Thriller Conventions

There are many conventions of thrillers, conventions are what audiences expect to see when they watch a thriller. Audiences expect to see the thriller from the protagonists point of view, this makes them feel as if they're part of the film and the events are actually happening to them. 

Sound in thrillers 
The conventions of thrillers are possibly creaking doors or eerie music, this is usually done to create suspense in the scene and to keep the audience on edge. (might include)

Characters in thrillers
The characters can vary. Usually there is a killer or a ‘villain’ in a sense within psychological, in crime there could be a detective or police officer trying to uncover the crime that has been committed or stop the ‘villain’ from committing these crimes. (must include)

Camera work
Usually the camera will move with the characters, for example if the character is running away from something, this is called a tracking shot. They also use close ups of the characters face to show their emotions. (must include) Also a very popular camera shot is a long shot to show the scenery around them and if there's lots of empty space then that can also make the character wonder what's going to happen next and if something is going to fill the empty space. (must include)

Lighting
Low key lighting is used along with the eerie music. (must include)

Props
Props would be used such as knives, guns and anything that can be used in a threatening way towards anyone. Fake blood is used as make up on characters and for setting a scene. (might include) 

Now a lot of conventions in thrillers are shared with horror films as well, conventions of horror films are, heavy make up, dark corridors and a lot of death, whereas, thrillers don't include a lot of death or heavy make up, this is because thrillers only want to create suspense, not outright terror.

Deconstruction of scenes from famous/popular thrillers

This is my deconstruction of silence of the lambs.

Deconstruction of silence of the lambs 

Sixth Sense Deconstruction

Thriller Audiences

If I take a movie example from my last post it would be Donnie Darko, only because the audience for that is very specific.

Donnie Darko. While making Donnie Darko there was a chance that it may not be as popular as it was, so the film makers had to make sure people knew what it was about before they chose to see it. They did this by how they advertised it, they advertised it specifically as a psychological thriller that would possibly scare you. Their target audience were mature enough to appreciate the film at 15 and above so they advertised it as not suitable for anyone younger than that.

Thriller audiences are always quite similar no matter the sub-genre. Thriller audiences are usually people old enough to understand the plot and people who want to be put in suspense but also want a movie that makes them wonder a little. A horror does the suspense but horror films don't always have the best plot lines.

Introduction to thrillers

This is my introduction to thrillers research. The Wikipedia definition of a thriller is a broad genre of literature, film and television programming that uses suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements, and that is exactly right,  a thriller is a film that regularly builds suspense, this is what makes them so popular. They build suspense  excitement and uncertainty. Most people think that thriller and horror are the same, but there are many things different about them. Thriller is a work of fiction or drama that holds the audience attention by creating suspense, intrigue and adventure, whereas horror creates feelings of fear, dread, repulsion and dismay. 

Some sub-genres of thriller are psychological thriller, crime thriller and conspiracy thriller. 

Conspiracy Thriller

An example of a conspiracy thriller is also a political thriller, named three days of the condor. Here is a short clip from three days of the condor. 

In conspiracy thrillers the main focus is the conspiracy that has been revealed and how the main character will handle the new information. 

Psychological Thriller

Psychological thrillers focus on the main characters mental state. The perfect example for this genre is donnie darko, this is one of the most famous psychological thrillers. 

Crime Thriller

Crime thrillers are films that focus on the crime, their detection, criminals and their motives.

These movies are very famous thrillers that we could research for our film, especially donnie darko if anyone decides to do a psychological thriller. Two famous thriller directors that could be researched are Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg.  

Choosing a genre to work with

Choosing a genre to work with was actually more difficult than it sounds, this is because of how many genres there actually are and how difficult it is to work with most of them. We did a mind map of all the genres we could think of to help us choose what genre to work with on our film, here it is:                                                  

At first we had chosen to work with comedy, but Mr Hood was quite sceptical about it, so he set us homework to come up with an original joke that would make him laugh, long story short, everyone failed. However by doing this, it showed us how difficult it is to write comedy because everyone has a different sense of humour. 

The next task we had to do was naming general conventions of genres Mr Hood said, by the end of this task the ones that had the most general conventions were thriller, horror and sci-fi. The genre that we chose to work with however was thriller, this is because horror and sci-fi require too much technology that we don't have. Thriller doesn't require as much technology as sci-fi.

Film Ident Research

For my film ident research I must first know the difference between a distributing movie studio and a film production company. The difference is that a distributing film studio is a company or person responsible for the advertising and marketing of the film. They are also responsible for setting the date of the film release, whereas, a film production company handles budgeting, scripting, scheduling, the supply of talent and resources, post-production, production and organisation of staff.

Next I must deconstruct movie studio idents, the most famous ident I have chosen is:

I think that the studio chose this name and image together because they matched well, the Universal studios ident is an image of the earth and the space around it, essentially meaning the universe, so the two would fit together and make sense. Another reason could be that the studio would be very popular around the world. Whenever a film is from universal studios the ident is usually on for 21 seconds and it is accompanied by dramatic music that has an abrupt ending as the ident fades.I think this ident is successful because there are many big film associated with universal, such as, Jurassic park, billy Madison and dragonheart.

Another ident I've decided to decided to deconstruct is:

Orion is a smaller studio than universal but it still has some big movies on its film list. This studio chose this image because it is one that most people will know about because it is an image of orions belt in space, which is visible from earth. The name was also chosen along with it. The orion ident is usually on screen for 18 seconds and is accompanied by a building soundtrack that reaches a crescendo as the ident fades. The soundtrack the accompanies this very well because it fits the ident as its running. This ident isn't as well known as universal but the films it has on it's list are quite popular. These most popular and well known film in the list is the silence of the lambs. The thing that stands out the most in this ident is the logo of course, but the colour of the background helps it stand out because its so dark and the logo is much more bold and bright.

