The Last Lane Shot List

1) P.O.V. shot following Emily playing with the leaves.
2) Production Company transition.
3) Low angle shot pointing upwards at Liam cycling past.
4) Same shot further down the driveway and following Liam with the House in the background surrounded in mist.
5) Low angle shot facing the pool house, towards Liam.
6) Extreme close-up of Laim's face with a handheld shot.
7) Low angle shot facing the pool house, towards Liam.
8) Panning shot of Liam walking towards the pool house.
9) Extreme close-up of Laim's face with a handheld shot.
10) Shot panning to the left to see a flash of Emily running behind the wall.
11) P.O.V. shot following Emily playing with the leaves.
12) Mid-shot from inside the pool-house facing Liam looking into the window shot pans to left afterwards.
13) Low angle shot following Liam walk back to his bike
12) Low angle close-up shot following Liam walking to the right.
13) Wide angle shot of Liam walking up and about to get on his bike.
14) P.O.V. shot following Emily playing with the leaves.
15) Wide angle shot of Liam riding up on his bike towards the house.
16) Shot panning right as Liam riding towards the house, panning upwards with Emily in the window above.
17) P.O.V. Shot from EMily looking down through the window towards Liam.
18) O.T.S. shot following Liam's perspective as he walks up and presses the doorbell.
19) O.T.S. shot of me (Ed) opening the door and sharing dialogue with Liam.
20) O.T.S. shot of Ed opening the door and sharing dialogue with Ed.
21) Low shot of Emily through the window.

The Last Lane Evaluation

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our Thriller opening thriller conventions as its main method of getting it's point across. One of our most important conventions was to create the feeling of being watched; the idea the entire way through the opening is that Emily is watching Liam as he delivers his pizza. We use many different methods to get this across, for instance we use the obvious ideas of shots from her point of view towards him. We also believed that there were subtle ideas which worked well to build up tension towards the end, for instance we used a fleeting glance for when Liam first sees Emily. This was actually done by accident as on the first take as Emily didn't get out of the way of the camera fast enough, but the way her dress flew behind her worked really well in terms of colour comparison to the other room and adding mystery because you only see a fleeting glimpse. This shot relates to the idea that Liam is being watched which is a further convention of a thriller. The idea of water or running water are included through the panning shot of the swimming pool which adds tension to the scene. The idea of there being a big house with only one person living in it works really well. This has been used time and again in thrillers (mainly sub-genres such as horror films), of course it is far more subtle than usual as the large house is obviously seen but it is only a small part of the story as it is only referenced in the storyline rather than the fact there is a large house being a main plot point, but it is clear that the father lives on his own.

Our characters are stereotypical, for instance the pizza delivery boy who investigates which character is in the pool house. The father whose daughter's death still remains in the forefront of his mind, and lastly the girl who follows Liam (Pizza delivery boy) is the small ghostly and frightening supposedly dead girl. These follow the conventions of characters as in this segment Liam follows the role of the detective character as he investigates the person supposedly in the pool house. The father in this situation could be the 'victim' as he is the only one who has no idea what's going on in contrast to Liam, who has at least been told he has to deliver a pizza and has a purpose at the house. Of course Emily can be considered the 'psycho' but she also plays the part of the 'Red Herring' as she leads Liam towards the pool house away from his original task. It is important to remember though that during the length of the film the character's roles in the story can change, for instance if we were to produce a whole feature length film then it would become apparent that although in the opening the main character appears to be Liam, as the story progresses it becomes clear that the main character is in fact the father. Liam is simply the helpless victim, but Emily's role stays the same.

