Influences For Setting

We have used a variety of themes, props and costume from other thriller films to insure that our opening sequence is as good as it can be and our audience are going to enjoy it. By doing this, our thriller opening scene looks more professional and more people are going to want to watch it. Firstly, we used the coast as one of our two main settings which is surprisingly common in thriller films. For example, in Inception, the main protagonist washes up on the beach out of no where showing how the ocean is mysterious and uncontrollable. Also, it shows the edge of land and if you look out to sea, you can see nothing. This links to how it is mysterious but it could be argued that the ocean is a force out of our control and it cannot be tamed. Another reason we used the coast was because it is common in thrillers to have a dead body wash up on the beach and we attempted to replicate part of this by having our victim thrown into the sea.

Another film which uses the ocean as a main setting is Shutter Island but this is due to it enclosing the characters and trapping them onto the island with no escape. The high cliffs and large waves are seen with long shots out to sea showing how there is no escape and no life around. By showing the waves lapping over the camera and it then dipping under waves, our audience feel the same entrapment as the camera angle could be a POV of the victim drowning. Also, a long shot pans across the beach showing the high cliffs and this makes the audience feel scared as they are much taller than the characters, trapping them in with no escape due to the sea being on one side and the cliffs being on the other.

The last thriller film which encouraged us to use the coast and mainly the sea as a setting was the film Jaws, made in 1975. Basing parts of our thriller around older, classic thrillers widens our audience and classic thrillers such as Jaws and Psycho contain very different, simplified themes compared to the modern thriller films. Also, they are filmed in a very different way which is interesting as it allows the audience to compare these films of different times. In Jaws, the antagonist is a shark which is non-stereotypical yet works very well as you never really fully see it yet the audience can sense its presence due to factors such as sound and lighting. But more specifically, they have used the ocean as a main theme as the antagonist is hidden in it linking to how there are hidden dangers and evil things lurking below the surface. In our thriller, we have attempted to give the ocean connotations of mystery and incredible power as the victim is drowning on show to the audience who can do nothing about it. One of the scenes in Jaws shows loads of children running out of the sea as someone has been bitten by a shark. The audience feel the urge to help all of the struggling children who could die however it is physically possible.