Thriller...

It’s a thriller, who cares?	What is the significance of a film being recognised as belonging to the thriller genre?
Audiences	·         Thrillers keep you on the edge of your seat ·         The genre depends on the target audience. ·         If the audience know it is a thriller, the film will be highly anticipated.
Institutions	You would be targeting a certain audience so;- ·         You have to have be careful when choosing the location. ·         Also have to think when, where and how to market the film.
Production	·         They use special camera effects. ·         You have make the film, in a particularly way to match the genre. ·         You have to use special sound effects. ·         To make the film more creepy and scary, you have to film during the night.
Distribution	·         Easy to market, due to the sub genres because they have a wider appeal.
Exhibition/ Exchange	·         Sense of familiarity, gives you an idea of what to expect during the film.

Intertextuality!

INTERTEXTUALITY?? Never heard of the word! Looks && Sounds pretty CONFUSING!

We didn’t learn about intertextuality in class,  So i decided to do some personal research on it to help me understand it.

This is what i found out, Intertextuality is borrowing ideas from one media texts and transforming them to be used in another media text to suit the audience.

So basically, even though the word is a mouthfull to say, its a posher version of sayin 'Copying'!!

The Structure Of Thriller Openings

You will notice that there are 3 basic structures of film openings that are followed:

A narrative opening with the titles running throughout

Examples of films:

Stepfather

The shining

De Ja Vue

A discrete title sequence

Examples of films:
Seven

Arlington road

James bond

Titles over a blank screen, followed by the narrative opening

Examples of films:

Donnie Darko

Dead calm

A narrative opening with highly stylised editing, distinct from the rest of the film.

Examples of films:

The taking of Pelham 123

Analysing Film Fonts

Today’s lesson was very interesting, because it taught me a lot, things that normally I would never realise!

We learnt how a title is very significant to the actual film, and how the font is clearly chosen so it fits in with the film. Like myself, I’m sure most of you lot didn’t know that! ;)

We spoke about what denotation and connotation are.

Denotation: is the literal meaning of a word, basically what you see is what you get!

Connotation: is what associates with the word, as well as what the word means!

We then discussed as a class why we thought avatar used the font ‘Papyrus’ and what are the connotations of this style of writing.

Theses are the suggestions we came up with:

·         Low technology

·         Treasure map

·         Natural

·         Tribal

·         Rusty/old/trees/old lifestyle

·         Alien

·         Pirates

We then realised most of these things do actually link with the film and how they are significant.

We learnt that Papyrus is the most common font used. It is one of the 10 fonts that come free with word!

We then spoke about two different fonts

Serif Fonts – such as Times New Roman and Courier

Serif fonts are generally more traditional and often slightly more formal than sans serif fonts.

(A serif is the extra little detail at the end of each stroke of every letter.)

Sans Serif Fonts – such as Arial and Comic Sans

San Serif fonts are generally more informal, more modern and more ‘Friendly’.

We then all got into groups and each group had to analyse a film title. We got ‘Rocky’

Up there is the poster we done in class. It might not be that clear, so I’m going to list a few things we discussed.

We said the text is informal so informal so it’s a sans serif, also that its very dull and unattractive. The fact that it’s bold and capital makes it masculine, yet again the ‘O’ and the ‘C’ are very curvaceous which makes it feminine as well. The ‘R’ and the ‘Y’ don’t really fit into the title which signifies that the film could be about someone finding it hard to fit into life. The outside of the letters seem big and bold, plus there block letters, however the inside letters don’t seem as harsh, this could signify that the person is hard on the outside, and soft on the inside.

The Stepfather

In class we watched the thriller 'The Stepfather' it is about a young boy that returns from a military school to find out that his mother is happily engaged to a man and they get to know another the young boy becomes more and more suspicious of this man.

The opening to the stepfather was very interesting scene for me as it created suspense by playing with the audience minds by confusing them by what is happening. The man starts of as he is doing his normal morning routine by shaving. cutting his beard,  making a cup of tea etc. This also creates suspense because we want to watch on and find out why he is changing his appearance it then cuts to a family that seem to be dead and we the know that he is changing his appearance because he wants to run away. As he leaves the house he gets a flashback of one of the kids screaming.

