All Initial Ideas for Thriller Location

When told that we were going to make a thriller opening I immediately pictured the scene in Millers crossing in which Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) takes Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro) out into the woods and is told to shoot him one to take him down and 'once in the head' to make it final. This is because i really loved the way in a forest vanishing points can be utilised and also by using a filter (brown) like has been done in this film it makes the whole world seem bleak and dirty which is a common signifier of the thriller genre.

On top of this i really liked the mystery and intrigue that could be gleaned from a variety of shots not actually showing someones face but just the person begging (example below) with this idea you would need a very convincing actor.


Moving away from 'Miller's Crossing' by the Coen brothers i also really like the tension built in the ending sequence in the forest to 'Assault on Precinct 13' directed by Jean-Francois Richet in 2005 (and also starring Gabriel Byrne), in this ending sequence Sgt Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke) is hunting Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne) who is hunting Jake in the forest, not knowing which way to turn, the audience do not know who's feet are who's and the mystery and suspense is built upon which character will win the fight and find the other one sooner! this effect would be great for our thriller but would have to be done using some difficult editing and camera shots which may be to much for the technology available to us.

This is why i think filming would be great in a forest. During our first large group meeting at Tanwyn's house both Tanwyn and I thought that filming in a wood/forest would be a great idea, however we were a bit dubious as to how steady and flat the camera could be kept whilst filming. On top of this filming out in the open would create a lot of background noise, run the risk of other people being around and we would also be relying on the weather. Despite this i still took a camera to the University of East Anglia (UEA) grounds in which they have a lot of woodland just to see what effects could be gleaned from working with a forest view. (apologies for the humming!)

From this film you can see that walking in a forest without tracks is extremely uneven and shaky, this type of hand held camera look works well for films like 'Cloverfield' directed by Matt Reeves, however all the thrillers that i have seen use stylish, smooth camera work unless trying to make a point in a particular section of film. On the other hand the rows of trees has the nice effect of shadows on the ground and can also be used for vanishing points into the distance.

On my way round the UEA grounds i did find a nice clearing and a bench over looking a lake that could be used for scenes like in Layer Cake when looking from behind Daniel Craig at his back when talking to the Dragon and with the cityscape in front of him. the bench and clearing i found are shown in the footage below:

Update: Due to all the problems with filming in a forest we have decided to film in a car park that is also more accessible in the city. Tom went and took some footage of the car park here it is:

Music for our Thriller

Music is used in films to add emotional tension and in thriller films it is especially used to build tension and mystery to get the audience on the edge of their seat. Without music films would be extremely boring and tedious. For example, watch this emotion scene from ... including the music.

Now watch this video on mute. This makes the scene feel empty and boring, and evokes no emotion in the audience.

This is why we have to carefully select the music for our thriller making sure that it suits the theme and adds something to the film, otherwise the film will not work and will be lost on the audience.After a long time looking for some music that is copyright free, long enough to fit over the entire (approx) 2 minutes of our film, and also a track that will fit the mood, Tom Kail finally managed to find a track that fitted. "The Four Of Us Are Dying" by "Nine Inch Nails" (shown below) was almost perfect for our thriller opening, however it had one major flaw because it was made by a popular band and we concluded that it was not copyright free. Despite this we still read the copyright laws surrounding the album 'The Four of us are Dying' was released on ('The Slip). we found out that it was released under a creative commons license which means that this song is suitable for use on our thriller opening.

This music is so perfect for our thriller due to the beat being at a walking pace to fit in with the opening sequence and the staircase. Also I love the way at the beginning the main beat sounds like a heart beat and after 20 seconds the beat builds with a 'psycho' like sound building in the background which adds tension to the plot of our opening. The music builds at the beginning which shows the audience that the film is leading into something and so keeps them on their feet. Obviously we will not be able to use the entirety of the track which is useful as I do not like the track as it starts to whine and has a ringing noise in the background. However throughout the track it sounds very dark, which is great for our thriller as it climatises the audience to the theme of the film at the very beginning. This song has no lyrics, as we purposely looked for one without, this is because during our very first group meeting we had a look at some amateur videos on 'youtube' and the ones that we disliked the most were those who had picked a song merely for the sake that they liked it and those what had lyrics just did not fit because it distracts from the film and does not seem like back ground music but music that has to be listened to word for word.

Plus the music has many different beats all put together along with the unusual (almost whiny) guitar sound make this song very mixed up and confusing which adds to our films sense of mystery and twists. All these reasons are why we have chosen to use this song for our background music.

Actor choices for our Thriller

Choosing actors for our thriller film was relatively easy surprisingly, for we had decided that we only wanted two characters so as to keep things simple and due to the fact that we are only making the initial opening sequence to a possible thriller film we decided that we didn't need to introduce lots of characters and over complicate things!

Finding two actors was really painless as we knew what we were looking for and that was: acting ability and whether they had any past experience also looks to fit the part and their availability to shoot.
The first two people we looked at fitted the bill exactly, these were Lukman Hussain and Tanwyn Smith-Meek.

