Terminology

Sound motif:
Introduces the character with sound and tells us something about that character.

Motivated cut:
Character is doing something that we have to follow.

Prominance:
Time on screen, who we are following in the story.

Diegetic:
A physical sound - a sound you can see.
e.g radio in a car - turning it up&down.

Non-diegetic
Sound you can't see
e.g Soundtrack

Brainstorm- Title sequence

In our group, while Danica was uploading the footage, me and Georgina thought up of a number of ways on how our titles could appear in our opening sequence. We need it to look interesting as it is an important part of the film and will help us achieve our marks.

Film Producer

Today we had a film producer come and look at our thrillers and give us advice on how we could improve them to get the best grades available. Kwame, asked us what challenges we found throughout our filming and what we think we could improve on ourselves if we are re-shooting. He also told us what challenges he found when shooting his films. As my group didnt have our footage with us today, we looked at some of the other groups' to see what kind of films they have been shooting and how he helped them with theirs. He also taught us how to use colour on Final Cut, so we can make the films look more expensive and movie like. I think he is very inspiring and I hope to put all the new ideas into our re-shoot.

Sound&Foley

While at the british film insititute we learnt about sound&foley. It was very interesting to learn about as I had not known what this was before. I never had heard of the term foley before.
Foley:
Foley basically means when a sound is recorded , foley will either replace the sound or compliment it. It tends to make the audience think that the sound effects are real.

A good example of a thriller film that uses sound and foley effectively would be Once upon a time in the west.

BFI Trip

Yesterday, both media classes went to the British Film Institute in London to watch and experience the different types of opening title sequences, what aspects make a thriller and advice on what to do and what not to do when making our own thriller.
I learnt that there are some different key features involved when making a successful thriller:
- Genre
- Narrative
- Character
- Amotsphere
- Setting
We also looked at the website http://www.artofthetitle.com/ to watch some interesting opening title sequences that could inspire us. Some good examples of this were, catch me if you can, Nepolian Dynamite, Dawn of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs the world. They each had interesting ways of presenting the titles.
Dexter Fletcher was one of the guests that came to speak to us about making a succesful film, what kind of things he has starred in and how to be successful. You have to be determined and confident. 
We also learnt that there are 10 steps to making a film and some examples of common predictable student films that arent really the right path to go down:
- Saw: victim tied up
- Scream: hooded stalker follows victim
- Waking up: clean teeth, brushing your hair, leave house
- Se7en: killer stabs polaroid pictures
- Lock Stock: gangsters play cards
- Flashback or flashfoward
These are some examples to miss, wouldn't get you a very high grade or have a good plot.

Physiological Thriller Mind Map

I created a mind map for physiological thrillers, naming different aspects and elements that would make up a thriller, for example, plot, key events, examples of key films, directors, genres etc. There were three sections of thrillers to choose from, a physiological thriller which I analyzed, a crime thriller was Georgina and espionage was chosen by Danica.

Some examples of physiological thrillers are Shutter Island, Vertigo, Inception and Fight Club.

Splice Analysis

In todays lesson, we focused on the opening title sequence of Splice. I wrote out a timeline and labelled each section with how many seconds a particular title lasted for and what effects are used when a new title would appear. Most of the titles would dissolve and a lot of the time the titles looked as if they were underwater. We also had to put what people were involved, for example the production comapanies and the actors/actresses involved. Overall i collected about 20 titles.

Ideology+Gender ♂♀

We discussed the meaning of ideology and gender in our class, I discovered that idelogy means ideas that go with a character, expectations and actions or a way of discussing a group. Ideology can also come in different forms, for example: messages. We also discussed the expectations of females and males. We had to line up in order of most masculine and most feminine. Most masculine meant that they would have a 'male' attitude, like swearing a lot, wearing clothes that may or may not be allowed or being quite tall and having hobbies such as playing football or rugby. The typical female wearing maybe feminine colours like pink, having nails painted, gossiping or the typical hobbies of shopping.
This is what society expects females and males to act in order to fit in and not judged.

Lighting, composition and editing.

In today's lesson we were looking at lighting, composition and editing. We had to split off into three research groups, each looking at a different topic. I took on lighting, while Georgina had composition and Sophie worked on editing.
I looked at lighting, deciding which lighting would be most appropriate for the different scenes, what lighting would create suspense and mystery. Myself and Georgina, tried to take pictures of the different scenes for our storyboard, with some actors from the other groups. We were only able to take a couple of shots as we didn't have our script at hand, however me and Georgina will be working on this after school.
When the pictures are available, i will upload them to my blog.

Thriller Narrative

Thriller Narrative. In today's lesson I learnt the difference between a mystery and suspense. I learnt what linear and non- linear meant and also what restricted and omniscient means.
Our teacher also gave us a preliminary task of '6 Ways to Kill Your Husband' to think about.

Mystery is basically an intellectal process of not knowing who done what, no information is given meaning you want to know more.
Suspense is an emotional process where the audience know what is going to happen from the beginning as only a little bit of information is given.

Restricted means when an audience don't know whats going to happen during the film.
Omniscient means when an audience knows whats going to happen so it creates suspense.

Linear is when the story goes from beginning to middle to end.
Non- linear is when the story doesn't go in any paticular order meaning there could be things like flashbacks.

Synopsis Of A Thriller

Thriller Synopsis: My Research Task.
When working in groups, Me, Georgina and Sophie had our seperate topics we had to research. My task was to research the typical synopsis for a thriller. I had to include the charcteristics, sub genre's and some examples.