 Another scene which is full of suspense is when we believe the kids are going to get caught  looking through the stepfather room for evidence he his mad and a killer. We get a feeling of nerves to if the are going to get found but as he opens the door their is no one to be seen we then get a sigh of relief but he looks at the window which is moving and it builds up the suspense again because he knows someone has been in his room

Lastly this scene is when Micheal finally realises that his stepfather is hiding something in the basement. This creates suspense because their is suspenseful music and quick editing to keep us watching to find out more . Micheal however does not realise that he stepfather has woken and knows that somebody is in his basement. This creates suspense has we know he is coming but Micheal does not.

Analysing Font

In class today we focused on font and how inportant it is in the process of making a film.
The very common type of font that many people use is called ' Papurus'

As you can see this particular font is loc tec, old , ancient and poeple could also describe this text as looking alien like , like trees , pirtates , treasure map and so on.

James Cameron used this text for Avatar because the characters are tribal, egyption and are intouch with nature. This font is acutally hated as it is branded and being 'to common' and 'oeverused' so with so much money James Cameron could of picked somethine different however the title ' Avatar' uses its own style blended it with the font Papyrus it glows withch suggests mystery it attracts audiences and looks more alienlike.

Fonts are broken into 2 fonts

Serif
 This is when their is a flick at the end of the letter this font is formal and is normally found in newspapers fonts this are Serif are Times Newman and Roman .

Sans Serif

This is when their is not a flick at the end of the letter which looks informal fonts such as this includeds Ariel and Cosmin Sanngs.

Filming && Editing Our Mini Movie 'Bag Swap'

 

In order to practise using the camera and creating suspense in a scene through camera shots, angles and characters, we all got a scenario to film and make it look interesting. We got ‘The Bag Swap’.

Everyone was well excited as we finally got to use the cameras and start filming!

But before we start filming we had to plan out our scenes, we all got a storyboard and we put down the scenes we were going to film,. Its crucial that everyone plans out there scenes, so when you go out filming you know exactly what you need to film and were. As well as you don’t leave any scenes out and it saves you a lot of time.

After planning, we knew what particular shots to use in each part of the clip. Here are some examples of the shots and angles we used:

Low Shot












Over The Should Shot



Close Up Shot



Two Shot

 

After filming, we edited the clips using the program 'Final cut pro' to make them into a mini-movie. We mostly used jump-cuts from one scene to another to give it a fast paced atmosphere.





Final Cut Pro Icon.



NOT FINISHED!

Title Sequence Analysis

Today’s lesson was very interesting and it made us aware of a lot of things we don’t usually realise. We watched the title sequence of stepfather, and talked about how they lay out the title sequence and how they put it in just the right places. I didn’t realise that an opening scene needed that much planning, but it clearly does. They done the title sequence in a very clever way, because when they want us to notice something significant e.g his shaving kit, then they don’t have any text coming up. When its something normal or not very significant  e.g when his walking down the stairs or making breakfast, then they have information coming up on the screen about the music, costume designers and all that.



The Shaving Kit



Then we all got into groups an analysed the title sequence of a thriller movie ourselves. My group analysed ‘Arlington Road’!

The opening scene of Arlington road was 2 minutes and 5 seconds long. I thought it was pretty good, but the thing was, straight away you had the idea it was a thriller movie, it’s because it started of with a man covered in blood.

The beginning was suspenseful because you didn’t know what was going on, and it was like everything happened in such a rush! Practically didn’t give you anytime to breath! Pretty much everything was confusing because the images were all fading into each other and everything was foggy, which made it very mysterious.  The music was fast and upbeat which made it more suspenseful and it built up tension.

This is the title sequence timeline for Arlington Road:

0.01 – Polygram filmed entertainment presents

0.08 – Association with lakeshore entertainment

0.11 – A Gorai/Samuelson production

0.15 - & Mark Pellington Film

0. 20 – Main Characters – Jeff Bridges & Tim Robbins

0.30 – Title – Arlington Road

More Characters: Joan Cusack, Hope Davis, Robert Gossett, Mason Gamble, Spencer Treat Clark & Stanley Anderson.