Our camera work throughout adds mystery by using certain aspects of the location we had and twisting them to our advantage, for instance the large house that we were able to use, we used a low angle shot in order to shroud the house in mist, this gave a great 'spooky' effect which works well with the idea of 'fear of the unknown'. We incorporated flashbacks of Emily before she died to give an idea of how happy she was but we also incorporated her playing with leaves into the flashbacks which as we filmed in autumn could have worked well with ideas of trees dying and their time passing which works also as symbol for what may be soon to come with her.One of the shots we are most proud of is the shot from Emily's perspective, which when we played it back, was framed well and the grass meeting the gravel alongside the edge of the window frame are parallel which space the shot out evenly, also the way Liam walks across past the edge of the window out of site is a way or representing how Liam may vanish or disappear later on in the story.   Quite a large part of our film is that Liam has seen the girl and is trying to find out if he just imagined her or not, this is challenging thriller conventions in a way because with most thrillers the idea is that the victim has no idea that they are being watched or followed but straight from the beginning we could see that Liam saw the girl and went over to investigate. We chose this because we didn't want him to appear helpless or at a loss when he saw Emily, we wanted the audience to think of him as a strong and brave character rather than what you get with other thriller genre films which use the first death at the beginning of the film (It is important to note that if we were to make this a full length film Liam would have been killed later on.) to show the killer and how they act or kill people, bu t by making the Pizza boy a strong character we have in fact made the 'psycho' character seem a lot tougher as well, which (although maybe subconsciously) ups the opinion of the character the audience has.

One of the main conventions thriller films have is that the main character is usually a strong male with a girl/woman playing the helpless and weak victim. We decided to challenge this and therefore flip it on it's head and make our victims in this case both male with the girl (who appears to be playing the strong character) being the character who controls them and is in power. There recently has been a spike in films which have strong females as the leads. They of course have been there before but recently with the release of films such as the “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” series, The Debt and The Iron Lady.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Each of the main characters represent their own individual social group. Liam is 17 and working as a pizza delivery boy and was created to be so conventional that it is almost unusual in itself. In himself Liam represents no social group specifically, unless we were to greatly generalise and put him in the ‘teenage male’ category. None of his behaviours in the film stand out in any way or make you think about his actions or feelings. This idea could be referenced to the film ‘Idiocracy’ in which a main part of the plot line and the character himself is that he is ‘the most average man of the planet’. This also helps as he is very average he shows no behaviours which we could really like or dislike or agree or disagree with.

So if we were to move further on in our plot we would see that Liam dies in a later scene, and as he shows no prominent or specific behavioural traits we do not relate or engage with him as a character, some would agree this is wrong and we always must relate but in fact this, I feel, slows down the pace of the story if minor plot points such as Liam’s death are focused on. So if we were to continue feeling sad for Liam for a prolonged period of time after his death, we would be subtracting from other important areas of the plot that may be continuing on afterwards. Putting all of this aside we would still have made Liam an average character for one very important reason, this is that as he has literally no personality to relate to. This highlights how extraordinarily ‘un-average’ Emily is as a character.

Emily is two different characters , in that when we see the old footage of her alive she is happy and carefree, but when we see the present day footage we can see she is sad and no longer a true representation of her formal self. And in this way she represents two different sides of one social group; children. So the first portrayal of the happy and carefree child Emily is a more traditional form of social group portrayal, a Disney character if you will, where although children go through periods of adversity, they are on the whole happy and cheerful. Films such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Sound of Music and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off typify this character portrayal. Later in the thriller we see Emily as a changed character; her demeanour becomes more sombre and serious. This side of childhood would be represented in films like Hesher, It’s a Wonderful Life and A Series of Unfortunate Events. So the social group represented by Emily is that of children and it is portrayed to show both sides of life, so while the characterisation of her life and ‘death’ is fictional and unrealistic her portrayal of modern childhood is accurate in its complexity of emotion.


Our final character is Ed the father of the ‘dead’ girl who answers the door to find that someone has ordered a pizza to be delivered to his house. We can immediately tell by the setting that he is a potential AB social classification and his dress furthermore supports this view. By setting we refer to the size of the property and its location obviously set in its own substantial grounds, suggesting the family that once lived there all together either inherited or made substantial amounts of money. This social grouping represents a very small percentage of the population, however most of us will know or come into contact with someone in this group. Often in films they can be caricatured, or characters to be envied. However, in our film we have chosen to keep this character very low-key allowing the setting and the story of his daughter to have prominence.

So in conclusion our three characters represent three different social groups, with a wide range of genders and ages enabling the story to have a richer content and a wider audience which allows more people to empathise with the characters as the film develops.

