Shutter Island

Shutter Island is one of my all time favourite thrillers, and was made in 2010. It is a drama set in 1954, where U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding on the remote Shutter Island. As the film unfolds, twist after twist demonstrates to the audience a story which is totally unexpected. The film is directed by Martin Scorsese, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Emily Mortimer and Mark Ruffalo, and is the second film (first released) that DiCaprio and Scorsese have worked together on. The film is one that uses techniques such as suspense, and builds tension from the beginning. There are several red herrings and twists, and the film keeps you guessing right until the end.

Always

Just finished watching a film called 'Always', made in 1989, about a legendary pilot's passion for dare-devil firefighting and his girl.  Although its not a thriller, but more of a romantic adventure movie, it is directed by Steven Spielburg, who is "Undoubtedly one of the most influential film personalities in the history of film, Steven Spielberg is perhaps Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world."

Similary to a thriller, the film does use techniques such as suspence, cliffhangers and twists. It also uses colours, such as red, to signal danger, and lighting to create shadows, particularly at the end, when the dead spirit of the pilot is letting go of his girlfriend, she steps from the darkness into the light, and into her new life, without him.

Treatment for your Thriller

Name of our Thriller;
HIDE AND SEEK

Outline of Ideas;
Girl receives a text saying 'MEET ME @ HAINULT, 11PM'.
The girl does so, we see her driving to Hainult Forest.
The girl arrives and believes she is alone.
Sees a hooded figure on the tree swing, which as she turns away becomes face to face with her.
She screams and is backing off but trips.
All goes Dark.
Title credit - HIDE AND SEEK


What Resources will we need;
Setting - Hainult Forest
Christy Davies as main character
Christy in her car
Tree swing and clear opening in forest
Christy's outfit
The girl on swing outfit - all black, hooded & make up (white)


Justification of Ideas in Relation to Genre;
Set in a dark isolated area, building tension.
The cross cutting of the two locations (the car and the forest) builds suspense.
The blackness at the end- the audience wishes to know more and continues watching.

Skyline

A couple of days ago, myself and Tom went to see Skyline at the cinema. It is a sci-fi thriller, starring Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Donald Faison and David Zayas. The plot involves strange lights descending on the city of Los Angeles, and the rest of the world, drawing people outside, where an extraterrestrial force threatens to swallow the entire human population off the face of the Earth. It uses such techniques as the build up of suspence and tension, to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. Most of the film is a fast pace, and the speed of editing encourages the audience to feel the danger that the characters feel. The main colours featured in the film, are blue and silver. The silver is a denotation of the mechanical metallic robot aliens, and the blue represents the sense of sadness that is felt throughout, right up until the end. The end features an unexpected twist, which keeps the reader engaged until the films final moments. This was an enjoyable film, and a good example of a thriller, demonstrating a number of different thriller techniques.

The Content of our Opening Credits

We have discussed as a group what we wish to include in the credits that will run alongside our thriller opening. The following is what we decided to include, and in what order we believe they should appear in.

Credit 1 - TDB Studios Presents
Credit 2 - A Film by Thomas Mason
Credit 3 - Starring Christy Davies
Credit 4 - Beth Berrett
Credit 5 - Also Starring Daniel Lawrence
Credit 6 - Screenplay By Thomas Mason
Credit 7 - Edited By Thomas Mason, Beth Berrett and Daniel Lawrence
Credit 8 - Assistant directors Beth Berrett and Daniel Lawrence
Credit 9 - Directed by Thomas Mason
Credit 10 - Hide and Seek

Mobygratis.com

Just signed up to www.mobygratis.com for myself and my group, so that we can use it to find music for our thriller opening. We are going to need two pieces of music, and this will allow us to find music from an unsigned group, and ask for their permission to use it, with ease. We will later find our tracks, and ask for permission, as soon as possible, so there is enough time to get a reply from whoever owns or wrote the music. 

Our Company Iden- TDB Studios

This is the finished product of our company logo 'TDB Studios', which we created on Livetype last week.

Our Company Logo

Today me, Tom and Dan created our own film company logo, on Livetype. Each of the print screens below demonstrate our progress step-by-step. The first image is simply of our company name, made up of each of our initials. Secondly, we applied an animation, called 'frigid', combined with 'circles'. Finally, in the third picture, we chose our colour, deciding on two different shades of blue.

Survey Progress

Checked the survey again today- 37 people have now completed it (as shown below). I have decided to leave it until we have collecte 50 sets of results, as this is an easy number to deal with if we wish to use persentages when analysing. Then I'm going to use a website called Wordall to interpret, and display my results.

Film Openings - Examples

Se7en
Below is the opening credits from the 1995 film 'Se7en'. 
Looking at the font of the credits, it can be described as flickering, irregular, spiky, and various shapes and sizes. The music used is both disturbing and unsettling. 




Panic Room
This is the opening of Panic Room, made in 2002.
The font of these opening credits is very big and bold, set amongst big buildings, emphasizing the size. The music is upbeat, and the shot goes from the general to the particular. 

