Research: Thriller Genre - Jessica Fernando

Psycho (Hitchcock,1960)

The thriller Psycho (Hitchcock,1960) has a shower scene from the film in which it is one of the most famous scenes in cinema history. Psycho was filmed in black and white, this made the film more scarier than it would have been in colored images, which created a thriller effect to the film. The scene starts off when the women is sitting down writing in her notebook, this scene created an innocent atmosphere, which links to the calm music being played at the background. However when the women rips up the paper in tiny pieces it created a dramatic atmosphere, the  music played at in the background adds to this atmosphere. The music afterwards stop and all we hear is the women having a shower, the fact that its silent creates an intense atmosphere, as we feel like something is going to happen. The camera then turns to the shower curtains in which we see a dark shadow of a person coming towards the women, even though there is no music playing and all we hear is the shower it makes the audience look away as it gets scarier. As soon as the person opens the curtains, scary, dramatic, horrific music is played as we see someone with a knife, the music makes the audience jump even though we knew that something was going to happen like this. The women starts screaming as she is getting stabbed, which makes the audience feel bad and grossed out by hearing the noise when the person is stabbing her. At the end we see the blood in the bath tub which shows the danger and the evilness. The women then falls to the floor in which the camera zooms out of the women's eyes as she lays there, which created one of the best thriller scene of all time. starts with

The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan,1999)
The opening of the thriller film Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan, 1999) begins with titles written in white letters with a black background with the use of spooky intense music playing throughout the whole opening of the film, the use of a dark background and the music makes creates great suspense as the music is playing slowly and the titles and credits are being showed at a slow pace as well. The music started of very low and then started to get louder, this is a great start to the opening of the film as it already sets the genre as a thriller, this therefore makes the audience feel scared, before any action has taken place.

Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008, 2012, 2015) 
Critics have applauded Pierre Morel for success with the thriller trilogy of Taken due to the fact that it creates suspense towards the audience. Throughout each film there is a lot of action for example in Taken 2 there were speeding cars and Americans in danger, but the only ones truly taken for a ride is the audience, this is because the way that it was filmed is almost like we were in the action ourselves, which makes it interesting for the audience and creates suspense. The music itself in Taken was very creative to make sure that the audience knew what was going to happen, for example when there was fighting there would be dramatic music being played in the background, also when something sad would happen there would be calm sad music playing to fit the scene. 

Thriller Research - Shannon Tobin

From analysing thriller movie trailers and extracts, I have discovered that one of the main conventions of a thriller movie is suspense. Every trailer and extract I watched managed to create an intense amount of suspense for the audience viewing it. The trailers and extracts would manage to do this by giving away a piece of the plot and making the viewer want to discover the entire story.

Sound plays a big part in building this suspense. In every single extract and trailer I watched their was music cleverly used to place the audience on the edge of their seats.
For example; from the classic Hitchcock film 'Psycho', the use of the classic and memorable music that plays whilst the lady is being stabbed is a great way to create an intense atmosphere.


Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)

Another example of a thriller that I analsyed was 'The Sixth Sense' (Shyamalan, 1999). The opening sense of The Sixth Sense was done in a very clever way. The use of music was very subtle but still managed to build suspense, without the audience even realising. The use of the camera work and mise-en-scene in this opening was fantastic at building suspense. When the light comes on at the start of the action, this shot is a great way to keep the audience of the edge of their seats. The brightness grips the audience right from the start. This carries on when the audience then sees the woman walking down the stairs in the background. This simple shot creates suspense in such a simple way. The audience is left asking so many questions; what will happen next, who is this woman etc. Near the end of the opening scene, when the woman and her husband enter the bedroom, their is a close up shot of broken glass on the floor where the window has been smashed open, and the use of the silence where the audience can only hear the phone line beeping creates immense suspense and is a great way to keep the audience gripped.

The Sixth Sense (Shyamalan, 1999)

Another brilliant example of an amazing thriller is Law Abiding Citizen (Gary Gray, 2009). What makes this such a great thriller is that fact that mystery and tension is kept throughout the whole film. Right from the very start the audience is gripped and left asking questions. The lack of knowledge about the main character leaves him a mystery to the audience. This shadiness of the main character is very eerie and this is what builds the tension throughout the whole film. The unique and extremely clever storyline is also one of the key elements that makes this film such a great thriller. The audience never knows what is going to happen, or how Clyde (the main character) has managed to do such things. The amazing plot twists keep the audience constantly interested and wanting to know what is going to happen next. I personally feel that Law Abiding Citizen is one of the best thriller films (and films in general), because it is so clever and always keeps the audience wanting to know why Clyde has done certain things, how he has done them and what he is going to be doing next.

