My 3 ideas for Thrillers

IDEA ONE:     Corpses

            The story deals with a new era in which the world has been cursed by hellish demons who curse the dead into rising up and trying to dominate the world. God doesn’t want to help humanity because he is fed up with the way that humans have been treating the world. The storyline follows a religious family that consists of the parents, the grandmother and two teenage kids, along with their struggle for survivability against the dead.

            The opening sequence for this movie starts off with an establishing shot of a lonely graveyard at night. In this establishing shot we spot a man doing something in a grave. We then get close-ups of this mysterious man dressed in black finishing up burying a corpse. We are unable to get many details of this man’s face since he is wearing a hat, a coat which covers most of his face and sunglasses. When his job is done, we get a long shot of him through his back and we see him drop the shovel. After this we get a low angle which enables us to see the pile of dirt from the grave and the man walking away from it. When the man reaches a good distance from it he turns around and takes a look at the grave. After this we get a point of view shot of his vision looking at the grave. Then the camera returns to the low angle before and we see the man turning back around and walking away again. And a few seconds after he is off scene a hand suddenly comes out of the ground. There is only a very soft muffled non-diegetic soundtrack playing along this entire sequence. And also the diegetic sound of rain. As soon as the hand comes off the ground there is a strong thunder sound meant to jump scare the audience.

 Feedback:

 It has a good opening sequence, but the movie idea falls more towards the horror side than to the Thriller side, therefore it wouldn't work for my thriller opening sequence coursework.

IDEA TWO:      The Black Masks

            This story deals with a bank robbery from extremely experienced robbers who are greatly wanted in the United States, they are known as the Black Masks. The story is in the state of  Los Angeles in a fairly popular bank. The robbers quickly put some people in hostage while the others go get the money from the safe. When the police arrive they fear to get in because the robbers threaten them and planted explosives by the doors. The whole movie is about the police planning new strategies and getting killed by ambushes made by the robbers. The police end up having to call extra forces to try and rescue the fewer and fewer hostages.

            The story opens with all the robbers in a van making their way to the bank. They are all in complete silence and all we can hear is the vehicle’s motor running. We start with a close-up of one of the robbers sitting down at the end of that back of the van. The camera slowly pans to the right introducing the other robbers. We then get a close-up of the driver who is the leader of the Black Masks. Followed by a point of view of him to the street. This is when the title of the movie shows up. We then get a low angle long shot from the street of the van just passing by. Then an over the shoulder shot of the driver as he pulls up the van. We then get a close-up of the leader as he says: Ready? .  After this we get a Mid long shot of the entire group putting on their masks and loading their guns. 

Feedback:

Once again, this does not completely follow the concept of Thrillers. This would be more of a crime movie with a slight touch of the suspenseful thriller genre. 

IDEA THREE: Pinkie

            An African American who comes from a poor family is the hero of this story and the main character. The storyline follows the concept of murder, which a murderer is on the loose and he is wreaking havoc in the city of London. Every time he kills someone he cuts off the victim’s pinkie finger and keeps it as a trophy in his basement. The killer is named pinkie by the police since nobody knows his real identity.

            The opening sequence basically starts off with an over the shoulder shot of a yet to be discovered person wearing a hoodie. This person has an African skin colour  is following a woman down the streets of London. The woman then recognizes that this individual is following her and suddenly gets attacked by another man who shows up out of nowhere. The black person who was walking behind her jumps in and saves her. The killer then walks away.

 

IDEA FOUR: Hotel Manager (working title)

            The idea for this thriller opening sequence basically consists of this hotel manager who runs a very successful company. He has gotten a psychological trauma after his wife was murdered and he feels the need that people need to feel what he felt. So he becomes a killer himself. He starts murdering his customers making it look like suicides. The police investigate the cases  but don’t ever find out it was him.

            The opening sequence to this film would start off by The hotel manager getting rid of all the evidence of the murder. Using close-ups of him cleaning up the blood from knifes. Removing his gloves with blood stains. Or even closing up on a sink and show the blood mixed with the water when he is washing his hands. The opening sequence ends with him putting on his suit, and walking out his house to make his way to the hotel.

Feedback:
Pinkie was more likable than the other ideas, mainly for the fact that it does follow the thriller vibe. The group said that they really liked the whole story but disliked the opening sequence. So we modified it to where it would mix Hotel Manager and Pinkie, starting off with this man just cleaning a hotel room, making the bed, etc. and then we would suddenly see him picking up a bloody knife and cleaning it in the bathroom and , and grabbing a pinkie finger from his last victim and then putting on his suit and walking away from the room. This way, the opening sequence was able to build a lot more tension, due to the fact that we start off by seeing him just normally cleaning up a room and then tension rises as he starts picking up the knife, etc.

Learning How to Edit

So far we've had two lessons on editing. The lessons' goal was to make the students realize how powerful and crucial editing is to a movie. How through editing, you can change the audience's view completely of the movie or clip.

In our first class we edited our prelim task, where two people from our group would act a simple scene and the rest would focus on the camera angles and movements. We filmed the scenes in various different angles and then put it all together however we wanted in editing. For example, we chose to start with a camera tilt upwards presenting the character who was sitting down at the sofa. But we could have started with the establishing shot of the room. It just made more sense to start with that "revealing" shot of her sitting down on the sofa.

In our second editing class we learned about the actual power of editing. We had an exercise to completely change the scene order. Basically completely messing up our scene and see what results we get. We basically did a kind of a remix looping the same section over and over again and at the end, dropping a tune. This shows that through editing we were able to create something completely different from what we had at first.

Movie Genres

 GENRES

What is a genre?

