We started to brainstorm some ideas for our thriller, and made a mind map which included ideas for the mise-en-scene, cinematography and narrative. We wanted to know exactly what kind of product our team were looking to create, and this helped to organize our thoughts!  You can view the mind map of ideas below:

From this process we came to the conclusion we wanted our film to have quite a simple narrative with just two characters. We considered including flashbacks within our film, but decided that this would be too much to include, and there was a possibility that is would really confuse the flow of the film. Therefore, we came up with the idea of a man being kidnapped, where he then wakes up in this attic room and starts trying to escape, while the antagonist is watching him from a CCTV camera, and slowly makes his way towards him. We plan to include a small montage within the film, where the antagonist is getting prepared to meet with the protagonist, and puts his gloves on, fills the syringe/needle and shuts down the CCTV. The two characters will not have any direct confrontation, we will just imply that the antagonist will commence to do something to the protagonist.

We created a Pinterest board including some of our ideas about location, characters, mise-en-scene, lighting and cinematography, which you can view below:

Follow Amber’s board Thriller Inspiration on Pinterest.

To get some ideas for our own thrillers, we created a collage of some different  typical cinematic techniques in the genre. From this research, it seems like low key directional lighting is very typical, and would be good to use within my own thriller. Additionally, I’d like to use some canted angles and tilts for that feeling of unease and panic within my audience. 

You can click the image below to see the collage of images I created:

We have learnt about how montage is used in film, it compresses time to transport the viewer to the the future, or the outcome of a certain task. This can be a really useful technique in films because it allows a lot of time to past very quickly, to the story line can proceed. We decided to make a short montage film ourselves, on taking something out of the vending machine.

Before filming this, we created a quick story board to be sure we’d include various camera techniques and know what we wanted to film. You can view this below:

We included various techniques that are typical in a montage film, such as:

• An eye-line match, such as when the character was choosing what to have, we filmed a close up of her looking  down, and then matches when the camera tilts down to see the content of the vending machine.
• A match on action, such as when the character was putting money into the vending machine, we get a shot of her holding the coins and then putting them toward the machine, but it then cuts to a close up of her actually inserting them in.
• Additionally, we used a point of view shot from the perspective of the bottle which added to this feeling of distance from the character, as you’re just watching their actions.

If I was to do this again, I would have taken a few more shots, as when the character is going to pick up the bottle, you miss when she’s going down to pick it up, and so that part of the clip doesn’t flow very well. Additionally, I may have made it more focused on the actual vending machine, as there was quite a lot of time based on getting there which may be a little irrelevant. Additionally, I that adding some more interesting effects whilst editing could really improve it, so next time I would like to experiment more with this.

Below you can watch our finished montage film, The Vending Machine: