Influence of Thriller Clips - The Shining

This clip has influenced my idea on the creation of our thriller production because it has bought about the style of suspense in which I’ve never thought about in the film The Shining. The tracking shot of the boy, alone in a corridor with the non-digetic scary music appeals to the audience in a way in which the audience would sit on the edge of their seat to watch this part of the movie. It has been a great success, because they haven’t missed out the fear in the boys expression as he looks at door number 237. I might think to include a style like this because it is a triumphant suspenseful scene where it is only one person dealing with a situation on their own, they are the only one that are able to save himself if something does go wrong.

Alfred Hitchcock review "Let 'Em Play God"

Alfred Hitchcock was once known as one of the most popular filmmaker of all time in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. He wrote an article about some of the key points into the concept of thriller films. His article is called “Let ‘Em Play God”.

In this article he says that the key ingredient to getting the audience on the edge of their seats is having suspense in the film. He says that when you have suspense in a film you have to let the audience play God. In other words, the audience have to work like the devil for the characters as they know what fate is facing the poor actors/actresses.

Alfred Hitchcock believes that puzzling the audience is not the essence of suspense, and that is why he hasn’t made a film similar to that for 17 years. He deems that one of the necessary ingredients for the formula is a series of plausible situations with people that are real. When characters are unbelievable you never get real suspense, only surprises. He uses his film called Rope to explain his point.

He is sometimes called the mystery maker and he says that it is unnecessary for a director to change his style in order to develop new characters and a different story.

Clip from The Shining

wrong video?

teddy - I don't think this was the right file! come to workshop and upload the right one!

The Shining

15/12/08
In todays lessons our media class had to watch a thriller film called the shining. We were asked to pick out some points of the film that had suspense. We also had to explain how the suspense was created, whether it was the movement of the characters, the sound that was added through editing etc... After the film had ended, we had a class discussion into what scenes created suspense. Some of our ideas were:
Jacks 'limp' - he's slowed down as he tries to kill his son with an axe, because we don't know if the boy is going to get murdered or run away free.
The chef - as he walks through the corridoor shouts out 'Hello', in the hotel that has a wife and child running for their lives which creates suspense as we know that he is going to get attacked because Jack is very close with an axe.
When Wendy finds out the writing that Jack has been doing which says, 'All work no play makes Jack a dull boy'. This is quite suspenseful as we find out that now the woman knows her husband is crazy, and we wait for Jack to pull off a move.

The Shining.

in todays lesson we watched a Thriller movie called The Shining. whiles watching this film we were ask to look for at least three examples of a suspenseful moment.

After watching this thriller we gave feedback about what parts was suspenseful and what made it suspenesful. Through out the film it was very suspenseful as the same soundtrack of a kittle getting louder and louder. This made the whole film very suspenseful. Some of the feedback:
the beginning starts of with a birds eye view shot following a car with a non-diagetic music of a heartbeat effect which made it suspenseful. also the birds eye view shot shows the location were the car is and establish isolation.whiles the boy was in the bathroom talking to his finger, there were a slow zoom on to him with the non-diagetic sound of kittle. As the zoom gets closer to him the sound gets louder this created suspense. The maze chase was very suspenseful as we don’t know whats around each corner also with the sound that contribute with teh chase. Tracking shot hightens suspense. When the boys sees the two girls there were quick shot of dead bodies this made me jump of my seat and again the sound contributes with it.
After this lesson i learnt that sounds can really make a different to the type of genre. The sound in this film made it very suspenseful as it repeats the same sound and get louder as somethink is about to happen

The Shining

In today's lesson, as a whole class we watched "The Shining" a film belonging to our project theme genre of thriller. The objective of this was to analyse sections of the film and explain why they are effective in creating suspense. Whilst also explaing

the shining Thriller homework

in today's lesson we watched the classic thriller, the Shinning, through out the film there is different thing that create a state of suspense, some of the biggest is the story that is told about the hotel, about the janitor that got "cabin fever" and killed his kids and wife, so from the start we know that something bad has happened in the hotel, and will happen again. from this we see jack go mad, and know he has turned mad before his wife, wendy and his son danny realize, another point of suspense is we know that he is going to kill or attempt to kill wendy and danny, so we are waiting and watching as he trys.
the use of tracking through the hotel corridors and the huge snowbound maze, this puts us with the character not knowing what is around the corner, and multiple times with help from the soundtrack there is something to make the audience jump, such as when we are tracking danny on his trike, ( for the third time and in the previous two there was nothing) all of a sudden we see the two murdered twins standing there a quick flash of them dead with blood all over the walls.

practice thriller David le

In the past few lesson we were put into groups of 4 (teddy,emre and james). as a group we had to plan a practice thriller which was to make a newspaper thrilling.

In the first lesson of our planning we was told to make a storyboard by taking photos of different kinds of shot that would make the newspaper thrilling or draw it by hand. My group decided to take photos of the different kinds of shots as it was easier to do than draw it by hand as we were not as artistic. Our idea of our thriller was a man which i was played by me reading a newspaper and see somethink exciting. This lead to him jumping of his chair in excitment. He then runs out the room with excitment and happiness. As he runs out another man who was played by James walks confusly over the to the newpaper which was thrown on the floor and there he sees a picture of Angelina Jolie. As we took the photos we took different camera shots to make the whole thing thrilling. We took a close up of the man reading the newspapers emotion, we try to take 4 shots which was to convey a rotation shot, over the shoulder, extreme close up and much more.