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

When we look at the ideas of our thriller film we think that in general although it does have it’s own original plot, it does have general ideas and themes behind it that would apply to many films. For instance the use of small children being the ‘scary’ lead antagonist in films has been used for decades going straight from The Omen series, The Orphan, to the modern day Insidious. These films all have something in common, which is that they all are your average ‘multiplex’ movie. For instance an obvious example of a film they have chosen to screen in the re-make of The Thing which is far more recent. I believe that if we were to carry on making this movie then we would aim for it to be in that category. This is because generally (but with exceptions) films do better in this area of cinema at the box office than Art House films or other genres do. So I think that our plot is interesting and new enough for people to want to see it and for the large cinema companies such as ODEON, Cineworld and Vue to want to screen it. Yet is simplistic enough for it to warrant being in a multiplex theatre rather than at an art house venue, which stereotypically, more complicated films do, one example of one of the films which I believe could belong to and do well in the Art House genre Is the first Paranormal Activity film which due to its low budget yet high success could have appealed to that type of audience.

Also the next obvious choice is straight-to-DVD. This is mainly because looking at other similar themes and movie ideas, the horror genre (Which is a huge sub-genre of media, and a huge part of the thriller set) has really had a re-boost in the past few years with far more movies coming out in this time, for instance the Paranormal Activity series has been hugely successful. From personal experience, and visiting other people’s houses I can see that almost every family has at least one of these ‘New’ horror movies, these include such films as, Drag Me To Hell, Let the Right One In, and obviously the SAW franchise. I know this is purely speculation and in no way a form of real research but I think it’s a sign of our buying habits in films and everything else, which supports the view that it should be a multiplex production.

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

I think that to get to our audience we first have to define what our specific genre of thriller we have developed; in our case a psychological thriller, as obviously different types appeal to different people; what may appeal to a teenager may not appeal to a 40 year old mother with children. All our rough edit questionnaires focused entirely on the films themselves and not on how the audience felt about genre but I have done some previous independent research in relation to another thriller movie which covers the questions we need to answer. In this research I found that overall the older generation prefers to have a much more substantial storyline and less violence whereas the younger generation has a higher appetite for violence and horror in general. I’ll explain why I think this might be.

In terms of audience preference my feeling is that the older generation, either one generation or older may have had a range of life-experiences ranging from difficult and uncomfortable to devastating and destroying and therefore may not find it entertaining to re-live those emotions in an escapist setting at the cinema. Younger people however in general may be seeking more emotional and frightening experiences to make them feel more alive – they may find it more enjoyable. My generation has not had to live through a world war or a depression and deal with the likely outcomes of close family death or loss of your home on a day to day basis. Although we have more stress around exams and finding a job after College at the moment this still leaves plenty of space for escapist entertainment. My generation has seen the rise of a whole movement of zombie books and movies such as the Walking Dead series which has been transferred into several types of media; we are less likely to have experienced death at first-hand and are therefore fascinated with it. Furthermore in my previous research I found that people in general favour psychological thrillers over any other sub-genre type. This has been apparent throughout film history with films ranging from Fight Club to Shutter Island, films which are eleven years apart but still have one thing in common which makes them hugely successful; a twist. I think people love the idea of not knowing what’s happening in film (as opposed to in real life) and being able to just sit back and relax letting others take control, as film is such a strong form of escapism. I see my thriller as a psychological thriller because of the girl’s father’s battle with himself throughout the movie. This leads me to argue that it will appeal to a wide range of audiences but particularly the older generation because of the complexity of the plot and the intrigue but without an overload of obvious violence.

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

We found at the storyboard stage that because the plot we had settled on had a cliffhanger ending to the opening. However for them to get to the ending and enjoy it we had to draw them in by gaining their attention right from the start. We used a range of ways to do this; we start with the young girl as a child in ‘old’ footage with a date 9 years back, we then open with the present day which made people want to know why the girl was of relevance. We engaged the audience through our setting; a big house shrouded in mist which gave the feeling of wondering who lived there and what might happen. The mist was designed to give a feeling of mystery and all of these elements were designed to get the audience wondering what was going in and how the little girl related to the other scenes. We also maintained this by cutting in shots of the girl throughout the opening. During this process we edited the shots in a way which meant we replaced part of Liam’s footage with Emily’s therefore creating the feeling that you had shut your eyes for a moment to think about something else and when you re-opened them real time had passed and you may have missed some of Liam’s actions, therefore making it seem less like a film and less like real life.

How we shot the film also contributed as when it came to Liam we used many different variations of close proximity shots in order to create the illusion of being with him and therefore the audience was drawn in and could feel part of the action rather than a bystander.

