Production Meeting about different ideas

As a group we all had our favourite ideas of what our thriller could be, here is a selection of them:

Katie's Favourite Sequence Idea:
A group of children laughing and playing in the woods.  'Ready of not would then be heard' coming from a mans voice, but we cant see his face.  i would have then put in a change of atmosphere as the children frantically run around in an attempt to find a place to 'hide'. The camera would have then shot to a pan of a mans legs walking through the woods, and a close up on a gun hanging down at his side.  screams and shots would have been heard, and the sequence would have then cut out of the song 'If you go down to the woods today...' but the eerie version.  As the screen fades to black the title, 'Ready or not' would come across the screen and the same time that a gun shot is heard.

Crerar's Favourite Sequence Idea:
The films begins with a family who move to an old haunted house due to the father's job. The father is doing research for a new scientific discovery near to this abandoned house. The film starts with a jolly mood which soon turns uncanny. After a short time, the two young girls start exploring the grounds around the isolated house. One girl begins to see and feel presences around her, however the other girl does not. The mother hates the new house and wants to leave. One day the youngest girl wakes up and her whole family have gone. She goes looking for them but cant find them. Then again she starts experiencing strange happenings like hearing voices from her family members. She finds her father's experimental equipment scattered around the grounds. The shadows continue to creep up on her. As it gets dark she panics and locks herself in her room to try and escape the shadows. In her sleep the shadows set the old crooked house on fire. The film ends with the house burning and the little girl screaming inside.

Opening title sequence-

The camera fades in on a close up of autumn leaves. The camera then pans upwards slightly to show the leaves moving by the wind. Quiet, eerie music can be heard but it is not overpowering the diegetic sound of the leaves rustling in the wind. There is an establishing shot of a forest in which the house can be seen in the distance. Trees are swaying and blanches are seen blowing in the wind. There is a shot looking upwards at the trees so they are towering over the camera. The camera slowly begins to zoom in on the house. As the camera pans through the trees- during which, the digetic sound of leaves and wind increases, then cuts back to the slow zoom. When the camera reaches the house there is a creak and the non-diegetic music escalates and then there is a fade out.

Igor's Favourite Sequence Idea:
What is film about? Film is about how a musician changes throughout his career with his age. Firstly he is young at the beginning and wants to make music to help change the world, but then he gets older and and changes his mind. He begin to work for money and destroys what he has done before. Moreover,he has romantic relationship with a woman,which changes cardinally throughout the film the same way as his view towards the the world.

Getting into our groups

In todays lesson Adam put us into our designated groups in which we were to work with for our media opening title sequence pieces later on in the start of next year. I was put into a group with Katie, Crerar and Igor in which I believe we will work very hard and well together to create a good piece of work. We went over each of our ideas and finally decided on a very good opening title sequence about a gymnast in which we were all happy with and had an advantage due to Crerar being a professional gymnast with lots of useful contacts which will come in use for when we film the sequence. Our final idea is:


A gymnast of the age of around 15-18yrs old comes into the gym to train like normal and starts the scene by turning on all the lights, then walking in and putting her stuff (bag etc) down and begins to run around the gym as her warm up. As she runs we will do a rotation shot of her body to show her working. Then when she finishes running she will take off her tracksuit getting ready to perform on the beam as her practice. As the scene moves on you start to realise that she has a psychological problem, like a mental block stopping her to be able to perform her tricks as normal on the beam. As she stands on the beam preparing to do her tricks she starts to have mental flash backs of herself performing the tricks in a black room so its very focused on her movements creating a clear and effective affect. But as she is having the flashbacks a door slams shut causing a reaction from her causing her to gasp and then black out.

My own ideas for Thriller Opening Title Sequences

To help choose our final piece of opening title sequence for our final idea to work with we each had to come up with and then present 4 of our own ideas including the plot of the film and what the opening title will include.


IDEA ONE:
The synopsis of the film is based on a prison breakout earlier on in the film (mainly in the opening title sequence) and how the prison escapee managed to breakout of the prison. Its conveyed through an investigation with lots of interviews and observations throughout the prison, and the history of the escaped convict free on the run.

In the opening title sequence it mainly a follow shot with the camera travelling back the way through the prison of where the prisoner travelled to escape showing and conveying to the audience the clever and difficult route of the prisoner's escape through the prison. The music will be very up beat and action pact to give the sense of how tense the prisoner must have felt during his escape with the follow shot then ending back in the prisoners cell room from where he started.

