Neils Script - Knife crime

Scene No.	Voice Over	Visuals/b roll	Duration
1	Presenter giving facts about knife crime in the cities mentioned.	Birds eye pan of a council estate in London	15 seconds
2	none	Title sequence	5 seconds
3	Introduction of primary three individuals in London	Following the three people as they walk around the local area discussing the previous night’s events .	30 seconds
4	Short interview with one of the three, asking how they got in to this style of life. How they became involved in a gang	Cut to short interview with one of the primary three	1:00
5	Documenter being introduced to the groups friends, asks a few questions of the group	Back to the group hanging out, they meet up with some friends.	2:00
6	the documenter questions about the previous nights antics and group explain they were at a party and got involved in a fight	Group overly animated and happy about the events of the previous night	1:30
7	Interview with the second of the three, documenter asks how happy he is with the lifestyle	Kid reveals that he doesn’t really want to be involved any more but it is a lot easier to go with it than rock the boat and try and leave	3:00
8	Short interview with the parents of the kids involved documenter probes for stories of earlier life	Sat in the living room of one of the houses	2:00
9	Commercial Break	Commercial Break	1:30
10	Brief introduction of the city of Glasgow and some stats	Pan of the city sky-line	0:35
11	none	Pan of youths hanging around in a park	0:05
12	Narrator asking in-direct questions to the youths	Short shot of a mother going the long way to avoid the group	0:45
13	Interviewer asking a lot of prying questions re gang	One on one interview with the leader of the gang	2:00
14	Interview attempting to re-unite the family and bring them together.	The parent of the child in the previous interview is brought in, crying.	1:00
15	Interviewer explains that he wants the two leaders of the gang to meet and discuss, loosely, gang activity	/	1:00
16	The two gang leaders meet and are prompted to discuss the actions and why the act this way	/	3:00
17	Summing up with a 1 year later sum up	Pans over cities zooming out o finally stop with a birds eye view of the UK	1:00
18	Credits	Credits	0:35

Thriller Assignment

Thriller's are a genre of film, tv and literature that are one of the most popular and widely respected. With film legends such as Alfred Hitchcock and titles such as The Shining, Shutter Island, Silence of the Lambs and Misery. All these titles are known across the world and have shocked audiences through the decades.
In this essay we will be looking at the codes and conventions used with in this specific genre and how they manage to build the effects and responses they do trough the simplest of means. Thrillers are expert at playing with the viewers mind and emotions. Heightened senses of tension and expectation are common among thrillers, they are generally speaking gritty, dark and face paced. Often with suggestions that the safety of the protagonist are thrown in to nearly unrecoverable doubt. Literary devices such as cliff hangers redherrings and maguffins are commonly put to use throughout the genre. These are all used to throw the viewers sense of understanding and always leaves questions that are sometimes never answered. Throw this all together and the thriller is born.  
Initially i want to talk about the vast range of character types adopted and used within thrillers. In every thriller with out a doubt there will always be a protagonist, this is the main character that the audience feel affiliated with. Generally the protagonist is the "good guy" the item of the antagonists interest and often obsessions. The protagonist is often put through harrowing mental and physical torture in order to fulfill the perverted pleasures of the antagonist.
The simplicity of the protagonist is often not that straightforward. There are a rang of aspects that can add to the effect of the film often by gifting the protagonist a weakness or strength that the audience can feel empathetic or endearment towards. Examples of this would be a handicapped protagonist, such as in Misery, that prevents the protagonist from being at full strength and thus unable to fully defend his or hers self. This automatically puts the antagonist, bad guy, in a position of power. You'll generally find that when a protagonist has been deprived of one skill or ability he or her is often gifted the pleasure of another, this brings us nicely on to our next type of protagonist. The Picaresque this is an aspect of protagonist that is gifted with speech, wit and charm. They have the ability to use this skill to work there way out of problems and temporarily appease there tormentor.
The antagonist is essentially the bad guy, to put it simply. Such as the protagonist there are many different types of antagonist, similar to the protagonist there is the handicapped antagonist in the sense that he is deformed or mentally challenged. An example of the is the medley of obvious mental disorders she seems to accommodates.
Thrillers have a large amount of general conventions that are used to employ suspense and tension. Camera angles and lighting are two of the most useful techniques. Whether thrillers are being shot for film or tv the general rules apply across the board. Lighting has the ability to set tone extremely effectively. Examples of this are evident in thrillers throughout the ages. Quick views are often employed, this is down by having a flash of light in a dark room so you only catch a short glimpse of the antagonist. By doing this you hit home fairly quickly with the audience as its only natural to feel immediate empathy for the protagonist in that situation. This, i think, is one of the things that directors play on the most in thrillers, empathy. Empathy is ingrained in all of us,   by lighting the character from an angel you can achieve a face shrouded in shadow, such a simple technique but adds a huge amount of effect. especially if you feel as though something bad is going to happen to our protagonist you put yourself in their position and feel, to an extent, what they feel.
When you see a character, or not as the case may be, that is only half view-able you immediately begin asking questions. Who is this? why can you only see some of them ? what are they hiding etc etc.
Music is also a key idea used with in thrillers in order to build up suspense again, it assists the theory of "theater of the mind". This is where the audience knows more than the protagonist for example the cat and mouse concept which is often used, split camera shots showing the actions of two people. Often the protagonist trying to escape before the antagonist arrives back to the scene. You are shown the antagonist drawing ever closer without the protagonists knowledge. As i mentioned earlier this is aided with the use of predominately stringed instruments building and then fading away again. If you are an active audience member it is easy to read the tone of the scene simply by listening to the music. If you are a passive audience member the music still plays a pivotal role with out you being fully aware. These theories combined can make for a truly nail biting, chilling scene.