We felt all of the audience (and we thought this was a broad audience of all ages) could relate to the at least one aspect of one of the characters. Emily is shown first and could either be a younger sister, a peer or a daughter or grand-daughter, then Liam would be related to by teenagers his age especially if they do a delivery job or paper round and then Ed would be related to by the older age group.  

All our feedback suggested that the cliffhanger had worked effectively, they had been drawn in from the beginning so our techniques were successful here – most said they would continue watching it.

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In the past I have used video cameras and many different types of editing suite through personal use and interest, work experience and through studying this course last year when I began to develop a strong interest in the subject. In order to improve my grades I am re-taking the coursework element and so last year’s learning experience  provided me with a large majority of the skills that are necessary to perform well in this task. However it has also been an opportunity to sharpen my skills and learn some new ones.

My previous experience meant that I was able to help our group avoid many of the mistakes I had made in the first year like letting batteries run down and losing our work. We were able to plan when and where to film and what equipment was therefore needed and what state of preparedness it needed to be in. This meant we went from filming to first edit within one week whereas with my first group it took us about four weeks to get to the same stage. I identified we needed a tripod and camera and made sure we could book it out at the time necessary and complete all the forms. I worked out how to get it home on my bike and on to location the next morning.

From last year’s experience I learned that it was important to be happy with every shot on location and it only takes a few minutes to re-do them then but once you have moved to editing you can’t return to the shot to try and do it again. So I was keen to get the group to get it as right as we could.

When it came to editing I remembered to just use iMovie solely as although Final Cut is good and more advanced none of the changes we could have made by using it would have been worth losing the simplicity of iMovie and familiarising ourselves with the new suite. But when we used iMovie we advanced from my learning of last year by experimenting with a different variety of filters and white balance, contrast and colour saturation.

Sound editing was a large part of our thriller opening. Jack had composed his own sound track to our thriller which is something I have never seen before. This incurred challenging but rewarding tasks of matching up events in the visual to events from the audio to make sure that they worked in harmony with each other to create the right effects in the film.

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?


Obviously it's hard to answer this question as the amount you can learn after doing it once already is large but the amount you can learn over again is much smaller in comparison. All we can do is re-use what we have learnt  from the previous years. 
Similar to the last question the previous year’s preliminary task and Thriller Opening had educated me on several techniques which helped me this year. For instance last year we focussed heavily on, what to be fair, was a less than ‘Scorsese-like’ masterpiece. So this year I remembered to keep it simple and in our preliminary task my main goal was to try and get the team to use as many different camera shots and angles as possible. This meant that we would be prepared to use as many different shots as possible as obviously we would have done it all before.

