Ideas for Thriller

in this lesson our group sat and thought of all the different openings we should do, we started with the basics, who, what and where. writing any words or ideas that might help such as "Alone" and "Night" we had three main ideas that we thought would work well, one was that there was a member of the public, walks down a road and witnesses an attack, then the attacker sees the person and there is an elaberate chase scene. when we showed this idea to the teacher she pointed out that where would the film go from the intro, as it would be one long chase, so we scaraped that idea.
the next idea was to go with the police investigating a murder, with shots of evidence and then a flash back of what happened, so we would see a crobar on a table and then an edit with a "woosh" sound and we see in a blury effect a quick shot of the crobar being used in action. this idea became our back up plan.
our final idea is a complicated one, it is of a ganster being riped of by another in a transaction of a bag swap. it stars with 3 men, numbers 1 and 2 are working togeather to rip off number 3. number 1 is all ready sitting down in a public area ( we were thinking liverpool street station) number 2 walkis in and sit in view of number 1. number 3 comes in and slighly swaps his bag with number 2 then both number 2 and 3 walk off. however number 1 gets up and bumps into number 3 and swiftly swaps bags with him, he then walks off, and you see number 1 and 2 getinto a car or taxi. then when number 3 opens the bag it is full fo newspaper. even though this may sound confusing as a group we throught it would be a good idea, becuase we are not going with the useual of someone dying.
we also had alot of ideas for good shots, such as on the escalator, one man going up as the camera goes down. also POV shot for number 1 behind the newspapaer looking at the transaction. also the use of in and out of focus shots to establish for the audience who to focus on.
i think that this idea is a great one, and im sure my group can pull it off if given the chance.

Editing practice lession

in this lesson we had to do a simple clip of someone walking, opening a door, and a bit of dialog between 2 people. We would be using final cut pro to do the editing, as a group we had used final cut before and we had a cut in our last clip of David walking through a door, so we were quite positive about this practical.

unlike the last practical we stuck to our plan and didn't made one change, because there where a lot of groups filming in the corridor we decided to film going up the stairs instead. this turned out well because we were able to take many different shots on the stairs.
we tryed to include all the different shot types in the clip, CU, MS etc. we also played around with the different angles, and one extreme high angle where we had to put the tripod to the max upwards it would go. to get a birds eye view of the handle turning.
we didn't have to create any kind of genre like a thriller, this made it a lot more easy when it came to editing, because we didn't have to try and make it suspenseful or humorous.
our group finished early and instead of going on to editing early we decided to take more shots, from different angles and different ways, panning and tracking. one idea was for Emre to do the whole scene in a POV shot in case we thought any would look good in the final cut.

over all i think that this practical went very well, we sucseded in the editing with convinceing edits.

Second Practice Film Session

In this lesson we had 3 hours to create our second practice film and edit the footage. We managed to get both tasks done in time. In my opinion, the session went well as we were quite creative in coming up with ideas to make the film even better. Between the first and second practise films I have learnt that using match-cut in the film properly boosts the films quality.

I think that our group followed the forms and conventions of real films as we didn’t think to divert any form or convention. We stuck to what our teachers thought was the best way to make a film. We kept the lighting similar all the way by not using special lighting equipment – we sticked to the room lights provided. We tried to use all the camera angles and shot types, which would have been suited to the film. This ranged from close ups to long shots, to high and low angles. We also tried to position the camera and record from as many positions as would think of to get the match-cutting technique more involved in the film. We were taught the 180 degree rule by Mickey, which meant that once all the characters were in the room, we could only film from one side of the room. Our group fortunately didn’t make that mistake. In terms of the mise en scene, the characters (me and James) wore casual outdoor clothes, so we didn’t want to mislead the audience for another stereotype. In terms of setting, we showed that our film was made in the college and we represented this by having shots of the corridor an the editing room. We edited the film accordingly to help guide the audience from different scenes and situations. Our film didn’t need a particular genre so we didn’t pursue the idea to actually have one.

