Thriller openings and title sequences

Pulp Fiction- Quentin Tarantino- 1994

Open Scene  

           Guns
       Crime- talking about it
Could be over heard
Characters seem psychotic

Title

Yellow text with black background to contrast each other

Shows the production company, director and main casting, along with co-starring

slide up, straight on and scrolling of text onto the screen

up beat fast music- contrasts theme of movie

title reduces in size t the background

          Blue Velvet- David Lynch- 1986

      Title includes blue velvet for the background- dark makes it eerie 

Quick paced

Fades to blue sky

 Peaceful setting

  Nice neighborhood

        Lady drinking tea- watching gun crime on TV- things like that only happen in movies

·         Something moving ion the grass- builds suspense

        Leaves the question of ‘what happened to the man?’

Run Lola run- Tom Tykwer

Quote

Pendulum bringing on text

Stops and tilts up to clock
Fast tempo music
Going through a crowd of people- unfocused- certain people come into focus
Voice over
People waling slowly
Cartoon of girl running through a tunnel
Mug shots of characters with names and actors names
Zoom through a house
Flash backs- black and white- distortion
repetition of talking
flashes of exotic locations
stereotypical story line

Preliminary Final

Convention of Thrillers

In our lesson today, we discussed conventions of thriller films.
The conventions we came up with were:

• Suspense
• Action- but not too much
• Mystery
• False leads
• Confusing and complex storylines

The characters used are generically

• a damsel in distress
• a sociologically disturbed person
• police
• a disempowered protagonist

We also talked about how thrillers use Todorovs Equilibrium Theory, which is structured in five stages:

1. a state of equilibrium
2. a disruption of the equilibrium
3. a recognition that equilibrium has been disrupted
4. an attempt to repair the disruption
5. equilibrium regained, either the same as the start, or a in new form

Another feature of thriller films we discussed, was that their conventions differ from T.V. thrillers, partly because of the time frame, air time, target audience and the use of episodes.

• Conventions of a Thriller Film [Taken from http://www.slideshare.net/TaylaMoore/conventions-of-a-thriller-film-6772447]
  
• Thriller films are essentially about the battle of good vs. evil. The two main characters are normally the protagonist (the good guy) and the antagonist (the bad guy). At the beginning of the story there is usually peace which is then disturbed by a particular event; at this point the storyline begins and a chain of bad events happen, engaging the audience. The main aim of the protagonist is to restore peace and justice whereas the antagonist seeks to destroy it. At the end of the story, the protagonist normally achieves his aim and peace is again restored. There are four main conventions of a thriller which are: characters, themes, narrative, and iconography.
• The first convention of a thriller is the characters. The protagonist is usually a brave male who seeks to remove injustice and/ or save an innocent female whose life is in danger. The antagonist is normally a mystery but has the characteristics of being a number of the characters although it could range to a sweet innocent little girl. Even though the antagonist changes in every film, they all share similar reasons for their actions: anger, revenge or has misinterpreted an event. Their dress codes tend to change according to the plot. For example, a spy is conventionally well-dressed, in smart dark clothing. For boys, the costume normally empowers their appearance by showing their muscles proving how strong they are whereas girls are normally dressed in a seductive, revealing manner showing their vulnerability.
• The second convention of a thriller is the theme/s. The director of the film usually bases his storyline on the things that are most feared by society so the audience can relate to them which enhances the level of fear. For example, I found that there was a correlation between the recent terrorist bombings and the amount of movies made linked to terrorism.

Preliminary Task- Editing

When we originally went to edit our filming, we had technical difficulties, meaning we couldn't edit during our lesson. We had to arrange to edit the next day, during our free periods instead. Esha and I meet up to edit, we did a basic edit of our sequence, in which we choose which take we wanted, and cut them down to the correct length, we then put them into the correct order for our sequence. Whilst editing, we realised that we needed to do more shots for our final piece, so that we would have more to work with when editing. the working on this was equal between Esha and I.

Preliminary Task- Planning and Filming

Preliminary Task

Brief

Film and edit a 30 second film sequence in which a character enters a room, sits opposite another character and they exchange at least four line of dialogue. Including, camera skills, mise en scene, editing and sound.

The grouping was me, Esha and Sheree. We went to a separate room and brainstormed ideas for the storyline of our film sequence. We mind mapped themes and plots, as well as camera angles, mise en scene and editing for each one.

We decided not to focus on the plot as much and focus mainly on the editing, mise en scene, camera and sound, so instead we chose to have the plot of one character walking through the school, meeting one person in which they exchange a piece of paper with, continuing walking until they reach the canteen, where they meet another character, exchange dialogue and they hand over the paper, in which the sequence title with appear on.

We worked together on our storyboard exchanging ideas on camera angles, editing and location. We went out through the school the find locations that would work on our storyline, then wrote them on the storyboard. When it came to the sound, we decided that we should use a song that created tension but was also something that could quite easily be listened to everyday. We decided to use Kasabian- Thick as Thieves as it gave the tension and suspense we were aiming for, but they were a current and popular band.

We decided that casual everyday clothing, preferably dark would suit the genre more, and that doing the acting ourselves. Me playing the character walking through school, Esha playing the person I encountered on my way, and Sheree the person in the canteen. In order to ensure we would all be involved in the filming, we decided that there would be a section that would be hand held as I'm walking to the canteen, then as I walk into the canteen their would be a point of view shot of approaching the door then opening it.

This is our completed storyboard:

We tried to include as many camera angles and terminology so that we would understand how we wanted to film in when the time came.

When we were filming, we each took part in the filming. We made sure that we all came to school in suspicious looking clothing, such as long coats and black clothing.We followed the storyboard as best as we could, but had to change a few shots because they didn't work. We also added shots, for example, we film the encounter between me and Esha many times from different angles and distances to give us more to work with when we edited. We also had to re-shoot scenes because of walking to fast or not walking far enough.