Q4. Who is the target audience for your thriller opening?

Powered by Issuu

Publish for Free

Q6. What have you learned about new technologies from the process of constructing this work?

Q3. What kind of media institution might distribute your film and why?

Powered by Issuu

Publish for Free

Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? [Unfinished]

Chosen Location

We originally chose a large, antique-like house in Hellesdon due to the aesthetically pleasing attributes that it possesses such as the grand size. Unfortunately, our first shoot in this house went pretty awful, so we decided it was best to choose a different location that was much more suitable. The second house - a house that belonged to one of our group members in Mulbarton - was easier to access and more convenient for everyone to get to.

Mulbarton House

Although the Mulbarton house was a little smaller than the Hellesdon house, it was still just as suitable, and the easy access allowed us to film much more efficiently in the time frame we had. The Mulbarton house was actually a lot better in a few ways compared to the Hellesdon house; for one, it had a stone path leading up to the house which had a much better impact on our sound. The sound of the footsteps on the stones is much more effective, and a key part of our thriller. Furthermore, the new choice of house had a larger bedroom than that of the Hellesdon house, which enabled us to fit the tripod more comfortably in the room, and allow us to achieve the best shots possible. The bed in the Mulbarton house had a lot of room underneath where we could place the bag, which is an important part of our thriller. The new house actually fit our storyboard better, especially because of the bedroom. This was a relief as we didn't have to redraw our storyboard. Below are some practice shots that we thought would help us get a feel of what angles and places to use when we film.

Practice Shot 2

Practice Shot 3 (Final Shot)

Practice Shot 1

Practice Shot 3

Q2. How does your thriller opening represent gender?

For our thriller, we didn't want to follow generic conventions of most thriller movies, where women
are shown as inferior and less powerful to men. We wanted to have our female protagonist as the character with more power, therefore challenging the genre. Our inspiration for doing this was the film "Double Indemnity" where the main female character outsmarts the male protagonist, showing that she is more powerful than him. 'Double Indemnity' also inspired the femme fatale aspect of our
thriller opening. We enforced Serena's power from the beginning by using a low angle shot whilst she's on the phone, whereas when Mr Mordecai is being introduced for the first time, there is a very high angle shot used which makes him appear vulnerable and of less power than Serena.

Serena is shown as feminine the way that she's clad in a red dress and heels, but also in the way that she's putting her lipstick on at the beginning. However, the femme fatale aspect is shown clearly here as she's using a knife as a mirror, showing that she is dangerous, but also glamorous. Another prop we used to display Serena's sininster, deadly personality was a gun. At the end of the thriller opening, a gunshot is heard which the audience can be sure that it's from Serena shooting Mr Mordecai. The gun is a physical representation/symbol of Serena herself; although small, she in in fact incredibly deadly.

We presented our male character to be intelligent, as shown by being dressed in a suit and carrying the right tools to be able to enter the house. This is inspired by the film noir thriller 'The Third Man' and a more modern thriller 'Se7en'. In the opening sequence of 'Se7en', we are shown the morning routine of detective Somerset. Part of his routine is making sure his suit is clear of any dust; the suit is what inspired what our male protagonist would be wearing. Holly Martins and Harry Lime in 'The Third Man' are also dressed smartly, and throughout the film Harry is able to outsmart many people, the way he's dressed enforces his intelligence. Also, Holly must be intelligent too as he was eventually able to find out where Harry was.
Detective Somerset in 'Se7en' has all of the things he needs laid out and ready to pick up and use, which inspired us to give Mr Mordecai a lockpick, showing that he's intelligent and prepared. Something that furthers the idea that Mr Mordecai is intelligent is that he pretty much knew straight away where the bag would be.


Women in our thriller task are presented as deceitful and secretive. We achieve this representation by never showing the whole of Serena's face, and never showing the whole of Serena's body in any one shot. The idea of deceit of the woman to the man in again inspired by 'Double Indemnity'. I thought that this still from 'Double Indemnity' best replicates what we were trying to achieve in our own thriller; this scene is supposed to seem like a face off to when the two meet. The male character in both are less out of focus than the female characters who both dominate the frame, making the women seem more superior.

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our thriller is an inspired by the film noir aspect of thriller films. In our thriller opening, we use and challenge conventions of the film noir genre. Most of our inspiration came from 'Double Indemnity' as even the plot is like ours - the female character deceives the male character.

Costume

For the costumes of our characters, we wanted both of them to come across as sophisticated and professional, so we dressed Mr Mordecai in a suit, and Serena in a nice red dress. Serena's costume was inspired by 'Sin City', where the woman in the opening scene is wearing a bright red dress, making her appear glamorous. Red is a colour often associated with seduction, passion but also holds connotations of danger. These connotations perfectly fit into Serena's personality, and the idea of femme fatale that is quite evident in our film. The shoes Serena is wearing are inspired by a 1946 film noir film called 'The Killers'. We chose these shoes as they are quite high and have a thickness to them which just screams "dominant". The height of the shoes represent how Serena has more power over Mr Mordecai, and with the shot that they're closely shown in, Mr Mordecai is also in the shot where he appears powerless and vulnerable.

