conspiracy

Numerous thrillers involve an element of conspiracy within their narratives. A prime example of a film we drew significant influences from was Shutter Island. As well as conspiracy, themes of mental instability and insanity are also prominent throughout this movie, similar to our own film. The conspiracy involved in Shutter Island revolves around an investigation into the disappearence of one of the institute's patients, as well as into the possibility of extreme lobotomies being conducted on the patients. Suspense and shock is created as certain twists are exposed throughout the narrative of the movie. Whilst some may have been predictable, the combination of the themes of psycholgical illnesses and conspiracy allow this film to successfully keep the audience's interest engaged throughout the film. To ensure that our own film will be successful in keeping an audience interested in what they are viewing, we felt it would also be a good idea to implement and combine these themes in our own film idea.

Conspiracy is also a main factor in the film Angels and Demons. It focuses on Illuminati conspiracies against the Catholic Church . In a similar way to Shutter Island, Angels and Demons creates suspense as the audience follow the main character on a journey to uncover the mysteries.

terrorism

The films Flight 93 and United 93 both revolve around depicting the incidents that occured on September 11th. Terrorism is an integral theme throughout these films, as they mostly aim to portray factual events that actually occured. The effect of these films is that  they portray how people who were on the flights involved were affected and dealth with the hijacks illustrating how much of a devastating effect terrorism has on innocent lives. Both of the films focus on the heroism that the passengers on board the United Airlines Flight 93 displayed in order to prevent the plane from reaching its target, the United States Capitol building in Washington D.C. Both of these films attempt to show the events as factually accurate as possible, which we also feel would be appropriate for our film idea, as it makes the narrative more believable and urges the audience to continue watching. 

There are also a number of other films that revolve around other significant events of terrorism or terrorist organisations. Munich, directed by Stephen Spielberg, is based on the events linked to the Palestinian militant group, Black September, and the Israeli government's secret retaliation attacks after the massacre of Israeli athletes. The way in which this film influenced our own was that it had a fictional narrative about real events, which we decided to use whilst coming up with film ideas as rather than depicting factual events regarding 9/11 which has already been done in numerous films as previously stated, we wanted to have a unique twist to it where the audience would still be able to relate it to the actual events yet still recognise that it is entirely fictional.

psychological disorders

The 2001 psychological thriller Don't Say A Word is a good example of a film that shares themes with our film in order to fit its genre. Brittany Murphy's character Elisabeth is a patient at a state sanatorium, suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. The use of this illness adds to creating suspense within the narrative, as it prevents Elisabeth from entirely revealing the six digit code that Dr. Conrad, played by Michael Douglas, needs to acquire. Her mental condition restrains her from trusting the doctor, which poses a  problem throughout the narrative, thus creating suspense and keeping the audience engaged as the story seems more compelling to watch. Similarly, we drew an influence from this film for our own character and decided that he too would be diagnosed with a psychological disorder. After research into various mental illnesses that could be fitting for our character Cornelius, we came to the decision that he would suffer from Schizophrenia, as most people have heard of this disorder however may not be fully aware of its symptoms and consequences. As well as this, we felt that the character traits and behaviour of someone suffering from Schizophrenia would be more appropriate to the narrative, as it allowed for an array of actions to move along our plot, such as the hallucinations and premonition.

Similarly, the character of Norman Bates, portrayed by Anthony Perkins in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 thriller Psycho shares certain characteristics with our character of Cornelius. A  psychological disorder is common of the two characters, as Norman suffers from dissociative identity disorder, which makes him take on his mother's personality. After a string of murders, due to his disorder, the consequence of his actions results in Norman being sent to a mental institute where his mother's persona completely takes over. We also implemented a similar idea in our own film, as towards the end our character Cornelius also ends up in an asylum. Unlike Psycho, we challeneged audience expectations however by portraying Cornelius as the protagonist, whereas in Psycho, Norman is the antagonist that conducts the murders.

september 11th attacks

Like the film Munich, we wanted to add a fictional twist to a real event which required research as to what incidents occurred on September 11th and what we particularly wanted to focus on. Below are headlines that I collected that are about the attacks, illustrating the response of the American public and media. There were some headlines blatantly addressing the possible conspiracies behind the attacks, which is where we drew an influence from for Premonition. Because there was a lot of spectacle around what really happened, we decided to implement this into our own film. As well as this, because of the massive media outcry and the prominent newspaper headlines that are seen below, we decided to show the influence of these headlines through our opening credits, by having the lettering consist of newspaper cut outs.

