Group Narrative - Miss Georgiou

In this post i will be analysing the different types of narratives that all my group members have come up with to decide which one we will be going with, or what elements of our ideas we would combine together to create our own thriller opening. My group consists of 3 girls , Jemimah (me) , Rishika and Ella and together we are going to make a 2-3min thriller opening scene. 

Group member 1 - Rishika Sohal 

The possible titles for this opening scene are: Trapped, You're not alone and He's Here.

Rishika's narrative is about a girl who is at her house alone as her parents have gone out for the evening, however she is not alone. In their home there is a trapped soul within their walls that makes creaky noises and sounds of scratching against the walls. Many things happen such as flickery lights, objects banging and eerie sounds until she enters the kitchen where she gets her neck snapped by this supposed evil spirit in her house. 

There a quite a few advantages in Rishika's idea, firstly the use of sound is dominate in her piece as it creates suspense and shock for the audience which would be conventional to a thriller. Also her protagonist is a female which is commonly used in thrillers as girls in thrillers are seen to be as weak characters and the audience can sympathise with them more creating a closer relationship with them. More over her antagonist has a hidden identity as the audience does not see him/her at all in the scene but they know they are around through the sounds used and the protagonists dialogue. The setting of her piece is a at the protagonists home which is conventional to a thriller as the antagonist often kills their victims in a isolated house, making the audience relate and connect more with the protagonist. 

The disadvantages of her narrative is that some of the things that she wants to do may be too complicated and time consuming as she wants objects to move by themselves which is impossible as we don't have the advanced technology and equipment to create this. 

Group member 2 - Ella Hutchins


Ella's narrative is about a girl who is sleeping in her bed and begins to wake up as there is a figure standing over her watching her sleep. She questions the figures presence and asks if it is her mother but its a stranger. Once the girl notices that this is a stranger she tries to get away from them and ends up going through a forest. Unfortunately the stranger gets a hold of the girl causing her to fall into a pond. Whilst the girl is in the pond 'drowning' , there are flashbacks of her past happy memories that were in the forest.

The advantages in Ella's narrative is firstly that the protagonist is a girl, this is conventional to a thriller as girls are seen as weak characters, and the audience can sympathise with whats going on with her. Also the settings that are included in the opening scene e.g forest and bedroom are isolated places which is conventional to a thriller because when the protagonist is in need of help she cannot receive it as there is no one around. This makes the audience create a closer relationship with her as they could relate to her age and empathise her situation. The use of a hidden identity is used in her thriller opening as the antagonist is masked, this is conventional to a thriller as it creates suspense and tension of who the stranger is, making the audience want to carry on watching the film to find out.

A disadvantage that I have found in Ella's narrative is the complexity of the narrative as there are two locations to shoot. I believe this would be quite hard and time-consuming to do as shooting one place to another could make the opening thriller quite long. Also I think the pond scene would be quite difficult to shoot, as we would need to buy more equipment to make it suitable for this scene and we may not even be allowed to use a pool. Secondly, I think her narrative has quite a lot of things going on which may give too much away to the audience which breaches the lack of suspense,tension and surprise expected further in the thriller movie. 

Group member 3 - Jemimah Ali (Myself)

Possible Titles : Human Switch, Switched Off, Humanity Off, Emotions Off

Narrative : My own narrative is about a very disturbed, troubled boy who is laying on the floor with a mask beside him on the road and is having flashbacks of events of his previous life.  Meanwhile two girls walk down the pavement besides him after coming back from a night out. One of the girls notice the boy on the road and checks on him to see if he's ok, but little does she know that he's a psycho. When she comes closer and stands over him, the boy finally wakes up from his flashbacks and then attacks her ( The audience wouldn't see the event). The other friend hears her friend scream and looks back to see that her friend is on the floor dead, she eventually starts to run away from the scene and goes through a forest but then the boys dark figure(wearing a mask) stands in her way to stop her. 

Characters : two protagonist's ( Girls ) , 1 antagonist ( Male )
Location : Forest, Road
Iconography : Mask
Make up & costume - Fake Blood, White pupil contact lenses , girls are wearing out-going clothes, Antagonist wears normal ragged clothes.

My advantages are, firstly I believe my thriller opening is quite easy to do as the setting is easy to find e.g forests and this is conventional to a thriller as forests are usually isolated with no one in them at night. Furthermore, the iconography needed is quick to access as masks could be found on line, in shops and even from friends or family. The narrative is conventional to a thriller as the antagonist has a hidden identity which creates enigma for the audience, also the protagonists are girls; girls are seen to be weak and an easy target for antagonists in thriller films. I believe that the narrative is quite unique as there are small elements that are unusual in a thriller e.g boy laying down on the road , change of eye colour.. but I believe that this is an advantage so that the audience wouldn't know what expect as it is not your typical thriller. 

The disadvantages of my narrative is that it could be seen as a supernatural film because when the boy wakes up from his dream he's eye colour changes to white which cannot happen in real life. This may be a slight problem as supernatural behaviour in films are usually in horrors because of their explicit gore scenes. Another disadvantage about my narrative is that they're may be too much going on, so the opening may include to much information in it which leads to a lack of enigma. 

Final Group Narrative

As a group, me and my peers came to a decision to follow my own narrative as our final thriller opening scene. We decided to go with my narrative because of the availability of the props and setting and also it conveys many of the thriller conventions making it a successful thriller creating suspense,tension and surprise. In summary, my narrative was about a disturbed boy who is laying on the road and is having flashbacks of previous events in his life. Meanwhile, two girls who are the protagonists are walking down the sidewalk besides him coming back from a night out, so they're quite drunk. One of the girls notices the boy laying on the road and goes to check on him to see if he's okay, but the boy wakes up from his flashbacks and kills the girl ( audience would not see how she was killed, creating suspense). Her friend who was left on the sidewalk, hears her friend scream and then notices that her friend has been attacked so she starts to run away as there is no one else with her. As she runs away, she goes into a forest and the scene ends with the boy standing in her way wearing a mask. 

I believe that our opening thriller scene conveys many conventions in a thriller. Firstly the use of a hidden identity for the antagonist creates enigma and suspicion on who he is and why he is hiding his identity. Moreover, I will be using a low-key lighted setting which is a forest as it is a isolated place, so the protagonist will not have people to call out for help making the audience sympathies with them as they wouldn't want to be in their position.

Narrative Theories

I think the narrative theory that suits our narrative the best is Aristotle; a narrative that includes an inciting incident, dramatic question, character goal, antagonist/protagonist, stakes, resolution and sympathy/empathy. The dramatic questions in my thriller opening are why the boy kills the girl? and why he lays down in the middle of the road? also if he kills the second friend in the forest or not? The characters goal for the antagonist is to be noticed and to be powerful because when he was child he was never noticed by his family and they only cared to when he did dangerous things to be seen. Also because he knew a lot of secrets about his mother and how she killed his biological father due to him finding out she was cheating he plots revenge to all girls that are seen to be stuck up or popular. Furthermore, the audience will feel sympathises the innocent girls that are killed by the antagonist as they're being punished for someone else wrong doing. Me and my group are following this narrative theory as the aspects that are included are conventional to a thriller film and our opening scene conveys most of the points in the theory.