Thrillers are notoriously a very high budget genre, and with this in mind, for the thriller to be successful, it needs to look expensive. Obviously, we do not have the money to make a high budget, explosive thriller, so we must figure out ways to make it look much more high budget than it actually is. To do this we must avoid trying to include things that involve destruction and explosives, and focus on good film making, in order to not look like we're trying and failing, but instead look as if we know what we're doing. Therefore we must very carefully plan out a suitable story, that could be filmed on a low budget, but could look as if it was filmed on a much higher one. In the world of successful thrillers it's all about production value.
An easy way to boost this production value is location. No one wants to see a film that is filmed in the director's back garden or bedroom, and they don't want to see a film that was filmed in the directors school either. Of course, schools are used a lot as locations, but they are very idealistic schools, and most schools just don't look 'cinematic' enough. Our school especially does not look even the tiniest bit cinematic. Even if houses and schools are avoided, it would still look cheap to film down the local high street, as, once again most of them do not look 'cinematic' enough, and once again, it's a very cheap look. If you were to take a look at the latest Bond film 'Skyfall', you'd realise that most of the locations were very exotic, and there's not a single scene in the film that is filmed somewhere less than spectacular. This is a convention of most thrillers, that must be followed. Location scouting, therefore, becomes a key part of making the film, and is something that I'm going to focus on very keenly. So if I've crossed off all the obvious, amateur-cliche, 'uncinematic' places, then that means that I'm goign to have to go further afield in order to make this film well. My mind is drawn straight to London, which is a mere 45 minutes away on the train. London has many extremely iconic locations, and just one of them would boost the production value considerably. I shall definitely put it under consideration! The only problem is that most thrillers require weaponry, and I'm not planning on pulling out fake guns in the middle of London, so if we were to film in London, then I'll have to adapt the opening scene to suit it. I shall discuss locations further in a later post.
Another way to boost the production value is the acting. The fact is, picking actors out of friends is never going to be the same as having Hollywood actors, so the acting needs to be both easy and minimal. If they're not good actors, then the obvious option is to give them an easy part, and a small part. Give the bigger parts to the better actors, and adapt the parts to suit them. To get around this acting dilemma, I'm also going to make sure that there isn't much acting needed, just following people, or getting punched, or waiting...simple things like that. I'm not planning to give them roles that the greatest actors would struggle to play!
Yet another way to boost the value is to play on my strengths. I know what I can and can't do, and I know what I can and can't afford. For example, if I had a car that was going to the dump anyway, I'd have a scene which involves a car being destroyed, which would look incredibly high budget, but it would actually cost me nothing! I'll have to think over what these strengths are. I also already own a lot of film making equipment, so I can use this to my strength. I am very adept with using Final Cut Studio, so I will edit my film on that instead of the school's option of Adobe Premiere. Personally I prefer Final Cut as well...I shall discuss it in a later post.
I've found three solid ways to boost my production value, and I am sure to think of more! This is a very good start, because if it looks as if it's expensive, it'll look much better. I don't want my audience knowing that it was done by an amateur, and I don't want them thinking about what's wrong with it, such as a shaky camera, bad match-on-action, or some stupid cheap errors. I want them to be thinking about it in the way they would think about any film: about the storyline, and what's good. With many amateur films I find myself thinking about what's bad about it, but I want my audience to be thinking what's good!
