Memento

the opening scene of memento creates tension as we see a picture that gradually disappears. we are then introduced to a character. we see blood all over the place and items. then we are introduced to a second character who gets shot.

Camera Shots:

• close up of picture of blood on wall creates tension as we want to know how that blood got there
• man's hand visible in the close up of the picture creates tension as we want to know who this person is.
• close up of blood dripping down
• close up of glasses in covered
• close up of first character makes him seem as the villain
• close up of the second character's back of head makes him seem that he is the victim
• close up of camera and man's face hiding behind it makes us want to know who this person is
• close ups are also used to show the characters facial expression.
• close up of bullet

Sound:

• the music is gradually building creating tension
• we can hear the flapping of the picture

Edit:

• the use of rewinding starts the story off.

Treatment and Planning

TREATMENT:

Smith has a perfect life; an amazing son (Sean) and an adoring wife (Rachel) who he married after he lost his first wife and mother of his son in a fire. Sean and Rachel's relationship hasn't been very good as Sean doesn't see Rachel as a suitable replacement for his mother.

Smith is a very popular and a well known teacher at the school that Sean is attending and he is having an affair with his son's girlfriend Emma. Emma decides that she wants to end the relationship and threatens to reveal the nature of their relationship if he doesn't leave her alone. This results in her being pushed down the stairs. Sean finds Emma on the floor; she then tells him about the nature of her relationship with Smith. Sean vows to her that he will get revenge.

Sean reveals everything to Rachel, Rachel then discovers that Smith has a record of affairs that have ended with the woman going missing or dying. Rachel becomes aware of the pattern of her husband's relationships and she knows that she could be next. Rachel and Sean's relationship becomes stronger as they realise that Smith has been the cause of the friction between them. Sean confronts his dad about all the evidence that they have found out about his hidden persona, Smith then tries to attack Sean. Rachel tries to protect Sean which results in the death of Smith.

STORY BOARD:

Before we began filming we had to make a plan of what our sequence was going to look like on storyboard. We planned what how we were going to edit our different scenes together and how long it was going to last. Even though we didn't end up doing our final in exactly the same way we planned to do it in our storyboard, planning however did help us to have an idea of what we need to record.

LOCATION SHOTS:

We needed to make sure that we found the right location for our film in advance. We decided to shoot in the school because it was in the school we had to shoot while no one was in the corridor(during lesson time and after school).

SOUND:

We decided not to have any diegetic sound so we have background music that kept the audience interested in the image.

Market Research

Majority of the participants preferred R&B music. Even though this genre of music isn’t suitable for the soundtrack of a psychological thriller it can however be added as diegetic music. So someone could be watching TV with music on or be listening to it.  The themes can also be based around R&B (lifestyle, dress sense ect).

 

Surfing the internet was the most popular hobby for the participants. This tells us that we need to incorporate the internet somewhere within our thriller.

For the question referring to the preferred setting in a psychological thriller the majority of the participants preferred the setting to be in a school. We can incorporate this into our film by basing our story around a school environment. We could also incorporate some of the other popular setting such as the woods-in order to please a range of our audience.