What are thrillers?

Thrillers are movies that often excite and shock the audience. They make the person watching want to get them selves protected by blocking their ears, closing their eyes, hugging a friend and etc. Thrillers mostly relys on the use of emotions to make them have suspense or excitement and have a lot of tension within them. Their main idea is to create tension, excitement and fear and to keep the audience on the edge of there seats as the plot builds up to the climax. Thrillers can be made into a lots of diffent types of sub genres for example crime, horrow, spy, psychological or conspiracy.

For example the supernatural thriller which has an fantacy element (from another world) mixed with suspense or plot twists. Often a main character has some kind of ability or superpower. There is not always much action in thrillers, instead they focus on the building up of tension through twists. Often the ability to see dead people or goshts is a main feature in a supernatural thriller, a good example of this is The Sixth Sense or the TV drama Heroes.

Psychological thrillers on the other hand focuses mainly on the unstable emotional states of characters. It typically incorporates mystery and drama elements, often overlaping with the horror genre. Unlike in action-thrillers characters are reliant on their mental resources to overcome their enemies and not their physical stregnth, their battles may be with a formidable opponent who is trying to either demolish their mental state or two or more opponents preying apon one anothers minds by playing deceptive games, or the battles is with the characters own mind. A typical psychological thriller would be Inception, it plays with your mind.

Again in contrast to both of these we have the spy film genre, which is mainly the subgenre of thriller and action, dealing with fictional espioange, either realistically or or as a basis for fantasy. Usually spy films show the espionage activities of government agents at the risk of being discovered by their enemies. Spy films have always been popular with aduiences worldwide, offering a combination of exciting escapism, technological thrills and exotic locales, the spy film combines the action and sci-fi genres, presenting clearly-delineateed heroes for audiences to root for. A good example of a spy film would be James Bond and Hannah which we have studied in media studies.   

 

 

Good fellas

Targeted age group for good fellas I think the targeted at young audience age between 18 and above male because they are the ones that are interested in gangster movies like this.

The movie is about how a teenage italian boy turned into a mafia then durg dealer. In the movie there are a lot of shooting and bad use of language, all these facts in a way represents gangsters therefore their main targeted audience would be 18 years old + male.

Audition

The opening shows a girl sitting on the floor next to a telephone. With a bag containing something in it which we don't know about. This scene is shown by a long shot. The very little lighting given durning this scene makes the audience feel the dark mood the women is in. With her black hair covering her face; it will make the audience think that she has  a dark and dangerous personality, and is trying yo cover it with her hair.

We don't know who this girl is, we don't know what is in the bag and why she is hiding her face. This makes the scene even darker and mysterious.

Slowly dark music gets louder, which gives the audience the feeling that tension is building up, the audience now thinks that something bad is about to happen. Suddenly all the tension gets broken by a phone ringing, then the shot zooms in on the telephone, showing that the call is important.

From that point on the pace speeds up, with the music having different beats. The editing also speeds up, with the scene of a finger in a glass of water, and a random woman staring at a syringe injection. All of this gets the audience more focused by the fast action pacing trailer, still including a tint of mystery because there is no dialougue.

Afterwards we see a midshot if the woman injects the syringe into a man's stomach, with a reaction shot of the man in pain. This little clip then hints the audience that this could be a horror film because in a way it is asking the audience, whether to kill the the man or not, and why she would do such a horrible thing. All of this leaves the trailer full of mystery.

Thriller opening

My thriller opening I want it to be miserable, I don’t want to give out too much information because if I do, it won’t be that interesting anymore and people will start to lose interest in it. The location will be in a VIP room of a club with 2 men in suit talking (I don’t know what kind of convocation yet) one of them takes out a bag out and opens it, then the camera zooms into the bag and inside the bad there are a lot of cash then he hands it over to the other man, when he is giving it to the other guy the camera zooms in to the bag once again then this guy takes a bag of white powder and camera zooms into show the power then he hands it over to the other guy, and they shake hand with each other, one of them stands up and walks out of the room, at this moment you will see a bunch of guys in suit following behind him, in the scenes before you won’t be able to see that cause of the camera angles and it ends when the door shuts.