The lesson we had to film the thrilling we changed parts of the storyboard that we done to make it more better as it turnt out to be. Filming this thriller was more easier as we can use lots of different angles shots and moving shots. This was much different to taking photos as you can use moving shots.we decied to take 3-4 different shots on one part of the thriller. The first shot we came up with was a tracking shot with a close up of my feet, high angle shot of myself entering the room, also a low angle of myself walking in to the room and sitting down. After this scene we took a low angle of myself picking up the newspaper to read it, as i was reading the newspaper we shot a 180 degree slow moving mid shot around me and ends up with a over the shoulder shot of the article that i’m reading. A close up of my reaction, a long shot of me running out. A low shot while i run over the camera, a low angle long shot of james walking towards the newspaper and then finally a close up of a picture of Angelina Jolie. The next lesson we had to edit the footage that we took. Editing the footage we made some shorter to make it contribute with the nexts scene. This was easy as we knew were to place each clip. After editing we moved on to sounds. This part took some time as they were quite a lot of sound to chose from. We tested alot of sunds that will fit into our thriller. As we tried to chose the right sound we then realise the we made a mess of this so called thriller. We realise that we made a mistake on filming as after the editing with sound our clip did not feel like a thriller actually it was completely not a thriller. This was our own fault as our idea was not thrilling at all. As a group we thought that the sound was the biggest promblem as we chose fast pace happy sound which a thriller does not have. We then stop editing the sound. The film ended up to be funny. After this we all learnt that the sound of the film can indicate to us the genre of the film. Sound is very inportant!

In the last few lessons we had, once we were put into groups following the teachers’ decision, we had to write up a storyboard, film the given task and edit the footage on the computers. Our preliminary task before making our actual thriller was to produce a short film based on a character reading a newspaper in a thriller genre.
Before we got into filming, we had to come up with a storyboard together with my group (Teddy, James, David). We had formed a storyboard in time for the day of the filming.
Our idea was that a man (David) that reads a newspaper article and gets really excited over this. He emphasises the excitement by jumping high up and running out the room with happiness. As he runs out another member (James) who seems confused about David running out, walks over to read the page David was reading, only to find a photograph of Angelina Jolie.
On the day of the filming we had fresh ideas into making the film better, as it turned out to be. We improved our ideas into the sorts of angles we should use in certain parts of the scene.
We had used a tracking shot with a close up of David’s feet; high angle shot for when he enters the room; a low angle shot for when he picks up the newspaper to read it; a 180 degree slow moving shot mid shot of David reading the article about Angelina Jolie; a close-up of David’s face to show his reactions; a long shot of David running out following a low angle shot while he runs over the camera; a long shot of James walking towards the newspaper, and finally a close-up of Angelina Jolie.
On the same day, we had time for some editing, which allowed us to delete the footage that was wrong and have our idea ready for the sounds to be put in.
On the lesson after, we were using a piece of software which let us pick out sounds which were already built in. This took some time, as there were quite a lot of sounds to choose from, that would fit into certain shots of the scene. After concluding the whole of the editing, including the sounds, the film had lost all of its content of being a thriller. We partly blamed our idea of the film itself, but it was actually the sounds that we used that were the biggest problem. This was because there were a lot of guitar sounds, which didn’t exactly help to make our film a thriller. The film ended up being quite funny to all of us, and we decided that we shouldn’t play around with it any longer. This also taught us a lesson that the sound/soundtrack of a film makes a huge difference into the type of genre it fits in to.

Practice Project

Over the last couple of lessons, after assembling into our groups we were given a task to create a storyboard, film it within an hour and then edit it to the best of our ability. A thriller based on reading a newspaper was our given task. When the storyboarding lesson took place I was absent, however I was quickly brought up to date with the process and the storyboarding was complete. The next lesson we had was our filming period in which the first thing we received was a tutorial video demonstrating how to correctly handle cameras, tripods and other equipment. After this was finished we started to film, the first we decided to do was film the ideas that were created on the storyboard in variable shots, angles and styles. We used tracking, high angle, low angle, and medium close-up and long shots. We had completed filming so briefly before the lesson ended we could start editing and there was a lot of footage which we wanted to keep and a fair bit we knew had to be deleted. We managed to edit everything to how we thought it worked best we did this before the lesson finished so all that remained was to add soundtracks the short film. The next lesson came and all we had to was add music and finally edit it fully using final cut, however we realised after it was too late that what we had filmed did not resemble a thriller in the slightest. We understood this after we were going through the selection of tracks we could use, none of the percussion or urban tracks that did have a sense of a thriller matched with our footage it was the instruments of guitars and even the harmonica that could have been suited well with the footage. It was too comical and humorous to rectify now, I believe we went wrong when we it came to filming maybe we were being too ambitious with trying to use different angles apart from using the angles that were necessary maybe we should have kept it simple as in reflection some thrillers are more effective with suspense mainly using tilts, pans and close-up. What we had created was interesting to watch however it was not in the right genre as what we were asked to do, since it was just a practice I can see this as a learning curve that has to be always looked back on to avoid it from happening again.

1st lession

the last few lessons our group had to storyboard, film and edit "a thrilling read" using a newspaper. the story boarding went well with the group at the end of the lesson believing we had a good idea what to do for the next lesson.
when it came to filming we had an instruction video in how to use the camera and equipment. when it came to filming we filmed our ideas in many different angels and stiles. such as high angles and tracking shots, so when it came to the editing we had a lot of footage to look through. however once we had edited it to the way we liked it, this took the best part of a whole lesson. the next lesson we added sound. after this we noticed that our final cut was not thrilling at all, but more comedy, with uses of soundtracks and comedy gestures. i think that we went wrong when it came to the filming, we didn't stick by the storyboard, but went with our instinct and we drifted off the thriller theme. we came out with very good footage, but it was not in the thriller theme, if it was a funny read then it would have been great. next time we will have to remember to keep it to the theme that has been asked and if we think we are drifting off topic again, go back and see if it is.