Lukman Hussain

At 25 years of age Lukman was especially good for the part of a gangster as he obviously looks older and more mature making our film look more authentic, than if we had picked both actors from our year (16 - 17 year old's).
Lukman's experience in amateur film making and acting was one of the main points we picked him as our sinister actor, as we needed quite a bit of emotions and thoughts communicated without using words and all through his actions and expressions.

On top of this Lukman's brother Ibrahim is good friends with Tom Kail and goes to our school so messages could be relayed through him to Lukman making him very easy to contact and make arrangements with.

Tanwyn Smith-Meek

Tanwyn is a member of the group already which has many advantages such as: We can rehearse with him, he knows the plot and script thoroughly, it is easy to organise filming times with him, he would put more effort in respect with his acting, he is up to date with all the changes made, and including him in the acting gives us the chance to hear comments on shots that we would not otherwise have thought of because he was the one in the shot being filmed.
In addition to this Tanwyn would like to persue a career in acting and this gives him a great insight into the world of film (even though we are amateurs) as he has only acted on stage in plays with his acting and he would also put a lot more effort in, and because of his ambition to be on the big screen one day he is also taking A-level Drama and gained an A for Drama GCSE.

Continuity Test

The continuity task is one being undertaken by everyone on the year 12 media course, it involves filming someone walk through a door sitting down and having a conversation with themselves or another person/people. The final production had to be fluent and exhibit, The Line Rule and The Rule of Thirds, whilst also being coherent and stylish. This was a perfect opportunity to mess around with the cameras to gain a basic understanding of how they work, their limits and what to expect from them in connection with our thriller filming.

Our continuity task is shown below:



I hope you enjoyed it!

Women in film...

Surfing the internet one day, i encountered a great website about women in the film industry, i am afraid that it only focuses on German cinema and people but it does however bring up many good points about difficulties that face women in cinema today: http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/michaelwalford/tag/women_and_film/

Thriller Editing - Random Updates

During making/editing our thriller opening we tried many things out that did not work to try and improve the plot and shots here are a few examples:

To try and make one scene more dramatic we tried having a close-up of Lukman's eyes slide into shot, this however looked extremely cliched and very corny so we decided not to use this. Also the style was too reminiscent of the western cowboy genre.

On one shot the top has been cut off by a low hanging wall and because it is dark it looks like a black block at the top of the screen. As this shot is really nice we tried moving the screen so that it looks like a wide screen shot, however the switching from full screen to wide screen looks extremely stupid and out of place so, we have decided to keep the scene in the film but have kept it with the band at the top. This shot can also symbolize how John's (Tanwyn's character) has his life cut short.

Also as we over ran the time limit by about 20 seconds to shorten the film we tried speeding up the part of Tanwyn walking, to make it a fast motion shot, however with the internal monologue on top and the slow beat of the music it just didn't fit in. Also the pieces in which he is walking are the tension building, mysterious parts as you have no idea where he is going or who he is! To save time we finally decided to cut down each of our shots and dissect some of the dialogue.

Why do we need the British film industry?

Chinatown Narrative

A Critical Analysis of ‘Chinatown’ (directed by Roman Polanski) and its Narrative

Chinatown is best described as a crime thriller as it is full to the brim with deception and illegal business that fills the narrative with twists and turns that are so reminiscent of the thriller genre.

The narrative of a film is its storyline, how it is told and from whose perspective. A simple narrative will usually begin with an introduction where everything is fine and normal which then turns problematic because of a conflict or event, then there will be a climax and at the end of the narrative the problem will be resolved; for example Goldie Locks would have a very simple narrative. At the beginning the bears go out all happy for a picnic and Goldie Locks enters the house all happy and not aware that she is doing anything wrong when eating their porridge and sleeping in their beds, until the bears come home (problem) and find their porridge eaten and her asleep in their bed (climax), but they resolve this when in the end she runs all the way back to her own home. This example of a simple Narrative is extremely different from that of ‘Chinatown’ because Chinatown has a very complex plot with many ups and downs, twists and turns which make it such a brilliant film.

In ‘Chinatown’ the narrative is presented in the eyes of J.J. Gittes so this is a very subjective narrative we can see this in many different shots for example when Gittes is driving the car you see through the windscreen as if you were looking through his eyes, also we see the events through his eyes, we flinch when his nose is cut and we feel repulsed when we find out that Mrs. Mulwray’s daughter is also her sister! The use of this type of narrative leads us into the story and connects us with the characters as if they were real. However with this type of narrative you only get one side of the story and one perspective, and even though Gittes is the most interesting character in the plot and is obviously the best choice for the subjective narrative to be based around, the audience still only receive his perspective and cannot know what is going through some of the characters heads even though we can guess, on top of this it is a biased view of the characters and plots that surround Gittes and he influences our opinions of the characters, for example Detective Loach the arrogant police detective who is in competition with Gittes comes across as a cocky idiot but from another persons narrative his partner for example he would come across as completely different.