Prelim Task

Last week I had to shoot a prelim task with a group of people, I was the cameraman, I really enjoyed it. Because i got to experience being a camera man but at the same time being a camera man can get really tiring because if one of the scene   wasn't good enough, you have to keep on shooting it until it's perfect. During the shooting I learnt that you always have to bubble the camera before you do anything then you have to focus before shooting, and every time i press play or stop I can't do it too hard because tripod is really sensitive. Our group worked quite well together everyone put effort into it and about my self I would say i contributed quite a lot. We made a scene of a girl getting peer pressured by her friend to take cocaine but she ended up blowing the cocaine of the table. This scene is to create drug awareness to teenagers and showing that how a lot of teenagers got into drugs because of peer pressure because they want to blend in, because they want to look "cool". 

Code break analysis

The angle of the camera is always from the side of the room, and there are a lot of close up shots, it shows the facial expression of simon or the prisinor. the lighting is perfect because it is a prison so it can't be too bright but at the same time it can't be too dark cause if it was too dark you won't be able to see the facial expression of the actors. acting wise i would say it wasn't so perfect, the criminals weren't serious enough to make me believe that it was in a terrible situation but at the same time simon was good with the role he was playing. The location was good it looked pretty real and cause the lighting was pretty dark so even tho there were some defacts, you can't really see it cause of the lighting. The Costume didn't really show in this thriller because the light was dark. After all I would say this is a good thriller because it got me excited as well as my heart beat went faster, isn't this what you want from a thriller ?

Kill Bill

When the bride is buried, you develop specific sympathies towards the main character. Quentin Tarantino, the director, uses the different techniques of the scenes to covey different emotions, one of which being through the m.e.s. The m.e.s is everything crucial and important about each scene.

In the scene the bride is buried, Quentin Tarantino uses sound to develop your feelings towards the characters. Before the bride is buried, the music is calm, depressing and slow. The effect the writer brings towards the audience is the feeling of sadness, as you cannot do anything about this terrible event. When the bride is finally buried the music halts, and the sounds of scrapes and screams comes in. This is where Quentin Tarantino achieves to make “fear” the theme of the scene. After the scene of the bride being concealed in the coffin, she starts to stumble out, punching her way through the top cover of the coffin, making it sound that with every punch, the bride is closer to escape. Then, the coffin busts open, and the sound, is deliberately emphasized to focus on the escape. This is when the bride escapes from beneath the ground, and there is a trumpet playing, to convey happiness and peace, which ends when the hand vanishes.

Another crucial component in the burial scene are the costumes. Before the bride is put in the coffin, the man whom places her inside, the use of techniques in camera position, and the way the man is displayed, gives us a powerful, as well as making us feel powerless, when we see the cowboy. There is absence of light, which creates an claustrophobic fear, and makes us think that the bride will die. The close- up view of the bride with the torch shows the futility of what she is conspiring her escape, trying to keep her cool. This causes us to feel sympathy towards the bride. But in the next scene everything is different and the audience just knows that she will escape. The bride then gets out, with a bleeding hand, develop a sense of pain, and of she has to go through. We feel that she is in a great deal of pain, and we compare ourselves with her, wishing we were even close as not only physically, but also mentally strong as her. Lastly, this scene drops the weight from our hearts when the bride at last climbs through the soil. The graveyard where she was buried is deserted. She is covered in dirt, which shows us what she had to go through in order to escape the coffin to her surface, again, making us sympathize with the bride.

The lights focus the coffin, when it is nailed shut, to show importance and contrast to this event. This coveys the tone and theme of fear to the audience, because we are certain that the bride will die. The first time she turns on the lights, the lights are dimmer, but the afterwards they are bright. After the flashback, the light from the flashlight is much brighter in the second scene. During the bride’s escape, the lighting on her face shows how determined she is, making us feel proud and feel positive feelings towards her. It is still a late hour, which shows that the bride has broken out of the darkness and emerged victoriously into the light.

