Continuity Exercise

In the past few lessons, my group and I have filmed our continuity exercise. I wanted to use a variety of shots so we used panning shots, point of view shots, tracking shots, and birds eye shots. We decided I would direct this as well as the thriller title sequence, and Aaron will be the producer.

Thriller Sub-Genres

When planning our thriller opening sequence, we need to take into account multiple things, including plot, camera angles, mise-en-scene and sub-genre. There are many sub-genres of thriller that i have came to find, including:

• Action Thriller
• Horror Thriller
• Psychological Thriller
• Drama Thriller
• Comedy Thriller
• Legal Thriller
• Supernatural Thriller
• Political Thriller
• Techno-thriller
• Conspiracy Thriller
• Crime Thriller
• Spy Thriller

Typical conventions of thriller include:

-Low Key Lighting
-Quick Cuts
-Shadows
-Tense Music
-Changes in the angles of shots
-Digetic breathing sounds
-Motage of shots
-Protagonist is usually male, trying to restore the equilibrium
-Antagonist's identity is usually revealed bit by bit throughout the thriller
-Antagonist usually wants revenge for a past event
-Close Ups and Extreme Close ups
-Shots of antagonist will cut quickly/will aim to hide their identity
-Jump Cuts

Camera Angles - Continuity Exercise Prep

In one of our recent lessons we revised over and learnt new camera angles, and were given a list of those we should consider using in our continuity exercise. These included:

• Extreme Close Up (ECU)
• Big Close Up (BCU)
• Close Up (CU)
• Medium Close Up (MCU)
• Medium Shot (MS)
• Medium Long Shot (MLS)
• Long Shot (LS)
• Very Long/Wide Shoe (VLS)
• 2 Shot
• Over the shoulder (OTS)
• High Angle
• Low Angle
• Tilted Frame

My group and I also spent time trying out these shots with our cameras, and we are aware thaat extreme close ups, close ups, high and low angles shots and over the shoulder shots are typically used frequently in thriller movies so focused mainly on these shots.

Thriller Directors

Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock was an english thriller director who lived from 1899-1980. Some of his most famous work is linked closely with Saul Bass, as they both were part of the making of movies like "Pyscho" and "Vertigo." Others of his work include:

-When Boys Leave Home
-The Ring
-Blackmail
-Murder!
-The Lady Vanishes

Quentin Tarantino

Alternatively to Hitchcock, Tarantino's work centers mainly around the action thriller genre. Some of his most famous works are:

-Pulp Fiction
-Kill Bill Vol.1
-Kill Bill Vol.2
-Django Unchained

Thriller Collage

Saul Bass - Graphic Designer/Film Director

Saul Bass-His work

Saul Bass is a graphic designer and film director, infamous for creating title sequences for films in the 1950's-1960's, and is a traditionalist within his work. He has worked for some of Hollywood's most prominent filmmakers including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger and Martin Scorsese. He became widely known in the film industry after creating the title sequence for Otto Preminger's "The Man with the Golden Arm", which targeted the topic of heroin addiction.  

Bass created title sequences for many world-renowned films including:

• Around the World in 80 days (1956)
• West Side Story (1961)
• Big (1988)
• The Age of Innocence (1993)

Bass also created logos for many companies as shown below:

              

Additional to that designed movie posters, some of which were for films he created the title sequence for, including "The Man with the Golden Arm."

I am personally very impressed with Bass's work and I like the fact that they all have the same aesthetic and style by being quite simple yet effective at planting narrative enigmas about the film. 



The opening title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" begins with a sound bridge that instantly creates an atmosphere and mood typical as a "thriller". Typically the heavy stringer orchestral music creates an atmosphere of mystery and suspense. The establishing shot is an extreme close up of an eye, typical of a thriller as this portrays emotion and the fear of the character.

The opening title sequence of "Psycho" features the titles being split into pieces, which could symbolise both the knife cutting the words in the same way the antagonist cuts the victim and also connotes the way the antagonists mind may be in pieces and not all together because he is a "psycho" which is a abbreviation of the mental disorder "psychopath." The music features high pitched violins, typical of fear, suspense and panic.

Brief

The Brief:

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match-on-action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task: The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. 

My blog will take into consideration all these key areas:

• Forms and conventions
• Production contexts
• Role of technologies
• Audience/users
• Representations

My First Post

My name is Jade and I am a sixth form student at Pen-Y-Bont sixth form college.



Today has been my first lesson in AS Level media, where we have set up a blogger account using google+, and we have customised our blogs. We have discussed the "thriller" short film openings we will be creating and different routes we could go down when creating these, we have also decided on our groups for filming.