IDEA TWO:
The synopsis of the film will be about a group of teenagers going out on a boat trip which starts out to be fun and enjoyable but drastically changes when the boat breaks down and they end up stranded in the middle of a lake/ocean (depends on practicality). It is a very tense and stressful situation which will be conveyed with the music and effects used in the sequence, especially when one of the teens falls out of the boat and bangs their head on the side, resulting in a bloody injury on their head. The blood from the injury diffuses through water which you then realize starts to attract someone or something in the lake/ocean swimming under the water creeping closer and closer to the injured teen, so possibly an underwater shot zooming upwards. So in conclusion the film will be about what had happened to the missing teens on the boat and what or how made them disappear.

In the opening title sequence what will happen is mainly what I explained above, with the teenagers in a boat, most likely and practically in a lake, with one of the teens falling in and hitting their head. The tempo of the music will change from happy and fun to tragic and sinister to create tension in the scene linking to the actions in the shot. Due to the blood from the injury diffusing in the water, it attracts something underwater which, using a underwater upward zooming shot, starts to creep closer and closer to the injured person with the music increasing in tempo and loudness adding to effect of tension with the audience. When the underwater creature looks as if it is about to reach the injured the person the shot will cut to black with screams in the background showing the written title of the sequence in big bold white colours contrasting well with the black background.
The plot of this film will be mainly focused on an investigation of a murder crime which has happened earlier on in the film (I.e opening title sequence). The crime is very well planned and the murderer is not going to be easily found making the film have a very tense and fast paced atmosphere with the genre being a thriller/crime movie.

In the opening title sequence the music will start with a heavy bass creating the feel of something tense and sinister is about to happen. One person will come into the scene running away from the camera in a dark wood looking back so its clear that they are running away from someone or something. The shot has close ups of their face throughout the sequence until they finally fall over and look up into someone of something, then the shot cuts to black.

IDEA THREE:
The synopsis of the film will be mainly focused on a child abduction from a playground and trying to investigate and find the child and also find out who is the main cause of the abduction. The opening title sequence shows the actual abducting which gives the audience an insight of what the upcoming film will be about. The main genre will also be based on a crime/ thriller full of fast pace sequences and lots of tense atmospheric action in the scenes.

In the opening title sequence the main shot is of a playground with lots of little kids playing around with the parents sitting on the side talking, we show this by cutting to each shot one by one of different scenery in the playground while having serious, heavy beat music in the background to indicate how something is about to happen in the scene. The music then changes to a kind of sinister high tension beat, and cuts to a shot of walking booted feet walking towards the playground, the boots show and indicate how they don't belong in the area they are walking towards. Next an over the shoulder shot of a hooded figure is done to give the feel that the hooded figure is watching a particular child in the playground leaving you as an audience to realize what is about to happen. The shots cut to different angle shots of the hooded figure coming closer and closer to the child in the playground, much to the mothers oblivious notice, until they finally reach the child with an ending shot of two hand and arms reaching down and grabbing the child, leaving the idea of the child being abducted.

IDEA FOUR:
The plot of this film will be mainly focused on an investigation of a murder crime which has happened earlier on in the film (I.e opening title sequence). The crime is very well planned and the murderer is not going to be easily found making the film have a very tense and fast paced atmosphere with the genre being a thriller/crime movie.

In the opening title sequence the music will start with a heavy bass creating the feel of something tense and sinister is about to happen. One person will come into the scene running away from the camera in a dark wood looking back so its clear that they are running away from someone or something. The shot has close ups of their face throughout the sequence until they finally fall over and look up into someone of something, then the shot cuts to black.

Analysis on the sound from "Kill Bill Vol.2" in the buried alive scene

In the clip from "Kill Bill Vol.2", the atmosphere created towards the audience is very tense and dark due to the situation of being buried alive. When I first watched this clip, I watched it with my eyes open and concluded at the end that this scene is very interesting and fascinating to watch due to the good sound effects such as heavy breathing, hammering, every detail heightened to be made clear to the audience and good music. However, in class we tried an idea of watching the clip but with our eyes closed to get a good sense of how much the sound was part of the scene. Sadly this task didn't really work for me due to the fact of how I had already seen the scene before so knew what was already going to happen, however it did make me notice the sound effects and music used to more of an extent. While listening to the scene, it made me realise that without any of the sound effects or music involved the emotions and urgency shown in the scene would not be as strong.

