Our Final Location Choice

Why are locations so important in a thriller?

There are a lot of reasons why the locations chosen to film a thriller video in are important. When watching a thriller, the audience needs to feel a sense of suspense and be able to connect with the worries and fears trying to portrayed in the film. Some main locations used are forests, islands or abandoned buildings/houses. These places show and also put across the feeling of isolation and also being distant from society and help. When making a good thriller film, the director has to make a hard decision in what location will best fit the story line but it will also be capable of creating the best emotions and feelings needed to create the film.

Location 1

We chose Southend Beach as our first location because it creates the feeling of danger. In the news, we see a lot of horrible things happening at the beach and we thought this would bring a feeling of danger to our video. When people see the sea, the sense of drowning comes to mind. When in the sea, you can feel very isolated and out of helps way. If something happens to you in the sea, there can be very serious consequences because help can take a while to get to you. Linking this to the denotations and connotations thought about when watching a thriller, the feeling of danger that the beach portrays really creates the feeling of tension to the audience and makes them want to carry on watching the film. (Location shown on the next slide)

The SeaConnotations- water, blue/ green, seaweed.Denotations- drowning, the unknown, helpless.

The SandConnotations- gritty, stones, grains.Denotations (can be both positive and negative) - sinking, unknown, warm, relaxing.

Dangers• Broken Glass• Sharp Objects• Debris• Tripping over• The Water• Drowning • The Wildlife

Location 2For our second location we chose a Train Station. We researched a few stations that are close to us and easy to get to and as a group we all agreed that Shenfield Station would be the best. A lot of films before have used train stations, not all of them thrillers but portray the sense of danger. In the Romantic Drama, Remember Me, the first scene opens at an American Train Station, where a daughter and her mother are waiting to catch the next available train. When the train arrives, the mother gets shot by black two youths. The scene was also filmed at night, connecting with the common fears of the audience. We thought that the station was a good place to film our thriller as well because you hear a lot that people have committed suicide by jumping onto the train tracks. This will help the audience gain more of an emotion and the tension will grow bigger and bigger in this scene.

Dangers• Tracks • Crowds• Trains • Children • Litter• Smokers• Open Space

Location 3

For our third location, we chose to focus on a place that is away from people, away from any form of help and communication so we decided to use a forest. This makes the audience feel a lot of sympathy for the protagonist if they get hurt or get places in a bad situation. Being so far away from society some people think that this is bad place to film a thriller because it is so predictable. We took that idea into consideration and used the beach as the main scene for our thriller. We still wanted to use a forest in ours but instead of making it the main focus, we only used it in one of the flashbacks, taking away some of the predictability that something will happen. We, as a group, still want to create a lot of emotion for the audience and still want to make sure that the film is still as impacting and rememberable as it should be.

Dangers• The Wildlife• Tree Roots• Slippery Surfaces• Broken Debris• Animal Holes• Animal

Droppings

Location 4

For our forth location, we were undecided about where we wanted to film this scene. We had the idea of what was going to happen (Victim 3 attempting to jump off the building). We had some places in mind. These were a Multi-story car park in Brentwood, and a building that you can access the roof by Sainsbury's in Brentwood. We thought these locations were the best and easiest to work with and they also give a lot of atmosphere to the scene. A common way of committing suicide is to jump off of a building because it can kill you instantly. Seeing this in a film, makes the audience wonder what is going to happen and why?. This also helps to create a lot of questions in the audience minds, whether the answers are shown later in the film or they are left unsolved.

Sainsbury's, Brentwood

Multi-Story Car Park