baska's thriller evaluation

Our thriller idea was very simple, it’d be 2 people having a conversation and between them would be table hence the ransom idea came to thought. I decided to be a body guard as this would be more conventional as Maria was a female boss. Dainai played the role of the person would needed to pay the ransom, she was a good actor and seemed like the fish out of water character. The theme was ‘triad’. very oriental and serious. It worked out as 2 of the members of the group was oriental. Taminah was the camera woman however we also tried experimenting with her in Dainai’s role; this didn’t work out so we stuck to the original lay out. Our practise film showed that Dainai was a better actress also her ethnicity didn’t really match the thriller genre. Dainai wasn’t experienced with a camera as well so these were very important factors. Maria dressed womanly and I in a black suit, conventional dress of triads. Dainai wore what ever she liked as she would be playing a civilian.


(rush hour 3) this is a similar scene to ours; dark , hidden, triads in suits, sat on a table
The subtitles in the video is Spanish because the movie was the Spanish version.

Next on the agenda was to find a setting, before we had found a empty classroom however we needed somewhere more dark and mysterious to provide a more tense mood. My friend owned a Chinese restaurant in Hackney so I found that we could use the basement which was perfect for many reasons. Firstly it was dark ( we took out a few of the light bulbs); the convention suited the genre; the props in the background was all boxes with Chinese writings on them. Lastly it was more private so we had all the time in the world to do our thriller. We set out the table and 2 chairs, then rearranged a few of the props in the background and there we had our setting, characters and plotline. (the layout of the chairs and table made it easier for us to keep to the 180 degree rule). It seemed simple enough till we found a few factors which we hadn’t thought of.

This misce on scene shows the basic layout however the sign on the right hand side is completely out of film, its not meant to be there as its for the classroom, amateur mistake however we took this into consideration next time we shot the film. Props in the background were moved or removed to fit the scene.

There wasn’t a lot to say in the script but the giggles came in every time Maria spoke in another language. Taminah had incorrectly angled the shots, there was too many shots in which we had experimented with and none that actually worked. For example there was a over the shoulder shot in which Dainai was portrayed from a high angle to make her look vunerable however there was too much space on the left side which showed the stairs compared to the right side which was nearly over-lapping Dainai, this was jus one of the mistakes. In the end we had a whole load of shots that didn’t look so great. After the not so great shooting we decided to go china town to make a few establishing shots to make it seem as if we were in the area even thought we was far from it; things like the people, decoration (luckily it was Chinese new year during the time we was shooting). In the end we had so many great shots for china town that most of the thriller was to build up the atmosphere and tension. We had so many great ideas and shots for the establishing shot which eventually took up most of the film and that we concentrated on very few but important shots for the basement scenes. This way we wouldn’t be wasting time shooting again and again in the restaurant.

The target audience of our film would be the same target audience of Jackie Chan films and gangster films as it fits those genres. 17- 23 year old males who are working class most likely blue collar. The violence and mystery would appeal more to them. This isn’t to say that Maria our leading actress wouldn’t attract females who are interested in gang business or basically being a leader, boss or powerful woman.

Triads mean Chinese mafia. They’re a group of people mainly Chinese men who have been around for centuries and they work in the underworld, rules to them don’t apply for normal people so its completely natural for ransoms to happen. Its business but at a more darker level. My character is the stereotypical view of a triad, tough oriental in a black suit. Triads sometimes have women in their gangs but those women are cold and strong what they lack in physical strength shows in their personality. Dainai is the non- oriental who gets into trouble with the triads and those are the representations which occur in our film.

The soundtrack was the next important objective. The beat needed to be Chinese or Japanese. We found a few beats and Dainai did an excellent job of mixing up the beats together to make something more unique, something that suited the actions and shots in the thriller.
We did the thriller twice, for many reasons. Firstly we realized that there wasn’t enough shots to edit with. Secondly the shots weren’t as good as we thought and lastly we knew that we could do so much better thus we went out and did it all over again. I wore a suit instead of a jacket, and Dainai changed jackets to look more womanly than commando. We smoothened out all the shots and made sure the angles were right; the acting was realistic and that we didn’t have any random camera shakes or blurs. Second time we did the thriller did it quicker and a lot more successfully.

We didn’t have much time to edit, however with the stress and anxiety we worked harder and more together than we had before. Like everybody else in media the last day on Friday was the only chance to finish it off. We knew we’d get it finished it was just the matter whether or not it’ll be good enough. In the end after all the work it looks brilliant, and came out better than we could’ve planned, because we did so many pilot thrillers there isn’t any room for improvement as we already discovered our flaws. We could’ve probably finished the whole thriller a lot more quickly but we decided to just take our time and make sure we didn’t do anything silly.
CHINESE RANSOM - http://www.thriller08group41.blogspot.com/