My practise film shows representations of young, lively college students from the way the characters converse, interact with technology (James uses the Mac) and the way they dress (Me and James both wear hoody’s with jeans and trainers).

This was the overall shot sequence of the film:
A close-up shot of James moving the mouse
An OTS shot of James looking at the computer
2 long shots of me walking up the stairs (with slight tilt)
2 long shot of me walking through the corridor
A high angle shot of me reaching for the door handle
A close up shot of me pulling down the handle
A medium shot from the other side of the door
A low angle long shot of me walking towards James
An OTS shot of James talking to me
An OTS shot of me talking to James
The OTS shots between me and James keep switching quite a few times.

Preliminary Exercise

Thursday 8th January Lesson

Match-Cut
In this lesson we were given a scenario on paper and we had to make up a sequence of shots in our groups. One half of a group made up a series of shots to use in the scenario and they had to compare their results to the rest of their group.
The scenario was:
A day in east London, 3pm. A man has highly confidential information and loads this on a CD. He then packages this to send it off.
In the group I was with, me and James worked together in this task and David, together with Teddy worked on the same task. After we finished comparing, we found that Teddy’s and David’s sequence was in more detail and was praised by Mickey for their work.
Mickey, then introduced us to “match-cut”. Match-cut is used in editing where you have a scene and two or more shots, in different angles, have been cut accordingly to fit and let the action carry on with no interferences.
Mickey then showed us his version of the scenario he gave us. We spotted how he applied his match-cutting technique into the video.

Our Preliminary Video Planning
Our group was given another scenario, but this time, we had to actually produce the video piece with our ideas that we put on paper. The scenario was that one person walks into a room, sits opposite the other character and converses with each other. Our group came up with ideas into creating the shots and putting them together.

Monday 5th January Lesson Overview

“Watching” documentary
On Monday’s lesson we watched a documentary about film openings as a class. There were interviews with directors such as Jean Jacques Beineix, Orson Welles, and critics such as Thomas Sutcliffe and Stanley Kauffmann. The documentary was about answering the question “how should a film opening work”.

T.V critic Thomas Sutcliffe described films that need to seduce their audience into long term commitment and that the temptation to go for instant arousal is the most irresistible. In other words, very fast opening movies need to instantly grab attention and let the audience want to watch the rest of the movie.

However according French director Jean Jacques Beineix, the risk of having instant arousal in the opening of a movie is that you may not be able to answer the questions afterwards, or even not be able to make the rest even dramatic than the beginning.

Stanley Kauffmann describes the classic opening with a long distance shot of the city, a mid shot of the shops, a long shot of the building and a mid shot though the window to the main character. He says that this type of opening works because it allows the audience to know that everything is well before the dilemma kicks in.

Student Thriller Openings
We watched a few clips from thriller openings that students had previously made before.

Blasphemy
This opening was a psychological thriller about a religious freak that collects pictures of people and makes adjustments in the dark and underlines quotations from the bible. It was very similar to the opening of the film “Seven”. This opening had very slow tracking shots of the church, long shots of the main character entering the church, there was speeding up of the non digetic sound, and close-ups of the process of cutting the photos. I think this opening had a target audience of 25-35 year olds.

Essex Road
This thriller opening is about a police officer trying to solve a murder case of a girl who was attacked in an underground station. The police officer was in his office trying to work out clues to catch the killer. The camera focuses on the girl with long and mid range shots, there was a close-up of the bracelet she dropped in the station to show the importance of the murder case, there was fast editing of the reconstruction at the time she was murdered. I think this opening had a target audience of 20-45 year olds

Timecode
This thriller opening was about a boy who wakes up in a back alley finding himself hand-cuffed to a briefcase. After a long struggle to get it out of his hand off, he sees a man on the other side of the alley, and it finishes. The pace of the film was slow. It was a good established location, where there wasn’t anyone in the public caught on camera. There was a good variety of shots. I think that this opening had a target audience of 25-45 year olds.

