Final Thriller opening

Identity - Mary Pegasiou

Identity is a film directed by James Mangold. He uses different ways of creating suspense and a sense of mystery; these are the ideal ingredients for a thriller. Firstly the location is set in a rundown motel in Nevada, where there is no sign of civilisation for miles. The beginning of the film sets up that there is a heavy rain storm and the characters cannot go to their original destinations; therefore are trapped at this motel for the evening. The director has cleverly set this up to show us there is no escape and they are isolated which adds to the suspense, a perfect beginning for a thriller. The film progresses and slowly each character is killed off in different unexplained ways. What makes it even more confusing is that after every death the body vanishes from the scene and there is no sign of a murder. One murder which stood out to me was when the pretentious character is walking out in the rain trying to get signal on her phone. We don’t witness her getting murdered but the director builds up the tension with eerie music and camera angles from behind gates and bushes which are handheld to create the affect that someone is watching her. The director uses techniques like this throughout to gradually build up to the unveiling of what really is going on. Later in the film we discover that this motel is nothing but a figment of a mental patients imagination. This massive twist adds to the genre ‘thriller’ due to the fact it was so unexpected. All and all Identity is a great example of a thriller; the director uses every technique possible (sound, camera angles, mise en scene, etc) to ensure we as the audience are on edge constantly. This could however be confused as a horror due to the vast amounts of gore but I personally would class it as a thriller as I did not find it scary. I found it enticing and jumpy which I think is exactly what a film needs to be a thriller. I definitely recommend this to film lovers.

Roughcut feedback

We received some feedback on our roughcut to add sound to different perspectives to make it easier to follow. als to edit one of the scenes in two to give more time between the two people in the scene.

How else might you advertise your film (apart from in a cinema)

we would advertise our film by utilising adverts in magazines, posters in bus shelters, tv and radio.

Roughcut

how we are going to use our feedback

We are going to take into consideration these constructive criticisms given by our classmates. We will give more indications on the development of our thriller from the planning stages to the thriller opening scene. Previously we were unaware of the issue and having this brought to our attention will help us to improve our blog.
Furthermore we will add more technical language and overall detail (photo's, captions to compliment other media) to make the blog more informative and user friendly.
We have also decided to use a background image for our blog to make it more appealing to read and more appropriate to the thriller theme.
We will add a foreign thriller analysis to make the blog complete.

Blog Assessment

Variety of Relevant Blog Posts
Relevant posts
- need to add some more analysis of foreign thriler openings
- Could add a few more posts

Appropriate Visual Aids
- Good use of video clips/pictures when needed
- More writing/captions to go with the photos
- Good use of video clip to give us an idea of how they are going to put together their thriller. Good use of - picture to show planning
- Good visuals

Appropriate use of technical vocabulary
- Yes
- Kind of Mentions protagonist/antagonist.

Quality of posts: content explanations and clarity
- More detail needed
- Have detailed analysis of ideas and reasons for using it
- Very detailed and clear
- Good detail but could use more technical language in explanations

Development
- does go through stages of what they have done but could give more info on their process of their thriller opening
- Needed to be more
- "Need more"

Analysis of Hidden/Cache

This film was created by a French Director.
The film has a slow start which helps to build tension.
The setting is an ordinary situation which then bares witness to an extraordinary circumstance.
The antagonist has power over people by watching. This is a convention which is common to thrillers which make use of stalkers.
The antagonist also leads the protagonist into a situation they have no control over. This use of a loss of control is very key to the building of a thriller since it makes the viewer feel uneasy.
The film has a slow start which can seem boring but it also makes you wonder what you're looking out for as the audience begins to realise that something isn't right and they expect something to suddenly happen. This creates and air of confusion.

Target Audience Expectations

Our target audience will be ages 15 and above, because thrillers tend to have much darker plots than a 12 or PG classification. There will likely be strong language which is not appropriate for people younger than 15.
It will be aimed at people who enjoy thrillers as it will not innovate in such a way that it will incorporate other genre or subgenre's to the film.

It doesn't contain enough Gore or jump out scares to be considered a horror and not enough on screen for it to be an 18. A lot of the scary aspects are from purely atmospheric and tension building techniques.

Classification of Films

U - Suitable for All

PG - Parental Guidance

12 - Suitable for 12 years and older
12A - Under 12 with parental guidance

15 - Suitable for 15 years and older

18 - Suitable for Adults only

R18 - Only available for Adults

Test Thriller Sound

Potential Thriller titles

Our thriller is about people disappearing so these are our idea's for names.

