into a dangerous love story, and they know that nothing will happen to them.  They're confident that they'll be able to walk out the exit when its done and resume their normal lives.  And, the more fun they have, the quicker they will come back begging for more."

"Emotion (in the form of fear, laughter, surprise, sadness, anger, boredom, etc.) is the ultimate goal of each scene.  The first consideration of where to place the camera should involve knowing what emotion you want the audience to experience at that particular time.  Emotion comes directly from the actor's eyes.  You can control the intensity of that emotion by placing the camera close or far away from those eyes.  A close-up will fill the screen with emotion, and pulling away to a wide angle shot will dissipate that emotion.  A sudden cut from wide to close-up will give the audience a sudden surprise.  Sometimes a strange angle above an actor will heighten the dramatic meaning."

"The camera should take on human qualities and roam around playfully looking for something suspicious in a room.  This allows the audience to feel like they are involved in uncovering the story.  Scenes can often begin by panning a room showing close-ups of objects that explain plot elements."

"One of your characters must be pre-occupied with something during a dialogue scene.  Their eyes can then be distracted while the other person doesn't notice.  This is a good way to pull the audience into a character's secretive world. 

“People don’t always express their inner thoughts to one another," said Hitchcock, "a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person thinks or needs.”  The focus of the scene should never be on what the characters are actually saying.  Have something else going on.  Resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise. 

"In other words we don’t have pages to fill, or pages from a typewriter to fill, we have a rectangular screen in a movie house,” said Hitchcock."

'Obsessed' digital storyboard / Animatic

Digital Storyboard for A2 Film 'Obsessed' by mattynolan182 on GoAnimate

Video Maker - Powered by GoAnimate.

This video was created on the website 'Goanimate' where I was able to create a story board using interactive animated characters which represent the characters I will use when filming my creative project. The narrators dialogue will not be used when the real film is produced but I used it within this storyboard to signify certain events which might not have been explained well enough within the visual imagery.

Mickey's reasoning

Mickey is the most crucial character of the film, he is the protagonist and must be shown in as much detail as possible so that the audience understand his motivations for capturing Rose.
Showing this on screen within a five minute time frame could be a difficult task so in order to show it I will use the flashback sequences to show shots of him watching and stalking Rose as well as perhaps him posting pictures of her on his wall.

Mickey's history is that he is an ex-boyfriend of Rose's and through whatever reason she decided to break up with him. Mickey doesn't seem to enjoy this as he then decides to kidnap her without thinking it through.

Film Title, genre and genre conventions and storytype

'Obsessed'

Genre - Thriller
story type - the fatal flaw

 

Character list and Details

Just to ease my mind a little I want to just plan out some things about the characters, perhaps it will help when storyboarding and filming.

Rose - main female, young, average build, normal clothing.
Mickey - Main antagonist male, young, obsessive, bald, perhaps dresses almost like a junkie or not really bothered about his appearance.
Rory - Male protagonist, young, muscular, seems kind, dresses more stylish than Mickey.

Rose's main points within the film will be:

• Being followed at the beginning of the film. Point of view shots of her from Mickeys POV.
• Being held hostage in a small room sat on a chair.
• Being fed water by Mickey and being blindfolded.
• Sitting on a chair in a large open but abandoned area as Mickey meets Rory.
• Running away as Rory releases her, this should be the last we see of her.

Mickeys main points within the film:

• Following Rose (close ups of facial feature such as eyes) but not many is these shots as POV shots of Rose will be mostly dominating.
• Mickeys hand feeding Rose water.
• Pacing the room where Rose sits, as he contemplates what he's done
• Ringing Rory to meet.
• Standing by Rose as he meets Rory.
• Fighting Rory as he frees Rose.
• Being killed.

Rory's main points within the film:

• Meeting Rose and Mickey
• Freeing Rose
• fighting Mickey
• Killing Mickey

Creativer project diary Entry 2

Concerning my last post about the cut away to signify the death of a character I have been contemplating how the most effective way of signifying the death without showing it might be. many different ideas come to mind such as taking on the 1930's 'All quiet on the Western Front' use of the cut away when German soldier Paul Baumer gets shot by the French sniper instead of showing the soldier getting shot instead a clever use of only showing his hand twitch momentarily before falling limp allows audiences to know of the characters death. So there's the idea of showing a hand or perhaps a leg twitching before falling limp might work but I am UN-sure how it might look on screen. Another idea is the use of blood splatter on the wall, when a character is shot, in the head for example, instead of paying thousands on special effects a cut away could carefully pan to a close wall where the sound of a single bullet is heard through an echo in the room as blood is thrown onto the wall. Obviously the best way to shoot this would probably be in black and white as without colour it is harder to notice that the mixture of tomato ketchup and some gloopy bits thrown against a wall is not in fact the victims brains. there is a lot more planning to go into this than brainstorming ideas but the use of a cut away is really growing on me. The black and white Film Noir style might be a winner too.

creative project diary entry 1

I have been thinking about interesting techniques used within thriller films and one of the most interesting ideas is that thriller films are mostly focused on using as much suspense as possible rather than vast amounts of action. One of the best techniques when concerning this is the use of imaginative filming. The death of a character is always going to be a tricky one to film but some thriller films, as well as other genres to be fair, use the technique of a cut away so that although the audience know clearly what has happened it is not shown on film. This idea could be explained using Disney films as an example, although they are not thrillers they still hold many cinematic golden techniques, when a character dies it is rarely shown on screen but instead the reaction of a another character or the silhouette of the corpse (Tarzan) can be shown. This is not just to distract the children from what really is happening on screen but instead can be seen as an ingenious use of cinema as the audience aren't stupid they know who is going to die and what must be done but because of their prior assumptions on the death of a character, whether they know it or not, they have an idea of what the death might go like. The use of the cut away allows the audience to let their imagination take the control and they can picture any form of ridiculous death face a character might show before kicking the bucket. Also when concerning my creative project I know I will not be using A-list actors and actresses but instead a humble hand full of friends to take on the role of amateur acting, I do not desire to bestow upon them the job of pulling of a heart wrenching and beautiful death so the cut away also ease their minds of pulling off a swell job.

Simple synopsis of film 'Obsessed'

The Protagonist, Mickey, has kidnapped Rose and keeps her hostage until he realises that he will get caught for the crime. He decides to contact his friend, Rory, to seek advice and a safe house but as Rory discovers Mickeys crime he begins to doubt his friends sanity. In the hope of reasoning with him Rory goes to see Mickey. After realising that Mickey cannot be reasoned with and brandishes a knife at Rory he quickly dodges, knocks Mickey down and grabs the knife of Mickey, freeing Rose and then killing Mickey as he lunges towards Rory.