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.

Thriller Opening (Research): Hitchcock - Case Study

   

Alfred Hitchcock (known as Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock as well) was born on the 13th of August in 1899 and passed away on the 29th of April, 1980. He was a famous film director and producer, well known for his work in the psychological thriller genres - nicknamed as the "Master of Suspense". He used many techniques to create suspense in his films and the ways he did such is something I would like to incorporate into our movie opening as suspense is key for thriller openings and this is why I will be looking into further depth of Hitchcock's work.

Filming over fifty feature films in his career that widened over six decades (60 years), he is very much regarded as the greatest British filmmaker due to these many films he has directed and produced which is a great title to hold.

Even today, Hitchcock is seen as a great director as during the 2007 poll, he gained first place as was claimed as "Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands." For years to have passed and him be still known as someone so great tells us what an impact he has left in the film world. His great work has caused him to be an engaging director who can toy with the audience's emotions as though it was  game as "his flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from us) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else."

His way of working is inspiring and the way he hides crucial information is something I would like to engage and use within our thriller opening with the plot twists we have planned out and the ideas that we could develop. He is also described as "the most influential movie maker of all time" by MovieMaker, a popular magazine.

His most famous film has to be Psycho where the heroine dies so early in the film as well as the suspense built up towards it. It definitely won him a lot as well as being a blockbuster which defined hallmarks of a new horror movie genre and has been copied by many authors of subsequent films.

Thriller Opening (Planning): Camera Angles

I have decided to look at different camera angles to see what sort to use within our film opening as well as how we could use them and what each would represent.

Close Up
- The first one on our list is a close up, the idea is to use this several times within our opening to show, not the typical mood/emotions of a character, but to show, for example, the job that our protagonist is taking which will be shown in a newspaper article. We thought that this shot would suit well as the starting shot as it instantly shows what is happening.

Establishing Shot
- We've kept in mind that we want to use establishing shots to show where the opening will be taking place, as do most establishing shots. We want it so that the shot will show the calm and peaceful exterior before it reveals what truly goes on within the house it shows. Creating a divide and going with the idea of "you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover".


Over the Shoulder Shot
- We decided to use this several times when showing the conversation between the owner of the house and the protagonist, which is the usual way to use such a shot, but the main time we will use this is to show him looking at the house he will be investigating and him walking towards it. This will, hopefully, show it being seen from the sight of the protagonist.


Point of View Shot (POV)
- This shot is to be used after a mid shot to show the male picking up the tablet and seeing it the way the protagonist sees it, focusing on how he then sees things as well. This will, hopefully, immerse the audience more and cause them to feel some sort of attachment to the protagonist.






Mid-Shot- We have decided to use this shot the show the protagonist in concentration and him having finished up putting up all of the cameras about the house. This is one of our more 'casual' shots as it shows him as a normal person sitting down at a table, not as though it's his profession in any way.

Thriller Opening (Research): The Woman In Black Textual Analysis

The Woman in Black is a film about the 'murders' of kids and a young lawyer travels to a remote village where he discovers the vengeful ghost of a scorned woman is terrorizing the locals. I decided to do an analysis on this as well due to the opening having more thriller aspects compared to Black Swan.

In the first two minutes of the film, it is opened with a lullaby soundtrack. Lullabies are meant to show a sense of understanding, a sound of safety and sounds very much child-like. Yet the way that this soundtrack is used is very much different compared to what we expected as instead of giving us this sense of safety and understanding, it gives off a chilling effect of insecurity as well as fear for some, expecting the unknown.

 

After the lullaby, it shows a room with three girls there, their costume seemingly Victorian which shows that zeitgeist has been represented within the film. This also tells us the time period in which the story would be set in as well as who these strange murders are happening to, the 'targets' so to speak. It can also set the pace of he film with the fact that the events occur in quite a fast pace, never slowing down. This is all shown through a long shot of the three as well as the room they are in which shows their age through numerous ways, such as the dolls they're playing with, the objects and other toys that are in the room and the colours, it almost gives off a light and eerie feeling before changing.

 

A long and high angled shot is used when the girls look up at something or in this case, someone. This shows them as being inferior to whatever they look at and remind us that these three are still children, in case we had forgotten for some odd reason, this can also show that the girls do, in fact, see someone there but when the later shot of the room shows, there's no one in the room. This shot gives a sense of mystery and wonders of the unknown.

 

Through editing, at this point, eye line match is used as after looking down at the three, this shows us them then looking towards something else and then shows it us from their point of view, creating a sense of suspense and foreboding. After this shot though, the girls get up and end up stepping on dolls and teacups, the sounds of these objects breaking are louder than we'd usually hear them, this sort of sudden sound indicates the harmony that was once there is now broken, as well as seeing the dolls breaking which gives a sense of foreboding, as though the childhood of those three girls is broken or that is what the three girl's bodies is about to become.

 

The girls walk towards the windows which give out a light which is actually much brighter than we would expect it to be, but this bright light that radiates through the glass represents the saying of "going towards the light" as it shows the three walking towards them. This can instantly tell us that the three are going to die.

 

 

The match on action shows the girls opening the windows, creating an atmosphere for the rest of the movie and almost wanting people to hope more that nothing happens to them despite the events that are slowly progressing and are bound to happen. After the three jump out of the window though, a piece of dialogue is heard from the mother - assumed, who is screaming; "My babies!"

This dialogue shows how everyone would see them, everyone would see the children as nothing more than babies and that they had only just took their first few steps into the world. This piece of dialogue is representative of their age.

 

The scene then quickly cuts to fog everywhere, creating a sense of the unknown as well as confusion as we don't know for sure what exactly had caused the three girls to do what they did. This fog also blinds the sight of the audience so they don't know what's in front of them, almost indicating that people won' know what they're walking into, the audience in particular.