Presence - We thought of this name because it contains supernatural undertones, and hints to the idea that someone else is there.

Lost - We liked this idea but because people were going missing due another being, lost implies that it was their own fault. Also there is a TV Show called Lost

Missing - We like this one because it's so neutral in the idea of whether it's someone else's fault or whether it is to do with the people themselves.

Fade - Fade was also in our top three favourites, we liked it as it suggested people missing in an unusual manner, not the ordinary way (murder, kidnapping etc..)

Thriller poster Analysis

The poster is effective as it uses a lot of themes from the film. The image itself is of a polaroid photo, which is a key theme in the film Memento. They are how the main character records memories. As the photo's go in it shows an image of the female Antagonist.

The poster also shows the audience some of the main actors in the film so that they can see faces who they may know from other similar films

The font used in the Poster is a handwritten style and so it makes it look more personal. The handwriting is also connected to the main film because the main character only trusts his own handwriting.

Our thriller poster

Our poster is laid out so that the left side is full of happier and cheerful images. Whilst on the right there are far more sinister and distressing faces.

Across the top we've used letters from magazines to make the title look more traditionally Thriller styled. There are gaps in the poster to suggest people going missing.

After we had finished the physical elements of the poster, we decided to edit it further using digital applications such as Photoshop. Using this we edited the Hue to make it look red, with the red tint the differences between the magazines we got the images from is less glaring, and it adds a sinister tone to the entire image.

Practice Thriller

Feedback

- To create a title that doesn't transcend on horror

- Has to start the first scene off as very subtle, maybe one or two people missing. This should not be too glaring, and try to cause the audience to question themselves. 

Edited images

Photos

Script

First Location:
Forest - Multiple people walking, when obscured from camera view people disapear

Second Location:
Chalk Pits - 2/3 people walking, when obscured from camera view, 1/2 people disappear

Third Location:
Guided Bus - Last person walking, camera cuts - person disappears

Transition
A person walking past, completely obscuring camera view

Storyboards + Shotlist

Planning idea's

Location: Chalk pits, Fulborn Forest, Urban - Cambridge, Guided Busway, Wicken Fen
Situation: Running from something, Night time, An average situation - walking which then transitions into        something mysterious
Music: Dark, Sinister, Violins, Childs Music - out of place,

Company Logo

Sick isn't it?

The idea for using the word pulse came from a website which we used to look at different font samples.
We chose this because it has a thriller theme to it, the audience can relate to the company logo as their PULSE will raise during our spectacular movies.
The heart rate monitor in the background reinforces the name of the company and fits with the thriller theme. It has dark connotations without displaying gore, this is one of many conventions of thriller films.



We have edited the logo slightly, bringing the word Pulse more in line with the heart rate monitor, and removed the line at the end.

Dreamworks Logo Analysis

The Dreamworks logo is of a child on the moon with a fishing rod. This gives the viewer the idea that they will be a fiction and child friendly company. This logo represents a metaphor for a boy fishing for dreams, hence the name Dreamworks. The logo uses only blue and purples which are globally considered dreamlike colours which adds to the idea that the film will be childriendly/not scary.

Identity - analysis

Genre elements / conventions
Identity features a number of conventions and elements you'd find in regular thrillers, because all of the characters are trapped together it raises questions as to what will happen next.
There is a prisoner trapped with the others which include a prostitute, a police officer, a family, a limo driver and actress. This diversity in social groups leads the audience to be constantly on the edge of their seat wanting to know whats going to happen between them next. It also leads to the audience being able to find at least one character they can relate to.

Sub-genre elements
The film includes elements of horror from the beginning. When the film starts it shows an average family which the audience is meant to find unthreatening and relatable. This makes the second scene where the wife is knocked down by a car, which shows the wife seriously injured with a lot of gore on screen.

Certification and Why
The certificate is a 15, mainly because there is some strong language, moderate references to nudity and some strong violence. Because none of this is frequent and the sex and nudity is just reference, that is why it is not any higher than a 15. The producers may of intended to do this, to target a wider range of audience, making more money from sales.

Target Audience
The target audience would be mainly people who enjoyed thrillers and horrors in general, however people who enjoy thrillers would have to be able to accept the horror elements, which is not stereotypical for thrillers. The age audience would be 15-18 years. Some people may watch this film because of some of the well known actors.