Overall, the burial scene in Kill Bill had 3 main factors in order to persuade the audience to think of the bride in a sympathetically way. The techniques Quentin Tarantino uses to achieve this are sound, specific camera angles and lighting. These three combined makes us sympathize with the bride, and think of her more highly than we did before.

The conversation poster

In the poster for the conversation, the main character is in the top section which makes him the main character. the whole poster is mainly grey which signifies moral ambiguity this makes it seem as though the main character is going to do something shady. he is looking through a window which puts a white streak on him which means he could be searching of redemption. the title is in red and black which shows that the titular conversation will involve death and the couple. the couple are in a camera sight which shows that they are being spied on and means that the man at the top is a spy of some sort or trying to stop a spy. the cityscape of San Fransico shows the grey which has further implications on moral ambiguity.

Hanna

In the sequence of Hanna we hear a really aggressive and dark electronic music as the background music but at the same time it doesn't make you feel that she's evil, instead you feel really pumped and excited about the whole movie. The non- diagetic music started after they opened the door, it took a long time for the door to get opened, during the time it feels like the build up for background music and in a way it gives you this feel that hanna's killing game is about to start. during the escape, the on and off light kind of matches to the non-diagetic background music and when the tempo of the song went higher nd higher as she almost succeeded the escape. The music stopped when she got away with the people that were chasing her but it started again after she started to run again. 

Filming rules

In  filmmaking  the 180-degree rule is the basic guideline regarding the on-screen orientation that is allowed to the audience between a character and another character or object within a scene. An imaginary line called the axis ,which is a semi circle, connects the characters and by keeping the camera on one side of this axis for every shot in the scene, the first character will always be frame right of the second character, who is then always frame left of the first.

you are allowed to cross the axis but to do this you must show the movement of the camera in order to not disorientate the viewers. other techniques we use to shoot  and maintain the camera are bubbling, white balance, exposure , framing,  and the rule of thirds. bubbling is when you adjust the the camera to get a bubble into the centre circle. white balance which is the process of removing all unrealistic colour casts so that objects which appears white in person are rendered white in your photo. exposure is when you regulate how much light gets into any shot. framing is a method used to draw the attention of the viewer to a certain aspect of the shot this can be achieved by tricks such as drawing the eye or focusing on a certain part of the body or area. finally the rule of thirds is when the shot is split up into 9 squares and the importance of an aspect is judged by what square an object or person are placed in. 

Children Of Men

Children Of Men is morally ambiguous  the cracks of the window seem to signify a broken society around him the lighting is brighter  where the man is standing this makes it implied that he is the hero.  the mans Expression looks brave. Unshaven and ragged ;   the shattered glass jutting from the pane implies that the threat of death is there. Metallic colours symbolise cold environment, eyes look like bright and determined. the Glass broken where the man is standing signifies doing something to change situation and overcoming obstacles.  children of men in white symbolise innocence hope and new life. 2027 grounded in reality

The Shining

From the moment you first set eyes on this poster you can tell two things, first that its a horror, second that it involves a battle of wits and strength. First how can you tell its a horror well the crazy man sticking his head through the door is a start, and the scared woman with absolute fear in her eyes  on the right. from the way we read the poster we can see that the man ins in the main square of focus. as it makes him stand out to be the killer, and there is a close-up of his face closeups characterize people better within the shot. The wording of the poster is simple and stands out by using white on black, and black on white which gives greater emphasis on contrast. the man in the poster is obvious saying something  to the woman which shows the hierarchy in the situation because the woman is forced to react and it is a negative reaction. due to the editing it seems that he is looking at her but the door is in the way. She is staring at the axeman on the left and can see the woman on right in the background this makes the man is more dominant over the woman and shows the woman to be weak and hiding away from the killer.