As I said in the earlier post, the conditions for the core module are Research and consider how you would make a new innovative media production within this genre, Develop your idea into a treatment and Prepare a Pitch for your project. The best pitch will then be taken forward and produced over the first few weeks of term.
Honestly, I have struggled with the very first step of this plan that we have been given. I know I am only a student, and am not a seasoned short film writer, but I have doing a lot of writing work recently and I have pretty much set myself into a way of working.
I can’t say that at any point in time I suddenly think “Oh man I really want to make a Horror movie“, I don’t see how it can work like that. If I have an idea, I will write the story. I will not think of a set of rules, conventions and guidelines where a story needs to be told and then add my story into this mould. I do it the other way around, I will think of a story I want to tell and then decide the way I want to tell it. Thinking of a way to tell a story before you have anything to tell doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t want to sound like a pretentious dick, but this is just the way I have started to develop and do things. I’m not saying it’s the right way and I’m not saying it’s the wrong way, I’m just saying it’s how I do it.
Now that has been established. I have decided to write a short film which I thought that would work well within the Psychological Thriller genre. Although this is a sub-genre within the Thriller genre, I thought it was important to say I have chosen this sub-genre, as from what I understand from many Psychological Thriller’s that I have seen, the films are not simply Thriller’s but take many aspects from Horror films as well, they feel like more of a mixture of the two.
The wiki definition of Psychological Thriller is: a specific sub-genre of the broad ranged thriller with heavy focus on the unstable emotional states of characters, in combination with mystery and thriller. However, it often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre, along with the typical traits of the thriller genre. In addition to drama and mystery, many psychological thrillers contain elements of, and often overlap with, the horror genre, particularly psychological horror.
This definition pretty much says what I was saying before, the genres of Horror and Thriller overlap in this sub-genre and it is a very fine set of rules which keep it from crossing over into a different sub genre.
Now that I have decided which genre my story will fall into, I have decided to do a very short review/analysis of a few films within the genre.
I am going to avoid spoilers for all the films I am writing a little something about, but at some points it may be impossible, so I urge you to not read the ones that you haven’t seen if you intend to watch them.
Psycho (1960)
As everyone know’s Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is a genuinely ground breaking piece of cinema. Showing a woman having an affair and suggesting nudity, watching her shower in the 1960’s? Alfred man; you crazy. Without attempting to ruin anything for anyone who hasn’t seen it, (And I do not know why you haven’t seen a classic film that has been out for 50 years, there’s no real excuse) this film is massively acclaimed among fans and critics to have the best mid-plot twist of all time, and to be honest, I agree. I have never seen another film where the nature, tone and plot of the film change COMPLETELY after the first 20 minutes. If you read the wiki definition for the Psychological Thriller genre, it sounds as if you are just reading an evaluation of this movie, nothing completely defines the genre more than this. A common theme in this genre is to have a big twist, an end game that completely just throws the audience into disbelief. Psycho throws the audience off guard with the mid-plot twist and seemingly showing the audience the answer to the mystery the characters are trying to solve throughout, but right at the end you are hammered with disbelief as an even bigger twist unveils. Psycho is a shocking and dark film for the era, and the film still stands up today as one of the greats, but I feel that a modern audience expect just a bit more mystery and characters that you can’t figure out, this is something I need to think about and work on.
The Shining (1980)
Whatever anyone says, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is always going to be the scariest film of all time in my eyes. As I stated in the previous post, the horror in this film, for me, comes from the ‘I actually really don’t understand what the hell is going on’ parts, which are strangely enough the parts when nothing really does happens. Again, as I said before, the twins flashing on the screen soaked in blood, meh, not scary, but the moments that just don’t seem to make any logical sense? A bear giving a man in a suit a naughty act of naughtiness in a room in a supposedly empty hotel, followed by them looking directly at the camera? What? That doesn’t make sense at all, but jesus christ does it make me cry like a 4-year-old whenever I see it. The Shining counts a lot more on the mental collapse of its main character, rather than establishing characters that are immediately mentally unstable. I think watching a character’s mental state completely collapse and force them to do insane things they would have never done before is a very entertaining in a film, but I do have to remember that I am making a short film, and I will not have a lot of time to establish characters, never mind destroy them. I will have to think about ways that I can show a change in emotional state in such a short amount of time when creating my film. Also, there is a twist of the end of the film that is just so god damn confusing, I honestly think Kubrick put it in just to troll his audience completely, If you’ve seen the film, I am obviously on about the picture, and if you understand it, then… just… what.
Misery (1990)
__Misery(1).jpg "Misery Poster")
I would say Misery is probably the film where you can sympathise with a character the most, it allows you to really feel like you’re the one being tortured by an over-adoring fan. Misery is an interesting film, unlike many films within the genre, there are no twists and turns, just one man finding himself in a very unfortunate circumstance. Within Misery you can track the mental deterioration of both of the integral characters, which is very interesting, at the film progresses the obsessive fan becomes more obsessed and more criminally deranged doing anything she can to keep the author she adores with her, and the trapped author becomes more obsessed with the idea of killing the freak that is keeping him in her home and escaping, which is completely understandable to be fair. Misery allows you to really feel connected with the main character, as most of the time he is trapped in his room, and we are trapped with him, the film stays with him within this room for the majority of the film, only cutting away for small amounts of time to keep track of other lesser important characters. This is another skill I need to learn to use, make a character completely relatable and connected to the audience, to make anyone who see’s it more invested in the film.
