Wednesday, 16 March 2011

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.

Monday, 14 March 2011

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.

Monday, 7 March 2011

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"