As well as this, we had to gather research on the specific timings of the attacks.The timeline on the BBC website helped us to find accurate timings for when significant events (such as the first plane crashing into the north tower) took place. Our script of the news report that we wanted to use as a voice over required factual timing in order to make it realistic and keep the audience's interest engaged.

schizophrenia

Research on various psychological disorders was necessary for Cornelius' character profile, so as to help how we could determine the rest of the narrative for Premonition would unfold. Our initial idea was to diagnose Cornelius with dissociative identity disorder, similar to the characters of Norman Bates in Psycho and the narrator in Fight Club. This was because it was an obvious mental disorder that we had seen in psychological thrillers before, however we were then unsure as to how it would explain Cornelius having premonitions about the attacks. It was then determined that the character of Cornelius required a psychological illness that resulted in hallucinations and with further research on mental illnesses, we decided that to allow the narrative to be entertaining yet believable, it would be appropriate for Corenlius to be a schizophrenic.

Symptoms of schizophrenia:

• Delusions - believing something completely even though others find your ideas strange and can't work out how you've come to believe them.
• Difficulty thinking – finding it hard to concentrate, drifting from one idea to another. Other people may find it hard to understand you.
• Feeling controlled – feeling as though your thoughts are vanishing, that they‘re not your own, or that your body is being taken over and controlled by someone else.
• Hallucinations - hearing, smelling, feeling or seeing something that isn’t there. Hearing voices is the most common problem. The voices can seem utterly real. Although they may be pleasant, they are more often rude, critical, abusive or annoying.
• Loss of interest, energy and emotions. You don't bother to get up or go out of the house. You don't get round to routine jobs like washing, tidying, or looking after your clothes. You feel uncomfortable with other people.
• Some people hear voices. Others have delusions but few other problems. If someone has only muddled thinking and negative symptoms, the problem may not be recognised for years. 

A large percentage of these symptoms were the attributes we wanted Cornelius' character to have, especially those that elicited hallucinations and delusions.

main task location recce

LOCATION	PROS	CONS
History office	- The props we required for our opening sequence already in place as we want to recreate a busy personal office environment - Lighting could be easily manipulated to suit our opening sequence - Minimal disturbance as booking the room would ensure that no teachers walk in	- Students may attempt to walk in whilst filming - Small and confined environment will make filming harder as camera movements will be restricted - We would have to ensure that all history teachers are fully aware that the room is in use for filming purposes
Music practice room	- Lighting can also be easily manipulated here - The coloured walls reflect our character’s persona – conflicting colours show how he often has drastically  conflicting personality changes	- We would have to entirely fill the room with our own office props which would require a large quantity to make it believable - Sounds from adjacent music rooms can be distracting and interrupt filming

evaluation - question seven

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Preliminary Brief: Film and edit a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character. A couple of lines of dialogue must then exchanged between characters & match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule should be demonstrated.

Main Task: The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes (all video and audio material must be original, produced by candidates, with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source)

There were many aspects of the preliminary task that aided in making the process of producing the final opening sequence of the main task because of prior experience. Taking the initial product into consideration, I reflected upon the strengths and weaknesses of the previous task and worked upon them in order to get a better outcome in the main task. The brief of the preliminary stated that we had to utilise shot/reverse shot, the 180-degree rule, match on action as well as have characters exchanging dialogue. Because of having to ensure we showed an understanding of those things, the preliminary task acted as a foundation to build skills that were then honed in on for the main task. The knowledge we gained from the preliminary task was essential, because without it we would have spent more time trying to get accustomed to the equipment rather than making our open sequence creative and of a high, professional standard.

