For mystery thriller films we are going to look at director Christopher Nolan , a British-American director and screenwriter known for the , The Dark Knight trilogy , Memento and Inception.
Christopher Nolan is known for doing very unique suspense building , mystery thriller films and being very successful at it , he is regarded as a post-modern filmmaker who is heavily influenced by film noir from the 1940s and 50s with the use of black and white , low-key lighting , his storytelling techniques include flashbacks , shifting points of view and unreliable narrators. Nolan is best known for his philosophical and sociological ways of approaching film , he explores issues like the nature of memory and personal identity , he is best known for experimenting with very unique and twisted ideas with temporal shifts , solipsistic perspectives and non-linear storytelling. A reason for choosing Chris Nolan as a director to focus on is because he has been credited for directing 10 films which are all massive hits , most received Oscars or were nominated and they all grossed millions worldwide.
Top 10 Mystery Thrillers at the Box Office
Looking at the top 10 here by box office rating , the number 1 is a very old film coming out in 1999 , but still with the highest gross. This shows the lack of quality mystery thriller films recently not living up to the standards of previous successful mystery thriller films as in the last 5 years from 2010 , the only films on this list are Gone Girl , Inception and the second Sherlock Holmes movie , this may be due to the worldwide success of old films that appealed globally and not to one particular audience. Lastly the only film to be a solely Mystery Thriller is The Da Vinci Code , this is because for films to appeal to a wider audience they implement different sub-genres , for example Rush hour which is mainlu an Action comedy but has elements of crime , mystery and thriller to make it more appealling to everyone.
Analysis of film openings:
Conclusion:
After analysing four film opening all being in the thriller genre mainly being linked to mystery as this is sub-genre of thriller we are going to do. All film openings gave me ideas for what I want to add in my film opening , with the use of disturbing and creepy soundtracks in Shutter Island and the use of disturbed characters in Insomnia. There is a lot of comparison between the four films as they all dont give too much away early on which i believe is the philosophy of a mystery thriller film opening as it is supposed to intreggue an audience and draw them in. The use of low key lighting in Shutter Island is something i want to use as i believe it fits the thriller genre perfectly. All of the film openings have an intregguing soundtrack but primal Fear which uses dialogue and the sound of a choir , however i would definetly like to include a soundtrack which creates effect and has a very dark tone to it which scares an audience , the use of characters is effective in all the film openings I analysed as some films such as Se7en another mystery thriller doesnt use characters but shots of different disturbing images , something like this catches my eye but i would like to introduce characters , especially one character but not revealling themselves to build suspense.
Audience Research
For our film , I am going to look at a potential target audience and analyse different audiences who suit our film genre to then create surveys and questionnaires to gather results in order to create charts to visibly see results in a clearer way.
Survey questions:
In our survey we collected 10 questionnaires , 5 male and 5 female to get an all round perspective with both genders and to ensure there is no gender bias , for questions asking for male or female answers having an equal amount for both genders makes sure the results aren't bias towards a particular sex , the survey contains 6 questions and some people answered to more than one selection so we added them also , this is the reason for some charts having 10 and some having 11 results , lastly the people who completed our surveys aged from 16 to 19.
From the results here we clearly see that thriller is peoples favoured genre in the people we gave questionnaires to , and it is our chosen genre , but action and adventure is also quite high so we may implement this into our film opening also , moreover we where thinking of adding a horror element to our film but it is very unpopular looking at the results but it still may be added int our film.
In my opinion I believe the main audience for a thriller film is males but that doesn't mean thrillers don't appeal to females , it just has a more predominant male audience , our film opening wont be targeted at any particular audience as thriller appeals to both audiences.
In this question we got answers of mainly high budget films like The Dark Knight , Taken and Phonebooth which are all mainstream and grossed millions worldwide , I knew this would be the result as films in cinemas are highly grossed and classed as mainstream , indie films I didnt expect to see as people at the age group of teenagers arent familiar with indie films that target niche audiences but watch the typical action , adventure films which we found in our survey.
After recording our results in graphic form , we before hand knew that we were targeting an age group of 18 to early 20s and we can now look at a type of audience.
The four groups highlighted are the groups we believe thriller films appeal to most and especially our thriller which is a mystery , firstly looking at stylers which is a creative group as styling needs some sort of creativity and this is the type of audience we would like to appeal to , secondly creatives which has creative in the name , is an obvious target audience for our film as I believe being creative makes you want to watch a creative and unique film and not the usual comedy and action movies. Also Indie scenesters , we are targeting as being individual and unique also brings a lot of flair and creativity a lot of the time , so people like this definitely attract our interest as people with this independence , we believe would enjoy a thriller over the typical comedy and action movies and so on. Lastly trendies is a good target audience as they are unique and creative in setting trends , but less if following trends but we believe they still fit our genre of film.
Research into existing titles:
In the opening sequence to Memento , it is different already to the other two as it starts with the title of the film rather than looking at production companies and the cast , I have decided to end with the title of the film as i believe it creates a better lasting effect. Also the text here is centered , differing to the titles in Se7en , also in this case there is a background image which I believe is effective but I believe the screen should be blank to make the viewers focus on the title. The blue colour I believe is unusual but I would prefer a different colour than white or black , however the blue colour connotes a relaxed approach to the film as blue is referred to as relaxing. The font size is average as it isnt big enough to take away the attention from the background image but isnt too small in not getting any attention.
The title for Inception I believe again has a very blank background which is a typical convention for mystery thrillers , connoting the mysterious approach of not giving too much away to an audience , however the red font shows a very disturbing death feel to the shot as red connotes blood and death. The placement again is central and the size is relatively large compared to the others to create an effect of it being important.
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