Thriller Evaluation

This is the final draft of my thriller evaluation.

Thriller Evaluation

1. Our thriller film, “Faye”, uses a variety of different references to other thriller films. The first shot you see is of our main character, a femme fatale, Faye, putting on some heavy makeup. This identifies her as a femme fatale, and is inspired by Marion Crane in Psycho by Hitchcock. She is an easily recognisable femme fatale, as she has lots short skirts, quite heavy makeup, and a beret. These mask her identity and make her harder to recognise.. We have used a lot of close ups or Faye’s makeup being put on in our thriller to emphasise her deviance as a femme fatale. This is similar to Marion Crane putting her make up on before running away at the start of Psycho. Faye seems to be a character that doesn’t care what happens, or who she hurts as long as she looks nice. She is quite laid back and casual about everything. Some similar femmes fatales in film noir such as Greta Garbo in ‘Mata Hari’ and Lauren Bacall in ‘The Big Sleep’ act and dress like this. This may be because they want to hide their identity, whilst their glamorous appearance and independence makes them into iconic characters who scorn convention.

2. We set our thriller mainly in the narrow streets behind Bryony’s house. This was empty and provided us with a lot of interesting and threatening shadows, which were emphasised by some chiaroscuro lighting, provided by hand lamps and mobile phone lights. This was meant to create large distorted shadows, similar to the Third Man, though this didn’t really work as our lighting wasn’t near powerful enough and we didn’t have the space to create shadows that climb up large buildings.

3. In the end we only really used non diagetic sound from our soundtrack, Basin Street Blues by Ella Fitzgerald. We used this soundtrack as it is jazzy and sounds like the kind of lifestyle Faye would live. It’s also called Basin Street Blues, which sounds glamorous and slightly sleazy injecting the mise-en-scene with a seductive quality. We can also imagine Faye listening to this as she is applying her makeup, almost as if she hasn’t a care in the world. Our diagetic sound didn’t seem necessary as you can only hear a few taps and footsteps. These sounded far too contrived and unimportant. We did have some powerful heavy breathing noises and screaming sounds, although they didn’t fit in with our final cut.

4. In our film we have 3 characters, in which 2 are femme fatales. The “victim” character is a man, thus subverting the strong man stereotype and almost reversing the roles of men and women. All our characters are meant to be the same sort of age, young adults. We wanted this age as young adults are young and energetic, but still have enough sense to plan a crime well. Our male character is represented as vulnerable as he seems dead at the start of the film, an idea inspired by “The Third Man” as Harry Lime is said to be dead but has just lied to escape the law, though we never see this.

5. I think our thriller would only be a YouTube film. It hasn’t got any special CGI’s or effects, so it wouldn’t attract many technology craving film fans. It would probably be given the classification of 15. It has some quite horrific images like Faye being suffocated by a bag, and there is some blood. It has no famous actors and little CGI’s. This is because we haven’t got any funding for this film. If we had a grant for this film, we could use many special effects and buy more actors. This would create a much larger audience. Though, as the film “Slumdog Millionaire” had no famous actors in and didn’t rely on special effects but still won 8 Oscars, this proves that actors and CGI’s don’t make a film popular all the time.

6. This sort of film, according to our questionnaires and film research generally should appeal to younger men, but not particularly teenagers. These people are old enough to understand the seriousness and dramatics of the film, such as thinking about the enigma at the end of our film, though they aren’t young enough to demand incredible high technologies. Generally men watch thriller films more than women. This may be because there is often a lot of violence and crime, which women don’t seem to enjoy as much, though we have to female characters as lead roles in our film, so female audience members may be attracted to that. Older men and women will probably enjoy this film too; many thriller films were set or made in the mid 20th century. They are often black and white, and have similar characters and plots. The older generations may be more used to seeing thriller films like this, and wouldn’t demand special effects as much.

7. We have attracted our audience by studying the results of our questionnaire. We found out that most of the people we surveyed preferred crime thrillers to anything else. We had already decided this was what we wanted to do, so these results almost confirmed that. Our audience had overall preferred a male lead role in thrillers. Our idea wouldn’t have worked without the classic Femmes Fatales as lead roles, so we had to overlook this result. When asked which thriller films our audience liked in the past, the same 2 kept coming up, “Psycho” and “the Third Man”. So we regularly tried to refer back to them in Faye.