Analysing the actual sound in the clip, you are first introduced to the sound of dirt being piled on top of something and then followed up by some dribble of debris, creating a very tense atmosphere. When all the dirt falling has ended all that is left is the harsh sound of Beatrix's heavy breathing without any words conveying to the audience the depth of her emotions in the scene with also later on her desperate screaming and hysterical laugh, strengthening the idea of her emotions of exasperation. The next sound effects we hear is a car driving away emphasising and conveying how Beatrix is now alone in her very tense situation. This is the part where the music starts to play which then matches with the idea of how she is escaping, so is very upbeat which contrasts hugely with the dark and tense situation happening on scene.

 

 

Hurtwood Thriller Opening -"Target"

What is your understanding of the action in the sequence. What is happening?

From the opening of the thriller "Target" you firstly start to listen to a non-diagetic soundtrack in the scene which builds the idea of suspense and tension in the atmosphere and mood of the sequence indicating how something bad is about to happen. A window of the house is forced open showing how the person trying to get in is not welcomed, plus with their clothing being all black, it gives the audience a huge indication of a burglar or criminal. The presumable owner of the house, due to the picture frame shown in one of the shots of the same person, is fast asleep upstairs with the shot of the clock informing you that it is early in the morning increasing tension in the atmosphere. Downstairs in the broken into house, the intruder starts too look through documents and letters left on the side hinting how they are there for a specific purpose and trying to find something in the house. But once they have found what their looking for with a sheet of paper, the intruder starts to head upstairs towards the asleep owner in the bedroom indicating that they have not completed their planned task. Once the intruder has entered the bedroom, the shot cuts to their boots waking towards the bed, then the alarm clock starts to go off waking up the sleepy owner. As the owner reaches for the clock on his bedside table, the intruder gets there first using their finger to turn it off causing a black out and end of the sequence leaving you with a cliff-hanger of suspense of what is going to happen next.

What do you think the rest of the film might be about?

From the sequence I believe that the rest of the film will be about a murder in a victims own home with an investigation showing what the intruder/murderer wanted so much to commit such a crime, linking with the stolen piece of paper in the opening title sequence. The film will focus mainly on the investigation but during it will explore a much more wider story giving an explanation of why the situation occurred.


What is your view on the casting? Have they chosen convincing actors? (not necessarily in terms of their acting but in terms of their suitability for the role/the right look etc.)
Well, for the character of the intruder you never clearly see their face of have a full body shot only parts of their bodies like their boots or hands, apart from the shot on the stairs where it shows how they are dressed head to toe in black clothing. Due to the shape of the body you would assume that the character is a male but the way they are shot in the sequence is well portrayed to create the sense of a criminal/intruder. The other character is the owner who is clearly showed with his sleeping in his bed. I think they have chosen a convincing character for the owner as he portrays a typical normal family man sleeping innocently in his home.

Are the characters interesting?
The main characters that captures your attention the most would be the intruder in the house as they are the ones performing the actions in the sequence, resulting in capturing the audience's attention on the screen and keeping it throughout the sequence.

If there is dialogue, what do you think of it?
In this sequence there is no dialogue which adds to the tension on the screen with the sound bridge and music chosen.

What do you make of the camera work, editing, sound, how convincing is the mise en scene?
The camera work used to create this sequence was well done due to the result in creating tension on the screen. The sound is very non-diagetic which really helped to create the mood and atmosphere of suspense and something sinister with the heavy music, really catching the audiences attention and keeping it on the screen. All the close up shots with the intruder showing his actions helps to give an indication on whats happening or whats about to happen as there is no dialogue used, also adding more tension to the scene as well. A bit of criticism about the sequence would be that the build up of tension and shots with the intruders actions does tend to drag on a little bit which has the risk of losing some of the audiences attention, so maybe quicker and neater editing of the shots can be done to help the flow of the sequence work well together.

Thrillers and Suspense Films: What is a Thriller?

Thrillers

A thriller can have many different forms such as, psychological thrillers, erotic thrillers, crime thrillers, action thrillers and mystery thrillers and they often create a sense of a sudden rush of emotions with fast paced action whether it be sad, happy, scared or angry from the audience watching. 