Rough Edit Questionnaire Feedback

1. Could you estimate the time of day during the film?
   Morning: 7
   Noon: 4
   Evening: 9
   Night: 0
   We mostly got good results from this question as the majority of people who answered believed it to be evening which is what we were looking for although a moderate amount also believed that it was the morning but the amount wasn't enough to consider re-editing the film and moving it into Adobe After Effects.
2. Were there smooth transition between shots?
   Yes: 15
   No: 1
   Didn't Notice: 4
   We found that most of the audience did in fact think that the transitions were smooth which was great as one of our main concerns was that the 'bittiness' of the shots was going to come across as a lack of editing skill rather than adding to the effect of the movie. One person said that our transitions weren't smooth but when asked for a reason they simply wrote “Some panning shots are a bit”. So we looked at our panning shots and decided that after the fairly useless comment we wouldn't change it. And lastly 4 of our audience didn't notice our transitions which was okay as we know they aren't the most prominent feature of our film, also it is important to remember that we simply screened the film to a group of our peers and not film critics or experts so it's fairly normal to not pay complete attention to our transitions.
3. Did you find the opening effective in drawing you into the story?
   Yes: 18
   No: 1
   “Sort of”: 1
   Most of our audience found our opening did want to draw them into the story, for such reasons as they wanted to see what would happen next, there was a cliffhanger, the use of music was effective and it simply kept them interested. This was obviously great as Jack took a long time on the music making it work alongside the visuals, and we also took time to frame the shots well using the weather we had i.e. mist etc. One person said that it sort of found it effective in that it left lots of questions unanswered which was good but it was in fact too slow so therefore didn't draw them in.Lastly one person said no as it was they didn't really understand it. So we looked at our thriller and to perhaps make it more clear of the times that the videos were taken we put dates and times on the video of emily as a child and also of Liam cycling up the driveway. This also solves the problem of people thinking that the video is taking place early in the morning.
4. Do you think the ending of our opening was appropriate for a thriller film?
   Yes:17
   No:2
   'Kinda':1
   We found here again that most people thought that the opening was appropriate, reasons people gave were, there was a cliffhanger, it was mysterious, leaves questions unanswered and because you're completely focused on it. One person said yes and no, because of slight continuity errors such as when Liam gets off his bike then back on the go up to the house, we decided that perhaps it wasn't clear enough that Liam saw something then went up the house, but in all honesty we couldn't think of any way we could change this without re-shooting. So we decided to risk it and leave it a it was as it wasn't the majority who were concerned about why he got off his bike.
5. Would you pay to watch the entire film?
   Yes: 12
   No: 8
   Here we had the majority who would pay to see the entire film but also quite a few who wouldn't, while at no point am I trying to make excuses I think maybe the question should have been worded better. As it may have come across as “Would you pay around £5-7 to watch this 2 minute clip at the cinema” rather than “If this were made into a feature length film would you pay to see it”. I also think this as one comment was 'No, I wouldn't because it's 2 minutes long”
6. Do you feel this film is true to the thriller genre?
   Yes: 18
   No: 2
   With this question it's important to remember that not everyone in the audience would know much about the ideas of thriller genres, but I think it was important to see if the people who would be watching the film and paying to see it thought it was.
7. Which gender are you?
   Male: 6
   Female: 14
   This was just to see if there may have been a correlation between the amount of people there and whether it was the gender difference that made some of them like the film and others not. Stereotypically males would like thrillers more but here we saw that we got mostly good feedback even though the majority of our audience was female.
8. How old are you?
   15-16: 5
   17-18+: 15

Vacancy Opening Analysis

The introduction of Vacancy has been called one of the best and most effective thriller openings that has been seen, it's use of typography and colours is advanced for it's type of film, and has been studied by many different people over the yeas it's been around.


When it comes to camera shots in the car it is fairly limited but this is used to good effect when paired with the pitch black of the rest of the screen, for instance when there is dialogue you are totally focussed on what the characters are saying and also their facial expressions to go with it. It also makes use of the 'thirds' rule, which is when it's said that you pay more attention to something in the left or right third of the screen, so in the majority of shots the characters faces are in the pitch black of the screen on either the left or the right. Also it works with the idea of being trapped being a convention of a thriller. It gives an almost claustrophobic feel which works well in focussing on the character and then you are brought back into the real world in the car. Also the idea of being trapped and not being able to see is a large part of a thriller convention and this works well as the only source of light we have is coming from the car headlights. In the opening titles a fast moving camera movement is used which gives it a really fast paced feel which almost 'pumps you up' for the first scene which is actually quite slow in comparison.


The main talking point of the opening are the opening titles at the very beginning, firstly the style of having the credits at the start of the film is something tat was a lot more common in older films, so this could be considered as the director Nimrod Antal trying to go back to the Alfred Hitchcock, Kubrickian times where it was believed real thriller/horror pictures peaked. 
The red text used could most easily signify blood, but it can also represent anger, hatred, violence or even love, which surprisingly are ideas that go hand in hand case in point Romeo and Juliet. The scratches could most easily be shown to represent a killers strikes upon his victim, and this paired with the quick camera movements could represent the killer moving quickly from victim to victim.
At the end of credits they all come together to form a maze which moves well with the next scene to which the main male protagonist has become lost. Also throughout the film the couple get stranded in a maze like system of tunnels, moving from room to room in and out of danger.     

Q Magazine

Q to me is the type of magazine that would appeal to people in their last year of college and upwards. the magazine is entertaining enough that it keeps a slightly younger audience interested while also catering for the older generations want for entertainment. One of the main advantages of this magazine is the variety of music it covers. It covers old bands, new bands well known award-winning bands and new up and coming bands.

This would appeal to people who love making music or just love reading about it, there are very few articles which are anything other than to do with music, this means that anyone who buys this must be fully committed to having music as a passion.

