Audience feedback

When we told our class mates our idea's for the opening of our thriller, the first idea which was our romance/ psychological thriller got quite a lot of bad feed back class mates told us it will be hard to film especially due to the fact it was in set in a prison they also explained props would cost a bit of money although they did say it was a good idea but they did think it was a bit to much which our group completely agreed with.  

We then explained to the class our second idea which was the crime thriller. They gave us a lot of positive feedback and explained it was a really good idea, one of the class mates asked what time we would shoot it which made our group think as we would want to do it at night but we wouldn't have the right lighting for that so we decided to film it mid day, the class also told us it was their favorite out of the three ideas of our opening to a thriller which made us choose this one to stick with and actually shoot. 

When we explained our last idea to them they told us we would probably need more people to do so and they said that its a very common piece of footage they also went on to say how we are going to make a set look like a jerwlery store? which made us think that this opening to a thriller would be rather difficult to film.

First production meeting and initial ideas

In this post I will be talking about our thriller opening idea's and how our group three has developed those idea's.

First idea - romance/ psychological thriller

 we decided for our first idea to do something around police force or FBI, we decided to have this set in a prison our idea was to have the villain as a women police officer and the hero was a man prisoner these two had a connection in the past and then he forced her to have a abortion which coursed her to not be able to have children again so she is eager to get revenge so puts him up for a crime he didn't commit, the villain wants to see the hero suffer so she set him up in death row in prison however when its to late to change this she realizes she don't want him going down for death row and that she still loves him so she  try's to stop it  but don't succeed. Later he dies and she realizes he has a necklace with half a heart on it around his neck as she pulls out the missing piece from her pocket to show the audience that they both cared about each other.

This is set in a prison in America as American prisons have death row the lighting would be really dim and we decided the costumes would be he orange sits prisoners wear the props we discussed would be knifes and fake blood we also decided to make it diegetic sound to make it more realistic instead of comical.

why we thought this was a good idea because everyone would possibly have a interest in it as it contains a interest for both genders and for people who enjoy different types of thrillers although, we also thought this would be very hard to set but we did think we could use our schools Dinner hall and make it look like a prison were they also eat however, we did find this would take a lot of time and the props we would need in this opening of a thriller would cost to much as we would also need costumes, we also decided also that this was to much to be putting in the opening of a thriller, although we still do think this is a really good idea and would like to be able to do it also we are not sure what the mc guffin in this would be yet. 

Second idea -  crime thriller  

For our second idea we decided to have two girls walking through a field set in East London and there is somebody following one of the girls although the girl that is with her cant see the person that is following the other girl and thinks she is going crazy however the girl being followed ends up running away with the other girl running to confused, in the end the two girls loose each other, when the other girl who was not being followed returns home to see her friend dead in her room with the killer holding a knife which ends up with her dying too. 

This was to be set in a nature park and we wasn't to sure on sound, we imagined that we would have non- diagetic sound of crickets and nature sounds in the beginning as its set in a nature park  also by adding the sound of a lake as a bit of footage was planned to be shot next to a lake in this nature park however we was going to change the pace and make it faster when the girls are being chased and we decided to make this bit diagetic to make it more realistic with the audience causing a lot of tension and to make the audience anxious, when changing the set into a bedroom we are going to use one of our groups bedrooms and we would be using props as fake knifes and fake blood to make the scene more realistic we was also going to change the sound to have scary dark music playing to make the audience think what is happening next. 

We liked this idea the most and this was the only idea our whole group agreed on as we already know were we can set this and props would be easy to get hold of not spending loads of money, what our group liked about this idea of a opening of a thriller is the fact that the mc guffin was us the opening scene would be so up tense and eye catching and this will make the audience think that these two girls are important in the film when in reality they are not important at all as they die in the opening scene the rest of the story would be based on other girls being killed and the main focus would be on the killer (villain ), also out of the three idea's we chose this was the one that we made a title for as we would film it in a nature park called 'The chase' and the fact the girls are being chased we thought it would be creative to call this The chase. 

Last idea - action thriller

Our final idea was to be an action thriller we wanted to do something different but it was hard to think of something that didn't involve robbing a bank  but we decided to do it robbing a jewellery store for his wife but then its too late because the guy who the husband let down brakes into their house and kills the wife so this makes the jewellery store the mcguffin.  

props needed in this would need to be a knife, a bit of jewellery and we would need a set in a home for it to look realistic and diegetic sound so its even more realistic. 

Mise -en- scene in Psycho

In this post I'm going to be writing about Mise-en-scene in the film Psycho made in the year 1960.