Box Office
Budget: $30,000,000 (estimated)
Opening weekend: $16,225,263 (USA) (27 April 2003) (2733 screens)
Gross: $51475962 (USA) (15 June 2003)

Critical Reception
Guardian 2/5
BBC 2/5
Chicago Sun 3/5

Conviction - Student Thriller

The genre elements found in the student thriller - Conviction includes using the most stereotypical things, for example a person frantically running from something, or someone. Suspense was built up using a mixture of camera angles, music and narrative.
The use of camera angles, for example close ups of the persons face, builds suspense as it hides out a lot, and you aren't sure what is behind the person, so you use your imagination.  This is better than showing something or someone chasing that person, as leaving it as a unanswered question makes the audience want to see the whole film to answer that question.
The sound in the film is used to display a narrative which is a bit overwhelming at the beginning of the film. but by the end it's used to build suspense when he's washing what the audience assume is blood off of his hands.
The mise en scene in this opening sequence is when the main character is washing away the blood into the sink, which implies there has been some form of assault or murder that he is trying to disguise.

Suspect - Student Thriller

The genre elements include suspense, panic, violence and murder.
The use camera angles to leave a lot to the imagination of the viewer which works better than anything they could have shown on screen. As this allows the viewer to fill in the blanks with mysterious information.
The music is questionable to the genre trying to be portrayed as it doesn't fit with the otherwise mysterious atmosphere.
The editing includes darkening the images, and using transitions between colour and black and white.
Mise En Scene: The opening sequence uses rope to tie the hands of the victim, this is used to make the victim appear as vulnerable. This is used in many thrillers because of it's effectiveness at portraying the victim as helpless.

Memento Review - Max Smith

Christopher Nolan is a British-American Director made famous by his work on thrillers. His Style focusses heavily on the protagonist trying to understand the plot which is comforting because the audiance regularly doesn't know either.

His Filmography currently consists of:

 a film about a young man refered to only as 'The Young Man'.

Insomnia, a film based upon the novel idea that shooting and killing your partner might not be the best way to go about getting a good nights sleep.

Both Batman films, which portray Batman as being  broody and angsty. It feels as if Batman  only wants to finish fighting so he can go back to listening to My Chemical Romance and writing sad poetry.

Finally, his most recent film; Inception. A film trying so desperately to be the Matrix that you could swap the two discs over half way through and the only way you'd notice was that the action scenes had suddenly become good and the main protagonists had become slightly easier to relate to than a block of cheese.

So, we come to Memento. It's a thriller about a man with amnesia, except it's not amnesia as Christopher Nolan is so desperate to tell the audience. Actually it's Anterograde amnesia. Funny that, I was under the impression that was a type of amnesia.

Now I understand the logic behind trying to make the viewer go through the same experience as Leonard, but that also involves not being able to connect with anyone in the story. You start the film up. BLAM, instantly you watch a guy get his head blown off with a pistol, except you don't know who he is and as far as I'm concerned have no reason to care about him either.

Because 90% of the film plays backwards (the exception being random bits of black and white footage of Leonard on the phone which makes no sense until the last 5 minutes) you miss out on almost every section where Leonard gets to know the characters until you are aware that they betray him. So in all the parts where you're expected to feel sorry for them getting beaten up, you'll probably find yourself routing for the side Mr Nolan desperately tries to express as the greater evil.

Now for a plot based entirely around the gimick of a 15 minute memory you'd expect them to at least make sure it all makes sense. Throughout the film we're constantly reminded that Leonards last memory is of his wife dying in front of him. If this is the case how does he remember he had a dispute with the police about the police file? This would have happend after he could no longer make new memories. This is even pointed out to the audience at one point when he's explaining to Natalie that the police didn't trust him because of his condition.

Also, what the hell kind of insurance company did he work for? if he really does lose all of his memory following the accident every 15 minutes and when he wakes up, surely he should revert back to how he was before the accident, i.e. an insurrrance investigator. Yet he follows this up by picking locks using his credit card to break into Dodd's room and tattooing himself using a pen and ink. Perhaps insurance companies in America have it a lot rougher than I gave them credit for.

The intro scene is Lenny killing Teddy. Now I could be wrong but I was under the impression that juxtaposition worked by having slow sections followed by fast exciting parts. They chose to do this backwards, instead we watch an action sequence where Lenny kills a man, followed by an absolutly riveting scene in which Lenny checks out of a hotel. Yeah, not sure that's achieving quite the same effect you were hoping for there Chris. So the film begins by exaggerating how slow the scenes are. Oh well, start as we mean to go on I suppose.

I suppose if nothing else it's a good way of displaying his memory problems, but it also shows the main protagonist killing people without knowing why. Unless your target audience includes, Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger and Mike Meyers this possibly isn't the best way to make you audience feel on the same wave length.