PRE-PRODUCTION:
For the preliminary task, the pre-production was minimal in comparison to the main task due to the restrictive time that was allocated to complete the whole production. However, I still learnt some of the essentials of pre-production that consisted of creating a storyboard, dialogue script, shooting schedule and location recce. The storyboard was redrafted twice and had a large influence on the outcome of the work as it summarised the concept of our sequence and ensured that all shots were carefully planned in correspondence to the script of dialogue that had to be exchanged. The storyboard was useful as it ensured that the whole group was envisioning the same outcome, as well as being a visual reference of our shots so we could manage our time efficiently whilst shooting as we would be aware of what shots to film. For our preliminary, we kept the storyboard idea simple and concise whilst still fulfilling the brief, whereas for the opening sequence the brief had a much wider requirement so we were required to think creatively and fully flesh out an entire film idea. The preliminary helped make this easier as we were already accustomed to pre-producing a simple idea, so the pre-production for the main opening sequence wasn't much harder. The shooting schedule and location recce for the preliminary had been quite brief, although for the opening sequence we had to go into a lot more thorough detail as there were a lot more shots and we were filming on a location other than the media studio, so the location recce had to ensure that it was an appropriate and convenient environment to film in. For the main task we also had to include a treatment and mood boards, which we hadn't done for the preliminary. This meant that planning for the main task was a lot more complicated as there were more things to do, as well as ensuring that they were more detailed than the preliminary. Due to experience in the preliminary however, as a group we managed to manage our time well by delegating smaller tasks to individuals once we were all sure we had the same vision. Overall, pre-production for the preliminary made us well aware of what planning elements were necessary before filming, and this was useful for the main task to save time as we knew what to do.

PRODUCTION:
During the preliminary task, when we were filming we had the issue of disruptive sound and intrusions of people into the room which interrupted filming. We were able to overcome this by reshooting, however the time constraints of the main task meant that this was not practical and we had to make do with the shots we had. However, for the main task we ensured the we limited the initial problems of disruptions by booking the room we wanted to film in, as well as filming after school so that the chance of anyone walking through corridors was less likely, which we had learnt from the scenes shot in the corridors from the preliminary task, as we had to reshoot after school and found it was much easier. The preliminary task allowed us to learn how to avoid these problems, which was useful for the main task as it meant the mistakes were less likely to occur again, which would have happened had we done the main task straight away.
The shooting schedule for the main task was a lot more thorough than the preliminary's, which allowed us to manage our time well. During the shooting of the preliminary we were unaware of how long it would take to film each shot, but the experience allowed us to learn and implement that knowledge for our main task shooting schedule and ensure that we left an appropriate amount of time to shoot each shot. This also allowed us to have extra time to experiment with shots and attempt to experiment with shot types we hadn't included on our storyboard.
During the preliminary, we had managed time by allocating various roles to group members throughout the production. My previous experience as the cameraperson during the preliminary taught me how to comfortably set up and handle the equipment, which was beneficial during the filming of the opening sequence as we didn't have to spend any time attempting to familiarise ourselves with the equipment.

POST-PRODUCTION:
The aim of the preliminary task was to simply fulfill the brief and ensure we knew the basics of filming and editing to create something that was coherent. Using the editing software was a dramatically new experience as it was something I had never used before, so the preliminary task was useful in developing editing skills. It was harder than anticipated, and I believe that had we not done the preliminary it would have been harder to edit the opening sequence. For the preliminary we were required to edit our shots into the correct order on the timeline, and we also experimented with some effects such as dip to black and black and white effect. This helped with the main task as we then knew what most of the effects were used for, so if we were certain we wanted to implement a particular effect we didn't have to experiment as we already had the knowledge. One of the main problems during the editing of the preliminary was that when the group was not entirely present, certain members might have been unhappy with the editing that another person might have done, so in order to reduce this conflict during the editing of the opening sequence we ensured that whenever it was being edited most of the group was present. For our preliminary task, we didn't recieve feedback as to how to make our work better, but for our main task we ensured that we did. To avoid overlooking small things that may not have been noticeable to ourselves, we asked for feedback from our peers as well as our teacher. By our classmates we were told that the sound was appropriate and implemented in a good way to create suspense, however the some of the shots weren't transitioning from one another entirely smoothly, which disrupted the sequence. However, the only way we could have amended this was by reshooting, which we didn't have time for so in the future I will ensure that we take a number of good shots as well as extra shots in case original ones aren't fitting.