Days Are Numbered
This opening was quite significant to the other ones as it didn’t express its genre as a thriller, because it starts of quite peaceful with an old man rowing his boat, together with a few shot of a teenage girl. All of this seemed quite normal. The title credits and the gentle music bought about the notion of serenity. I think that this opening had a target audience of 35+

Thriller Films & Audience
In this part of the lesson we looked at statistics to find out the types of genres certain genders liked to see. There was a sample of films that were out at around the same time. We concluded that men were more likely to watch films from action, war and violence genres. We found out that women would tend to watch romantic comedy movies. We also found out that women were equally likely to watch thriller films than men.

28 days later clip

The majority of this shot is shot in a hospital, we follow a man as he walks down the stairs. we can tell that he is a little confused, by the way he says "Hello?" as there is nobody there, this creates a thrilling suspense from the fact that it is a hospital in the middle of the day, this causes the audience to ask the question "where is everybody?"
the next shot is of public phones, but they are all off the hook, meaning that someone had left in a hurry, not putting the phone back, once again this makes the audience ask, "why are the phones like that?" we see the man try them all, but fails to get a dialing tone, there is a high angle shot down on him, this shows the space that he is in (hospital reception) completely empty, there is a sign of panic at one point as there is paper, parts of a sofa and an over turned wheelchair.
the whole time there is no sound, apart from the sound the man is making, we hear no background sound.

the man then downs a whole pepsi, the audience now know that he hasn't drunk or eaten anything in a while. there is then a high angle shot of him crouching beside a pepsi machine, however the machine has be riped open, and there is cans every where with spillage of some. this creates a sense of carnage.
there is a lot of use of long shots, this helps emphasise his isolation, we see a shot of him over the reception desk, the reception desk usually has someone there no matter what, so we now know that the place is completely abandoned.

we next see the man outside from a low angle shot with a big building in the background, even though he is out side there is no sound of anything, no cars, no birds, no humans. This makes the audience think, "where is every body".
the next shot is an extreme high angle shot, we can just about make the man out as a small spot, we see where he was looking down at, some ambulances, one has been searched through
once again this creates the sense of "every man for them selves"

we now see the man crossing a bridge over the Themes river, with a few long shots of the city to show how that he is in central London, but it is still soundless, there is no sign of life anywhere.
when he is crossing the bridge we see that there has been some kind of struggle as there is remnants of a stall that sells London memorabilia all over the floor. there is still nobody around, however we get our first non-diagetic sound, quiet at first it is a slow soundtrack of some kind of guitar, this creates tension because it has hit both use and the man that there is no sign of life in the central London, meaning there must be something wrong. the man still trying to shout hello, trying to find somebody, there is another long shot of the bridge with big Ben in the background and we can just make out the man, there is also a quiet sound of the wind, that emphases the fact that there is no life around. there is then a shot of the man walking towards us through a broken window, at first we do not quite know what this window is of, but then we see from the next shot it is an over turned route master, the route master is seen as a tourist attraction to London, and seeing one on its side just emphases the fact that something bad has happened to the man, we are still hearing the plucking of the guitar in the background, this shows that it has hit the man that something big has happened wile he was in a coma. after we see the man shouting hello one last time, the next few shots are of long shots showing the man alone in central London, there are 3 separate shots, each one getting further away, in different parts of London, this shows that he has been walking around London and still hasn't found anyone.
there is then a pan upwards to see the shadow of the man walking towards a war memorial, this puts the idea in the audiences head that maybe a lot of people have died?

through out the whole clip the audience get a strong feeling of both isolation and wanting to know where everybody is, the clip itself is made more thrilling by the fact that it is set in central London and many people can relate to the area. the use of long shots to show isolation, and the use of no sound apart from the man frantically shouting hello every now and then creates suspense. it is not a thriller where you do not know what is around the corner, but it is a thriller of the audience being able to relate to the man, this makes you want to know what is going to happen to the man.