So for the majority anyone above the age of 16/17 would read this easily, they could be the sort of student types who may or may not play an instrument, are just starting to learn to drive etc. The sort of people who read this seem to be the sort that may watch the history documentaries on Channel 4 on some nights, co-incidentally studying for a History degree at Manchester University.
I make all these judgements based on not only what is in the magazine but by also the cover and the feel of it. It has a polished cover which is much more expensive to make and therefore also to buy, also the sheer volume of pages is massive compared to that of NME. To put it into more practical terms, Q and NME, and the equivalent  of FHM and Nuts Magazine (And yes there is a difference). It is hard to make judgements by what type of music is in the magazine especially as I pointed out earlier that it cover such a wide variety of music. But one of the safest bets I can make is that the main audience of people who buy this are probably upper-middle class working families or above.

No Country for Old Men - Scene Analysis

In No Country For Old Men (NCFOM) all of the items on screen move the story along in one way or another. this is known as 'mise-en-scene' which is another term used for everything in the scene.

In this particular scene the antagonist (Chigurh) stops for fuel in a gas station in the middle of the desert. He tells the store owner to call a coin toss. There are things in this scene that progress the story and change the appearance of the characters.

The peanuts Chigurh eats throughout the scene are the reason he went into the shop in the first place. This could be thought of as the Macguffin. This is something that moves on the story at hand, it could be small an insignificant or it could be a major part of the storyline. Similar to Marsellus Wallace's suitcase in Pulp Fiction.

Chigurh unnerves the audience, which is the same reaction that the store owner has, so this makes the audience empathise with this man's situation. His appearance also makes him him more like the antagonist of the story as he is wearing dark clothes and has dark hair, he has very little that would make him stand out of a crowd, this is the direct opposite to the store owner who wears a bright yellow checked shirt and who's portly appearance gives us the impression of him being friendly. This helps us recognise the characters for what they really are more quickly.

As Chigurh approaches the counter he already gives off a bad 'vibe' as the counter and register are suddenly covered in shadow, darkening the room. He has turned a light friendly place into a dark and unpleasant one. also the cables behind the man also seem "noose-like" giving a subtle impression here this conversation between the two maybe going. Working with the idea of light and dark, one of the main sources of light is behind Chigurh  almost to give the impression that the store owner would have to get through him to get out which he knows wouldn't be an option. The way Chigurh carries on eating his peanuts also increases the tension of the situation as    it throws the shopkeeper off how this man can seem so intimidating and scary yet still be able to carry on eating.

the main piece of mise-en-scene is the coin, obviously as it's known as the coin toss. The coin could represent many things but I feel the main thing it represents is life and death. Both literally and metaphorically the right or wrong side of the coin may cause life or death.Another possible idea is that the coin has two sides just as there are two sides in this scene of good and bad, each character has a side and whose-ever side it land on will live.

The editing of this scene is fairly normal and doesn't vary between two over-the-shoulder shots. This could be misinterpreted as a lack of imagination but I think it boils down to have as little as possible to distract you from what is going on, for instance there is very little non-diegetic sound, if any at all, during the dialogue, this is one of the most tense scenes in all of the film, and I found that in all of NCFOM, scenes can go from quiet to loud very quickly, mostly with the aid of a gun. so the audience is very ready for this to happen again.

Disturbia

I) This is a dark mystery thriller about a teenage boy who has been sentenced to three months house arrest after assaulting one of his school teachers. Kale's father is killed in a car accident and and few months later his tutor comments on it and while Kale is under house arrest he starts to believe that his neighbour, Mr. Turner, is a notorious serial killer. One night, he witnesses what appears to be a murder going on in Mr. Turner's house. Kale becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth behind these murders but, after a few unsettling run-ins with Mr. Turner, it becomes a matter of life and death. The film is based on a story and screenplay by Christopher Landon and Carl Ellsworth, directed by D.J Caruso, the film has 5/6 characters which reoccur throughout the story and these are Kale played by Shia LaBeouf, Ashley ('The girl next door') played by Sarah Roemer, Kale's Mother Julie played by Carrie-Anne Moss, Mr Turner, his next door neighbour, played by David Morse, also Ronnie, Kale's best friend, played by Aaron Yoo.