Law Abiding Citizen (Gary Gray, 2009)

Institutional Research- Felicity Bearfoot-Fallon

The Art of The Title - Opening Scene Analysis - The Walking Dead - Felicity Bearfoot-Fallon

For this task, we had to go onto a website called 'Art of The Title' and choose a trailer to do institutional  research on.

What I have learnt from this task is there are usually up to 20 titles overall, and in 'The Walking Dead' there are 16, in which I highlighted the 10 mains ones which included the director and producers.
The opening clip was a moving cartoon with the titles appearing around it after each 2-5 or so seconds. Throughout the opening, the genre was made very clear by the animations and colours that were shown, which indicates to the audience some parts of what to expect.
The soundtrack is just the music from the walking dead which is continuously throughout the opening clip; This also adds to the contribution of exposing the genre.

Institutional Research - Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) Shannon Tobin

Fight Club (Fincher, 1999)

What I have learnt from doing this task is that most opening title sequences usually contain around 15-20 titles within them. The title sequence usually gives and insight into the genre of the film and what the film may contain. For example, when I analysed the title sequence for Fight Club, there were 24 different titles and gave away the information of the director, producer, different actors etc. It also gave an insight into the genre of the film due to the music that is used and the last image of Brad Pitt's beaten face.

Institutional Research - Red Lights (2012)- Elona Doci

For this task we had to watch a film opening and then create a timeline of the titles we saw throughout the opening; the visual elements we saw and all the audio we heard. In the opening of 'Red Lights' there was 22 titles; these titles told us about who the actors were, who the director was, who wrote the film and the film title itself. The film title was shown at 20 seconds, this is very early on but this basically told us what the film was called and then we were able to make links from what we saw and heard. Through the visual elements in the opening we got a flavour of what sort of film it would be and the audio added to this. when watching the opening and listening to the audio i could tell that the film was a thriller and mystery as the music was quite dramatic and mysterious, as well as the imagery that included x-rays, skeletons and needles.

Institutional Research - Coraline (2009) - Jessica Fernando

For this task I had to watch any film opening, in which I chose 'Coraline' 2009. Once watching the opening I then had to create two timelines (above picture) one for visual for example what titles were there. In the opening there were a total of 23 titles listed in the 2 minutes and 24 seconds of the opening of the film. Some of the titles were the directors and producers, who the music throughout the film was and credits. The reason to why there is all these titles are for us to know who took part in what. For the visual I also had to write down what ever I saw other than titles, for example images that I had scene during the opening of the film. 

The second timeline that I did was on audio, everything in which i heard for example music. In total there were 11 things that I had heard during the 2.24 mins of the opening for the film. from the audio it gives me a taster on what the film will be like. In 'Coraline' i assume that the film is quite creepy and mysterious with the use of the music playing throughout the opening scene 

Preliminary Evaluation - Shannon Tobin

Our preliminary task was to make a video that consisted of many different camera angles, and to show off our continuity editing skills.

In this task I worked with Elona, Jessica and Felicity. 

Jessica and myself were in charge of all the filming, while Elona and Felicity set up the camera beforehand and took charge of changing the white balance each time we had to change location of the filming. They were also the stars of the video. 

Before any filming could be done, we had to make a plan so that everyone knew what they had to do and to make sure that we would have had enough time to do everything. As we were filming both inside and outside, this meant that we had to change the white balance each time, which took a lot of time and effort. However, the white balance was slightly off at the beginning of the video. 

We had to gather a lot of footage so that we were able to use the perfect clips and merge them all together during the editing. During the editing stage, we had to make sure that we edited it correctly so that all the different clips would flow really well from one to the other. However, we did have to add in some transitions as there was a bit of missing footage where Elona went and sat on the chair. 

Part of our task was to include match on action. This is when a piece of action is happening in a scene, and there is a cut to a different camera angle of the same action. This is a great example of our continuity editing skills, and it makes it easy for the audience to follow the action and understand what is happening. 

Next time we have to remember to correctly set the white balance every time we change our location before the filming begins, and make sure they we have all of our footage, and even some extra footage to make sure we cover everything we need to.