Analysis of Thriller Openings

On this post i will be analysing the opening of thrillers.

A History of Violence
I thought the the opening to A History of Violence was rather effective in the way it was set in a very remote and random location, this makes the audience begin to think on how they ended up in a motel in the middle of nowhere. There are some elements thast make tell the audience that its set in a baron location, these are the sounds which are crickets in the background and the rare sound of a truck going past on the road. Another point that makes the opening good is the part when one of the men has to go inside the motel to retreve something and the shock of the dead bodies and the killing of the little girl brings across a suprising twist. This creats thought as to what their doing killing these people and what have they done to act like they are on the run.

Memento
I thought the opening to Memento was very effective, mainly because of the scene with the the polaroid picture and execution in reverse. I found this very effective as it creates a confusing moment with the photo fade back to being blank, but only until he places the blank picture back into the camera it is then clear that that it is set in reverse. The clip with the photo could represent the direction of the story of how it goes backwards.

Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was the master of suspence who's films came to be the benchmark for'psycological' thrillers. He was born in Leytonstone, London on the 13th of August 1899, his famous films would consist of Psycho - (1960), North By Northwest - (1995) and Vertigo - (1958).

Alfreds Hitchcocks famous quotes:

• "The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them." 
• "There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."
• "If its a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience will still have a perfectly clear idea of whats going on."
• "Always make the audience suffer as much as possible."
• "Im a typed director, if i made cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach."

Two examples on Hitchcock's uses of suspence:

•  Rope (1948) - Rope is a thriller which is about two men who live together, and they plan to murder one of their friends in an attempt to see wether or not they could get away with it. Hitchcock uses suspence in the scene wehere the two men throw a party and the body of the man is in a chest which is in the middle of the room, the suspence is built from the anticipation of the body being descovered by the guests. And to emphasise this shots which focus on the chest are put into play to build the tension even more.

• Sabotage (1936) - Sabotage is a thriller which is about a foreign terrorist who plans to set off a bomb in london. The use of suspence is used when the terrorist gets a child to transport the bomb across london to the location he wants to destroy for a specific time. In the scene as the child wastes time the emphasis on the time increases, this is emphasised by shots of clocks the child passes them. The steady increase of music which resembles a clock ticking also addes to the whole suspence.                                                            

Preliminary Task - The Video

This is our Completed Preliminary task.

Preliminary Task - What did we do?

The first thing we did in our task was to find a suitable location to film our clip, this was a place were there was a corridor out side the room. We found two rooms which were very similar with location and appearance, and we had to use both of them due to one or the other being occupied due to lessons. While filming we did encounter some problems but other than them the filming went perfectly. some of the problems we encountered were people coming into the shot and bringing in the same clothes for the filming  de to filming on different days.

After gaining all our footage we uploaded it from the camera to the computer and edited the footage on Final Cut Express. While editing we cut down the shots to the parts which we required, and put them in order and kept cutting them till the shots changed smoothly. Then when we had the complete film we uploaded it onto Youtube.  

Preliminary Task - The Brief

For our Preliminary task we had t produce a short clip which follows a script, this script is :

• Character A walks towards a closed door.
• Character A goes through the door and crosses the room to character B.
• Character A&B exchange lines.
• Then either Character A or B leaves the room.

There are also three other things we need to include in our video, theses are:

• Match on Action - This is when a character stars a action in one shot and then you see then continue the action in the next.
• 180 Degree Rule - This is a basic guideline that states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship. if the camera crosses the line between the characters this is know as crossing the line.
• Shot/Reverse Shot - This is when you have the camera on one character while they are talking and this switches from character to character depending on who's talking  

Source Code - Duncan Jones (2011) - Editing (Trailer)

The Trailer for Source Code has overall about over a hundred edits, they had done this man to to make the film seem fast pace action packed thriller.Also by showing little short clips ths creates suppence and makes the audience want to know more about what is going on and to find out the whole picrure of the story.

Mise-on-scene of Casin Royale

In one lesson we watched the opening sequence of Casino Royale, and we were asked to analyze the two parts of scene which is the office and public toilet scene and pick out the aspects of mise-on-scene in these two scenes. My Evaluation to the mise-on-scene is below the link for the clip.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNvzNWuzI9Y

During the office scene where bond is reveled, he is sitting down in a chair and his body language shows he is very relaxed and slightly mysterious. He comes across as mysterious due due to how he sits in the dark shadows of the room, with his face half lit by the light. Also his facial expressionis is slightly confident and this does not change through the entire time of the scene even after he shoots the other character.

Storyboard Coursework

During the last few lessons we created a storyboard to something with the title of 'The Chase'. We then uploaded the pictures and edited it on Final Cut Express, before uploading to Youtube. This will be good practice for when we storyboard for our thriller opening.

Sound

Sound in Filming can be categorised into different groups, for example there is:

• Diegetic sound - These are sounds which are apart of the film world, for example if someone  knocks a glass over in the scene the actors and the audience can hear it.
• Non Diegetic sound - there are sounds which are not apart of the sound world and cant be heard by the characters in the scene, for example narrations and theme music are non diegetic sounds. 

Another category is on-screen and off-creen sound: 

• On-screen sound is sounds which you can see being made in the shot, for example you see a door get slammed shut in the shot and you can hear the slam.
• off-screen sound is sounds which you cant see being made, for example a car pulling up out side of a house.

Lighting

Lighting in used in film are used to show emotion in characters or the mood of the scene. There are different types of lighting to create this effect such as: 

• Key light - This light is the main light which is mainly the brightest.
• Back light - This does the opposite of the key light, and it gives the effect of a character looking rounded.
• Filler light - This light deminishes the shadows that are created by the filler and the back light. 

The Key light can be positioned to create different effects like:

• Back lighting - This light is shot from behing the character to create a silhouette effect on them.
• Under lighting - This light is shot from beneath the character to create a mysterious look.
• Top lighting  - This light is shot from above the character to highlight their features.

 There is also Low-key and High-key lighting:

• Low-key lighting is the use of only the key and back lights to create a contrast between light and dark areas to create distinc shadows.
• High-key lighting is the use of more filler lighting to make a more normal and realistic look.

Welcome to my AS media studies blog!

This blog will chart the progress of my foundation portfolio, on it it will have details of my research on a thriller.