To begging with, a extreme close up is shown of the stolen money as dramatic fast pace music starts playing the non- diegetic sound makes the audience know that the money is not legit and the extreme close up makes the audience believe that the money is the  main focus point of the story, by using non-diegetic sound instead of diegect makes it more dramatic as, if they didn't use non-diagetic  sound then the money wouldn't have shown as much attention to the audience as Hitchcock would of wanted it to . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LcSwRtLx-Y

When Marion takes of to make a run for it we see her in her car when a voice over is shown of other peoples voices this is really clever as it makes the audience think is this scenarios made up in her head or is that what is actually happening  this also shows Marions fear and panic as we also can see in this medium shot her facial expressions and this builds up tension and makes the audience not want her to be caught although we know that she has done something bad and that she should be caught we also feel sympathy towards her and feel anxious because we don't want her being caught this is because we have seen this crime from her perspective and we know that although she has done something bad she is a good person. There is also lots of back lighting that creates silhouettes which gets the audience curious as to what is going to happen next.

When Marion first comes into the hotel Norman Bates the hotel man seems quite jumpy and then there is a close up of the hotel keys behind the desk seeing how Norman changed he's mind about what key he gave Marion made the audience suspicious although the focus comes of him very quickly as she goes near her bags and the dramatic music begins to play as the stolen money is in there, Hitchcock done this to make the audience not suspect Norman Bates too quickly into the film so he changed the focus back on the money and then the audience just went back to feeling sympathy towards norman bates as he was seen as just lonely.


When Norman Bates was in the hotel room with Marion the audience began to get suspicious due to the props in the back ground the props were stuffed birds the birds stuffed were birds of prey i think Hitchcock done this to get the audience suspicious although he also done this to represent marion as the prey and Norman as the bird. This got the audience attention on Norman rather then the cash which was the mc guffin of the movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9mJ2oBONug

Mise en Scene exercise

In this blog I am going to be talking about mise en scene and the exercise I did with fellow class mates showing mise en scene. Mise en scene is all the conventions needed to make a good film or a video clip.



To begin with setting when filming something you need to think about your back ground for example if you are filming a jail scene and you shoot it in your house then it is not going to look like a believable back ground as everyone watching will know that this is not a jail. The settings in your film or video clips also needs to show what area it is based in for example if it is based in Texas or the south west of america it is going to give the audience more of an understanding of the stereo typical things around this area so they will automatically feel anxious due to this being a rather dangerous place. Going back to the jail setting for example if its a jail in America the audience are going to feel more tension and fear for the characters inside the jail compare to an England prison due to the fact its shown to be a lot more dangerous even though prison is a bad place overall.


Secondly lighting, lighting can represent the emotions that a character is feeling and gives of a much better effect in a film or video clip when you relate the lighting to the mood in the sequence. The lighting is done by the three point lighting this is key, fill and back light this gives of a deep depth of lighting which makes scenes shot at night time look more realistic however its not to deep to give it a proper dramatic shot. Then we have high key lighting, high key lighting is used by fill lighting this makes the scene appear bright and soft showing very few frame shadows. High lighting is normal used when filming comedies or musicals. Finally what i am going to talk about is low key lighting this is the complete opposite to high key lighting and gives of the complete opposite effect, this is when the filler light is at a very low level making the frame give of large shadows. Low key lighting is normal used to create tension and sometimes fear to the audience this is normally used in  thrillers, horrors and hood movies.


Props and costume is another Mise en scene convention this is all props and costumes needed to give the best effect to the audience, for example if your film was based in a school then the props needed would be to make your set look like a class room etc so you may have lockers, white boards, tables and chairs pens etc as props to show that you are in a school scene also costumes would come across depending on what country this is based on so if this is being shot in a school in England for costume the school characters will be wearing school uniform and be wearing back packs to show they are students also, the hair and make up they may use depending on what type of person the character is so a typical school girl may have her hair in bunches with no make up on. Props and costume mean a lot when it comes to filming as for this example when shooting school scenes the actors will acting as a teenager but its most likely that there really in their 20's so by using uniform as putting little make up on these characters makes them look a lot younger and this makes them being teenagers in the films way more believable. If we didn't have props and costumes it can be a lot more harder to guess who characters are suppose to be and without props the audience will not believe the film and will loose interest eventually.









This is the exercise we done for Mise En Scene. We used over the shoulder shots for the first time we  showed facial expressions and some body language to show how we was feeling and done a few medium shots. This helped us to see and try out Mise en scene and camera shots too get an idea on what shots and mise en scene will be best for when we make our thriller. This also helped on deciding what props and shots we would need in our thriller to make it more realistic and look more effective.

Sound Excercise

We was set to create a piece of footage showing how we can use different sound techniques in this task we used: 

• Off screen 
• On screen 
• A sound bridge 
• parallel 
• Diegetic 
• Non - diegetic 
• contrapuntal 

Bellow is the clip of what we did and we tried to do as much sound techniques as possible. 