0.55 – casting by Ellen Chenoweth & kathleenchopin tracy Kaplan

0.59 – co producers, jean Higgins, Richard S.Wright

1.03 – music by Angelo badalalmenti

1.07 – additional music by tom and Andy

1.12 – costume designer Jennifer Barrett

1.16 – production designer Theresse Deprez

1.18 – edited by Conrad Buff A.C.E

1.25 – direction and photography Bobby Bukowski

1.35 – Produced by Peter Samuelson Tom Gorai Marc Samuelson

1.41 – Written by Ehren Kruger

1.48 – Directed by Mark Pellington

This is supposed to be the order of the main opening film credits, most films do follow this order, but that doesn’t mean all of them do. Most films order the main film credits, on how important they think they are.

Analysing An Opening Scene Of A Thriller Movie

In class we watched a sequence of opening scenes of thriller movies, we had to figure out what sub-genres is was, also focus on the camera angles, mis en scene and sound.

We watched 'Momento' which is a psychological thriller. Its about a man that has a short term memory loss and is unable to store new memories, so by using notes and tattoos he searches for the man that raped and murdered his wife.




Momento uses a lot of close up shots on objects that are significant in the film. They start of with a extreme close up of a picture, but we really cant tell what it is, because it becomes blurry and changes colour. The music is very mysterious and airy which makes us realise that it’s a thriller, as well as the gunshot, plus there’s blood splattered everywhere. The interesting thing about this film is at the beginning they reverse what happens which makes me want to watch it MORE!



What Lies Beneath

The film I chose to analyse myself was ‘What Lies Beneath’; the reason being is that the film looks strange, yet again it looks very interesting! I hope to watch the whole FILM!

The opening of the trailer is all blacked out and slowly the music starts to come in to play, this keeps the audience expecting more.

The production company’s title appears when there’s a full black background, it comes in slowly, and at that time there’s fog being used so it comes in slowly with it. Then after the production companies’ names are shown, the title of the movie appears, it's shown as if it's being reflected by water also it’s as if we're seeing the title in a dark, gloomy and mysterious night under the moon.

Then all of a sudden a ghostly face appears, we only get to see it for a second before it moulds into the main characters face. At this point, were not really sure what we just saw and that keeps us guessing.

Next the camera does a ‘Jump shot’ to the scene were she’s blow drying her hair, and suddenly it just stops working. She tries to fix it, and then she gets a little electric shock, but she does manage to fix it. She carries on blow drying her hair in front of the mirror, the camera is placed behind her, and so we get to see an over the shoulder shot. We can see the mirror and you can’t see any reflection because the mirror is all foggy.

Then the camera is placed just in front of the bathroom, so it looks as if someone is watching her.

The camera slowly comes closer and closer to the main character, she starts breathing heavily, and this shows us that something is clearly wrong! At this point we sort of get a clue about what the film is going to be about, as we realise the main character doesn’t feel safe and seems quite scared.

Sub - Genres

Thrillers all have similar characteristics, which make them the way they are. They all use the elements of suspense, tension and excitement. 
Well clearly, they need to have those elements in order to be defined as a thriller, as well as if they want people to be interested in their movie!
Thriller is an overall genre but it’s divided into many Genres called Sub-genres. 
Here are the main Sub-Genres:
• Mystery thriller
• Crime thriller
• Psychological thriller
• Action-Adventure thriller
• Disaster thriller
• Spy thriller
• Horror thriller
• Political thriller
• Paranormal/supernatural thriller
• Romance/murderous passions
• Innocent on the run


I’m Only Going To Explain A Few.. 
There’s really no point in me explaining each and every single one, I’m sure you get the message! ;)
Mystery Thriller: most of them are investigations, and they use the ‘Who did it’ technique.
Crime Thriller: The main common methods are ransoms, captivities, heists, revenge and kidnapping.
Psychological Thriller: The common technique used is mind games! They have elements of stalking, death-traps and obsession.
Action Thriller: It will generally have a fast-paced, centered, and a definite plot.
Disaster Thriller: The main conflict is due to some sort of natural or man-made disaster, E.g. earthquake, hurricane and tornado.
Spy Thriller: The main thing they deal with is secret agents. 
Later In class, we did a worksheet on three types of sub-genres political/conspiracy thrillers, supernatural thriller and crime thrillers. 
In groups we had to think about what characters, these thrillers would have, and what setting would suit it most.