The subjective Narrative is typical of thrillers and it is very popular to use an internal monologue like in ‘Sin City’ (directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez), and ‘Layer Cake’ (directed by Matthew Vaughn). Internal monologues draw us into the plot and the mind of the character, this is extremely effective in ‘Sin City’ with the monologues of all the men with gruff voices add an eerie, tension as there is only a faint sound of the background except the voice this draws us into their life and the storyline, this is why they are very typical of the thriller genre. The Narration in the first person by a male protagonist in both ‘Layer Cake’ and ‘Sin City’ is also a characteristic of the thriller genre as the voice of the men adds depth to the plot and also adds to the bleak atmosphere of many thrillers. Another type of Narrative that I have briefly mentioned before is the spiraling, twisting, turning narrative that is full of mystery and intrigue every single thriller has this sort of narrative and is how we classify a thriller, this is because the twists in the plot as in Chinatown draw you deeper into the lives of the characters and helps the audience to form an understanding of all the characters. The mystery and intrigue helps build tension and the theme of corruption, deceit and moral ambiguity, this is very evident in the film ‘Reservoir Dogs’ directed by Quentin Tarantino. In any film it is very important to get the narrative right because if you have a brilliant plot for a film but you tell it from the wrong characters perspective it can spoil the film. So using the subjective narrative from the point of view from J.J. Gittes in Chinatown was the right choice and is the factor that holds the brilliant plot together.

To conclude the narrative in Chinatown is very clever as it gets the audience involved in the action through Gittes’s eyes and it fits in brilliantly with the theme as the whole film revolves around him and his investigation and was the obvious choice for the subjective narrative. This film could have used an internal monologue as that would fit in with the thriller genre however I believe one of the great things about this film is that it keeps you guessing.

Intitial Plan of Perfume Advert

Initially i had decided on a very noir, sexy, Gothic theme to my perfume advert as i have found that they tend to be very over the top and are always full of nudity. I had a basic plan of how my advert was going to look. Here is a rough sketch with annotations:

Update: Due to the fact that I will not be able to find a model for this sort of naked shot and one that will fit the bill, and also partly because the technology we will be using to take the photo will not be of the highest quality and the light will not be right for the light and dark shadows on the skin. on top of this the programme to be used for editing, 'Photoshop Elements 2.0', does not have a high enough quality to enable me to obtain a flawless shaded skin tone without spending an overly large amount of time on this project. Instead i am going for something with more red in it and a close up shot instead of an extreme close shot so the skin tone does not need to be changed too much.

Shooting locations

For the main part of our film we are planning to shoot in a car park this car park is located in Norwich, East Anglia in the city centre:

In Norwich we will be filming in a car park at the top of St Steven Street here is an arial view from google maps; the red arrow signifies the car park.

This location is close to the school so is very accessible and also has the dingy, urban sleeze factor that is a popular thriller signifier.

Wallander - a T.V. production

Wallander is a new T.V. series involving a detective aptly name Wallander, whose job it is to investigate homicides. This plot and theme of this series is very similar to thriller conventions in film so to analyse and compare this to thriller films should be quite interesting. I have only seen the first episode as it is a new series however this was an extra long episode of one and a half hours so there is plenty material to look at.
The opening credits consisted of the face of the actor playing Wallander (Kenneth Branagh) in black and blue block colour framed by yellow which were the words of the title using the letters a, a, d and e as they are the letter with holes in them. once all the letters were exhausted it was just a yellow screen with Wallander in black unobtrusive letters. The yellow mirrors the colour of the Rape Seed plantation in which the opening sequence took place with a young girl committing suicide. The large use of yellow may also intimate cowardliness or jealousy that is to come, after watching the whole episode i find that the yellow would be a good representation of Wallander's troubled mind which is close to cracking and could be interpreted as cowardly. Whilst watching these credits the yellow gave me the picture of lines on a road, this signifies the journey of twisting and turning plot that the series contains. The blue/black face also shows sadness 'he was feeling blue'. And also provides an image of a storm that is to come.

The Thriller conventions shown by the first episode shows the style of this series as it has a flawed hero, many male protagonists, mystery into who the murderer is, slanted blinds and fast tension building music. I could not see many differences between this T.V. thriller and that of the big screen productions except that this is a series and obviously the story is carried on throughout the space of time the series lasts. There was one subtle difference that i did notice however, which was the repetition of some of the shot types used, as well as having a variety of shot compositions the variety was not as wide as that of a film and the shot that was often used was extremely strange and the audience saw the main male protagonists reflections in windows, vases, mirrors etc. This indicates that there is a hidden person inside everyone or that there is always someone watching which adds to the sense of tension/worry, although these types of shots would be used in films the frequency in which they would be used is definitely not as much as was used in 'Wallander'.