Shutter Island Official Trailer

This is the official trailer to the thriller Shutter Island, it is a very gripping, edge of your seat film that will confuse you but make you want to keep watching and unwind the plot twist.

Thriller films over the past 50 years

 

From Russia With Love

1963

Anita

1967
 

The French Connection

1971

Jaws

1975

Alien

1979

 



The Shining

1980

First Blood

1982

 

Die Hard

1988

The Silence of the Lambs

1992

Single White Female

1992

Pulp Fiction

1994

Se7en

1995

The Sixth Sense

1999

Memento

2000

The Others

2001

Hannibal

2001

 

The Bourne Identity

2002

Collateral

2004

The Dark Knight

2008

Orphan

2009

Black Swan

2010

Chloe

2010

Shutter Island

2010

Drive

2011

Mission Impossible:- Ghost Protocol

2011

The Woman in Black

2012

Skyfall

2012

Fast and Furious 6

2013

 

Mama

2013

The Hunger Games - Catching Fire Official Trailer

This is the trailer to the thriller film Catching Fire, I really like this trailer because it is almost like an opening to the movie. It grabs the audiences attention and holds it from the beginning right through to the very end.

Questionnaire Result Analysis

We created a questionnaire to hand out in order to find out what different people find to be important in thriller openings. We included questions about how often people watch films, what sub-genre of thriller they prefer, what props they find to build tension, etc. The three of us each had ten of the questionnaires to hand out for a range of people to fill in. From looking at the results, we have learned what we think would be suitable to use in our thriller in order to create a suspenseful and professional opening.

We ensured that we gave the questionnaires to a range of ages and to both genders in order to understand what different target audiences expect from a thriller. Despite asking a range of people, we realized that each of us did end up giving questionnaires to mostly people from between 10-20. We took advantage of having more results for this age group by starting to consider using this as our target audience. We thought this was helpful because teenagers tend to be prime viewers of thriller films. We think that this may be because after being a child and watching childish movies, they want to mature and see those that are more shocking, and tense- the thriller genre is right for this. Even though we asked people who seldom watch films to people who watch them almost daily, they were mostly people that watched films often. This would give us more valuable results as they are more likely to be sure of what they believe works or does not work in thriller openings.

The first question we asked to do with thriller films was ‘What is your favorite thriller sub-genre?’. It was a closed ended question, and we gave the interviewees a large choice of thriller sub-genres to choose from, also giving an ‘Other’ box, in case we had not included their favorite. The most popular choice was ‘Psychological’, especially among teenagers, which is convenient for us as we now know what is appealing for our target audience. Because of this, we plan to create a psychological thriller opening. Other popular responses were ‘Crime’ and ‘Religion’, so we will therefore try to include aspects from these genres in our movie. This will work as these three sub-genres have similarities. For example, they are related with the mind and death/murder.

For the next two questions we asked them to give reasons why their chosen sub-genre was their favorite, and to name their favorite of this sub-genre. The reasons people liked psychological were: ‘I love the tension of a psychological’; ‘they have a lot of plot twists making it impossible to guess the ending’ ‘I find them exciting because they are eerie to watch’. From this, we learnt some aspects that would be important to include. For example, we could include a plot twist which in turn would create tension, like the death of who we think is the main character.  Eeriness is of obvious importance, and making the opening eerie will be one of our primary goals.  

The next question was about what techniques are best to create tension. We gave suggestions, and the individuals would tick which ones they think were most important. The three options to get the most ticks were: ‘Little/no dialogue’, ‘Tense music’ and ‘One/two main characters’. These options all work together very well; by having very little dialogue the tense music will be focused on more. Also, having fewer characters makes sense because if there are only one or two people, there won’t be much talking.

‘What gender do you expect the antagonist to be in a thriller film?’ and ‘What gender do you expect the protagonist to be in a thriller film?’  were our next two questions. We gave the option ‘Doesn't concern me’ as well as ‘Male’ and ‘Female’. For both questions, the majority of people said that they weren't concerned by the gender of these characters. After finding this we chose to use a female as the protagonist, because it is a popular convention of thrillers to have a female victim. We have also decided that the gender of the antagonist does not have to be revealed in the opening of the thriller, because this is something that would be revealed later on. It would build tension to keep the identity of the villain a secret. 

The last question in our survey was ‘Which props do you think will help to create tension in the opening of a thriller?’ The three most popular options were: ‘Gun’, ‘Victorian Doll’ and ‘Disturbing images’. The gun and disturbing images will work well together, because shooting someone can create a disturbing image; blood and/or a dead body. The Victorian doll was an idea that we thought would bring a strange atmosphere because it is an old-fashioned object. It is quite sinister, because it is supposed to be a pleasant toy for children to play with, but we plan to give it a darker undertone by implying that it could be responsible for the death of a character.

Questionnaire

1. How old are you? (circle one)
10-20   21-30   31-40   41-50   51-60   60+

2. What gender are you? (circle one)
Male   Female

3. On average how often do you watch films? (circle one)
Never   Rarely   Sometimes   Often   Daily

4. What is your favourite type of thriller sub-genre? (circle one)
Psychological   Action   Crime   Religious   Conspiracy
Disaster   Legal   Medical   Gangster   Mystery   Political
Romantic   Spy   Supernatural   Sci-Fi   Dystopian   Other

5. Why?

……………………………………………………

6. From your answer to question 4, what is your favourite film of this sub-genre?

...............................................................................

7. From the following options, which do you think are the most important in a thriller opening? (Circle as many as necessary)
Little/no dialogue   Tense music   Dark lighting   Confusing plot  
One/two main characters   Narration   Establishing shots of Location

8. In a thriller film what gender do you expect the antagonist to be?

Male  Female   Doesn’t concern me

9. In a thriller film what gender do you expect the protagonist to be?

Male   Female  Doesn’t concern me

10. What props do you think would help create a tension in a thriller opening? (Cicle as many as necessary)

Knife   Gun   Police car   Victorian doll   Mask
Newspaper clipping   Blood   Holy text   Disturbing images
Axe   Alcohol   Drugs   Dead body   Body parts

Story Board for our Thriller Film