Thriller Ideas

Thriller Ideas...

With time moving on fast, I am approaching the beginning of my main media coursework for this year sooner than expected, and so here are a few rough ideas for films, along with their opening sequences.

The Glitch

A film much alike I-Robot, in which a 'mad-scientist' style character has modified himself with robot parts, however the procedure went wrong resulting in a rogue cyborg with bad intentions.

In the opening sequence, we see a man, not his face, sat in a chair in the center of a room. He taps his nails repetitively on the arm rest, taps his foot lightly, and maybe even listens to a scratchy record. All of these sounds slowly layer on top of each other as we see them, creating a rhythmic sound.However when the man stretches in his chair, his body 'lags' and 'glitches'. Meanwhile we see a group of men, perhaps work mates or police, en route to where the man is. The sounds increase in sound and speed as the men get closer and finally, as they enter the cyborgs room, we see his face, give a twisted smile, and say 'Good morning Gents'.

Fleurs En Rouge

 A psychological thriller, in which a painter is completely obsessed with the colour red and the majority of his possessions are red. Most of all he is obsessed with the painting of two red flowers and he continually paints the flowers but can never get it quite right. In the end the only red vibrant enough to fulfill the painters needs is the colour of blood.

In the opening sequence we see close ups of paint being brushed onto canvas to an unsettling soundtrack. The shots become shorter and shorter until the painter punches/stabs the canvas. Like before I want sound to play a large part in creating the tone, with an increasingly aggressive piece of classical music to match the painters emotions. Other than this I want to make the sounds of the brush strokes to become louder and louder throughout.

V1RU5

A film about a young college student, making money in his free time from hacking gambling sites for credit card details comes against a rival hacker, who wants to punish him for his immoral actions. In order to do this he plants bombs under the library where the student and his friends come to 'make their living' and takes control of the students camera to make sure he doesn't try to get any help. The rest of the film is about how the student deals with the situation, especially when the stakes raise as more loved ones come looking for him.

In the opening sequence, I picture the boy entering with a few college friends, setting himself aside from the others, opening his laptop and starting to hack. We see bits of code on the screen with the title card within and also a gambling site to hint to the audience what is being hacked. Within the titles we are shown a single alert among the many short cuts of some malware spotted by the computer security.

Coursework Groups

Forming Groups for Coursework...

Today I was placed in my group for the coming thriller opening sequence coursework. I have been put with two guys, named Ben and Archie. It's going to be fairly challenging seeming as all three of us aren't the most creative of types. Unfortunately the other two aren't the most productive of sorts either and so I'm going to have to lead the progress mostly. The groups were formed completely randomly, using a random name generator and so I can't complain!

I'm sure everything will go well (fingers crossed)

What is a Thriller?

What is a Thriller?...

Thrillers are an incredibly varied set of films. Easily mixed up with horror films due to their close relation of tension and uncertainty, thrillers base their tones about building suspense not in order to scare the audience necessarily, but to create intense excitement. This can be used in a multitude of scenarios and so there are a tonne of sub-genres as below;

Action thriller

Comedy thriller

Conspiracy thriller

Crime thriller

Erotic thriller

Horror thriller

Legal thriller

Political thriller

Psychological thriller

Spy film

Supernatural thriller

Techno-thriller

Inception

One example of a science fiction heist thriller that I have seen is the critically acclaimed 'Inception' by Christopher Nolan, who wrote, co-produced, and directed it. Perhaps the reason this film is so successful as a thriller, is simply down to the fact that it makes you think. If you want to keep up with the story, you have to wrap your head around the crazy ideas being put forward, and much like The Matrix once did, you may even question your own reality. This level of philosophical involvement really captures an audience and helps to encompass an audience, which in the long term creates a bigger lasting effect of excitement and tension throughout.

Saw

A more extreme sub-genre of thriller films include slashers and some horrors. Even though ,as I said before, horrors and thrillers are different genres, there are some films in limbo. Both genres use incredibly similar techniques of building suspense, anxiety and anticipation. However the difference is in the climax. Horrors intend to 'jumpscare' the audience whereas thrillers want to create an adrenaline rush. Saw is one of the movies that fits in between. It is a high anxiety film. The climaxes aren't necessarily scary but instead just incredibly intense and violent.

Fight Club

Of all thrillers, my particular favourite is Fight club by David Fincher. The film doesn't fit within any particular sub-genre necessarily. Its action-packed, physiological, crime-based, comedic and the list goes on. The film manages to tell the audience a false story so successfully whilst giving enough information so that the final plot twist is hard hitting and nerve wracking. Much like inception, the film makes the audience think, which in my opinion is the best way for a thriller to create suspense.

