Initial Location Ideas

We got the idea for our location after looking at Conspiracy Thrillers which we found were generally shot in well-known, built-up areas. We also looked into locations on the Moodboard and Examples of Films.

Car Park

Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square

Ice Rink in London

Oxford Street Christmas Lights

The images above show some of our initial location ideas. We will be visiting various locations in the near future to get our own images and ensure we will be able to film there.

MacGuffin

When looking at Examples of Films, we found the work of Alfred Hitchcock was very much relevant to our genre and teaser trailer.
A MacGuffin is a plot device used in films and can be in the form of an object, information, or anything desired. The term was popularised by film director and producer, Alfred Hitchcock. The MacGuffin's identity can be left a mystery at the end of the narrative; it gains the viewers attention and drives the plot.

We watched some videos on YouTube about the MacGuffin which we found useful in fully understanding what it is. These can be seen below. The MacGuffin is an appropriate plot device to look at in terms of our narrative as the top secret file is of little importance to the narrative itself; it simply drives the plot forward to the narratives conclusion.

Wikileaks

We got the idea of looking at Wikileaks after researching Conspiracy Thrillers.

Wikileaks is a non-profit organisation bringing news and information to the public that would not normally be as accessible. Anonymous sources give their information to Wikileaks journalists, providing transparency and creating a more open and free society. They use the defence of freedom of speech and media publishing, yet are still a controversial site in the eyes of the law and the subject involved. Each document is thoroughly analysed for authenticity to ensure it is 100% accurate.
We decided to look at Wikileaks due to the confidential nature of the site, and similarities to our initial plot. We have also looked at some YouTube videos related to Wikileaks and are considering the idea of doing a montage within our plot.
For further reference at a later date, we have linked the site here, and the documentary here.
We have also found that the hackivist group, Anonymous are closely linked to Wikileaks through social networking site YouTube.

It could be interesting to involve something surrounding this concept in our teaser trailer, as they have recently pulled support from Wikileaks as seen n various articles such as this.

Anonymous can be found on YouTube here.

Film Title

The film title is a crucial aspect of any film. It is what will capture the interest of potential audiences and make suggestions towards the genre and even plot of a film. However, there has to be an air of mystery about it, so as not to give too much away. We thought of a selection of potential titles for our film, as follows:
Confidential - definition: in strict privacy or secrecy

Classified - definition: available only to authorised persons

Scandal - definition: a disgraceful or discreditable action, circumstance, etc

Ignominy - definition: disgrace, dishonour, public contempt

Opprobrium - definition: the disgrace or the reproach incurred by conduct considered outrageously shameful; infamy

Liberal - definition: favourable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs

Conservative - definition: disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions etc, or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change

Allegations - definition: an assertion made with little or no proof 

Arcane - definition: known or understood by very few; mysterious; secret; obscure

We will incorporate a question concerning the title in our questionnaire that will be conducted shortly and the results posted thereafter.

Narrative Theory

Narrative theory refers to narrative structure and the way our perception is affected according to a narrative. Our film, in length, would follow some of these theories, as described below.
The first is with Levi Strauss' Binary Opposition. This suggests narrative tension based on opposition or conflict; in our film, this will be between the government and the criminals. This also represents the struggle between good and evil. The government are presented as the "good" people and the criminals as the "bad", however we are playing with the idea of a twist that would reverse these roles.

Levi Strauss

Binary Opposition; Good vs Evil

The next theory we are looking at is Barthes' Enigma Code. This suggests that the narrative will establish enigmas or mysteries as it goes on, and solving these mysteries becomes the narratives function. As the narrative goes on, we encounter several potential meanings, and the basis of the narrative itself is almost a mystery. Our film is intended to be "open", so the audience can interpret it in different ways (with the good vs evil) and keep guessing about the mysteries throughout.

Roland Barthes

The last narrative theory that we have taken some influence from is that of Vladimir Propp. It suggests that each narrative has a hero, villain, donor, helper, victim, dispatcher and false hero. Within our narrative, we certainly have a hero, villain, victim and false hero, and some of the other characters could come into play later in plot development.

Vladimir Propp

Conspiracy Thriller

We were originally planning on doing an Action Thriller, as shown in our research with Film Examples, we mostly looked at Codes and Conventions of an Action Thriller (here), but after rethinking our plot, we realised it contained more conventions of a Conspiracy Thriller. A Conspiracy Thriller generally has a protagonist unravelling a conspiracy, having a character in danger, and there are many different themes that build up tension to unveil the conspiracy. Examples of Conspiracy Thrillers include The Bourne Identity and Enemy of the State.
The Bourne Identity trailer can be seen here and Enemy of the State here.

Target Audience

We decided to look at our target audience in further detail. We intend to aim our Trailer towards males who are of the age of 18-25 years old. This blog post gives reference to information relating to our target audience and gives a typical example of what we believe is a detailed analysis of someones likes/dislikes, lifestyle, interests etc.


Sport - Football, Manchester United fan, plays for a local men's team, regular viewer of Match of the Day, sports betting

Lifestyle - Student at Gloucester University (studying Sports Coaching), lives away from home, has a girlfriend, unemployed, work experience at a Junior Football Team

Music - UK Top 40, fancies Pixie Lott, illegal downloading

Food and Drink - Eat out at restaurants regularly, fast food, ready meals, convenient and cheap meals, Alcohol (beer, lager, pub)

Film and TV - Taken, The Hangover, Saw, The Bourne Series, Top Gear, Friends, Cribs, Liam Neeson (favourite actor)

Clothing - High end brands, designer wear e.g. Calvin Klein, All Saints, Topman, Abercrombie and Fitch

Moodboard

This is the Moodboard we created as inspiration for our Teaser Trailer. It presents a variety of concepts which we would be interested in integrating into our film. Some of the inspiration for this was from our previous research on Codes and Conventions of a Thriller and Examples of Films.

Examples of Films

We looked into existing Thrillers which can act as inspiration for our Teaser Trailer. We found the need for this after looking at Codes and Conventions of a Thriller and Timeline of Thriller Genre.

Timeline of Thriller genre

The image below shows a timeline of key events and films within the Thriller Genre. This helps us narrow down what we need to focus on and gain inspiration from the greatest films. This links with our research on Codes and Conventions of a Thriller post.

Timeline of Thriller Genre

Codes and Conventions of a Thriller

After looking at Codes and Conventions of a Teaser Trailer and deciding upon a Genre, we found the need to research the codes and conventions within this. We used both the internet and watched some of the thrillers ourselves to find some patterns and made a poster (below) to show what we found out.

Codes and Conventions of the Thriller Genre

Social Networking

In order to understand our target market better, we set up a Twitter account and Facebook group. We can post videos and blog posts on these accounts to keep followers informed of what we're up to.

Our Twitter page

Our Facebook page

Link to the Facebook page...
Follow our Twitter...

SoundCloud

We are currently considering using a soundtrack to overlay our teaser trailer, as this seems to be a common trend in current film marketing.  After researching music sharing sites such as ‘MySpace’, ‘Last.fm’ and ‘8tracks’, we have recently discovered the website ‘SoundCloud’. 

As mentioned in our ‘Problems and Solutions’ post, SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform which allows the ‘collaboration promotion and distribution of audio recordings by users’.  It was founded in 2007 by sound designer Alex Ljung and artist Eric Wahlforss, and has since accumulated over 20 million users (growing by 1.5 million every month).  On SoundCloud we have found a number of potentially useable soundtracks available for free download, with permission from the creator to adapt and publish them.  This tool may save considerable time during our project, as our group does not have the ability to compose and create our own professional sounding music.