Film openings

"Opening credits, in a television program, motion picture, or video game, are shown at the beginning of a show and list the most important members of the production. They are usually shown as text superimposed on a blank screen or static pictures, or sometimes on top of action in the show. Some opening credits are built around animation or production numbers of some sort (such as the James Bond films). Opening credits usually mention the major actors, guest stars, producers and director, as opposed to closing credits which lists the entire production crew."

(http://en..org/wiki/Motion_picture_credits#wikipedia Opening_credits)

Yesterday we discussed and analyzed film openings, such as 'Se7en' and 'Panic Room'. We looked at the order that members of the film production team and cast are displayed in. We discovered that it is as follows;

- The production company, and their logo

- The directors name ("a film made by...")

- The main characters of the film ("Starring...")

- The co-stars ("Also featuring...") 

- Other members of the filming team (Editors, cameraman, hair and makeup artists, assistant   directors and producers etc)     

Sabotage

Sabotage was another of Alfred Hitchcock's movies, made in 1935. Hitchcock himself was known as the 'Master of Suspense', and this particular piece of his works has often been used to define suspense in a thriller. The extract that we watched demonstrated dramatic irony, meaning the audience knows something which a character does not. In this case, a man named Verloc is a terrorist, and he gives a package to his his sister's younger brother to take to Piccadilly Circus. The brother, a young boy does so, not knowing that the package is in actual fact a bomb, set to explode at 1:45. He is told to walk to Piccadilly Circus by 1:30, but is prevented in doing so by a number of obstacles, with deadly consequences.

How suspense and tension is built
- There are number of close ups on the bomb, and a number of close ups on the boys face, which occur more and more frequently as the time gets closer to that at which the bomb will explode.
- The music alters from an upbeat sound, parallel with the scenes of the Lord Mayors Show, to a contrapuntal "tik tok" sound, similar to a bomb, or a clock, which speeds up and becomes higher pitched as the time nears 1:45. 
- Various clocks are shown throughout the extract to emphasis the change in time, again increasingly more as time nears the time of the bomb exploding.

Survey Progress

Just checked the number of responses collected so far for my Target Audience Survey. Have had 29 responses so far, which is good, but i've re-posted the survey onto my profile and updated my status asking people to do it (as shown below).

Film Certificates - The BBFC

I have been looking into what film certificates are, and what they mean to a film, and created this table to demonstrate my findings. Ratings are distributed to films by the BBFC, the British Board of Film Classification. It was set up in 1912, and its aim is to create age appropriate censors on films, based on their content. Recently certified films includes; Brighton Rock (15), Gnomeo and Juliet (U), I am Number Four (12A) and Mothers Day (18).

Creating our Survey

Today, i created my survey on surveymonkey (as shown above), and uploaded it onto facebook (as shown below), for friends, family and peers to complete. i asked such questions as the age and gender of the participant, their favourite type of, and all time thriller, and how often they watch thrillers.

Our interview

This is the interview that me and my group carried out, in an attempt to identify our target audience for our thriller. As I explain in the introduction we asked three questions, in order to find out the sorts of thrillers that different ages and genders enjoy, and what they believe to be key components to a thriller movie. The three questions we asked were:

What is your favourite thriller?

Why is this your favourite?

What are your favourite componants of a thriller?

Identifying our target audience

In order to create an effective and popular thriller opening, myself, Tom and Dan need to identify a target audience to which our thriller will appeal most to. The are a number of methods that can be taken to do this, such as carrying out an interview with a range of different people, and finding out their favourite thrillers and thriller movie components. Also, we can carry out an online survey asking various questions, which we can post onto facebook, so that our friends and families can answer the questions.  

My Thriller Montage

The above thriller montage demonstrates the sorts of images and ideas that come to mind when i think of or discuss thrillers. Most thrillers that i have seen have one of the above ideas incorporated into it; for example, bloody scenes, money, death, darkness etc.

Preliminary Task BLOOPERS!

Although the final product of our film is around 1:12 minutes, we actually filmed around 4 minutes of film. The film below is the parts of the film we had to edit out of the actual preliminary video, for obvious reasons. However i've put it onto my blog as a example of the number of out takes we had, and the editing we had to do as a result of Daniel being unable to act.

Preliminary Task with Thomas Mason and Daniel Lawrence

The below video is the preliminary task that myself, Thomas Mason and Daniel Lawrence created, in an attempt to learn how to create different camera shots, and how to edit them together to make a sequence. We used a number of different shots, such as long shots and close ups, and we also tested the use of over the shoulder shots in the conversation between me and Dan. We also used the tripod to create tilt shots and pan shots, where the camera moved side to side or up and down, on a fixed axis. At one point, when dan enters the room to meet me, we filmed him opening the door from one side of the door, and going into the room from within the room he was entering.

Spider Diagram on thrillers

Today i asked two students, Connor who is a media student, and Stacey who is not, to help me create a spider diagram of words that first come to mind upon hearing the word THRILLER, as another way of identifying our target audience, and to discover what people expect in a thriller. The following videos demonstrate what they came up with.