Filming date = 26/01/17.

Today we've been finally told the date we will be filming our thriller - 26th of January.

I'm very happy, as it leaves us about two weeks to have everything sorted and ready for the day after we come back from the Christmas holidays. Can't wait to film!

Filmmakers against violence & the VAW.

16 Filmmakers making films about violence against women.

'Films are a powerful storytelling medium. They have the ability to influence and change the world. How someone chooses to use this medium makes all the difference. In the last few years, a myriad of fiction and non-fiction films have been made about Violence Against Women (VAW) and other women’s rights issues. Many of these films have had a positive impact in the fight against VAW as they are often a powerful vehicle for educating the viewer about issues related to VAW.'

(read the full article here: http://16days.thepixelproject.net/16-filmmakers-making-films-about-vaw-and-telling-the-right-stories/)

Examples of short thriller sequences.

In the preparation process I've researched for short thrillers to see how the tense is created in the other opening sequences.

I quite like this one - it starts in black and white and then turns to colour after the girl is attacked and wakes up - which brings a sense of relief as the audience believe it was just a nightmare. 
But then we see a blurry figure behind girl's back.

I loved this one! This thriller is a bit too long for what we have to do, but I like the idea it also have a really powerful and vengeful female villain.

This thriller has a really good tension built up and the final twist is just amazing.

Numbers about domestic abuse.

There are some awful figures I've found on the internet in the middle of my research. 

Some of them might even look fake, as you wouldn't ever believe that amount of women are suffering from abuse and rape every day.

                            

                    

                   

                   

Percentage of women ever experiencing any type of abuse (only those reported!) -  it's coming closer to half of all women living in the area in Southern parts of Africa and in South Asia.

                   

                     Percentage of women, reporting abuse in low and middle income areas.

                                     

P.S. I fully understand there is a possibility that some of the statistics are not as accurate and representative as we want them to be, but there is no physical way I can check whether they are reliable or not, apart from just comparing secondary sources to each other to see if they all agre between themselves.

Domestic violence statistics.

I've spend a bit of my free time to research into the subject of domestic violence. 

I think it's quite a useful thing to do, as I can get a better understanding of how important (or not) this particular issue is to the society nowadays. It also helped me to create a rough image of my target audience and how many people would find the topic of domestic violence interesting or at least be able to understand it.

- '1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have been victims of [some form of] physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime.' - that gives us the idea, that we might get a broad audience of people, who would find the theme illustrated in our thriller, in one way or another, close to them; however, I think younger people, like teenagers, who might not have yet experienced any long-term relationships wouldn't be interested in seeing our film, as they wouldn't associate themselves with main characters. On the other hand, teenagers may associate the story with their parents, if they've experienced domestic violence from the older members of their families.

- 'On a typical day, there are more than 20,000 phone calls placed to domestic violence hotlines nationwide.' - that statistic backs up the information from above - domestic violence IS an important issue in our society, so we would probably have a big target audience of people, who have ever experienced, seen or been told about domestic aggression. However, if somebody is really struggling through the domestic abuse from his partner, they wouldn't necessarily go to the cinema (or they might not even be allowed to), on the other hand, they might think it's just too much - experiencing abuse at home, but also seeing it on the screen during their leisure time.

 - 'Women between the ages of 18-24 are most commonly abused by an intimate partner' - that's a really interesting one! In one of my previous blogs I've predicted that our target audience will be 'female, aged 18-24', and now, after the short research I see that this type of people suffer from domestic abuse most, which is good (only) in terms of finding the right audience for our product.

- 'Domestic victimisation is correlated with a higher rate of depression and suicidal behaviour.' - also similar, to what I've already found out in the process of pre-production: domestic abuse and mental disorders really go along with each other, both for the victim, which may suffer from something like anxiety or PTSD, and the abuser, who probably has some sort of anger issues. 

Psychological depth of characters: male.

To understand the characters from our thriller better I've also looked at the male, trying to understand his reasons for aggression towards his wife. Of course, we never know the real reason why he did it and even why males in real world sometimes act aggressively towards their women, however I've read a couple of articles on that subject and here is what I've found:

- 'Some scientists say that domestic violence is a maladaptive byproduct of the husband’s inclination and tendency to guard his wife to make sure that she did not have sexual contact with other men.'

- 'Those, who use violence against their girlfriends or wives just desire to have total control over their loved ones. That's why, before they actually start using physical violence, they are often constantly phoning and text messaging the object of their affections so they know exactly what she's doing at all times, who is she meeting with and what she's wearing.'

- 'Wife-beaters are often obsessively in love with their wives, which makes them even more jealous and controlling — they just don't know the proper way to express it. They most likely grew up in a home where there was violence.'

- 'A batterer will tell himself and his girlfriend that SHE provoked the violence by looking at another guy, wearing a skirt that's too short or not cleaning up the kitchen fast enough.'

