Synopsis of Own Ideas

As a group we have decided the best idea for us is to do a short film following the conventions of a thriller/crime genre. We chose to follow the thriller crime genre because of the typical shots and lighting associated with it. Also, the survey monkey we did saw that the most popular choice of film genre for our short film was a thriller genre, however the crime genre was very close to being the most popular choice, so we chose to do a short film of the thriller/crime genre. Because we decided to do a thriller/ crime genre, I decided to do some independent research into famous feature films such as Psycho and The Departed to understand the way a thriller/ crime genre film is shot and how certain scenes are lit. This would allow me to gain independent knowledge of what famous thriller films look like and share my independent understanding with the rest of the group. For instance, in The Departed there is a scene involving Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) where the lighting is very low and dark, creating an eery and mysterious tone to this scene. I conveyed this new information with Fin and Zack to show them how I felt this low-lighting and certain shot types create this eery effect. Fin and Zack were then able to discuss these ideas I brought, and Fin being the director had the final decision as to whether he wanted to use these certain shots/ lighting.

I also looked at short films such as The Eater by The Duffer Brothers which is one of the most popular thriller short films of 2016 because of their status as directors from finishing highly regarded TV series, Stranger Things. The lighting in this film is primarily very dark which gives the whole film a eery and dark tone which creates a mysterious and tense feel throughout the entirety of this film. There is a very slow build up to when the plot twist comes, which allows the suspense and tension within the audience to fester before showing them the plot-twist.

From doing research on both feature and short thriller films, I have seen how they predominantly use dark lighting to create a mysterious and tense tone to certain scenes. Even though we will be shooting in the day because of the actors schedules, we will test various lighting techniques to see which set-up fits best to show our desired tone in certain scenes. Because our character is a drug addict, the stereotypical associations you would connote to him would be that he lives in a run down 'drug-lair' and doesn't care about his overall style because of the effect the drugs have had on him. However, we have decided as a group that, because he's still a father to Jessica, we wanted him to look like a normal man, with a normal looking house, to subvert typical conventions of a drug addict. We chose to do this based on the fact that there have been many feature and short films which show the 'typical' lifestyle of a drug addict and what the drugs have ultimately done to them. However, we felt that subverting these conventions would allow us to make the character more personal to the audience because he is a father, and the actions he commits may hit the audience harder if the person their watching is someone like themselves.