Animatic

My animatic took me forever to draw out so in the end I just traced some of the storyboard pictures but it really helped me get a sense of what my final thriller opening would look like and an idea of the pace needed.  I didn't include any of the credits or title which would have been a better idea!

Storyboard

Creating the storyboard really gave me a sense of what the thriller could be like but there were a lot of shots here and I sensed that my opening will be too long if I used every single one, especially as I still need the credits.

Risk assessment

I used a real risk assessment form, from Riverside Studios.

Audience research

To do the audience research I used the i-Sight on my Macbook to record the answers. The people I asked were representative of males and females aged 15 to 50, which is the target audience for thrillers.

Most of the audience said they like thrillers but weren't sure on the difference between a thriller and a horror. They mostly all said that suspense and the plot were the most important parts of a thriller. The audience I interviewed would also rather watch it at home instead of the cinema, mainly out of embarrassment as no-one wants to scream (as they can be scary) in the middle of the cinema. The majority of the audience said that they had watched it with someone else, and the younger audience often watched them at a sleepover or when they were staying with another friend.

Death shots

These are the shots that I took to go in my thriller opening but I did have too many so I'll need to cut down on some of them. I want to indicate they have been moved by the killer so I need more than one location for each 'body' but some of the actors were used too many times and some didn't quite look dead enough! The photo of the dead bird may not be used but I made the most of coming across it as it could add further to unsettling the audience.

Stills for Title Sequence

These are the stills I plan to use in the opening title sequence, I won't use all of them because it will make the sequence too long but the normality of the images will contrast with the unatural world of the dead children and the fact there are no people in the pictures will suggest the real isolation.