Primary Research for thriller opening sequence

1. Primary Research for thriller opening sequence By Debra Idowu, Rachel Haywood-Percival, Joel Vickers, Barney Nash and Joe Woodhall

2. Top 50 Thriller Movies • The Godfather • The Godfather 2 • Pulp Fiction • The Dark Knight • Rear Window • El Secreto de Sus Ojos • Fight Club • Psycho • The Usual Suspects • The Silence of the Lambs • North by Northwest • The Matrix • Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb • Memento • Se7en • Leon • Taxi Driver • Vertigo • Double Indemnity • M • The Third Man • Alien • Das Leben der Anderen • Terminator 2- Judgment Day • The Shining Looking at the top thriller movies on the IBMD website that was voted by over a million people helped us by letting us know what were the top thriller movies. We then read the summaries of the top 50 thrillers and decided under what sub-genre it went under. Doing this gave us an idea of the most made sub genres and the most popular sub genres. It also let us see what sub-genres weren’t made often or weren’t very popular. The most popular or most made thriller sub-genre seems to be crime thriller with 12 of the top 25 being of that genre. In the top 50 we saw that techno thrillers aren’t very popular so when making our opening sequence we will probably refrain from going down that route of a sub-genre.

3. 26. A Clockwork Orange 27. Chinatown- 28. The Departed 29. Aliens 30. L.A. Confidential 31. Reservoir Dogs 32. Rebecca 33. El laberinto Del Fauno 34. Metropolis 35. Some Like It Hot 36. Touch of Evil 37. District 9 38. The Prestige 39. Safety Last! 40. The Great Escape 41. Witness for the Prosecution 42. Les diaboliques 43. Séance on a Wet Afternoon 44. Strangers on a Train 45. Le salaire de la peur 46. Notorious 47. Sin City 48. Hotel Rwanda 49. The Manchurian Candidate 50. The Big Sleep

4. Individual Interviews • During this process we asked 5 people all of different ages what type of thriller they liked, what they didn’t like in some thrillers and what they thought would make a great thriller. The older people questioned talked of their dislike of unnecessarily gory thrillers as they said it was ‘silly’ and made the film seem more amateurish; while the younger people didn’t mind if there was too much gore. We interviewed these people separately as to know only their thoughts so that they wouldn’t be influenced by people around them. All of the people we asked said that they would like to see more psychological and eco-thrillers as there isn’t many around in the industry as the crime and action sub genres dominate the thriller sub-genres. When asked why they thought that was they all replied in some way or another that its probably because our culture is used to films with explosives, fights and weapons and its just the type most people prefer because it’s the only ones that are really available to them.

5. Survey • We made a survey on survey monkey and also by printing out the survey and giving it to people, we did this most in school and posting the survey via Facebook. We asked 10 questions , asking their favourite thrillers, their age and gender. We also asked them questions that are in the slides below which will be looked at in more detail. The people we asked like thrillers which had realistic points, elements of surprise and likeable characters. They also like thrillers that made you jump and feel involved. The majority of the people we asked were female and the majority were aged between 15-25 because they are the age range we are targeting.

6. What is your favourite type of thriller? The pie chart left shows that action thrillers are the most popular sub-genres from the people that were questioned. We also see that techno thrillers are the least liked with no one naming it as their favourite sub-genre. I put an example of a film next to each sub-genre which may have influenced people if they saw their favourite film they might have picked that as their favourite sub-genre, but it was used to give people an idea of what type of film went under that sub-genre. The results further discourages our group from making a techno opening sequence as it might not be very popular.

7. What do you think is the best element of a thriller film? • Surprisingly people thought that the best element of a thriller is the suspense, with the majority of people voting for it. We can use this information so that we know what elements to concentrate on when making our thriller.

8. What do you think is the biggest thriller cliché? We asked this question as we wanted to know what people thought was wrong with some thrillers, and we wanted to prevent our thriller from being like every typical thriller, as clichés are often seen as bad. The majority thought that the biggest cliché in a thriller movie is when the protagonist befriends someone that is meant to be good but we later find out they are a baddie. Other clichés included when the protagonist falls for very obvious traps that every sensible person wouldn’t go for. Another cliché people commented about was when the ‘pretty girl’ runs away from the antagonist and it seems like they will get away only for them to trip up and be caught. We did this as an open question because we wanted to get everyone's different views on what they thought was a big cliché in a thriller film.

9. Which out of these thriller genres would you consider watching if there were more films available for it (that isn’t your favourite)? Psychological thrillers were the thrillers most people would be interested to watch if more of it were available this shows that people are interested in branching out to different sub-genres and that they would be happy to see different types of thrillers. People would also be interested to see eco and conspiracy thrillers so this widens the range of thriller sub-genres that we could do.

10. What was the worst thriller movie you watched and why? There were endless examples of the worst thriller movie people have watched, examples that often kept popping up were thrillers such as Sorority Row, The Godfather, Knowing and Psycho. The reason the Godfather wasn’t liked by some people was because it was only aimed at one gender, so when were make our thriller we will make sure that the thriller is suitable to both genders. Reasons for not like lots of different thrillers ranged from the storyline being too weird and confusing, to it being far-fetched and it being unrealistic.

11. What do you think would make a thriller better? Almost half the people we asked thought unexpected twists would make any thriller film better as the thrillers they’ve watched recently are too predictable. We also found that viewers like thrillers better with realistic situations.

12. Thank you for watching!