Thriller Opening (Film): The Finished Product

 

The above video is a production made by Millie and Stef and this is 'Systems Down'.

Thriller Opening (Research): Cutaways, Jump Cuts and Match Cuts

I decided to do some more research into cutaways, jump cuts and match cuts to get a better idea of what we should do when it comes to editing in our thriller opening. I also thought it might help us out when it comes to things such as issues during the filming and the such. These types of editing though can also give us ideas as to how else we can incorporate them to create certain effects.

Cutaways - when a shot cuts from a person or the main action to an object, another person, a secondary action or the scene before cutting back to the person.
Jump cuts - a type of editing that is used in films to show a skip forward in time, it's quick and simple as two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly.
Match cuts - cut between two different objects, two different spaces, or even two different compositions in which whatever is in the camera's view matches graphically and helps to establish continuity and links the two shots together.

Below is a video I watched that helped me to understand the different shots in more detail so I would be able to use them a bit better when it comes to filming the thriller opening.

 

Thriller Opening (Planning): Titling Practice

 

 

 

The following is a try out of our titling idea and allows us to think what more we could do with it and how it suits the theme of our opening. I like this form of titling since it looks like it's being typed on as it seems quite technological and our opening is very much like such.

Thriller Opening (Research): Research into Audience Views on Thriller Films

This is some footage that Millie had taken and I decided to mess around with it edit it, this was us gathering some information on what people like in thriller films and what sort of elements we should include in our own.

Thriller Opening (Planning): Messing Around with Editing

Me and Millie have been messing around giving a shot at editing for our thriller movie when we tried to figure out how to make the knock at the start have more of a dramatic effect. This is when we came across the option to change the speed of the clip and messed about for a bit before finding the right speed to use. This was what happened;

Thriller Opening (Planning): The Risk Assessment and Shooting Schedule

Below is the shooting schedule and the risk assessment we filled out before we started shooting for the thriller opening. They aren't too clear due to the camera we were using but you can still read it at least a little bit.

 

Thriller Opening (Research): Spielberg - Case Study

 

Steven Allen Spielberg (Born December 18, 1946) is a well known director of many famous movies from E.T. to Jurassic Park, yet his number one hit in the thriller world was Jaws, using the suspense of the music to his advantage as well as numerous shots of the sight from the sharks point of view and looking at the person above the water. This way of creating suspense was known as inspirational and aspiring to many.

A well known way of him using bright light in dark scenes is something I want to incorporate into the thriller opening of ours as he uses a bright light before making it less bright as well as making the outline of the light stand out a bit more using dust particles, mist or even fog, it's a very inventive way of doing things in my opinion.

A little fact that I've found out about what he incorporates into his movies is that he always makes his protagonists come from families that have been broken up or with fathers that are reluctant, absent or just mostly unimportant which is supposed to represent, in some ways, his own childhood life when his parents divorced. This was just a little fact I wished to include in on this.

He is very much, one of the richest directors in all of Hollywood with many nominations and Oscars secured under his belt. He is known as one of the leading pioneers for the New Hollywood Era which refers to films from the 1960's to the 1980's.

Other famous films apart from E.T., Jurassic Park and Jaws consists of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? A movie which combines animations and humans in one movie and pretty much throughout the entirety of the film.

A noticed theme throughout Spielberg's work is that the characters either find something extraordinary or come into contact with a situation that's very much out of place, something that our thriller movie opening does as well with the main protagonist coming into contact with ghosts, an extraordinary being of the sorts.

One of his famous directing trademarks is low height tracking shots - something he has managed to incorporate into many films of his, consisting of Hook, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind and A.I Artificial Intelligence.