8mm (1999)
As a massive fan of the glorious man that is Nicholas Cage, as soon as I required a Netflix account I watched all the films that was in their library that has the acting god that is Cage in them, and I stumbled across 8MM, a film about a detective investigating the legitimacy of a snuff film a widow found locked away in her dead husbands safe, where a young girl is murdered. Immediately the dark themes, mystery and deterioration of the protagonist’s mind is clear, for anyone investigating something to do with snuff films is not in for a pleasant ride which is easy on your mentality. 8MM defines the genre with instability of emotional states within the characters, as Cage finds himself getting too invested in finding out if the film is legitimate and see’s it as his duty to track down and kill those responsible for making it. Although I love 8MM and think it is a great and entertaining film, there isn’t much I can take from in it in regards to furthering my understanding of the genre. It stays pretty close to the already set out guidelines within the genre that have been moulded by films before it, and it doesn’t attempt to expand upon them, there is certainly nothing ground breaking about the film itself. (Unless you consider everything that Cage does ground breaking, which I do because he is my idol.)
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
If you watch a film and think ‘What the fuck just happened? I literally do not understand that at all’, it’s more than likely a Psychological Thriller. I have seen Eyes Wide Shut multiple times, and honestly, I still don’t really get it. The base plot of the film is Nicole Kidman’s character tells her husband, Tom Cruise’s character, of how she once fantasized about someone else when they were having sex. Outraged, he goes on a rage blinded sex journey in order to find a revenge shag, but somehow ends up wrapped up within a secret and seemingly satanic sex cult. The film is completely covered in metaphorical and hidden meanings within things, there are whole website designated to even understanding what the film was about, some have even said at one point from the film onwards, it is all a dream. One thing that I could take from this film is, a film doesn’t necessarily have to spell everything out to the audience in order for it to be successful, and the power of an undefined metaphor is amazing, if something’s meaning isn’t made clear, but it clearly means something, people are going to have lengthy discussions about what the meanings of these things were. I could easily use a lot of metaphors in my project in order to give the story more depth.
Memento (2000)
Memento is a fantastic and innovative film, it takes the protagonist’s fatal flaw and uses it to execute a unique narrative style. The character has short-term memory loss, he can only remember what is going on in around 5 minute segments, the film start just after the end, goes backwards from that point but also swaps to the beginning and plays from that point, it’s sort of hard to explain, but just watch it, you’ll understand. I don’t have much to say about this film except praising the narrative style, on the DVD extras there’s an option to play the film in linear mode, and to be honest, it’s pretty boring, the unique part of the film is lost and it’s just nowhere near as entertaining. Since seeing Memento a few years ago I have wanted to create a film with a non-linear style, much like the one Slumdog Millionaire, the film starts with the end sequence and the story is told through flash backs. Although this would be great to do, it wouldn’t be as easy to employ in a short film and the execution would be a lot different, but I do want to experiment with narrative, so this is definitely something I will try.
Hard Candy (2005)
There are not many films that I would say have completely nothing good about them, but unfortunately, I feel this way about Hard Candy. The film only contains 5 characters, 3 of which only get a few minutes of screen time, the film being about the other two. The plot of the film is a 15-year-old girl pretends to be taken in by an internet pedophile, but then reveals she lured him into a trap, the film is then an hour and a half of the girl torturing the pedophile and trying to ruin his life, the film is not entertaining and is damn right difficult to watch, I don’t think pedophiles deserve any respect, but watching one being castrated is just completely uncomfortable to watch. The two primary characters are a psychotic and unbelievably intelligent 15-year-old girl and a pedophile, neither character is relatable in the slightest, and I think that its main problem. I have included this in this section, as the only inspiration I can get from it is to not make a film like this one, there are no relatable characters, the dialogue is poor, literally everything is stale and boring. The main point of a film is for it to be entertaining, and in my eyes, if it’s not entertaining, it’s not a good film.
Shutter Island (2010)
One of the most recent and iconic Psychological Thrillers, Shutter Island is one of my favourite films, and inspired me to make my own detective film in my A levels. When I saw this film in the cinemas, when the twist had its grand reveal, everyone, and I mean everyone in the cinema shot up out of their chair and was literally standing for the rest of the scene. This is something I’ve never seen anywhere else, we were so engrossed in the story and so shocked at the reveal we literally were forced to our feet. A lot of people hate this film and think it is awful, but I think it is absolutely perfect (bar the continuity errors, and to be fair there are a few). The second viewing is completely different, you see the film from a completely different perspective but it is still just as entertaining, the twist is literally given to you, it is possible to figure out what is going on but you just don’t. This is something I aspire to do, put the twist of the film in plain sight, but still make the audience incapable of figuring out what is going on, only to give them a completely different viewing experience on the second viewing.
After all of that research I have developed a treatment and a script for a short film in the Psychological Thriller Genre.
Thing is I wrote this script and when i got to the end, I suddenly wasn’t happy with it, so I have also written an alternate ending for the script, as I didn’t have the heart to cut some work I have just written.
So here is my pitch, brief, treatment, script and alternate ending script! All in one! Huzzah!
Pitch, Brief and Treatment: Murder Investigation
Script: Murder Investigation Script
Alternate Ending: Murder Investigation 2
Thomas Longstaff - Year 2 Blog 