Sound Evaluation

In this blog i am going to be discussing what we did in our sound exercise, for this task we needed to use different sound techniques to help us gain knowledge and a better understanding on sound with filming. We managed to use most sound techniques which was:

• Non - diegetic 
• Diegetic 
• Parallel 
• Contrapuntal 
• Sound bridge 
• On - screen 
• Off-screen 

To start with we used diegetic sound to use this technique we used dialogue and natural sound which was the sound of the door opening and also Sarah being pushed off her chair. The dialogue was calm and had a neutral tone of voice, this sound is effective as a sequence comes across rather boring to an audience without dialogue and natural sound due to it not being realistic and there would be no content. 

Secondly we then had non diegetic music the music used was happy and upbeat as the diegetic sound carried on with the girls having a conversation were the music helped reflex their moods to the audience as they was happy to see each other so therefore their moods were happy which makes the music parallel due to the mood and music fitting together. This is very effective as it helps the audience see how the characters are feeling and this helps express this.

We then changed the mood in the two girls and you can see the tension were Sarah started acting sassy were the music continued being upbeat however the mood between both girls was different, this made the music contrapuntal which was very effective in this scene as it made it more comical rather than serious which would have been a change in the music to reflex on this new mood which wouldn't be contrapuntal. 

We also used on-screen sound as there was dialogue, falling sounds and chair squeaks whilst the action was happening  .On-screen sound is important so that an audience can see the source of the sound as if you cant see the source of sound then this can be confusing in the sequence unless they use dialogue to explain what the sound is and where its coming from, so when Sarah was pushed of her chair this was important to see as if this sound was off screen we wouldn't know what was happening so this is effective when getting the audience to understand what is going on fully between Shelby and Sarah.

We also used off screen sound when Shelby walked through the door you heard her come through but you didn't see this happening but you heard it however when you heard her coming through you could see Sarah on camera as seeing Shelby at this point was a bit irrelevant. Off screen sound is used so that the universe of the film is expanded in which has the effect on the audience to make them feel what their watching seems and feels more realistic and this is the reason to why we used off screen to make it look more realistic . 

Finally we needed to use a sound bridge however we did not use a sound bridge due to only having one setting and one scene in our exercise so there wasn't another scene to be able to use a sound bridge to link the two scenes together. A sound bridge is used to maintain continuity between two scenes so that the sequence overall runs smoothly but due to us not having two scenes we couldn't show this in our exercise however we discussed if we was to have used one it would have been the music running over.

Lighting

In this post i am going to be talking about different lighting sources.

A standard lighting set up has three lights, a back light, a fill light and a back light. These lights are used to create different effects by using them differently to create more and less shadows. A camera and these lights all pointed at the subject is known as the 3 point lighting technique.

To start with the key light this is the brightest light out of the three this is usually the most important light in a scene composer for a lighting set up due to the fact it can create big shadows behind the subject.

A back light this helps to cancel out the effect which the key light gives of and creates a outline or silhouette which blocks the subjects face. The back light is normally put behind the subject .

The filler light helps reduce and soften harsh shadows that the key and back lights create. 

 Under lighting is when the light is placed below the subject this is used in thriller and horror movies to give of a scary effect and leaves the audience feeling anxious due to it leaving the subject looking ominous. 

Top lighting is where the lights come from above the subject pointing down onto the subject this gives the effect of highlighting features of the subject and creates a glamorous look this is normally used on model shoots. 

Low key lighting is were only the key and back lights are being used this will create a sharp contrast of light and dark areas on the screen as very distinct shadows are formed.

Finally high key lighting this is were more filler lights are being used to make the lighting look more realistic. 

This is our class demonstrating what different lighting creates and makes you look like. 

Speed style of editing

Editing is putting all your footage together until your pleased with it using different type of effects on your footage to make it interesting and more affective.

There are two keys of editing the first being speed editing this is when you plan how long each shot lasts. The next is style of editing this shows how each shot is connected to each other you need to use these to make a successful and affective bit of footage.

