Themes
Our thriller features numerous types of themes especially that of film noir. For instance, one of the major characteristics of our thriller narrative is vengeance - a son seeks revenge for the murder of his father which then leads to other major themes: betrayal, as he is willing to betray his lover to succeed, and moral ambiguity, as he is in-training to be a lawyer the line between right and wrong should be clear to him but in the underworld of crime and corruption what I right and what is wrong?
There is also the essential element of the femme fatale; the niece of a crime lord who hides her true motives and uses her beauty to manipulate men to seek her own revenge - so this shows the theme of women’s sexuality being dangerous and destructive and eventually leading to her and the protagonist‘s downfall. Another important supplementary theme is: the struggle of the protagonists, to survive in the deceitful world of crime where everyone strives for power or retribution, but ultimately failing in the end.
Style
Because of the themes of our thriller mainly being that of film noir we have incorporated this into the style of our filming and the mise-en-scene of the opening. As film noirs are mostly shot in gloomy, dark conditions we have edited our thriller so that it is in black and white; also this effect makes the audience focus on the sinister and sadistic side to human nature. Various low angle shots have been featuring in the opening such as: the building scenes which gives a sense of dominance and threat to the audience. Streetlights shining down onto the rain lashed road demonstrates the use of chiaroscuro lighting, a characteristic of film noir and the rain lashed road giving off the sagacity of urbanisation. We aim to combine the classically dark, sinister style of film noir with the realistically modern municipal styles.
Subgenres
In our thriller we are going to use the genre of gangster/mafia and the genre of film noir together as we have features of both in our opening.
Influences
Many characteristics of our narrative are similar to that of The Godfather (1972) and Goodfellas (1990) as we have taken their themes as inspiration for our own thriller’s gloomy underworld of crime, corruption and the fact that the main protagonist switch from one person to another. (Our intention is for the audience to realise that they can not relate to any main character because of their immorality and corrupt lifestyles).
Chinatown (1974) has also been influential in terms of the narrative because the way in which the film is portrayed is how we want our thriller to be portrayed: we want to be ‘one step in front’ of the audience at all times and for them to be caught up in the many twists and turns.
The thriller element in Layer Cake (2004) deserves credit in the sense that the female lead was the male protagonist’s downfall - this was used as part of our narrative.
With the style of filming Taxi Driver (1976) gave us the idea of shooting some of the opening sequences of a road - this conveys consistency in out thriller and makes the film more interesting.
The foundation of our thriller originated from the story of Romeo and Juliet and is present in the narrative as two of the main character’s fake love affair - this was only used because we wanted to use Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet of Romeo and Juliet as our opening soundtrack (look at soundtrack of thriller opening for more explicit information).
No comments:
Post a Comment