For our male character, we found inspiration for his costume from Harry Lime in 'The Third Man'. Throughout 'The Third Man', Harry Lime is a mysterious, secretive character spends most of his time in the film trying to escape from people a deceiving them, Although we couldn't find a large black trench coat like the one Harry is wearing, we came close with a black suit. Furthermore, something we did get right was the hat Harry is wearing. We wanted to portray Mr Mordecai as being a very intelligent, sophisticated man in what he wears, so the suit was a perfect way we could do this and still fit into film noir conventions.

Props

This is the area in which we felt we could use to best challenge traditional film noir conventions. Most commonly in film noir, women are portrayed as 'damsels in distress' and inferior, which is what we wanted to challenge specifically. One way we challenged traditional conventions is by giving Serena not one, but two weapons; the knife and the gun. Although the knife was never used and the gun was, Serena still has it in her possession. One film we found that also challenged is a 1947 film noir style film called 'Out of the Past', where a woman is shown to be behind the gun for once. (Shown below to the right)

Because we wanted to challenge film noir conventions, we displayed Serena as being powerful and dangerous, as well as secretive and mysterious; we aimed to present her as being more dominant over the male character - Mr Mordecai. 

The gun Serena possesses is very small and delicate, yet lethal and dangerous which is a perfect representation of her personality.

However, also wanted to incorporate aspects of film noir such as glamour and seductiveness which is why we have her putting on red lipstick, and wearing a red dress and heels. Red is the key colour in our thriller as most other colours are quite dull, whereas the red stands out against other colours. Furthermore the red has connotations of danger, but also seduction. The way we set out Serena's props was inspired by 'Se7en' as we wanted to show the audience that Serena is organised and neat.

Location

'Double indemnity' also inspired our location. We needed a house with stairs which had banisters with gaps between like in Double Indemnity. The reason we need this shot is we needed something to have connotations of prison; stair banisters are perfect for this as they look like jail cell bars. We needed this because it shows that Serena and Mr Mordecai are involved in dangerous, criminal activity which could lead to them ending up in prison (Serena especially as she murders Mr Mordecai). The connotations to a jail cell also create a claustrophobic, trapped feeling, adding to the tension and intensity of the situation. This idea of entrapment is inspired by 'The Third Man' when Harry Lime is trying desperately to find a way out of the sewers.

We filmed at a large house which looks very grand as it has pillars. We needed to film at a location like this as it makes more sense to have Mr Mordecai stealing from a wealthy person. Plus this suits the genre as most film noir films are glamorous and grand. We required a large house as we needed to show the extent to Mr Mordecai's skill in breaking into big, expensive houses. The bag he steals is our MacGuffin, as we never find out what's in the bag, which corresponds to how we do not yet know why Serena killed Mr Mordecai.

Similar to 'Essex Boys', our location choice has quite bleak colours and scenery, which we needed to have to represent hopelessness of Mr Mordecai's future. A certain scene from 'Essex Boys' inspired our opening scene shots, however ours doesn't have a vanishing point which would've been ideal to outline Mordecai's death and how he would come to an end. We changed the saturation in editing to be similar to the one in Essex Boys as we wanted to show bleakness. We found it difficult to directly replicate the locations found in most film noir thrillers, but the house we did film at was probably as close as we could've gotten.

Sound

Our original soundtrack idea was to have soft jazz playing in the background, similar to the 'Sin City' opening scene soundtrack but unfortunately, we were unable to find such soundtrack due to Copyright issues. Instead to build tension and uneasiness, we found a low rumble, which can be heard throughout the opening of our thriller, along with a soft drum beat to build tension. Although we wanted to develop film noir conventions here, our version with the rumble still worked just as effectively as a jazz soundtrack would've.

To correspond to Serena's mysterious, unpredictable nature, we used non-diegetic wind chimes to create an eerie, uneasy feeling. This creates the feel of uncertainty around Serena, with the audience unsure of her next move. The audience may even believe that Serena is mentally unstable, and the wind chimes that challenge the film noir genre may lead them to believe that she is morally evil.

We used diegetic sounds such as the phone beep, footsteps on the gravel and the gunshot where the original sounds we had were not loud enough, apart from the gunshot as we didn't already have a sound for this.

Camerawork

Many shots seen in our thriller are widely influenced by other film noir thrillers.
 The face-off scene between Serena and Mordecai is inspired by this shot from 'Double Indemnity', we added our own touch to it but its still, if not more effective.

This shot from 'Se7en' inspired us to use the same technique as we wanted Serena to come across as organised, neat and very prepared.

"Serena" - Final Edit