These type of films are very important in the film industry as it gains a very wide range and variety of audiences with its high level of anticipation and ultra heightened expectations. Film's of these genres have a very adrenaline-rushing, fast-paced and gritting style to them allowing the audience to be on the edge of their seats while watching.

One of my favorite thrillers is Oren Peli's 2007 paranormal activity, as it is very different from most thrillers with its style of film which is more physical than psychological, mental or emotional which you would expect from a psychological thriller. This is a brilliant thriller as lots of action occurs in the film and creates a huge build up of tension that even a simple door slam makes you jump in your seat.


Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twoWuDy5kys







Another type of thriller which i really enjoy watching is a crime thriller which involves normally a crime that involves revenge at the end containing murder, fighting, lots of action, kidnappings and car chases etc. One of my favorite crime thrillers is Liam Nelson's 2008 Taken which mainly has a target audience of male adrenaline junkies in which crime thrillers normally attract.

This film contains lots of action and a huge build up of tension with lots of revenge and murders. 

Denotation and Connotation

Denotation and Connotation are two principal methods of describing the meanings of words in films etc. To look into this in more detail, in class we were asked to look up the difference between the two words and sometimes they seem to be very similar but are actually very different meanings which both word to help the audience to understand a film

Connotation:
Connotation are the meaning that comes along with a word so it is added to a specific object. The online Literary Dictionary states it as "the range of further associations that a word or phrase suggests in addition to its straightforward dictionary meaning (the primary sense known as its denotation); or one of these secondary meanings". What this means is basically depending on the situation that a word is used in, the meaning may change to what it initially meant.

Denotation:
Denotation is a logical word where the literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests. It is what something literally is, linking exactly to the dictionary meaning of the word

Examples of these two words:
One of the most popular examples of a connotation which is used within many different thrillers if the kitchen knife where is can be used to everyday life such as cutting foods, which doesn't pose much of a threat. However, using a knife could also be conveyed as a dangerous murder weapon in a thriller used to kill someone as a weapon. This use of connotation will therefore help to build tension and suspense in a thriller, allowing the audience to wonder what the significance of the object will be.

 

Final Prelim

Actual Coursework Task

3.12.2014

Video

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

Prelim Editing Part 2

On Monday 20th October, we carried on editing our prelim shoot using the program called Adobe Premier Pro. I worked with Ollie who was in my group then with Katie later as she was late into the lesson. To start with we looked through our previous work and progress we had already done in the editing lesson before then looked through our shots and added some more to the sequence by dragging each cut into the timeline. As before, we repeated this until all of our video had all the clean edited shots into the timeline so that the story line ran smoothly in the sequence resulting in a good. well presented scene of our work. To add to our final piece of edited work, Max showed us how to add our names on a title sequence to go on at the start of our scene to represent that its our work.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed learning how to edit and cut scenes to create a final clean cut scene which would then be uploaded to YouTube. I believe that my group and I worked smoothly and well together which showed in our final presented edited scene.   

Editing the prelim shoot

I worked with Katie while editing our prelim shoot, using a program called Adobe Premier Pro. Our first task when we opened the program which contained all of our shots from our sequence in, was to create a bin in which we could copy and paste the shots that we wanted to use and also name each shot individually so that it was a lot more clear to tell which shot is which in the bin file.

Next we started the actual editing process and began by cutting each of our individual shots into the only parts that we needed to use in our final scene. Then we dragged these cut shots into the timeline. We repeated this process throughout the hour lesson until we finished with half of our video edited and complete on our timeline which resulted in each shot running smoothly into one another, presenting the same scene but edited to show different angles in the shot.

Overall, I thought Katie and I worked together really well and smoothly which resulted in a good piece of produced edited piece.

Some Photos

 



Prelim Shoot

Doing our prelim shoot was a very enjoyable and interesting for me as it was the fist time i'd ever used professional equipment and filmed something using the technique to create different angles of the shot. In my group we had Ollie and Crerar as the actors to perform a short sequence using the instructions given to us by our teacher Adam. The director of the sequence was Katie and the filming was done jointly by Lauren(me) and Ben. Using and following the storyboard given to us by Adam, we began shooting by firstly bubbled our camera (Sony NX5) and got the white balance right and even by holding a blank white piece of paper in front of the camera. For the opening shot we just used a simple blank white piece of paper with our names written on it the moved on to the more complicated shots using different angles. We had help and advice given to us by Paul to help us complete our sequence and gave us a useful tip that we should shoot the whole scene with a wide shot, then the sequence all again with an close up shot, over the shoulder and mid shot etc..
After finishing all the shots we needed to create we were then able to add some of our own resulting in a better understanding of the story in our sequence such as the over the shoulder shot of Crerar looking at pictures of her "husband" on her phone. We did this because our story was about a woman being told by her lover to run away with him before her husband gets back.