Lastly is Officer Gutierrez, the cousin of the teacher Kale assaulted but also the police officer that

Kale feels is out to get him. As most of the film takes place between two houses it was all filmed on

location in the houses of 6221, 6222 and 6227 Painter Ave, Whittier, California, USA. The film was very successful at the box office being nominated for 8 awards including 'Empire's Best Thriller' and winning 4 of them. The production company predominantly involved were Dreamworks and Paramount. The film was rated a 15 in the U.K. for sequences of terror and violence, and apparently 'sensuality' and from watching this film several times i can say that there is nothing which calls for it to be pointed out in the rating. The film did excellently at the box office quadrupling it's budget ($20,000,000) to gross at $80,050,171. 

II) The film can be reduced to an 'American Suburbs Murderer Neighbour' film. So this film could appeal to a large audience, the film is rated a 15 but as the storyline is fairly simple and easy to follow this is just because of the content, I feel that if the sole storyline was just the idea of there possibly being a murderer next door then this film could also appeal to an older audience, helped mainly by the presence of David Morse but for this they would have to sit through 40 minutes of Kale being sentenced to house arrest and him spying on Ashley the 'girl next door'. Most people would take this to be another american teen film which severely closes down the audience but actually this is a fantastic thriller that doesn't really focus on the teen romance side of it as a main storyline. I also believe that the film would appeal equally to males and females, basically because, stereotypically males may watch 'girly' films for the attractive females, similarly here the males would watch this for the action and (After asking several female friends) for Shia Labeouf's performance, but of course this is a stereotyped and speculative view to hold.


Looking at User Reviews Disturbia's IMDB page I found that with a rating of 6.9 this film has a 
largely successful following and I have picked one good review and one bad at random.

2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Surprisingly Good!, 20 September 2007

Author: willpbudd from United Kingdom

I came into the movie theatre with no high hopes. I went in thinking it would be just another Hollywood thriller with regular Jump Scares and a weak script. Disturbia was really good. Its not an amazing work of art and will probably be forgotten in 4 years time. Disturbia is one to watch with your friends on a Friday/Saturday night. The casting isn't amazing and i did get sorta annoyed with Sarah Roemer. Shia LaBeouf is amazing in this movie and i think its maybe his best acting role to date. Disturbia keeps you going throughout and i rarely got bored. Im glad the movie didn't keep making you jump too much (like 1408). I give this movie 8 stars as its definitely my thriller of the year. So go buy your tickets!!!

I think what this film struggled with most was that people would go into it with low expectations (as this review highlights) but this does mean that with most of the reviews I saw a lot of people were surprised with the quality of the acting from LaBeouf who still saw him as Louis from Even Stevens which while critically good, did portray him as an immature naive character. The reviewer liked that way the film didn't classify itself strictly to the horror or crime genre, for instance they liked the way the film wasn't just 'jump scares'. But then again it wasn't 'tame' when it came to jumping either.

Here is another review:

30 out of 46 people found the following review useful:
I am outraged that this trash has gotten good reviews!, 7 August 2007

Author: Shelly Alexandre from Seattle, Washington

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I hated this movie! I don't care what kind of star power you have ( if you can even call the kid from "Even Stevens" a star), how much money you have, or how well your movie is made, if the script is bad you have nothing. Disturbia is a stylish, highly-polished thriller. Everything looks good, it is well-directed, well-acted, and has an authentic, modern-suburban feel to it. However, once you get past the impressive first five minutes, the film falls completely flat! Without giving anything away, the movie has absolutely no surprises. In fact, Disturbia is so formulaic that anyone over the age of 10 should be able to predict exactly how the movie ends, including what happens to every single character. The dialogue is cheesy and ridiculous, every character besides the main kid (Kale) is completely one dimensional. By the time anything that is supposed to pass for scary happened I was so bored I didn't care who lived or died. This movie had absolutely no emotional resonance. I watched it alone, late at night, in the dark and was not scared once! I have worked in video retail for almost six years. Maybe I've just seen so many great movies that this one just seems especially bad. It is a mediocre film at best. There are good performances, but the actors really had nothing to work with. David Morse's suspected killer is a complete waste of his talent. I am happy I have a job where I can directly influence what people are renting (at least in one neighborhood of Seattle). I am going to make it my personal mission to keep Disturbia out of as many hands and homes as I possibly can!!!

