Genre: What genre did we feel our movie would fall under? Thriller. A thriller is made to keep the audience on edge. It contains many twists and turns making the audience constantly ask questions - this can be unbearable for them.
As shown above, the thriller genre has many sub-genres. 'The Safehouse' fits into the Crime-Thriller sub-genre.
We want our audience to have to examine the backstories and motivations of our main characters and to feel somewhat involved in the movie and to become immersed in it.
Examples of crime thrillers include:
- A Perfect Murder, Davis, 1998
- Seven, Fincher, 1995
Both these films include typical characteristics of the crime-thriller genre - We have one clear 'goodie', 'baddie', dark scenes in shadow, tense music and the sequence increases in pace - these are common of thriller.
Do we challenge conventional crime thrillers? Yes.
We have a female heroin and the whole movie is from her point of view, as opposed to from a male's point of view eg. Seven.
We also cross-cut between the present and past events.
Narrative Structure: Conventionally, films have a closed narrative in which time is compressed. (Two hours constructs events happening over months or years) The opening tells us the WHO, WHAT and WHERE of the story and we usually see a series of events crucial the rest of the film's development.
Typically, a film:
this is based on Todorov's theory.
A buildup to the event is shown through jumpier and shorter clips and the sequence is not shown in real time - we include flashbacks and crosscutting between the past and present.
The action code is clearly set up - the who (victim), the where (her flat), and then when. ("It was the 28th February 2010...")
The enigma code is also set up clearly as the audience wonder why our victim was chosen by the rapist. These follow Barthes' theory.
Form:
Our film does conform to these typical features of opening sequences, as demonstrated in the grid of screenshots below:
Comparing our opening sequence to that of 'Seven':
Despite the fact that Seven is of the same genre as The Safehouse, the opening sequence for it is very different. Yes, the main character is introduced but we never actually see his face and it's all alot more mysterious with far more ECU's. There's alot more detail too - however, like our opening sequence there's tense music in the background and titles are also included.
Style:
Music; Initially, the music is sad but it slowly changes to tense and dramatic with a loud ending when the attack happens. The dialogue is all straight to the point (eg. "I'm here to talk about my rape experience.") showing that our movie will be gritty and realistic. The pace increases building up to the attack.
Titles; 'typed' up as though an investigation piece is being written.
Use of Binary Opposites;
Between the shots of Georgia talking to the camera and the flashbacks, we included lots of binary opposites through her clothing (tight to baggy), the lighting (dark to light) and the camerawork (jumpy to static):
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