Initial Ideas

Initial Ideas

Here are some of the ideas that we have come up with for our thriller. We have considered where to film it and have come up with basic ideas that we may use, but we aren't sure yet. We know that there is going to be some sort of enigma and a large sense of suspense though, as we need to make our opening very convincing.

First Production Meeting

 Today was our first production meeting. We discussed today how we would plan out or thriller, who would film, who would star in it and roughly came up with a plot. We know that in our next meeting we will discuss our thriller opening in more detail and talk about what camera angles to use.

Introducing Our Group

Introducing Our Group

This is our group in which we have decided to call White Virgin Media. There are four of us, me, Michal Cendrowski, Samuel Hannigan and Joshua Collier. Sadly, I am stuck with them to work with this year. But we'll make it work. 

How To Film A Thriller

How To Film A Thriller 

In this short video there are very typical aspects from a thriller. We watched this in class to understand how a thriller should be laid out so that we could have inspiration for when we film the opening to our our thrillers.
The start of this video is very silent and quiet, until we hear some diegetic sound fade in, the diegetic sound being the nature sounds e.g. birds singing and the breeze. To set the scene there is also a very long shot at the beginning so audiences can see the environment that the character is in. As he walks, to avoid wasting time filming the character walking everywhere there is a cross-dissolve which leaves out part of the character's journey, but audiences understand what is going on all the same. When he walks in to the deserted building, we see a quick high angle shot to symbolise his vulnerability. When we see the first shot of the building there is an eerie suspense sound to suggest danger, and the creepy deep-noted sounds continue as the man walks into the building and curiously looks around. The backlight beside the window creates a silhouette and the point of view shots also have a good effect. There is a low angle shot when he comes across the bottle on the ground, and the sounds of the water trickling also creates a diegetic sound, which is a good effect to use even if it was just added in it worked very well and sounded realistic. The eerie sounds grow louder and sharper when there is suddenly a lot of quick cuts to show a lot of panic and fright, and the shots coming from outside of the building suggest that someone or something is out there, which leads the clip to the next scene where there is a close up of the man's face to show his reaction. As soon as he runs outside, all the suspense and creepy effects stop, and the sound goes back to the diegetic nature. Outside it is light, whereas inside the building it is dark, so it gives the audience the impression that there is nothing to be afraid of and there is actually no threat there, and that they can relax. However, when the man walks away we see an extreme close up of an eye and there is ominous music, creating enigma and mystery. The audience are then left with a cliffhanger to wonder what is going to happen next.

Studio Ident

Studio Idents of Today

Universal Studios

Universal Studios was founded in 1912 as a universal film manufacturing company by Carl Laemmle, Pat Powers and Mark Dintenfass. It is one of Hollywood's biggest studios and has received outstanding box office records for films such as "Jaws", "E.T: The Extra Terrestrial" and "Back To The Future" which were all directed by Steven Spielberg. 



Walt Disney Pictures

Walt Disney Pictures was founded by Walt Disney in 1923. It is based at Walt Disney Studios and is based around live action movies today. It has changed quite drastically over the years as short animations created by Walt Disney Animation Studios were just the beginning. Its first feature film was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" and was animated in 1937, but their first film with live action actors was "Song Of The South" released in 1946. Nowadays, Disney is famous for films such as "Frozen" and has over 50 animated classics which are considered timeless to audiences of all ages.


20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox Film Corporation was founded in May 1935 by Joseph M. Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck. Over the years the company has become more and more successful. They began with producing films such as "Music Is Magic" which was released on November 1st 1935, and after making lots and lots of black and white movies went on to create animated classics decades later such as "Ice Age" in 2002, and more recently from then up until today, have produced very successful movies such as "The Maze Runner" and the "Night Of The Museum Trilogy".



Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures was founded in 1912 and has produced some of the well known classic movies we know today. These are all sorts of thriller genres, some films such as "North By North West" directed by the world famous Alfred Hitchcock. Paramount has developed over the years and has changed drastically as they have produced many different sorts of films with all different genres.

Titles (Thriller Examples)

Titles (Thriller Examples)

The title of a thriller, or any film for that matter, needs to include the title of the film, the production company and the producer, and also the logo for the production company as well as perhaps the music for the production company. I have looked at a few thriller examples with title sequences and have reviewed them.

Se7en
With the eeriness and the creepiness of the Se7en opening, it is easy to see that this is going to be the opening for a thriller. The music creates a lot of suspense, and the shots in between the actor's names are very sharp and fast and unclear, which creates a sense of enigma because the audience see quick shots of paper and pens and other objects but cannot understand what any of these things mean.

Past Student Thrillers

Past Student Thrillers
I have been looking at past student thrillers. By looking at these, I can compare them to the thriller opening I made and see where these people have done well and what they can do to improve. I have also seen if I could notice any typical thriller conventions that have been used in these openings.


Hunter
In this thriller opening I think this group have made a great use of sound. As soon as the detective character walks in we instantly know that something is going to go wrong simply because of the way the music builds up and creates suspense. There are a good use of camera angles in this and I think the costume choices were very good and suited each character; the detective was wearing a stereotypical inspector coat and the killer at the end was all dressed in black and held a baseball bat, like he was undercover and this was very effective. I liked the way the camera followed the main character, however, I feel like the tracking shots went on for too long and they could have easily been cut down a little.

After Eight
I really like this one and I feel that the camera angles were very accurate and you can tell that each little shot in each part of the opening was filmed very precisely and carefully. I think the music is very good and as soon as we see the male character walk in with the bag there is a sense of enigma because the audience don't know what is inside of it to start with but are instantly drawn in to want to know what is inside of it. There is also a cliffhanger at the very end, and when the guy says "are you ready for this?" and the female character gives him a very sneaky grin, we wonder what it is they are plotting especially when we see the axe and the blood on the chopping board - what was it that the girl was cutting up? I think to improve they could have used a better microphone and maybe could have limited the dialogue a little bit.

The Catalyst
This opening was very creepy and I found the whole concept of it quite saddening. But there was an excellent use of mise-en scene involved, and also there was a great sense of suspense which started up when the male lead role pulled out the sniper rifle. The music really suited the whole assassin atmosphere. I think to improve they could have added in some more obvious camera angles that you would typically see in thrillers for example a low angle as he pulled out the gun to show that he had power over everyone else.

Preliminary Evaluation

Preliminary Task Evaluation

The preliminary task we did had a lot of parts where we had improved from our last attempt at filming a sequence, such as our sound test. But there are also some parts on it that we could improve on in our next piece of filming. For example, not all of our camera angles were as useful as we could've made them and there were a few adjustments we could have made.
The rolling shot we did at one point of the video did not go as smoothly as planned. Also, in the outtakes at the end you can see that we had a few troubles doing it to begin with as the rod on the tripod didn't move the camera correctly. We also had a bit of trouble with the diagetic sound as the boom seemed to pick up more diagetic noise than we thought. So we had to put the non diagetic music in there except we turned it up louder. Timing was an issue as well, as there were some times where some members of my group didn't walk into the scene on time or spoke too soon or too late.

However there were some points where we did quite well in the process of filming. We managed to do a lot of editing at the beginning, after we filmed Michal at different angles waiting in the classroom. The cross dissolve effect made him look like he had been waiting for a long time, and also the music in the background helped make the scene look dragged out, so when Sam ran in, it looked genuine. It was interesting to film and I feel that it made a huge difference because it showed us our strong and weak areas and also how we could improve in the future, or when we film our thriller opening, for example.