Speed editing
Each film scene must last a matter of seconds however it could last minutes the length of each sequence establishes the pace of the film, the speed will also show the mood of what is taking place on the screen, for example if the speed is quick and the scenes and shots also change quick this shows the mood reflecting will be anxiety for example many action shots are shown like this, although if the mood is relaxed then the shots will last longer and change less this is usually used in romantic comedy's. The shots normally last seconds due to if they last for a long time the audience will start to loose interest in what they are watching although if they are seconds it makes what an audience is watching more fast and dramatic making it more eye catching and keeps their focus. If we didn't use speed editing then majority of an audience will loose focus and the footage wouldn't be as successful this also helps build tension as it can also help switch from scene to scene for example in a soap there are loads of different story lines going on in one episode so they use these cuts to help stay focused in all of the story lines.

trailers

Trailers are a known piece of footage that use a lot of editing due to the fact they try to edit it to the fact they don't give too much away however enough to give an audience a rough idea of whats going on and the basic story line and enough time to introduce the main characters and some of the most affective footage this is due to the fact a trailer is advertisement and you need enough to want someone to go and watch this full footage trailers make sure that main characters are seen in this due to the fact if they are successful well known actors this makes people automatically want to watch the full footage because they love other films that these actors are in.

Diversion is a good example  for a trailer as there is many cuts and the pace changes the cuts are not longer then 2 seconds in each cut to keep the audiences attention and make it much more dramatic this makes you want to see the movie when it comes out. Being fast pace grabs your attention as it makes the film seem more exciting and makes you feel curious and excited to see it. Due to trailers being for a short amount of time and and straight to the point they normally have your full attention which is really good advertisement as its really affective.

camera shots

Camera shots are linked together to other camera shots which creates movement this is called a transaction one shot moves instantaneously to the next without attracting the audiences attention, a straight cut helps retain reality with the audience, a wipe shot is were one image is pushed of a screen by another and a jump cut this is used to capture the audiences attention it is a sudden cut.

Below is examples of camera shots. 

Jump cuts this is when the audiences attention is brought into focus on something very suddenly this helps fasten the pace of something happening to prevent wasting time and loosing the audiences attention.

Below is an example of a jump cut

montage theory
Lev Kuleshow was among the very first to theroize about the relatively young medium of cinema in Lazo he said editing a film is like constructing a building this was called the Kuleshow Experiment .

Analyzing Opening Of Thrillers

Looking at three different openings of thrillers we can see that some very different approaches are used to create a certain atmosphere to the audience. In this post I'm going to concentrate on how mise - en - scene and sound have this effect on the audience.

The first opening to a thriller used was No Country For Old Men at the start of this clip we see a slide show of places in south America that were taken during the night, these were places that horrible things happened in the middle of nowhere, they use a non - diegetic voice over of a man in a south American accent this is to give the audience a sense of curiosity and lets them know were this story is set this has an effect on the audience to make them know this is dodgy as south America is a dangerous place in the media, however then the scene changes very quickly as it just cuts to a straight shot unexpectedly then the opening of the scene begging's with it starting in the day time this also shows the audience that the story is about to begin. As soon as the next scene begins we see that its set in a prison the fact that its set in a prison attracts the audience to the fact prisons are full of danger however, then the fight scene starts and the diegetic shows struggle in the mans sounds he is making, they done this instead of adding non - diegetic music to make the scene more realistic and serious this made the audience suspense, hopeless and worried and also feel sympathy towards the good guy which gathered the audience to build up tension as a brilliant effect , if they added music to the action scene the audience would no have taken it seriously and seen it more as a comedy this shows the purpose of why the producers of 'No Country Old Men' did not add any non - diegetic sound within the fight scene. The close up of the villains face makes the audience feel fear for the good guy also, an extreme close up of the oxygen tank gives a confused and anxious effect on the audience as they don't know what to expect from this prop. In the final scene a tracking shot follows the bad and good guy this gives of  tension on the audience and finally the kill happens which is so unexpected and fast it shocks the audience.

The second opening to a Thriller is Brick the opening to the scene begins with western music with extreme close ups of feet and hands of a body although they also are using cuts from a boy to a girl with these close ups which makes the audience curious to what has happened and makes them think how are these two people connected its a brilliant opening scene as it attracts the audience and makes them want to carry on watching and find out the story. The fact that there is  a non- diegetic bit of western music in this short scene also immediately informs  the audience that something bad has happened as western music is never happy and represents danger most of the time.



Finally the last opening of a thriller that a am looking at is Zodiac at the start of this opening there is non- diegetic romantic music whilst showing a pan shot of the city all lit up in California, as the actual scene begins we see that is set in the night which automatically gives a anxious effect on the audience, then there is a tracking shot with a conversation of a boy talking to a girl from the outside of her car at this moment in time the audience don't think much of it as they drive along there are fireworks going of as the girl in the car informs the audience its the 4th of July, when the scene changes and is set in a dark empty car park the women starts to show power over the boy this makes the audience not trust her as she becomes very touchy over the boy as stating she is a married women, This makes the audience curious as we don't know the relationship between these two people as the lady begins to act like she knows something and starts to panic the audience can kind of predict what is going to happen and they loose interest as the rocky music begins and they are both shot this makes the audience confused as to why they killed them and makes them think it had something to do with the lady and she set them up.