Genre is a way of categorizing film in different styles.
(i.e. Action, Comedy, Horror, Thriller, Adventure...)

What is a hybrid genre?

A hybrid genre is when a genre blends with one other or more genres. Basically when two or more genres are combined they can be referred as a hybrid genre.
(i.e. Romantic Comedy, Action Thriller...)

What is a sub-genre?

Sub-genre can be defined as a genre within a genre. Or in other terms, sub-genres are subdivisions of a specific genre.
(i.e Thriller [genre] can be subdivided into psychological thrillers, or medical thrillers)

Why is  genre used?

Genre is used for marketing purposes. Basically facilitating and making it possible to depict the different categories of films. This makes it easier for the audience to choose the film that they desire to watch. If the audience wants to watch a Horror film then they will look into the Horror films genre. It's as simple as that.

                                                                                   What are genre conventions?

Genre conventions are the elements that separate genres from the rest.Elements that are usually only found in the certain genre. (i.e. Guns/explosions are conventions of action films)

THRILLERS

What is a thriller genre? What makes a thriller a thriller? Well, a thriller can be described as a movie category (genre) that thrills you. In a more detailed explanation a thriller is supposed to stimulate its audience to feel tension rising throughout the scenes in the movie. Tension is a key concept when it comes to thriller. In other words a thriller must rise the audience's anticipation levels. 

One convention found in a lot of thrillers is the use of mirrors. For example we can see in the image below Nina in "Black Swan" with her reflection looking at her with a mean expression. 

Thriller can be subdivided into a vast number of sub-genres. These include: Action Thrillers, Conspiracy Thrillers, Crime Thrillers, Disaster Thrillers, Spy Thrillers, Supernatural Thrillers, Erotic Thrillers, Legal Thrillers, Medical Thrillers, Psychological Thrillers, Political Thrillers and last but not least Religious Thrillers.

Prelim Task

Prelim Task

 During

this class we had our first practical work using professional cameras. Basically we were given a sheet with a simple dialog between two characters filmed in various different camera angles. 
The class was divided into a few groups. My group consisting of  five people. We went to the recording studio and had to film this prelim in one continuous shot. Each shot in different camera angles. I worked as one of the actors along with another girl in the group. It was extremely important to make sure that as we recorded our other scenes, we needed to do the exact same thing as we did on the last shot. What I mean by this is that we had to stand in the same position in all shots, doing the same hand gestures, and looking the same way as before. We also needed to make sure that our tone and loudness of our voices was the same in all clips. The reason for this is to not only make it easier for the editor who has a lot of work to do, but also for the scene to make sense, because the audience would notice something was wrong if I spoke in a different tonality in a different clip in the same scene. Or if I was standing in a different position than I was before. The reason why we filmed the scene in so many different camera angles is because it's a bit boring seeing a dialog in only one frame, it's good to vary a little bit to make the audience more intrigued in the scene. 

After filming the scene various times in different camera angles we added some short clips that may be useful when it comes to editing, such as the clip where they filmed my feet while I walked in the room. Or when they filmed the actress from the feet to the head is a slow paced camera movement. Or even when they filmed my hand gestures when I spoke. These little details can actually have a major impact on a film, capturing the attention of the audience. For instance, when we filmed the actress in the sofa in a slow camera movement from the feet to the head,  the audience comprehends that she is alone, in the sofa just chilling. It is also a good introduction to the character, since the audience is not only getting to know her face, but the body structure as well. In a future class we are going to edit freely this prelim task in order to get the best possible from what we've recorded.

Gravity Poster Analysis

Gravity Poster Analysis

When the institution made this poster they focused on the main aspect of the film, which is the unfortunate event in which one of the astronauts got lost in space. The movie is about the struggle of the astronauts trying to fight the force of gravity in order to survive. In the movie poster the institution presented two main characters who happen to be very popular in the film industry, those are Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Just through the appearance of these two big names, automatically it will grab the attention of the audience. The biggest text in the poster is the movie title, which is pretty much self explanatory. Above the two main actors in the film, there is a short phrase saying "don't let go". This indicates one of the key features of this film, the fact that if an astronaut lets go of his safety rope he or she will be pulled or pushed forever by the gravity in space.

If I were to denote the film, I would say that basically I see a astronaut in space near our planet. But if I were to do a connotation of this poster I would describe many other features, within them,  the lighting. The lighting in this film poster is very poor, since it represent space. Some colour connotations for black are darkness, emptiness, loneliness, frightening and spacious. There is though, some  lightning in the right edge of the planet earth which comes from part of the sun which is being exposed in the picture. This small amount of lighting is meant to grab the attention of the audience and make them focus on the astronaut being pushed away from his spaceship by gravity. There is also a small presence of the colour blue which mixed with the black gives a sort of mysterious and empty vibe to the poster.

The image lacks on objects and has a lot of empty space in it. There is an astronaut, some sort of space machine on the bottom right corner which could be a spaceship or maybe a satellite. We see a detached rope coming from the astronaut which suggests to the audience that  the astronaut was detached from his safety zone. There are also many little fractures of something floating near him/her, which could be metal scraps. And again, the only reason why we can actually see the metal scraps and the astronaut is because of the small sunlight. We can tell that the location is very near to planet earth because of how close we can see the world to the astronaut. Last but not least this poster leaves the audience thinking "what happened in the scene that made the astronaut float away and get detached from the spaceship, or, his safety zone." 

Overall this poster has been very nicely done by the institution, because it gives some information about what the movie plot will be, but at the same time, still leaves us, the audience, wondering what was the cause of that event. This is a very good example of a poster that catches the attention of the audience and maybe makes them want to watch this film.