This reviewer was the same as the last but came in with low expectations but believed that the script was awful and the the most prominent acting came from LaBeouf, who is the reason in fact why many people wouldn't give this film a chance. Most of the criticisms come from the script in this case, she even says that ' Everything looks good, it is well-directed, well-acted, and has an authentic, modern-suburban feel to it'.

III) Technology is rife in this film whether it's a prop or even the ways in which it was used in production and throughout it's release. Firstly, the film was brought out in 2007 which means that the production team had access to all the of the equipment that we have at the moment (for the most part). The Film has it's own official website, when you open it you are greeted with a similar but different picture from the front cover of the DVD, later the trailer automatically plays which automatically will make whoever is watching scroll down and watch it.  Finally underneath that is the cast list and a synopsis of the film which is something I have never seen before. The trailer itself doesn't give the best impression at the beginning with the few couple of minutes being american Pie style humour, which involves looking at girls in bikinis and hanging out with your friends but later on the mood all changes and becomes much darker and suits the film much more in my opinion. they should have just kept that last two minutes of the trailer to have a real impact. Once you enter the site you are greeted by Kale's room and the objects lying around also act as links, for instance the video camera on the floor links you to clips of the film and other trailers. Being online also opens up its audience to much more people who may not have seen the television advert, or maybe use web services such as rotten tomatoes or IMDB more to find the films they would like to watch, they were also able to read up fully on the film before watching and able to see who directed and who wrote it which is very popular. 

IV) I'm now going to analyse the trailer of Disturbia mainly because there aren't many moments in the actual film which show off both sides of the films feel. (Note: This is not the same trailer I commented on earlier).

 Music: From the start there is a low 'chanting' which immediately gives the film a 'wary' sort of feel. the music progresses to when Kale is measuring out how far he can go in the garden, where it changes the tempo up slightly to give it a more paced feel, as if something is going to happen. This stays the same for a while with Kale's voice-over playing on top of that, he sounds excited and happy at first until it stop and the music gets more fast paced and then the colours seem to dim a little  while the darker side of the story starts to unfold. Kale's voice (and other character's too starts to become lower which makes them sound nervous and uneasy. the music then goes down to a hi-hat, which while allowing the tension to build, keeps a sense of pace. Finally there is the sound of wind rushing past as we see the antagonist brandishing a knife.

Colours: At first the colours are all bright, this is similar to the film in which the scenes where Kale is at home and before his dad's death are all rich is colour. Whereas in comparison to the second half of the film (and therefore the trailer) everything has been dulled down, this shows you that along with the music the mood has changed, so going through this film all of the areas where things are okay in Kale's life such as fishing with his father and just doing what he wants at home, everything is bright, but as soon as he starts spying on his neighbour and seeing strange and unexplained things it all becomes dulled down.

Editing: Shot lengths at first are short and snappy changed with each bar of music, there are times during certain sections early on where the music picks up pace and the shots rapidly change to keep in time with the music. As the trailer moves on shots become longer and longer so as to build up tension and just when it's gone on just too long the trailer ends.

V) when it comes to social groups, there are only one or two subtle references to this, firstly there is the stereotypical view that Kale is living in a 'perfect little suburban bubble' which is broken by the idea of a murderer living next door, this is almost an attempt to break the stereotype. the second could be that it just so happens that the teacher that Kale punches was of Spanish decent and therefore it could be that a part of the violence in the film could be racially caused (Obviously it isn't but this could be subtle hint from the film makers). Lastly women in the film for the most part seem to be shown as a little 'ditzy' and unaware, for instance all of the victims in this film are female, which gives the impression that it seems females are the only ones whom are easily captured, similarly the main female character was not permanently captured but she was the only main character to be isolated by the antagonist.

Thriller conventions: The main point of this film is about a boy who is 'trapped' within his house which is obviously a main convention, also the idea of him not being able to escape. There are red herrings throughout such as the deer which the antagonist claim to have hit with his car which the protagonist originally thought to be a body, as for characters there is the psycho (Mr. Turner) the detective character (Kale) and an authoritative police character played by several people (The judge, Officer Gutierrez, the woman who fits Kale's ankle bracelet). The entire of the last fight sequence takes place hidden under the house in a water filled ditch, with water being one of the main thriller conventions, the fact that it's dark and a torch is used highlights the shadows (another convention). The street is also full of street lamps, and their dull glow also gives off dim shadows too.