Legend

Romance thrillers are less common. My current favourite film is Legend by Brian Helgeland based around the Kray Twins. The film cleverly blends the two genres, to create a sense of realism in the relationship. The romantic side makes you empathise for both brothers and the wife, but the tension and suspense illustrate the darker sides, for example abuse and rape. The 'thrilling' parts of this film aren't particularly action packed (apart from the fights) but are based on the audience's knowledge on the strength of the brothers, and the tension is built up through clever dialogue.

All in all in my opinion, a thriller is a film that gets your heart racing. It doesn't have to be scary, or action packed, it simply has to emotionally involve the audience in one way or another. This can include scaring the audience or simply having an audience feel so empathetic toward a character that the story is able to reach them on a personal level.

Prelim Task

The Final Cut of our Prelim Task...

Having watched it back there are some issues. The audio is slightly off, sometimes words are heard twice between shots. Also one thing to take on board is that sometimes less is more. Tonnes of shots and angles aren't always necessary and sometimes ruin the tone of a sequence and take the audience out of the film as the edits make it hard to watch.

Actual Coursework Task Defined

The Coursework...

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

Editing the Prelim Task

Editing the Prelim Task...

Having had a successful shoot the week before, yesterday I got to edit my prelim task. I got to grips with premiere pro fairly quickly once again and was soon cutting and sticking clips together with relative ease. First I put together a rough cut of the scene, without checking for continuity or smoothness. However having watched it through, it had no flow and it felt very choppy, as if the shots were all just put in place with no real reasoning behind them. I then copied and pasted the whole sequence further along the timeline the that I could change it however I wanted without losing the original cut completely.

In my second draft, I wanted to create more empathy for one character, who was being bullied by her older brother. To do this, I lengthened the shot duration for shots of the girl, in order to allow the audience more time to identify with her. Also, for the opposite reasons, I shortened the shot duration on the guy, and I tried to show his face as little as possible. This made a great impact. Not only did the sequence feel less choppy but it also gave the audience a side to be on, creating more meaning to the piece.

One thing I took away from this task is the fact that getting a sequence right takes a lot more time than expected. From the hour long shoot last week, I created a sequence that was maximum 20 seconds long. Therefore every minute of shooting time is sacred as time is money.

Filming the Prelim Task

Filming the Prelim Task...


However on the day I was made to change groups and work with an entirely new sketch about self-harm. The shoot was still very successful and by simply working through the whole scene from every camera angle, we had completed everything we needed fairly quickly. The reason we did the whole scene each time and not just the necessary dialogue was for safety, in case a shot went wrong and so we could cut to any other one. The roles were quite balanced. As a group of three it was quite hard for all of us to be behind the camera seeming as we had two actors in the sequence. I played the less involved role of an older brother bullying her sister but also helped out with camera positioning, continuity and will hopefully be in charge of editing. We didn't have to many difficulties on the day, as we had a simple task with not too many people involved and so the whole shoot was a success. However I did learn from the experience. Prior planning of which shots need to be taken is completely essential for success, especially under a tough time constraint. You don't have time usually to work out what you want to film on the day.

Preparation for the Prelim Task

Preparation and Filming a Prelim Task...

Today I was set my first filming task, to film a short sequence which follows the storyboard shown below. The script is very vague, and can therefore be interpreted in very many ways for example to portray an image of social class such as gang initiations or to capture an image of the problems faced by young people such as mental issues and bullying. For my original group, the plan was to have a gang initiation in which the new
member had to shoot a teddy, but create a very serious tone to make the scene even more ridiculous.
We then wrote the shot list, and matched the storyboard with our own story.

First Edited Sequence

First Edited Sequence...

During my introduction to editing, I created my first edited sequence using Adobe Premiere Pro. It obviously wasn't an Oscar winning piece, but it was ideal for understanding the basics of the software and getting used to the general feel of what I will be doing on a much larger scale in the months to come when I create my Thriller trailer. You can watch it below.

It isn't my best work if I'm being honest! Apart from the very jumpy audio which we were told to ignore for now, there are many issues with these 6 seconds on footage. The clips are very jumpy and abrupt, for no real purpose other than to show some of the footage we filmed on the day and not waste it. Other than this there are multiple continuity errors, and some dodgy acting which I can forgive!

Learning to Edit

Adobe Premiere Pro Logo

Getting Into the Editing Suite...

Recently I was finally able to use the editing software and taught the basics. We used a program from Adobe named Premiere Pro, a system that came fairly quickly to me as it's similar to the software I tend to use; Final Cut Pro.

I started things off by learning some basic terminology;

1. The general folders that contain your raw footage are named bins, a name that originates from back when film strips were used and were organised into various sections by containing the rolls in named bins

2. The raw footage collected inside the bins are technically named Rushes or Dailies for Americans. This is also due to how old film strips used to work. Each day the film strips would have to be 'rushed' off in order that the director could watch over the footage from the previous day and work out if anything needed re-filming.

3. In order to extend or shorten a clip easily, you can use the trim handles. For more precision, the +,- symbols can be used for zooming in and out of the timeline.