8. From using the technologies we have, we’ve learned to use more powerful lighting to shoot our film; we had some great shots that had to be discarded due to the lack of lighting. We learned about camera techniques and options, such as black and white picture, just by playing around with different camera modes and functions. Black and white I believe is quite a prominent feature in a thriller film, it makes the film look more surreal and distorted. In many we’ve studied, such as the Third Man and Psycho, there has been black and white picture. In our thriller, we really wanted to emphasise the bold colours of Faye’s makeup, so we kept the colour in. When using our editing software we have not only learned how to primarily edit a film, but new effects such as a cross fade, which we repeatedly used in our final cut, as it makes our shots look more sequential. Our experimentation with the camera and editing software was purely using trial and error, at first we were beginners to this sort of technology, and so didn’t know anything about them, but after seeing what our options were, we soon worked out what effects worked best. My favourite aspect of the editing effects we’ve used is a technique called ghosting. It basically leaves an opaque version of the last few frames in the shot as something moves, making everything look distorted. We used this in a close up of Faye’s eyes, and the effect really emphasises how nervously she is looking round. I’ve also learnt how to use a blog. As all of our coursework had to be put on a blog, which none of us had done before. Weve learnt to create the blog, edit posts and add labels, which has been very useful for the organisation of our thriller.
9. When looking back at our preliminary task, we have learnt that it’s not always best to have dialogue, as it can often go wrong and waste time, so we’ve decided to have no speech in our thriller. We believe that having no speech would make the audience concentrate more on the visual elements, such as the close ups of expressions on our actors’ faces. We learnt how important it is to have clean cut shots, and have the right transitions between them. I think all of our shots have worked very well, though as our idea changed a day before filming had to be finished. This forced us to experiment more and use less obvious lighting. In the future, we’ve learnt that we would spend more time getting everything planned and set.

Our Soundtrack

Below is a video which includes our chosen soundtrack song. It took ages trying to find a song that really fits with the film itself and was especially difficult finding a song old enough. We played through tons of classical music, such as the song from Madame Butterfly, and some jazz and ended up with this. The song itself is mainly linked to our thriller opening via lyrics. Even though at first you wouldn't expect to hear anything quite like this when watching, if you concentrate on the lyrics they tell a story which is easily related to Faye. One line in particular - "We'll take a boat to the land of dreams..." - emphasises that this is Fayes dreaming song, and the spirit which the song expresses is the life she is aiming for.
Some people immediately think the song is too happy for the film, as we found in our feedback, but it is purposely made to be ironic. So overall i am pleased with the song but it would have been good to experiment with many more or maybe more than one. Also adding diagetic together to see what kind of effects could be given.

Audience profile

The audience for our thriller film would be young adults, at student age, 16-25. This is because of the younger cast members, and the gripping storyline. It would be certified as a 15 due to the reference to identity theft, and the violence present in the opening scene. We can conduct from our surveys would attract both genders from our audience as the majority surveyed would rather have the female lead role, which we have included. Our film is likely to appeal to students due to the action in the opening scene, yet could also appeal to those higher up on the demographic model and to older viewers, due to the reference to classic films like Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho'. Other films that may appeal to our audience could be those like 'Jackie Brown' - Quentin Tarantino, and several of his other films. This is because our film was inspired by his directing, with the use of location and femme-fatales.
Our film would attract an audience who enjoy tv programmes, such as The Bill, with the reference to identity theft and a murder. Our film could continue into being a Crime type thriller, a film proved to be favoured by some from our surveys.

Femmes Fatales

Femmes Fatales are female characters, who main characters often fall in love with, but later find out they aren't who they think, and lead to the downfall of the main characters. In the end of a film, a femme fatale is often either tamed, turned out to be good after all, or killed off.

"A femme fatale is an alluring and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetypal character of literature and art. Her ability to entrance and hypnotize her male victim was in the earliest stories seen as being literally supernatural, hence the most prosaic femme fatale today is still described as having a power akin to an enchantress, vampire, female monster or demon.

The phrase is French for "deadly woman". A femme fatale tries to achieve her hidden purpose by using feminine wiles such as beauty, charm, and sexual allure. Typically, she is exceptionally well-endowed with these qualities. In some situations, she uses lying or coercion rather than charm. She may also be (or imply to be) a victim, caught in a situation from which she cannot escape; The Lady from Shanghai (a 1948 film noir) giving one such example. Her characteristic weapon, if needed, is frequently poison, which also serves as a metaphor for her charms.

Although typically villainous, femmes fatales have also appeared as antiheroines in some stories, and some even repent and become heroines by the end of the tale. In social life, the femme fatale tortures her lover in an asymmetrical relationship, denying confirmation of her affection. She usually drives him to the point of obsession and exhaustion so that he is incapable of making rational decisions."

Examples of Femmes Fatales


This is Lauren Bacall. She was a femme fatale in 'The Big Sleep'



This is Greta Garbo - best known for her role in 'Mata Hari'.



Lana Turner - Best known for her role in 'The Postman always rings twice'.

Our thriller opening. No soundtrack

Mock Essay

This is my mock essay for media. I know i could have done better in this exam. I didnt prepare for it well enough.