Individual Storyboard - Miss Miller

What is the purpose of a storyboard?

The purpose of storyboards is to lay down the narrative onto paper so that the creator as an idea of what they think the scene will be like and has an example to start filming on and possibly change. Helps manages timing of production, portrays an idea of which production can start, shows how the final product will look and finally is used to show to the rest of production team a basic idea of how the scene will work. From this it is easier to see if there are any faults with the narrative that need to be changed. My storyboard contains 12 different frames with different time lengths, drawn images of what I think the narrative should be like, camera angles that will be used, location of each frame, iconography, lighting , actors, sound, editing to the next frame and also the narrative description. 

Conventions

Blonde Female Victim/Killer- It is conventional for a thriller film to have some form of female as the victim as they are portrayed as weaker and men therefore are more vulnerable. By having a weaker character as the victim it is easier for the audience to bond and sympathize for the character. Also it is conventional for the male to the killer as they are seen as the more dominant gender, it gives the sense to the audience that the little girl is exposed as she cannot defend herself. This is until the narrative flips and turns into an unexpected plot in which the girl disappears and is actuality the killer. Although this is breaking the conventions that I have just wrote about, it is still conventional to the thriller genre as the audience find less dominant killer more sinister as they appear to be more terrifying than a man. By doing this the audience will feel an emotional twist as they have been strongly bonded with the girl which then the emotions are transferred to the man when she disappears as the situation has been reversed.      

Low Key Lighting - It is a must for LKL to be present in a thriller film as it the most used type of lighting across the genre. The lighting casts shadows in the scene which will make the audience not be able to see certain sections of the setting so it will create one of the main elements of the genre, suspense. The audience have to focus more on the scene which will mean they become more engaged, at this point the audience will have a feel for the scene and will understand that something is going to happen in the near future. Finally when something occurs in the scene it will have a bigger shock (second element of a thriller genre) on the audience, than if the scene was not to be filmed in high key lighting.     

Sounds - By storyboard has helped me to identify the certain sounds that I wanted to use at a particular time intervals to help the audience receive a better response to the footage that they were viewing. At the start I want to use normal sounds such as the wind and rain so the audience can easily relate to the scene. Then I want to build up the tension alike other thrillers that I have seen by including a soundtrack accompanied by various noises that influence the feeling of the narrative as it is seen by the audience. This will then enable the audience to create a stronger/weaker bond with the characters in the scene this is why it is conventional to the thriller genre.   

Inspirations
I have taken some of my ideas from previous thriller films that I have seen and this can be reflected in my storyboard by the use of similar characters, narratives and conventions from the films. 

Orphan/The House on the End of the Street - From these films I have taken the idea of including in my opening scene a young female blonde as the killer. I think that this character gives an unexpected twist in the plot for the audience this is only seen across the genre a couple of times. In Orphan the audience are given a impression that the character is a sweet child, but the plot then twists and the audience finds out she is a deformed adult pretending to be a child after occurrences during the plot, this is the same for the other film except the twist plot and the child is actually the killer from the start. I have tried to capture this in my storyboard as I feel this will make a good basis for our narrative if we first try to make the audience see her as the victim and then flip the audiences feelings when the girl disappears. 

How will this help when making a group storyboard?

My storyboard has been very successful as I have identified my own ideas of how I think the scene should look. I have also chosen specific lengths of frame so I have an idea of how long the scene will be, how the camera angles will look. Also I know the props that I will be using in the film, lighting, sound and editing techniques that I should use.  I think that my storyboard has been successful because I now have a basis which I can go and create my opening scene from with my group by collaborating ideas together. This is as we will all have a different understanding of how the plot should look like, all we have to do now is collaborate and decide which micro-elements we want to use from each other storyboards.  By doing this we will have a a greater understanding of each others thoughts and ideas and then the best one we can include in the scene so that we have a scene we all agree on and like making the scene better and more effective because we will have a better structured , intense and wide ranged scene, as four peoples ideas have been combined.

  
How will we combine each others storyboards together?

When we next meet as a group we will swap storyboards and then exchange what we think stand out from each of them. From this we will write down the elements that we all like and try to find a way that we can fit all of these into one group storyboard that we can all agree on the basis that we like of the elements within it. In addition we can also improve on this by adding in additional thinks afterwards that we think are a slightly unconventional , that we need to change.