Case Study: Taken

Thriller: Taken
Director: Pierre Morel
Production Company: Europa Corp
Release Date: 26 September 2008 (UK
Country where made: France
Awards nominated: None

Synopsis
Bryan a retired-CIA agents daughter, aged 17 named Kim, is kidnapped by a Albanian human trafficking gang while on holiday in Paris. It then entails a chase to save his daughter before time runs out.

As you can see, the synopsis is a common "Bourne" like title and display the cliche action through with Bryan becoming near super-human by the end of the film. However the grittiness of the location and base of the story line involving human trafficking pulls the film into the Thriller genre.

Opening Scenes
The open scene uses a flash back affect with a transition of jittery movement and a halo affect of lighting around the edges providing a feel of looking into the blurred past. We have a few close ups of Kim as a child, as though Bryan who we see briefly when we come back to the present is smiling to himself about, this then leads onto Bryan going out to a shop, which we presume, is for him to buy a present.

After collecting the present we have an almost obsessive parent wrapping up the present with absolute precision. The audience is then allowed to guess that we've moved into the future where Bryan is now getting out of a car in front of a large mansion where a party is taking place. After a brief spat with his Ex-wife Lenore he finally is allowed to give his present to his overly loving daughter Kim. Kim is displayed as an average young girl easily impressed and filled with love, practically leaping to give Bryan a hug.

However after giving her the present and a few moments of love the rich Step-Dad Stuart then comes out leading alone a horse, Kim then totally ignores her real father and screams a girlish little noise and sprints to the horse shouting "I love you I love you" over and over while hugging the horse.

The camera then pulls a 180 degree turn to Bryan, who we see standing while switching to an over the shoulder shot and back again until we see him look down at his own gift lying ignored next to his feet which moments before his daughter was loving. After this shot the audience is imprinted with the emotion of feeling sorry for Bryan, someone who obviously loves his daughter but is totally out down by his replacement, Stuart.

Representation of Gender
Throughout the film females were represented as weak and vulnerable to the events at hand whether at home in perfect safety such as Lenore or the unfortunate girls within the human trafficking market. This is further enforced by all the of the villains being male and Bryan being the only character throughout the film fighting to save his daughter even though Lenore and Stuart had the money to burn.

This is traditional representation which you would expect from most films displayed in other titles such as The Third Man, Psycho etc.

Thriller Opening Youtube Video

This is our finished project, just to provide a quick peep.

Enjoy! Evaluation coming soon.

Thriller Opening Planning

In this post you will find all of the Thriller initial Planning and ideas ranging from Location to Costume. Please note due to the shear amount of information and the lack of being able to correctly display it will make it appear in a slight mess..

1. Brief Synopsis of plot

2. Shots Outlined

3. Characters

   1. Victims

   2. Villains

   3. Extras

4. Casting

5. Location

6. Sound

7. Props / Objects

8. Equipment List

Brief Synopsis of Plot

The plot entails 2 female characters exchanging a pill, which the audience presumes is a drug, and thereby having the female victim take the drug and being kidnapped and put into a boot of a car. This is then followed with a speedy drive away.

Shots Outlined

You will notice there are more here than on the storyboards, this is to provide more detailed information on how we plan to do the shots due to my lack of ability of drawing anything better than a stick men.

1. Opening Scene consisting of a blurred long shot of 2 female characters.
   

2. Followed with a zooming in shot of the two characters.
   

3. We then have a close up of the characters exchanging the drug itself.

4. We then have a close up of the female victim before she takes the drug, as though thinking about it.

5. The female victim then takes the drug, and we have a quick following of close ups / extreme closes up along with some fade to black transitions to add to the confusion.

6. We then have a slow motion of the victim slowly falling to the ground.
   

7. This follows with an extreme close up of the other female character crying out for help from her male associate

8. A quick switch shot to the male character open the boot of his car and walking over to help pick up the victim

9. We then track the characters carrying the victim and putting her into the boot of the car. All the while with the same music track playing.
   

10. We suddenly switch to the victims point of view with her in the car boot looking around in a confused state, this includes some heavy breathing via diagetic sound.

11. The villains are then shown to be having a conversation before separating to either side of the screen.

12. The male villain is then shown getting in the car and slamming the door shut.

13. This then follows with some clever camera work using the car rear view mirror showing the two villains looking at each other.

14. After shaking his head in disgust the male villain then drives starts to drive away after having an outside of the car shot via a tilt to add to the feeling of confusion.
    

15. The car is then tracked and zoomed in upon to get a better view of the license plate along.
    

16. Finally the car turns around a corner and we can no longer follow it allowing us to fade to black leaving the audience with the question in their head asking "What happened to Grace?"
    

Characters

Within the Thriller Opening there are 3 characters, 2 villains and a single victim. The opening is dominated by the 2 female characters and half way through we then see the only male character, also a villain.

Victims

Grace – Leading Female Role – 17 years old – Clothes are a grey hoodie, white trainers and genes

Grace is displayed as a rather unaware girl, not expecting to be kidnapped since she freely takes the drug infront of the other female character. As thought she may be a friend, someone to be trusted.

