Wednesday 26 January 2011

Planning For Pitch Presentation.

Narrative description:
As a group we have many different ideas to the storyline for our opening sequence.
1) A women is incredibly jealous of her brothers fortune, and ends up killing him.
The opening sequence shows her killing her brother and the rest of the film shows the order of events that led up to the death.
2) A family go on holiday for a week, not knowing that a killer, who stalks the oldest daughter of the family, is staying in same hotel as them.
The opening sequence shows the killer stalking the daughter of the family.
3) Two girls find a dead body in a shop, and the whole store gets locked inside.
The opening sequence shows the two girls finding the dead body.

After discussing the ideas carefully as a group we decided on doing the first idea. The sub genre of the film is crime. We chose this because its an interesting genre and can have a lot of ideas from the genre.
The conventions of a crime/thriller are:
- Has to add a crime, either successful or failed.
- Focus on the criminal rather than the policeman/ investigator.
- Emphasize on action over psychological ascpects.
- The crimes could include: robberies, murders, chases, drug dealings and many others.

Characters:
Main character - Grace. A middle aged women who is jealous of her younger brothers success and fortune. Single, with a 5 year old child.

Harry - The younger brother who has recently come into a lot of money via the international trade of bananas.

The costumes that the characters will wear will be:

Grace: Everyday clothes to symbolize the difference between her and her brothers fortunes.

Harry: A suit, as he is rich and wealthy.


Location: Sisters house. As we are allowed out of college site, we have a wide selection of locations that we could film in.
For example :
Town center
Characters houses
Fields and large open areas.


Opening Sequence: Harry (the brother) will turn up to Graces house (the sister) unaware that he is going to be murdered. Conventionally this part of the film would be at the end, however, having this at the beginning will instantly catch the audiences attention. They'll being having a conversation and Harry will start talking about his big success and business, which angers Grace. She then goes to make him a cup of tea, and pours some poison in his drink. Harry then passes out and wakes up in Grace's garage. He's tied to a chair, she then tortures him till he dies.

Tuesday 25 January 2011

Thriller Production Logo













The color scheme used for our logo shows dark disgusting greens and blood reds, these are representable of the thriller genre as they can be associated with death, horror or anything that might be seen as a key element in any thriller film. The colours used also mirror the stereotype that fall upon leeches, which is, that they suck out human blood and are seen in a negative light due to this.
The background colour for the logo helps to set the tone for the film to come with a murky and dirty feel which also reflects upon the colours in letters and meaning behind the name and picture. adding to this, the colours have a subtle context that may make it more noticeable. Moreover, the production name "LEECH" is suitable for a thriller production company, rather than a thriller company named "Happy Friends Of The World" for instance.

BBFC

'15'

Noone younger than 15 may see a '15' film in a cinema or rent/buy '15' rated films.
The film must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour. Drug taking may be shown but it must not be promoted and the usage of highly dangerous or easily accessible drugs is unlikely to be acceptable. With horror, strong threat or menace is allowed unless sexualised. Dangerous behaviour should not be so detailed as to be imitated. There may be frequent use of strong language. The strongest terms may be used if justified. Aggressive or repeated use of the strongest terms may be found unacceptable. Nudity can be allowed in a sexual context if there is not much detail. Sexual activity is allowed to be portrayed as long as it doesn't contain strong detail. Strong verbal references are allowed. There is no theme, content just has to be appropriate for 15 year olds and violence can be strong but shouldn't dwell on the infliction of pain or injury.


'18'
Noone younger than 18 may watch an '18' at the cinema or rent/buy '18' rated films.
With the findings of the BBFC and The Human Rights Act 1998, the BBFC guidelines do not overrule the principle that adults should be able to choose there own entertainment so the BBFC guidelines do not really apply. There are some exceptions to this such as if the films content breaches the law or contains material which risks actual harm to individuals or strong explicit images of sexual activity which cannot be justified.

Friday 21 January 2011

Production Logo Research



This logo was created probably through some sort of editing programme like Adobe Photoshop but probably more professional and expensive software, there seems to be a use of 3D in the editing and the logo clearly displays the productions company name within the image.


This logo was probably also created with an editing programme like Adobe Photoshop. It uses text and an image positioned next to eachother, its not a complicated logo and it clearly displays the name of the production company.

Wednesday 19 January 2011

Thriller Soundtrack Planning







We chose this type of soundtrack as we thought that it would be a good plan to use for our own final soundtrack. Involving no diegetic sound, just non diegetic the music is melodic and dramatic, showing the thriller genre. Its typically instrumental just like most thriller's are.

