Our Storyline

Woman murderer (Marilyn), murders husband for wealth and finds out someone knows something and turns into a serial killler.

Start of the scene is Marilyn ringing the police to say her husband has been murdered, she is the murderer. Cut to the police at her house you don't see the actual body, just the chalk outline.The detective brings to ask questions, interrogates Marilyn. He doesn't suspect her. She then finds out that someone knows that she murdered her husband, then kills someone else. Clues have been found to explain it was Marilyn who killed her husband, when they go to arrest her she tries to kill the lone detective until her partner follows and kills Marilyn, just before she tries to kill the detective.

Top 10 Film Noirs

1. Sweet Smell Of Success
2. The Big Heart
3. Pickup On South Street
4. Out Of The Past
5. The Killers
6. The Big Sheep
7. Detour
8. Laura
9. Double Indemnity
10. The Maltese Falcon

Film Noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Film noir is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style. Many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.

The term film noir, French for "black film". first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, was unknown to most American film industry professionals of the classic era.

Because Film Noir is mostly crime dramas, the main characters in the films would be: the central figure may be a private eye (The Big Sleep), a plainclothes policeman (The Big Heat), an aging boxer (The Set-Up), a hapless grifter (Night and the City), a law-abiding citizen lured into a life of crime (Gun Crazy), or simply a victim of circumstance (D.O.A.).

Our New Idea

Our new film is going to be a film noir detective film. We have started to think about the story line, and the obvious one would be to do a murder. A film noir/detective trailer would easier to do than our last idea and it wouldnt be any problem to do as there are no possibilities it may cross over into the horror genre.

Change of Idea

Due to a few problems we have encountered in our film, we have been told it is in our interest to change the genre of the film and story-line as there is a possibility it may cross over with a horror.

Narrative Structure

Narrative chain of cause and effect- the plotlines in a story that are triggered by action and enigma codes (something that happens that causes something else to happen). Below is the two theories by Propp and Todorov that show the two typical structures to storylines in films and television.

Propp Todorov
1)Preparation 1)Equilibrium

2)Complication 2)Disruption

3)Transference 3)Recognition of Disruption

4)Struggle 4)Attempt to repair disruption

5)Return 5)A return or restoration of NEW equilibrium

6)Recognition

Richard Dyer

Richard Dyer 1993 argues that representation is a political tool:

Social groups are treated in cultural representation is part and parcel of how they are treated in life, that poverty, harassment, self-hate and discrimination (in housing, jobs eduacational opportunity and so on) are shored up and instituted by representation.

He also highlights the complications in theories which focus on negative, representations of calss, race and sexuality.

Media Theorist

Representation

The media have
"The power to represent the world in certain ways. And because there are so many different and conflicting ways in which meaning about the world can be constructed, it matters profoundly what and who gets left out, and how things, people, events and relationships and represented".

(Stuart Hall 1986)

This means the media controls what people think, because the audience will believe whatever the media portrays. They control the way people think about social/racial groups as well.

Psychological Thrillers

We decided to research the top 10 psychological thrillers, we got the information of this website: http://www.flickchart.com/charts?genre=Psychological+Thriller

1. Black Swan
2. Silence Of The Lambs
3. Rear Window
4. The Prestige
5. Psycho
6. Vertigo
7. The Third man
8. The Sixth Sense
9. Donnie Darko
10. The Night Of The Hunter

After researching this, it has become apparent that there is no particular genre that these psychological thrillers fit into. However none of these films are documentary, therefore this makes our trailer an original idea.

Our Trailer

Our film is going to be a psycholgical thriller. We got the idea from a movie that has recently been released called 'Grave Encounters'. However this film is classed as a psychological horror. Never the less, we have decided to go with the idea, but we will have to be careful of what we put into it and make sure we use the codes and conventions of a thriller instead of a horror. We haven't thought of a name as of yet, but the idea is coming together, as we have got a actors who aren't working with us for help in the trailer. Also we have strung together a lot of ideas for a locations i.e, a graveyard, abandoned buildings, open fields.

First Day.

On our first day of starting our project, we made a moodboard about our target audience and did some audience research on what their hobbies/interests are. We have decided that our trailer will appeal more to females ages between 16-24. We decided on this because through research, we have found that young female adults would prefer to watch a psychological thriller than a gory thriller.

Mise-en-Scene

Codes and Conventions of a Thriller

A main feature of a thriller is entrapment, therefore the main setting of thrillers are claustrophobic.

E.g;
Flightplan, Snakes on a Plane, Phonebooth, Kill Bill 2 and Panic Room all have claustrophobic spaces and a sense of entrapment
Flightplan - location - plane

Snakes on a Plane - location - plane

Phonebooth - location - phonebooth

Kill bill 2 - location - buried in a coffin

Some examples of claustrophic spaces are:
•planes
•coffins
•under water
•boot of a car
•elevator/lift
•walk in freezer
•tube trains
•white van
•small room
•car
•prison cell
•narrow alleyways
•multi-storey car parks