To research into thriller films and the aspects which help to create a good one, I watched a film called The Life of David Gale (2003) written by Charles Randolph and produced by Alan Parker, Nicholas Cage and Nigel Sinclair.
At the beginning of the film, we meet a man called David Gale, and see that he is a member of Deathwatch, an anti-capital punishment activist group and a teacher at the University of Austin. After a lecture, a good looking student called Berlin tries to seduce David into raising her grades, however he declines and this results in her getting expelled from the University. At the graduation party, while David is in the bathroom, she enters and once again tries to seduce the now drunk David who gives in. However it is not how it seems, in revenge to David not giving her the raised grades she wanted she uses physical evidence, for example a bite mark on her shoulder, to get David accused of rape. She then leaves town and drops all the charges, making it look as if she was too scared and distressed to go through the the prosecution, this action results in David losing his job, marriage, son and the role as an activist in Deathwatch due to all the bad pubblicity. This is what causes David to become an alcoholic. After his wife and son move to Spain, so that his wife Sharron gains custody of their child, David becomes very good friends with Constance Harraway, another member of Deathwatch. A few years later Constance is found raped and murdered in a kitchen, David is convicted for this and is helped by an attorney that means well but is not very effective called Braxton Belyeu. Awaiting his execution in a few days, David agrees to tell his story, for a fee, to Bitsy Bloom, a journalist from a major newspaper who brings with her an intern called Zack Stemons, however she prefers to work alone and refuses to have the intern with her during the interviewing.
Bitsy sees that the details that David is giving her do not add up, this is when a stranger manages to get into her motel room and leave evidence (a video tape) hanging from the ceiling, the content of the tape suggests that David has been framed for a murder he did not commit. As the interview and investigation continues, Bitsy comes to the conclusion that it was not the rapist and murderer that recorded the assult, but that Constance commited suicide as she knew that she would eventually die from Leukemia. Bitsy also suspects Dusty Wright, a man who also once belonged to Deathwatch before he was asked to leave, and a good friend to Constance. This thought leads her to his house where she finds a letter addressed to her and inside the video which proves that Constance commited suicide.
She desperately tries to get to the courthouse in time, the car breaks down forcing her to run however when she finally arrives she finds that David has already been executed and has died an innocent man the tape is then released to the media who go mad over it.
The interview fee is sent to David's wife and child in Spain, along with the postcard from Berlin in which she confesses that the rape incident was fake and apologizes. Another tape is delivered to Bitsy, in this one it shows Dusty Wright confirming that Constance is dead and David leaving his thumb print on the plastic bag Constance had used to suffocate herself. This is when the characters and the audience realise that these deaths were all in the name of Deathwatch to show that capital punishment is not effective an that all three, maybe even David's attorney, had planned everything.
This film is a hybrid thriller with crime, there is a lot of tension building music and it manages to keep the audience on the edge of their seat and they are guessing what is going on right from the very beginning. Also, this film is not filmed in chronological order, it starts off in the past then flicks between present and past throughtout the film when David is in prison telling Bitsy the story. Another thing i noticed was when he tells a different story about a certain part in his life and it then changes from the present to the past, we see very quick flashes of words such as 'pain', 'stress' and 'death' on handwritten notes.
I visited Cambridge during half term, and noticed that a possible location could be Regent Hotel on Regent St. and is 3/4 of a mile from the station, it has the suitable attributes for the shot we want and is easily accessible for the group compared to traveling to London.
t we could use in our opening sequence.
d then walk for around 10-15 minutes. This is shown by the photo on the left.
The scene is mildly psychadelic and not like anything that would normally be seen, this causes suspense mainly because of their atire (white shirt, tight white trousers, bowler hat, one eye with fake eyelashes, and a cod piece) that is abnormal to the audience, especially when the film was first shown (1971). The background music also builds tension, the main instrument used in the background is a Theremin, which produces a very erie sound and matches how psychadelic and mysterious the first shot is along with a drum build up it really .
Alex begins to narrate the beginning of the film and does so throughout, this proves confusion as you are seeing him but also he is narrating it himself, the way he talks also confuses the audience as he does not use normal english and instead uses a slang similar to cockney in which words do not always make direct sense. "I can only be concerned about my own Booky Wook, plus in a matter of fact its a reference from clockwork orange, where he rhymes all sorts of words to make language, which just becomes a white noise, a blur, stand out, so we recognise that we are alive in the moment and don't live in the slue of mediocrity, that at any moment just by being a bit silly that we can puncture pomposity" (Russel Brand - Have I Got News For You)
Above is a compilation of questions 1, 2 and 3 to show the variation between our sample.