Finally there are the keyboard shortcuts for the tools that you can use:

Tools
Selection Tool	V
Track Select Tool	A
Ripple Edit Tool	B
Rolling Edit Tool	N
Rate Stretch Tool	R
Razor Tool	C
Slip Tool	Y
Slide Tool	U
Pen Tool	P
Hand Tool	H
Zoom Too	Z

Analysis Practice

Dead Mans Shoes - First Full Analysis Practice...

In the opening title sequence of Dead Man's Shoes we meet two characters, who we assume to be brothers, going on a journey.

Camera

However, having said that we met the characters, we never actually felt a connection to them. This is down to the fact that we never actually saw their faces. In all of the shots of their journey they are only ever either walking away from the camera or they are two far back in the shot to see their faces. This makes a contrast to the flashbacks that we see of the two boys growing up. In these shots the audience can connect to the young boys because of the use of close up angles. This, on a subconscious level, makes us feel less comfortable with the grown up versions of the boys and so adds to the feeling that something isn't right in the present day.

Another contrast between the young and old boys is that the flashbacks are filmed on a hand held camera, meaning the shots are shaky which gives off the effect of a home-video. Whereas the shots of the journey are very still. Again this contrast makes the two times seem very different on a subconscious level.

In this first shot we see of the grown up brothers, they are very far back in the depth of field and with a deep focus. This is just after having seen a lot of close up shots of the two young boys so this sudden difference in depth is in a way portraying how far away the present day characters are from their younger selves. This could give the audience the impression that something has changed.

 This is also the establishing shot as it immediately sets the scene. It tells the audience that firstly, this is set in the countryside and secondly that the brothers are going on a journey.

The large depth of field of the shots of the older brothers is something that is carried on throughout the sequence:

This big depth of field means that we can see a long way into the distance and so in every shot we can see where we are going. This means that we can see that the characters are going on a very long journey. We get this impression because in every shot the background I different showing us that they are travelling a long way.

Mise En Scene

The relationship between the two brothers seems to be strained now, compared to in the past. In the flashback scenes the two boys seem to have a close and happy relationship as they're always seen smiling and playing and hugging each other.

However, in the present day shots, the brothers do not interact. They walk separately, one in front of the other and do not talk or look at each other even. However there still seems to be a social hierarchy between the two as the older brother is leading them both and seems as though he is in charge. This indicates that somehow their relationship has become harder as they've grown up and they are now not all that close. On the other hand, the leading of the older brother throughout all the present day shots shows the understanding between the two that he is in charge
and should be leading which may indicate a healing relationship.

We learn from the use of costume and props in the flashback that they are most likely real home videos from someone’s childhood, and not staged shots made specifically for the film. The props and costumes in all the flashback scenes seem very authentic and would be difficult or expensive to source now.

In the present day shots, the different use of costume supports the change in the brothers, and the fact that they've grown separate. The costume of the older brother suggests that he was perhaps in the army due to the camouflaged coat and the duffel bag he's carrying throughout the clip. However, the younger brother is dressed very differently and out of place with the countryside. His tracksuit and trainers make him seem more suited for a city. This represents their different paths and personalities and encourages us into thinking that they're very different people.

The different body languages of the two brothers also supports their difference. The older brother walks very purposefully and securely which makes us think he is more comfortable in the environment. However, the younger brother is much clumsier with his steps and this suggests he is not used to walking in the countryside.

The settings for the flashbacks are however chosen carefully to reflect the films aim. The shots are based around the home and the brother’s family to show us the enjoyable childhood they had together, and how happy they were. Contrasting this with the impersonal shots of the two brothers walking down country roads with no contact at all amplifies the change in their relationship and that they aren't as happy anymore. The fact these shots are all set in different countryside settings - from roads to the forest, shows that they are on a very long journey.



Sound

Album cover for the song used - Vessel in Vain by Smog

The use of sound in this particular introduction plays a huge role in setting the tone. Although the majority of the video used are happy scenes of 'family films' and two people walking in the country, the music creates a sense of nostalgia and even melancholy. This makes the viewer question why this emotion is being portrayed; Why are the two brothers walking far apart? What has happened between them since childhood that has weakened their relationship? The brothers were clearly very
close at one point and yet now they don't even look at each other once over a long journey.



Editing

The editing plays a major role in giving the audience an understanding of who the characters are. The use of old footage contrasting with the new footage gives us a sense that times have changed. The use of a fade between some shots like the example shown tell the audience that there is a direct link between the two children and the two walkers, subconsciously giving the audience the idea that the pair are brothers. The shot duration also creates effect. The old grainy shots are short and choppy, giving an appearance of excitement and happiness whereas the walking shots are long and drawn out, giving a sense of boredom and melancholy. The long shots of walking also create the idea that the journey the two men are taking is very lengthy.