Second part of the storyboard that we were asked to film:

                                             

We were then tasked to take this further by coming up with our own storyline to go with the scene in which our group decided to have Crerar and Ollie as the actors as act as two lovers where Ollie was pleading Crerar to tell her husband about their relationship. Although quite serious some comedic values were added by having Ollie do a Scottish accent. As a group I thought we worked really well together, despite the few giggles and laughs along the way we worked very hard and managed to complete the task and have great results.

 

 

Photos of the Filming

We were in the studio using different props such as a sofa, desk, door and a white backboard to help create the scene 

Katy, Ben and I were in charge of the filming (with the help from an expert of course)

Ollie and Crerar were in charge of acting

Overall I really enjoyed doing this task and learnt some really interesting things along the way with filming and how to create different scenes.

"Sexy Beast" Opening title sequence

    "Sexy Beast"

The opening title sequence of "Sexy Beast" starts with the first voice over with a wispy/cricket  sound which catches your attention straight away wanting you to keep on watching the rest of the scene. There's a strong use of music which has a very sassy, light heartened and slightly comedic tone giving the sense that the scene is a comedy. Your first introduction is a clearly shown main character who is a middle aged, sweaty, leather skinned and tanned man with an arrogant, non classy attitude giving the idea that he was not born into money. He is obviously the owner to the huge house shown in the scene due to the way he commands the spanish boy to clean the pool. The house is in the middle of no where with a very hot and muggy environment with only a few towns which is shown from a long shot, indicating that he is trying to keep a low profile and probably is up to no good due to the angle of how higher up he is due to the other houses, As the scene goes on you get a cross cut shot to a woman driving a car away from the camera indicating that she's driving towards him and away from us, from the same environment surroundings in the shot. In the camera shot before the woman, it shows two hearts as part of the tile decoration in the swimming pool which suggests that they are both lovers which also makes you start to ask questions such as who? what? where? keeping your focus on the scene. The information about the sequence is placed either as the bottom of the shot or on the sides which was done deliberately to keep the focus on the action of the scene.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps2WwRjvQkY

Opening Title Sequences, "The Shining"

Each opening title sequence is basically used to set up the audience with information about the film they are about to watch. Such as giving production information and maybe showing you the names of the main character/s. It will also aim to entice the audience by showing you the genre, whether it is a horror/comedy/thriller etc, and the tone or mood which is usually shown through the music produced in the sequence. To establish the setting and atmosphere of the film the variety of camera shots would be used which as a result, it should aim to leave the audience asking the question of, "What is going to happen next?


                                                                     "The Shining"

The opening title sequence for "The Shining" starts by showing us the production company of the film as the well known "Warner Bros Pictures" with "A Time Warner Entertainment Company" as the main company, which is clearly recognizable from the well known logo. The intro opening was held for around 5-6 seconds which dragged on a bit showing how old the film was as there wasn't much editing used for the intro, As the title sequence continues you instantly get the idea that the film is going to be very dark with a sinister tone giving a very strong perception of the film being creepy which strongly contrasts with the scene involving the beautiful views and scenery shown, changing something that should look and feel peaceful to a sinister and isolated tone. You can tell that the film is old due to the amount of holding the image and dragging it out which is a result of the less technical options available back then. During the opening title sequence you follow a car driving along long roads through mountains, making you wonder as the audience, who is in the car and where are they driving to showing that the scene has caught your attention and kept your focus towards the scene. The composition of the camera shots help to create the atmosphere with the massive clear establishing shot of the mountains giving a feel of isolation, and also the long held shots which cut to different environments, helping the audience to understand the amount of distance the car has traveled with also the effect of the roads becoming smaller and smaller also showing how near the car is to its destination. The overall genre of the film is a horror/thriller due to the result of all the effects used, especially  the music.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgCejsyS0t8