The first scene which i feel is key to the film is the point where Natalie meets Leonard in the diner. Partially because it's a fairly huge turning point in Leonards 'investigation' and partially because it's one of the only scenes where Leonard manages to display an emotion other than confused and blood thirsty. He genuinly seems to connect with the character Natalie, which would probably have been better if it was put before we watch him mercilessly kill his best friend. Also he seems to show genuine remorse for the loss of his wife, where every other point in the film he just gets angry. Overall I feel this was one of the better scenes, if only because it couldn't have been done equally well if it was acted out by The Hulk.

The second scene that  I feel is worth noting is one in which the audience is shown one of the minor plot twists; that Natalie is actually not on Leonards side and instead just manipulating him. I feel this is worth noting for two reasons, one good and one bad. The first reason is that it was one of the only parts I didn't see coming and therefore was pleasantly suprised when it happened. The second is that it doesn't make any bloody sense at all. First off why is she so angry? She enters the scene and instantly goes into some sort of endless rage. Perhaps we're not shown the scene before where she fails to get the beer taps to work, maybe she tripped over launching 200 year old wine across the pub, or perhaps a homeless person dressed as Scrooge McDuck followed her down the street whistling out of tune songs from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Eitherway it's never really explained why she's so angry in this particular scene and the film seems to hope you'll just pretend not to notice. I understand that she's angry that he killed her husband, but by this point she would have had hundreds of chances to hurt him if she particularly felt the need.

Then following her huge rant about how she's going to exploit his memory she walks off and sits in her car for maybe 30 seconds. Then she walks in JUST as he forgets what happend. Was she hiding a stop watch in that enormous chin of hers? Perhaps the writer just got bored around this scene and figured it didn't have to make sense so long as the plot finally went somewhere.

Now from what I've written so far you may get the impression that I didn't enjoy the movie. This isn't true, it's a unique way of telling a story and the story itself was original. The actors were fitting for their roles and Joe Pantoliano was enough to make the film worth watching. He's been great at displaying anger and frustration since the original bad boys film.

This said it is definately flawed. Whilst the story was original some parts didn't make sense. The writer should be aware of plot holes, especially when they relate to the gimick the entire film is based around.

In conclusion, I think it's a good film with a lot of flaws. I enjoyed watching it but I don't like what it represents. Amnesia is becoming what is essentially an all purpose plot fixing device which writers are using when they can't be bothered to put in the effort. I don't have the numbers, but i'm fairly certain that by now we're coming to the point where there have been more cases of amnesia in thrillers and movies than there have in real life.

Overall, a competant thriller but even people without amnesia will likely forget it.

Opening Sequence for Se7en - Kynan

Se7en is about a murderer who kills people for their sins.
 - Lust - Gluttony - Greed - Sloth - Wrath - Envy - Pride
One person is killed for each sin, according to what sin they have committed. The reason this film was so successful as a thriller, is because of how it builds tension. There are 7 people who the killer has already targeted, once a murder has been committed, the killer has to be even more careful, as now the police are trying to solve the murder, however as more kills happen, and the police find the link between the kills, it becomes a race to see if the killer can complete his mission, or if the police can save that extra citizen.

This opening credits shows how well this film can build up tension, it starts off fairly ordinary, with a book, however the writing over the top of the book to show the credits with the writing as a harsh white compared to the black backgrounds. It then proceeds with the same type of writing throughout the opening credits, only with increasingly more disturbing images in the background.
Soon is becomes obvious that it is the kill you are watching, with images flashing up of distorted bodies, or other images.
Special effects, like when he is writing, you see double vision, makes the killer seem psychotic, which is slightly disturbing as it means the killer would be that much harder to predict.
Sound is not loud, but because it is quiet, it emphasizes how brutal some of the images are.
The camera work used, always hides most of the killer, only giving away the smallest hint of who he is; showing only his fingers.
Props include things like books, pages of messy hand writing, which shows that he has done his research and is a calculated killer, other props include distorted images of bodies, or hands that look as if they have been tortured. Some images, for example a normal picture of the face, which the killer gets a permanent marker, and cross out his eyes, which then cuts to the same picture but the whole face is scribbled out, this might show someone who has been killed.

All four of these micro elements are used and blended effectively, to create an opening sequence which gets the viewer interested in what will happen in the film, while also promising a good thriller.

Preliminary task

This is our preliminary task, we chose not to include vocals because we felt it built tension following Kynan's assault.

This was purely to showcase the different camera angles and shots we can use to make our thriller better and prove we can use them in an appropriate environment.