Changes to My Thriller

Leading up to filming. Talia, Charlie and myself arranged to meet together and discuss the final ideas for our thriller so that on the shoot day it ran more smoothly.

We changed multiple ideas and concepts before and during filming.

Before filming we had to change the actress in our thriller three times. The reason we had to do this was because either they were too young and therefore would not fit our ideal target audience of 17-24 or did not have blonde hair and portray a stereotypical 'dumb blonde ideology.
We as a group were keen watches of Breaking Bad, and this is where we adapted ideas about poison into our thriller. We decided before filming that we would change the plot so that our character was killed by an external source, poison as oppose to being murdered in cold blood.In making this decision we had to altar particular parts of our plot in order for the thriller to flow without being repetitive.These particular changes included changing three phone calls in the study and then the death of the girl in the kitchen, to two phone calls in the study to one phone call in the kitchen followed by her death. This made the film more stimulating and increased suspense.

During filming we decided as a group to change certain parts to make the film match thriller characteristics. Characteristics including suspense,fear,violence and because out sub genre is crime we had elements of crime such as murder. Whilst we were filming we decided to have a shot of the killer stalking the house. Originally we filmed from a wide shot but then we changed to a medium shot so that the killer was more noticeable in the shot because the killers outfit camouflaged into the environment which was night time. One of the other reasons for filming the killer stalking the house was to show perspective and created a sense of dramatic irony, as the audience would be expecting something to happen to this vulnerable girl, however she was unaware that her fate was about to be met. This created sympathy and an eerie vibe.
We also included a shot of the killer unlocking the door, which was also decided on the day of shooting. The aim of this was to show a transition of the killer stalking the house to unlocking the door. A possible interpretation that the audience would make was this killer was someone that this girl knew as they were able to unlock the door to her home, possibly a close friend or neighbour. However if someone did not read so much into this would just assume that the killer was skilled at breaking and entering.

Our decision to choose poison was also changed during filming. Poison is stereotypically used as a method of death because it is slow, painful and easy. In our thriller this is shown by our character clutching onto her neck to show that her airways are blocked and can no longer breathe, followed by her falling to the floor in pain foaming at the mouth to lying on the floor eyes rolled back unresponsive. The foaming at the mouth was an addition to the scene. In the beginning she used her own saliva however this was changed to swallowing toothpaste as it was more hygienic.

We had to stack boxes and
books together to create
a tripod.

During filming we came across many issues with the camera that we were given. The lighting was too bright for the lens making her face unnoticeable in the shots, We also did not have a tripod so had to improvise and use the chair in my bedroom and stack it with books and boxes, removing certain equipemt for different shots and angles. We also changed camera to one that I owned that allowed us to change the brightness on the camera so that when we did wide shots or close ups her face would be seen.

As a group we believed that these changes made our thriller opening sequence more 'thriller like'. We created suspense and included crime in order to represent the sub genre.