Analysis of Sound in thriller opening

Catch Me If You Can
The opening sequence of Catch Me If You Can is completely non-diegetic.  The sound matched the usual sound you'd expect to hear in a thriller opening as it was instrumental, melodic and dramatic.


Vertigo
The opening sequence is also non-diegetic but it also features the diegetic sound of speech from the characters. Vertigo also featured the typical instrumental music, and it was fast and upbeat to create suspense.



Face Off
This opening sequence is also quite instrumental in Face Off. At the start we hear chimes and its quite peaceful and slow. There is a sudden change in the music when the location and character changes on screen the music becomes a more heavily instrumental piece. The music matched the movie sequence itself.

Tuesday 18 January 2011

Action Thriller

An action thriller revolves around a race against time and features lots of action scenes (violence, guns etc) with a large amount of explosions and use of props such as guns. The films also feature an obvious antagonist, making us aware of the dangers in the film.   Action thrillers also include elements of mystery and quite noticeably crime, but these are underlying to the action.
Such as in Casino Royale we see the protagonist, James Bond, must stop Le Chiffre, a banker to the worlds terrorist organisations from winning at a very high stakes poker tournament at Casino Royale in Montenegro. This film displays lots of action as James Bond attempts to stop Le Chiffre, but also there's the underlying crime as he is linked with terrorist organisations. 

Examples of action thrillers would be: Casino Royale (2006), The Bourne Identity (2002)  and The Transporter (2002).



Crime Thriller Conventions

Crime thrillers are a mixture of crime films and thrillers, these films usually show successful or unsuccessful crimes, and the repercussions that come with that crime, i.e what they had to do to make the crime successful or what happens to the criminal(s) if the crime is unsuccessful. As a result of this the main characters tend to be the criminals and not the police. Crime thrillers are unconventional in comparison to other thrillers as more emphasis is put on action as the main content, rather than psychological factors of the characters, such as mental illness. Typical themes of these films are serial killers, chases, shootouts, robberies or heists.

An example of a crime thriller is: Seven. We know this is a crime thriller as it falls under one of the conventions and typical themes, police hunting for a serial killer.








Political Thriller Conventions

A political thriller is similar to a normal thriller, the narrative just revolves around political issues and differences. A political thriller usually shows political power struggle. There is usually many plots, illegally schemed to give someone political power or the opposite, to take power away and it can feature a national or international political incident.  The protagonist normally ensures the stability of the government.  We see also that theirs normally a big incident such as a war or international problem but the films also focus on smaller problems going on within the narrative.
 Such as in the film The Manchurian Candidate we see the narrative revolving around a political issue, the Gulf war, but focusing on a problem within, the kidnapping of soldiers and them being brainwashed for specific purposes.
Examples of political thrillers are: JFK (1991),  The Contender (2000),  The Manchurian Candidate (2004) and All The President's Men (1976).



Psychological Thriller Conventions

Film 1: Donnie Darko

Analysis: Based on on Donnies mental state - manic depressive and schizophrenic, he has visions that the world is coming to an end. These disturbing dreams are based upon the exploration of a parallel universe. The concept of reality is challenged with the ideas of traveling to parallel universes.

Film 2: Black Swan

Analysis: A mentally fragile ballet performer goes insane when playing two roles in her performance. The main character is schizophrenic , this character gets her big break, but her co-performer Lily is started to be seen as her 'alternate'. The fact that the main character has a mental illness has a mental illness means that it can be classed as a psychological thriller.

Film 3: The Shining

Analysis: A family heads to an isolated hotel for winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific images from the past and from the future.

Friday 7 January 2011

Preliminary Task

Preliminary Evaluation

During our preliminary we had to know about what goes into a thriller, such as suspense. As this was our 2nd preliminary so there wasn't much else we could learn, we just had to put the skills we had already aquired into this and hopefully show all the key requirements such as establishing shot and continuity in a more professional way.
We had difficulties with the filming due to a restricted area (college grounds) and people being around whilst trying to film causing disturbance and unwanted background noise but this could be sorted out during the brief editing process.
For the preliminary Micro elements such as mise-en-scene were taken into account, due to the restriction of the area, there wasn't that much we could do but the part where you find out where the banging and shouting is coming from is set in a dark room and darkness is a connotation of bad/evil, giving the impression this wasn't a good situation. The sound was also crucial, the diegetic sound you hear of the person screaming and banging is also key and adds to the thrillery feel of our preliminary due to not knowing where the sounds coming from.

Preliminary Task Ideas

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Preliminary Task Ideas

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