While constructing my own ident I will need to consider how attractive it must be to the audience I'm trying to reach, I must make sure that the ident and the ident name I choose must fit well together like Orion and Universal do. I must also make my ident stand out by choosing the right colours, choosing bright colours can make it stand out but like Orion I would want to use dark colours for the background and brighter colours for the actual name to make it stand out.

Titles research

 We researched film titles using Art of the title, this helped us look up thriller films that were similar to our own and see how the titles were handled.

We also watched a film called Brief History of Title Design.

Film Opening Research

In films there are a sequence of things that happen before the actual film begins. These are the actors appearing in these films, the company idents, the title of the film and many more things involved in the film making process. Some movies however don't show any of these until the actual movie has started, for example a movie that I have done is called a knights tale and it does this. In the movie it starts with a few lines of text then the film starts without naming actors or anyone involved in the production of the film, only after the movie has started do the actual film opening begin.
I did film opening research on three films, they are posted below.

Spiderman 

I Robot 

A Knights Tale 

Preliminary Task

For my preliminary task we had to film a short film of a character opening a door  walking across a room, sitting at a table and sharing a few lines of dialogue with another character, the getting up and walking away. In my group were James Minton and Callum Harris. Our task had to be completed twice, We do not have a copy of our first draft but by having done the first draft we had many things to improve on.

Editing:

- In our first attempt our editing of our sound was incredibly terrible, we had no sound and any sound we tried to record sounded like a robot. This gave us the idea to keep our original soundtrack and just add music when no one was talking, this turned out very well in our second draft. 

Another editing problem was that we had cut a shot too early and one our our characters foot jumped from one position to another. This was once again fixed in our second film.

Framing

- Our framing was good in our film and we followed the rule of three throughout it, however we had to be careful of not cutting off any characters. We did this a few times with one of our main characters and ended up cutting off part of their arm, but we fixed all these things in our second film and we were very cautious with our framing.

Shots

- We used many shots in our film, these included, shot reverse shot, over the shoulder shot, centre shot, close up and point of view shot. Our point of view shot however went quite wrong, the camera was too close to our character face and was not realistic enough.

Finally, without further ado, here is our preliminary task!

Lighting Terminology

There are many lighting terms in film making, all of these are needed to make a clear movie scene. The first lighting term is

Key lighting:

The key light is possibly the most important light in a scene, the key light is used to highlight the form and dimension of the subject.

Back light:

Back light is the source of light is behind the object or character

Fill light:

A fill light is the light, usually from the side of the subject that can soften shadows and illuminate areas not covered by the key light.

This is a diagram of the three point lighting.

Camerawork

Okay, depth of field is when in a film or even a picture the object that you focus on is in sharp quality, this means they stand out from the background. Depth of quality means that when they do this the background becomes out of focus so that the viewers eyes are naturally drawn to the object or person. The video explains it better than I do. But basically this can be very difficult to recreate on modern camcorders, this is because not all modern cameras are that good, but in the video it gives tips on how you can get a shallow depth of field from a modern camera.

Also, another camera technique is a dolly shot. A dolly shot is when a camera is placed on a set of wheels and a platform and is moved whilst filming is taking place. this is similar to a tracking shot.

For an example of a dolly shot there is an extract from the film panic room below. The dolly shot in this video begins at 1:51.

A dolly-zoom however is different, a dolly zoom is when the camera is placed on a set of wheels and a platform and as the camera is moving the camera is also zooming in on an object or character.

Editing techniques

This video explains all about split edits in a very interesting and original way. The way it does this is while filming this video they start to do the things that they are talking about, such as L cuts and J cuts, pay close attention and see if you can spot where they start doing it.

Other editing techniques used in films are fade and dissolve. These are two different transitions between shots in films. Fade in is when the screen is black and slowly and image becomes visible until it is clear, fade out is the other way around. Dissolve is when an image gradually dissolves out of screen and is replaces by another. Here is a short clip to describe it.

Film Shots

Before doing our preliminary task, we have been researching many things to help whilst filming, some of these things are types of film shots. Shots in film can be described in many different ways. here are some examples of shots in films.

close up:

This is an example of a close up from the film The Duchess. Close ups are of the characters face in the film.

Long shot:

This is an example of a long shot from the film real steel. A long shot is when you can see the characters and the setting around them.

Medium shot:

This is an example of a medium shot from the film spiderman. A medium shot is when a character is shot from the waist up, in this photo it also shows a good example of depth of field.

There are many different versions of these shots, for example there is a very close up and extreme close up. There is also a very long shot and an extreme long shot, an extreme long shot would look like this:

Filming rules

This video shows examples of continuity errors in the harry potter films. Continuity is when a film is continuous, meaning there are no mistakes, for example, if in one scene a character was wearing sunglasses and then in the next scene they were not then that would be a good example of a continuity error.

Continuity and the 180 degree rule are not the only things used in films. Another example of techniques used in films would be fade in. Fade in is when a a film starts with a black screen then gradually an image appears until it is full visible.

Also a very important one that is almost always used in film is the rule of thirds. the rule of thirds is when the screen is split into threes and to make a film look good and professional the character must stay in the rule of three. Here is a video that can explain it better.

For our prelim task we had to follow an 180 degree rule, this is a video explaining what this is and how it works.