To discuss this i have chosen Misery, 1990, to look at. Directed by Rob Reiner starring James Caan and Kathy Bates in award winning performances, this film was a classic of its time and remains so to this day.
Misery employs a number of the concepts discussed above. Paul Sheldon a coveted author leaving the remote district of Northern Colorado crashes his car on the way back to New York only to be saved by an unidentifiable savior. Immediately the questions begin to get asked, who is that?
Shortly after this scene her identity is revealed to be the seemingly lovely, warm and caring Catholic women in the form of the delightfully rotund Annie Wilkes. She reveals to a bed-bound, battered and bruised Paul Sheldon that his legs are broken in a number of places and that the hospital is out of the question due to closed roads attributed to the very snow storm that sent Paul cascading off the ledge in the first place. Lucky to be alive Paul makes a simple request to phone his daughter and agent, this request is denied due to the phones being down. Paul is assured that as soon as the roads are cleared and the phones are back up he will be on his way to the hospital. But for the moment he is, for all intents and purposes, trapped. Problem numero uno.
Almost instantaneously we identify Paul is the handicapped protagonist. As well as this it is revealed in the following scene is Paul's agent getting on to the towns local sheriff Buster to try and find out where Paul is. This is an example of dramatic irony, the audience has had revealed to them that all is not as it seems. That people are beginning to worry as to his where about. Paul does not know this.
Straight after this scene we see Annie giving Paul a shave, suggesting an amount of time has passed, she is telling Paul how she is his number one fan and that the only reason she was able to save him was because she was following him. She disguises this as normal and almost brushes over it. Which helps the audience not pay to much attention to this comment.
This film uses alot of devices in order to instill fear and suspense into the audience. I personally think the most important of these would be the music they use. It is ever present in even the most, what would at first appear, regular scenes. The thing that's scariest about this film and is accentuated by the music is the lack of stability within the mind of Annie Wilkes and the frailties of Paul's situation.   