Villains

Tom – 28 years old – Clothes are a thick coat with linen trousers, dark shoes, displaying money.

Mary – 17 years old – Clothes are the same as Grace's, grey hoodie and genes with trainers.

The villains consist of Lauren using her unsuspecting friend as a kidnap victim, she then uses her associate Andy to help take Emily away from prying eyes to do what she wishes.

Casting

Grace – Emily Mullenderr

Tom – Andy Drane

Mary – Lauren Jordan

Location

We have decided to set the thriller opening in a out of the way car park within Norwich during the early hours of a winter evening. This provides the thriller generics such as unglamorous, remote and threatening location mainly influenced by the thriller 'This is England' by Shane Meadows and the gritting feeling it inspires.

Sound

The majority of the sound within the opening scene will consist of a unsigned / uncopyrighted music track called the "Nu Piano Project"

However we also use diagetic sound of Grace's heavy breathing to add to the feeling of entrapment.

Props / Objects

The props include the Car as well as some harmless pills to look like drugs.

Equipment List

Camera, Camera Stand etc. Nothing else was used.

Title

In the end after discussing as a group we settled with the title Snatched against the common names such as Kidnapped, Abdcuted etc.

Thriller Opening Storyboards

Stereotypes - Homosexuals

The homosexual stereotype is quite far reaching, to display this I will be looking at a prime example from the popular TV show Skins, Maxxie, dispalyed in a picture tap dancing below.


However let's first look at the stereotypes that comes with homosexuality.

Appearance

• Highlight hair
• Tight clothing
• Physically fit
• A wrist deficiency
• Very good posture

Attitude / Behaviour

• Extremist of politeness as well as bitchiness'
• Prone to giggling like a pre-school girl
• Higher pitched voice

Social Activities

• Creative Arts - Dancing etc.
  
• Shopping
• Social Centre
  
• Hair Dresser
• Gossiping.

As you can see there is quite a lot to go along with being a homosexual, the most common 5 examples have been coloured in blue to allow you to picture a common homosexual in your head.

So if we then look to apply what has been discussed to Maxxie we can clearly see that he is the embodiment of an homosexual, he is everything that has been listed and if not more! If we just look at the opening scene of a Skins episode we have this enforced by having Maxxie tap dancing and talking about this "big gay night out".

If we then looked at my other work of homosexuals with Torchwood you can see they all have a clear link between them, it's very unlikely that if you look at a drama that you do not find some sexuality storyline in it. However it is clear that Maxxie is a prime example of what it means to be a stereotypical homosexual.

Compare the ways in which “This is England” and “Hot Fuzz” were packaged, marketed, distributed and exhibited in the UK.

When a film idea is born, a lot of things happen from producers being brought in to the location being picked, however no film can get off the ground without finance, the way new born films do this is to package all of the details they've got and wrap it up nicely. The items included within this nice wrapping is director, script, whether it's a best selling book, the production company, actors, music, location and of course the genre of the film.

Item	This is England	Hot Fuzz
Director	Shane Meadows	Edgar Wright
Writers	Shane Meadows	Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg
Origin	N/A	N/A
Production Co.	Warp Films, Film4.	Big Talk Productions
Leading Actors	Thomas Turgoose	Simon Pegg, Nick Frost
Music	Let's Dance	Slippery Rock 70's
Location	Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire - UK	Rural England - Somerset
Genre (sub)	Drama	Action/Comedy & sub-genres of Crime/mystery
Release Data	27 April 2007	14 February 2007

When comparing the difference of packaging of both projects you can clearly see that Hot Fuzz has a huge budget compared to that of This is England from the actor prospective. Hot Fuzz has huge names from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost doing Shaun of the Dead and of course Timothy Dalton being the James Bond actor from The Living Daylights.

This is further enforced by the production companies behind each film, where as This is England has a small yet popular British company Warp Films and Film4 where as Hot Fuzz has Universal Pictures and Big Talk Productions showing it's huge budget as well as probability of being a good film by having Universal Pictures pump out many action films such as Bourne.

The marketing behind This is England was quite small when compared to the huge amount of advertisements done via Hot Fuzz, also due to the massive following of Shaun of the Dead it was quite far ahead. However This is England also had a large following straight off due to being done by director Shane Meadows, renowned for directing “Trainspotting”.

Distribution was a simple procedure for Hot Fuzz going from Cinema to Dvd to Tv where as This is England was quite different. For a start it wasn't setup to go world wide, it was expected to be quite small however due to word of mouth it was transported all over the place.

The exhibition was quite interesting, if we look first at This is England below you will find the Dvd analysed.

Overall it is quite clear that Hot Fuzz had the larger budget behind it, however This is England also did extremely well.

How is sexuality represented in Torchwood

Due to the main character within Torchwood, Captain Jack, being homosexual I will be concentrating on how stereotyping has been arranged around him and his relationship with Captain John is represented throughout the 5 minute clip, I will be doing this by looking at the micro and macro features thereby adding up to the representation.

Firstly let's look at how the characters are dressed, Jack is dressed in a military style long coat displaying a fierce and masculine appearance which goes completely against the stereotypical homosexual. This is further enforced by how John is dressed in flamboyant clothing representing the expected homosexual attire.