- 'Most batterers don't get the treatment they need in order to stop. They don't want help because they believe they are in the right. Furthermore, the beatings are likely to escalate over time.'

Physchological depth of characters: female.

In order to make each character in our thriller more "realistic" we have to think about their psychological depth, which acts as a reason for their actions.

Looking at the main character - a woman, a wife - I've decided to research and see what kind of mental disorders she may have, so that the audience understands her and sympathizes (or not) to her.

One of the articles I've read was on Wikipedia, and I've found it the most helpful and detailed = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorders_and_gender.

Mainly, it talks about different disorders in men and women, highlighting that domestic violence can be a cause of the mental disorder in women.

Overall, I've picked three most likely illnesses our character may suffer from:

1) Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) - is a mental disorder that can develop after a person is exposed to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, or other threats on a person's life. 

                 

2) Anxiety - is an emotion characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil, often accompanied by nervous behavior, such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints, and rumination.^[1] It is the subjectively unpleasant feelings of dread over anticipated events, such as the feeling of imminent death.^[

3) Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity or apathy that can affect a person's thoughts, behavior, feelings and sense of well-being. People with a depressed mood can feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, angry, ashamed or restless.

One-minute meeting.

Me and George have met on the weekend to discuss some of the shots in our storyboard. As a result, we had some fresh ideas to introduce to Harriet and Aidan on Monday when we've met in the classroom.

Top tips for making a good thriller.

As a part of my preparation for the shooting. I've read a couple articles about film-making and how to make an interesting tiller. 

Analysing them all, here are 10 top tips for making a good thriller film.

1) 'You need a good story' - Thrillers have to be thrilling. You have to create an intense story, with the key element - the protagonist will fall victim by someone else and be stuck in the moment of dread or be defeated. 

2) 'Write about the underdog' - Write your story from the point of view of the person with the most to lose - family, children, house - give him baggage and emotional complexity.

3) 'Multiple points of view'  - More than one point of view will allow you inside the heads of many characters, which can create more dramatic tension, irony and twists.

4) 'Show action first' - Don't start with biographical information or facts in the beginning - do it later. Show action to the audience, introduce the main hero and the main villain to catch the audience's attention. 

5) 'Establish the aims' - Early on make it clear what your villain and protagonist want - their aims and main conflict so that your audience doesn't get confused by what you show them.

6) 'Make your protagonist suffer' - The struggle between the villain and the hero should be really intense, so make your protagonist suffer - give them false hopes, grief, anxiety - your villain should look powerful and dominating in the beginning.

7) 'Your protagonist need to change' - In order to defeat the villain, the character of your protagonist needs to change - he should become stronger emotionally.

8) 'You have to keep high pace' - You mustn't allow the pace of your thriller to decrease, otherwise it will be boring. Each scene should reveal something new, use more short shot duration and fast cuts.

9) 'Show - don't tell' - Avoid the passive voice, don't narrate the story - show it! Reveal the secrets and twists through the camera work, don't write long dialogues for thrillers.

10) 'Teach us something' - Make sure your audience is thinking about something after they've walked off the cinema - something new they've found out or something new they've experienced.

Final storyboard.

After a couple of days Harriet has sent us the final storyboard, drawn by hand, which reflects out thriller outline shot by shot:

Overall, we have 23 shots to do in total. I assume we were expected to draw more, however, I feel like our thriller involves less 'shot changes' and more long shot durations, so that camera stays with characters more, without cutting from one shot to another, in which case our story board doesn't have that much shots.

Also, I think it would have been so much nicer and clearer if Harriet added color while drawing, however I realize that making a storyboard - is a lot of hard work, the main point of which is not to look nice, but be helpful for us as the cameramen and editors, because the audience will only see our thriller, not the storyboard, so I'm happy with the results we have.

Storyboard in progress.

As H - is the most artistic person in our group we've asked her to draw a story board for our thriller, as we realize how important it is. We've filled the story board sheets with the details about the shots so that it's easier for H to draw. We've been giving her those as soon as we've agreed on how should each shot look so that we keep the pace up and she was sending her work to our Messenger group in case there's anything ASAP we needed to change.

We've been discussing our storyboard shots both in class and in our Messenger group.

 At this point me, George and Aidan has filled all the required information about our shots and handed it to Harriet, so now we are waiting for her to finish drawing. 

Storyboards for famous films.

In order to get a better understanding of how story-boarding works - I've looked at some examples of storyboards for famous movies:

'Star Wars'

Storyboard Artist: Joe Johnston

'Jurassic Park'

Storyboard Artist: David Lowery

'Psycho'

Storyboard Artist: Saul Bass

'Apocalypse Now'

Storyboard Artist: Dean Tavoularis

'Gladiator'

Storyboard Artist: Sylvain Despretz

'Forrest Gump'

Storyboard Artist: Chris Bonura

'Spider-Man 2'

Storyboard Artist: Chris Buchinsky