Misery assignment notes

• good use of sounds at the beginning, while hes driving the happy driving music up until the point where he crashes then you hear nothing but the wind. cut to flashback
• flashback gives a little back story about the book misery and why he is where he is, instantly we know more than annie wilkes
• led in to a false sense of security when you think he is being rescued although we arent shown who it is rescuing him
• annie wilkes introduced. seems perfectly pleasant and lovely. 
• handicapped protagonist revealed as annie describes whats wrong with him
• agent tries to find out where he is and tips off buster the local sheriff.
• first bits of suspicion  revealed while she is shaving him, saying she was following him. 
• paul tells annie she can read his new book
• the way annie dresses and acts its very uptight and fuddy duddy. gives the impression of something wound so tightly that eventually it will snap
• she lives on a lonely homestead with nobody else quite a way out of town, her house has a very typical 70's design that denotes uneasiness. 
• annie starts to really loose her shit over the swearing as you start to get little hints that she is far from ok. aswell as the fact she is driving around as is the sheriff. she returns to her house and begins to lie to Paul. 
• stringed music building tension throughout the movie. 
• its night time and paul is asleep in bed as annie enters and is furious that misery has been killed and annie reveals her true colors. and also tells paul the truth that she hasn't called any of his family etc. 
• paul realizes his predicament and tries to get out his room. 
• annie declares that god has set her a task to show paul back on the right path. she interprets this as having paul burn his manuscript, the only copy. 
• she also sprays gas around his bed in a threatening manner. 
• annie sets paul up a writing area but paul requests different paper and annie once again goes mad with a background of the stringed music again to build tension and is the first time she physically hurts him
• paul finds a bobby pin and the classic ideology of cat and mouse comes in to play. paul trying to find a way out or something of use or use the phone, you also see alot more of annies house aswell as the fact the phone has been taken to pieces. you cut to annie leaving the store and about to drive home. cut back to paul, cut back to annie. cat and mouse
• while paul is out in the house he knocks over a tiny penguin figure and puts it back facing the wrong direction. this is important. 
• the tension builds further as annie gets closer to home and the music becomes climatical as paul is literally on the floor out of his chair taking his time. then you hear the car. and the tension becomes fever pitch
• paul begins collection the medication out of the pills that annie keeps giving him. 
• as paul is beignning to write annie walks in and tells him to re-write it and begins the famous cock-a-doody rant.
• days and nights pass as paul is writing the new book as instructed by annie. finally she approves 
• they have dinner together at pauls request in order to commence his plan. but it goes wrong and annie spills her glass with the drugs that pauls been savoring in there 
• a time lapse happens to more stringed instrumentals as paul begins to finish the book.
• a storm comes. a fierce storm. annie comes in to give him his pill and looks awful. she divulges that the rain gives her the blues. she explains that she loves paul. she also begins to tell him that she is terrified that his legs are getting better and soon he will leave her (you get a feeling this cant possibly be good) 
• annie pulls out a gun in the same scene, she says she sometimes thinks of using it. and that she might put bullets in it. she drives off
• paul is once again in and about the house while she is out. he finds an album called "memory lane" that has a lot of cuttings from annies life. you find out she was on trial for a number of deaths of babies and cuttings saying she was being questioned and then finally arrested. Branded the "dragon lady" this helps add more suspense and adds another dimension to annie as a character and makes her all the more fearsome.
• annie comes home. stands outside pauls door and then goes upstairs. paul, aswell as the audience, are lured again into a false sense of security.
• a close up of pauls face and the a straight cut to annie stood over him during the night. she drugs him.and ties him to the bed. also telling him she knows hes been out.
• mozart playing of the top of this terrifying scene adds to the effects that her behavior is somehow profound
• she begins to tell a horror story of old mine workers being "hobbled" for stealing. 
• buster the sheriff starts to clock on to annie and begins digging a little deeper and find a quote she said at one of her trials that was from the misery books. he decides to pay her a visit. 
• paul sees this and finally a ray of hope before annie drugs him and hides him in the basement
• this time the cat and mouse effect its between the sheriff and annie. as she tries to hide paul before he gets to the door. 
• annie offers a number of well thought out reasons as to why theres a writing area. the fact she wanted to try and write "exactly like paul sheldon" 
• paul knocks over the bbq from the basement and the sheriff returns back in to find paul and then annie shoots him straight through the back 
• annie tells paul they are meant to be together and that she plans to kill them both that evening. pauls persuades her to let him finish the book to let misery live on
• he grabs the lighter fluid while her back is turned 
• as paul is about to finish the book, you can see on his face he's planning something.
• as soon as she leaves the room to fetch another glass he throws the manuscript of the new book on the ground, covers it in lighter fluid and does unto her as she did him to and burns it all infront of annie.  
• they then start fighting and paul force feeds her the burning manuscript. annie gets up and tries to run off. paul trips her and she hits her head on the type writer. you think shes dead
• the camera angel shows only pauls upper body crawling as annie cones back and lurches after him 
• paul goes for the door stop and hits her directly in the face with it. 
• suspense over.

Notes on Assignment

• Solidarity, the way misery creates a sense of "you against the world" is a fascinating feature that appears in a number of thrillers of the type. The way paul is literally on his own writing the book, driving back alone, found by one person and then is trapped on his own. Creates a sense of eery solitude for the viewer.
• Will Paul get away (or even back to his room) before Annie returns? Look at your watch. The movie can't end until two hours have elapsed.One way that Alfred Hitchcock avoided this problem, built into the genre, was by sleight of hand, by surprise, by anticipating the audience's expectations and turning them inside out. "Misery" never succeeds in doing this.
• The scenic value of misery adds to the effect and draws you in, the old style american homestead, decorated as such, has negative connotations  

Thriller notes

Different Character Types :

• Protagonist: Good guy
• Antagonist: Bad guy
• Dramatic irony - when the audience knows more than the protagonist
• Character archetypes
• Handicapped Protagonist: Paul Sheldon - Misery.
• Picaresque: uses wits and charms to escape problems
• Unaware Hero - Become involved in plot by accident
• Unreliable narrator -
• Conspiracy theories usually use governments
• manipulators
• criminals - murderers, assassins, kidnappers
• Handicapped antagonist - deformed
• Absent Villain
• Supernatural
• Maguffins - An item that you never actually see but helps expand on the plot and is an item everyone wants 
• Suspense - builds tension 
• Theater of the mind - what you cant see is often more powerful

Purpose of research

•  To provide evidence and support of your chosen topic
• credible, accurate and authentic 
• can be trivial and have a sense of humor but still be matter of fact. 
• interviews with experts
• equations / graphs / percentage 
• articles / documentation 

Qualitative

Examples : Diaries, one to one interviews, vox pops 

Advantages 

• easily accessible 
• get close to people's actual experiences, meanings and feelings
• gain massive insight into people lives and could obtain highly valid information.

Disadvantages 

• can question the authenticity and credibility of the response 
• sources are subject to bias as the content may reflect he strong opinions of the person. 

Quantitative Research 

examples; exam results, data, statistics, graphs, tallies.

Advantages:

• provide reliable information in terms of accuracy 
• reduce bias
• quick to use

Disadvantages:

• statistics lack insight into the meaning, feelings and motivations of the people being studied
• in constant need of updating. 

• you will create a report explaining the advantages and disadvantages of qualitative and quantitative research, with relevant media examples for each.