The entering of the bar itself enforces a more masculine feel by how the shots are displaying the characters as imposing with high angle shots and panning from the feet up to the body making them seem larger. This then adds up to a feeling of an upcoming clash of the captains, which is a reverse representation of the homosexuality due to be aggressive.

This aggression is also imposed upon the audience by the mise-en-scene of the surroundings, the bar itself being called Reunion makes you expect a meeting of old friends or enemies, however with the bar doors being western of origin and how we follow Captain Jacks boots to the bar the audience is then allowed to guess a fight is about to break lose.

The mise-en-scene of the bar itself however enforces the homosexual representation by the candle like lighting, adding a mysterious and sensual feel to the scene. With the plasma tv's also displaying a virtual fire it builds up to allow the audience to deduce that there is a natural attraction between the 2 captains. By the full on kiss and the mise-en-scene it all adds up to a stereotypical representation of homosexuals being sensitive and feminine.

However after the impressive kiss a large number of reverse stereotypes appear, firstly the fact that rather than going off to a room and doing “what comes naturally” the captains start to have a fight. This is most likely due to the airing of the show meaning it is unable to show 2 grown men making love to each other, so the director employs the next best thing for guys, a playful fight.

This fight in itself is a non-stereotype for homosexuals due to it's pure violence, however with the music of Song2, or Woo Hoo, in the background you feel that they're enjoying it, as though it's replacing the sex scene. This is further enforced by how both characters are grinning throughout the fight and seem oblivious to the damage they are doing to their surroundings.

After the majority of the fight the male characters are then seen via 180 degree rule shot while having them do a 360 staring at each other. However this is a contradicting shot by how a stereotypical aspect is shown with both characters commenting on their attire and staring each other in the eyes yet a reverse stereotype is also employed by how both captains are pointing lethal weapons at one another.

This is then followed with Jack and John then having a little chat against the bar. This in itself is a homosexual stereotype, due to most males at a bar simply drinking and rarely having a friendly chat. John also has a little giggle while covering his mouth with his hand displaying a common signifier for a homosexuals. Yet there is a clear reverse stereotype by how John drinks a huge amount of alcohol.

We then go into the conversation between the characters displaying a strong non-homosexual feeling by how both characters are sitting there leaning against the bar holding drink. The dialogue itself is extremely masculine by how John describes his rehabilitation for sex, drugs and murder as some sort of little joke. This is a strong reverse representation of homosexuals due to it's pure insensitivity.

If we look away from Jack and John and look at the gang in the taxi we get another stereotyping of homosexuals and how they're all liked by the group due to being mysterious and fun to have around. This represents the general expectations of homosexuals being at the centre of the group.

However the overall representation of sexuality in this clip is homosexual, and it displays them as a mixture of passionate love and boyish behaviour. There is little other sexuality's displayed apart from within the Taxi, and there is to little to analyse within that section.

Mock Exam on Independent research into the thriller genre

How is sexuality represented in Torchwood [Draft]

Due to the main character within Torchwood, Captain Jack, being gay I will be concentrating on how stereotyping has been arranged around him and how his relationships are represented throughout the 5 minute clip. The first major non-stereotype of homosexuals is the way Jack is actually dressed in a long coat military style, rather than in a fancy costume similar to that of John's.

At the beginning of the clip you get a feel of western origin by how you follow Johns feet walking towards the bar and watch him enter through swinging half-doors, this connotes violence and cowboys, not pink clothes and giggling as related to most homosexuals, however an interesting quirk of Mise-en-scene is how the bar is named “Reunion”, which is just what happens with Jack and John knowing each other.

Throughout the following scene there is a large number of contradicting stereotypes from Manly to homosexual. We first have how the 2 male characters march up to each other like they mean business, where as they then have a passionate kiss in front of a Plasma TV fire, this in itself connotes a fiery passion of attraction to each other, however due to the airing of the show they can't show 2 men making love to each other so instead they then employ a boyish fight.

This fight in itself is a non-stereotype for homosexuals due to it's pure violence, however with the music of Song2, or Woo Hoo, in the background you feel that they're enjoy it, as though it's replacing the sex scene. This is further enforced by how both characters are grinning throughout the fight and seem oblivious to the damage they are doing to their surroundings. After the majority of the fight the male characters then comment on each others appearance in a very homosexual manner with John saying Jack has put on weight and John commenting on Jack losing his hair.

The following action of the Jack and John then having a little chat against the bar is also filled with stereotypes attacking each other for dominance, you first have a little giggle with John covering his mouth with his hand as a common signifier for a homosexual but then you have him drinking a huge amount of alcohol and in the same minute joking about murder, which is totally the opposite of each other.

If we look away from Jack and John and look at the gang in the taxi we get another stereotyping of homosexuals and how they're all liked by the group due to being mysterious and fun to have around.

However the overall representation of sexuality in this clip is homosexual, and it displays them as a mixture of passionate love and boyish behaviour. This is little other sexuality's displayed apart from within the Taxi, and there is to little to analyse within that section.