Catch Me If You Can Analysis

For this task, I had to create a 9 frame analysis for 'Catch Me If You Can'. I watched the opening sequence and then chose 9 frames to write about.

Episode 50

Episode 50.
You may think that episode 50 looks like a horror, but it is also classed as a thriller. 
The opening sequence to episode 50, is very basic. The background holds no image, just black with white type writer font. This gives an eery and mysterious effect, also the music used is quite dull and low creating suspense and making me wonder what will happen next.
The titles shake in and out, like they are being recorded and the camera has just cut them off. There are no camera shots used in the title sequence, it is a similar beginning to shutter island, quite basic but making the viewer curious as to what 
the film will be about. 

Usual Suspects commentary

One of the first tasks we had to complete was a commentary on usual suspects. 
As we had trouble uploading it to our blogs, we decided to write it onto our blogs instead. My group involved me, Georgina Ladley and Alexandra Ryder.


We had to look at: 

- What creates suspense?

- How the camera (shot types) tell the story to create mystery? 

- Genre conventions of mise-an-scene

My involvement in the group was answering the question:

What creates suspense?

In the film Usual Suspects it creates suspense by the use of slow strong beat of organs and the sound effects, such as  when the match is lit and dropped + also the gun shots created curiosity. The line of fire on the floor also created suspense as you didnt know when it was going to stop. The sound effects help to set the mood throughout the scene. 

How the camera tells the story to create mystery.

The tracking shots show the scene from a low point of view, and then there is a long shot from the floor showing a tall dark man on the balcony this is dark and mysterious. Using the over the shoulder shots of the other man creates mystery because you wonder who the other guy is, as you don't see his face. 

Genre conventions of mise-an-scene:

Dark lighting is used though out the scene. The men in the clip are wearing dark, dull clothes nothing that stands out, also they speak with monotone voice to make them sound more scary and mysterious.  

There are some good close ups of the props like the gun and the matches. 

Rear Window

When watching the opening sequence of rear window, it gave the impression that it would be a cheerful yet intense thriller. There were quite a few elements which made the opening sequence interesting.

The Sound: jazz/classical music that was quite high pitched and up beat was used throughout to create suspicion.

The Editing: the titles faded in and out to create mystery within the background, Hitchcock purposely had titles by the window of the house to also create suspense. Important information is revealed, for example; the characters, setting, plot and location. 

The camera: When using the camera, there was a variety of shots used like close-ups, extreme long shot and still shots.  Props were also used to make it more interesting. 

Miso-en-scene:  during the title sequence, it showed us where abouts the film would be set - an apartment block. Very stereo typical. There could have been a photographer from the use of props. e.g. photos+ camera. 

The Departed

In today's media lesson i was discussing the design aspects of Departed.  The background image included a city, it could of been any city. Cities are usually used in thrillers to create mystery and suspense. The colours used on it were black+white+red, monochrome colours. There were also visual elements, blood and bullet holes; this is mostly used in thrillers to show what will happen later on in the film. The font and animation of the title was big, bold and linked with the words below it. Also the editing of each shot was falling and in a kind of grainy aspect to show if the film was old or again to get a reaction from the audience.

Memento Analysis

Memento.
Discussing different films in groups,
The opening title sequence for memento seemed to be quite dramatic. The opening title's seemed to fade in and out creating a mysterious affect, making us want to know what will happen next. There is also a use of camera shots which show us the emotion in both characters, there is the extreme close up which shows me what the character might be feeling or their eyes could show some sort of story. However during the beginning of the title sequence everything gets rewound backwards, this can be confusing but could show a brief glimpse of what might happen at the end of the film. There were also a few other elements used such as gunshots, photographs + bullets.
When viewing the title sequence, there are two main parts of feedback, being shocked and being curious, the viewers would be shocked/confused as to why the film would be going backwards and curious as to why the victim was shot. Overall the beginning creates confusion.

Taxi Driver

Title Still

Extreme Close up

In a class discussion we watched the opening sequence to Taxi driver, there was a use of loud but quite slow classical music to bring tension. I could recognise the use genre of a jazz instrument, e.g. the saxophone. There were a few camera shots used to show emotion, the extreme close up showed the brewing emotion in the actors eyes. A view shot from the taxi was used to show the setting area he was in.  Visual elements were also used, shown when the taxi drove past the fog, this could have been used to show the idea of mystery.The titles at the beginning were trying to get the audience hooked and also explains the actors/characters that were in it. - Taxi Driver

Long Shot

Own Research - Shutter Island

Shutter island title sequence still.

 Shutter Island...

I thought of carrying out my own research on a well know thriller film, Shutter Island. While watching the opening title sequence, I noticed that the fonts used were quite basic and bold, but still managed to make me want to watch on. The words fade out like they have just disappeared and you want to know where to. The genre of the film, which included the music used in the beginning sequence had an almost eery feel to it that linked in quite well with the music which was quite low and classical. It could also be described as sad but calming music. I could just make out what sounded to be a violin. Those seem to be used in quite spooky, mysterious films. No camera shots were used just words.  I think that even though it was quite basic, the music helped it to be more dramatic.

Mind Map

On one of our first media lessons, we had to create a brainstorm based on thrillers and what they involve.  I wrote some examples of thrillers and what aspects are most important, for example story and characters, visual elements and mood/atmosphere.
We had to discuss what elements make us want to watch the film again and what gets us intrigued.
I also had to discuss what makes a thriller a thriller. What keeps me on edge and wanting to know more.  How the music can affect the title sequence of the film and how the atmosphere of the film can make the audience want to get involved.
One example of a thriller, is Shutter Island which i will take into further research.