Our project is to create an opening sequence to a thriller movie, in which Kiah Wauchope, Vanessa Silva and Zaiba Hakim blog frequently discussing various different aspects to their thriller throughout the project.
As audience research is very important we thought that we should post our prelim clip on Vanessa's facebook page and ask people to comment on what they liked and what could have been improved .
Tom , a friend of Vanessa's who does not study media at all commented giving a very descriptive breakdown on what he thought could have been improved and what he liked .
From this comment we've learnt that our title in Hangul(Korean Alphabet) with the English translation is something he likes and that we should defiantly keep that but work on it by making it longer . Also that maybe it would be more spooky to make objects like the see saw move just as Kiah is disappearing . Most importantly i learnt that my group needs to add more sound , We had a few technological problems which meant we lost out on time to edit and record sounds for our prelim. However we've learnt from out technological difficulties, and hope to inprove in the final project.
If we are going to make the thriller at all believeable we need to have a plot or information on the why , how , what and where . For example 'Why is she killing all these people?' ...what is her reason ?
We did a storyboard of possible reasons to a question that we might have to asnwer using images on our final thriller clip .
I think this question is very important , why is she haunting and then killing people , whats her reason ?
Here are a few reasons we came up with .........
This is a BIG possibilty , often when kids grow up with family related issues it effects them mentally and in some cases leave mental scars that could be triggered later on in life . For example if a their parents split up and it's a nasty divorse the burden might be to much on a young kid . If we were to pick this for our thriller we could have an image of two parents arguing .
One idea Vanessa had was that maybe our main character got bullied because of her hair colour or just how she styled her hair in general , maybe later on in life she tracks down all the people who bullyed her and cuts their hair before killing them . To show this we could include some shots of our main character finding gum in her hair and then images or kids pointing and laughing .
The last reason we came up with is abuse , our character could have been abused by someone at her school for example by the school janitor . She could then have a thing about killing different janitors in different schools or places .
While watching different openings of different thrillers we soon realised that the main structure we wanted to use is a discrete opening which involves highly edited shots of images that could be important and tell the audience something about the main character or what will happen in the film .
The weapon of choice ?
Maybe our girl main character has a fixation with hair and she snips a bit of before killing her victim , the point is showing images of the weapon can make the audience really start to think .
Why is she holding a pair of scissors ?
What's she going to do with it ?
The Symbolic object
The next obvious image that will most defianlty have to be included is the symbolic object , the reason being is that the audience is only going to see two minutes of the beginning of our thriller we need to put objects in that will indicate the plot/story line so that even though their won't be anymore of the film to watch they would still want to watch it anyway !
The location of the killing or where the majority of the film is set
There could be some images of just the location , or maybe with our character in the location . When the audience looks at out 2 minute thriller opening they'll be piecing all these images togethere just like a puzzle . So if they see an image of our main character with a pair of scissors outside a church that could lead the audience into thinking that she's going to do something horrible near or in the church . It keeps them alert .
In our group we were thinking about an object or something that could be used to be symbolic or to give our character the sense of "innocence" . Our first thoughts turned to costume even though it's quite cliche' we were thinking of dressing our charatcer in a "white" dress , the colour white is interpreted in films as showing innocence and purity but also there's something angelic about the colour white . As we want a girl as our main character , dressing her up in a white dress will convery all these interpretations meaning the audience will be shocked when the realise that she isn't angelic at all .
This is a picture from the film 'Ring' as you can see this is the sort or image our group will be trying to pull off , the contrast between the black long hair and shoes and the white outfit creates mystery . We were thinking of using Zaiba as our main character due to the fact that she has straight , long black hair and when teamed up with a white dress could add to our thriller and make it even more spooky and scary .
The next thing we looked at was a 'Jack in a box' the reason being is that symbolicly it could take our thriller to the next level . As you can see the jack in a box is a clown and for one reason or another a few people find clowns scary , this could be used in our favour . Also theres something about "winding" the little handle round and round till it POPS out , maybe our main character is being bullyed or has been mentally abused and when someone does push her buttons or "wind" her up thats when she offically bursts out and attacks .
Filming the prelim i felt went better than the filming that took place for the 'Collateral' remake , we used a different variety of shots and our location i felt was stronger as it went with the vibe we wanted to give off.
Things that i liked overall about the prelim :
1) The first few opening shots.
What i like about it mostly is that you can tell that this girl is outside and maybe in a park as you can see the sand box .
On the second shot you can defiantly tell that it's a park , the reason why i liked these few opening shots was because unlike the 'Collateral' remake it isn't blurry , it establishes the location and we used different shot types . (Wide shot - Mid shot and mid close up)
It was a necessary that we included a match cut , we agreed that when doing the match we wanted to show that the girl was a ghost . The match cut included her walking then disappearing and then re-appearing. However when editing began we soon realised that a man appeared in our background that wasn't meant to be there. We had to keep that clip as we didn't have any other that we could use to replace it with.
As you can see the third shot include the man which makes our video and match cut less believable . For our thriller we are determined to make sure no one of thing who isn't supposed to be there is in our clips.
Before we set out to do our prelim we were given a set of instructions that we had to follow :
"A character opens a door, walks into a room, sits down opposite another character and they share a few lines of dialogue."
With our prelim we have our character opening the park door, sitting on the swing opposite another character and they share a few lines of dialogue.
The dialogue we decided to use was -- " Hi my names Zaiba what's your name? "
We had the ghost girl character not respond to add the spooky effect. In which Zaiba responds with "hey you know it's rude ..." She doesn't finish the sentence because she then realises that the girl ghost has disappeared.
All in all i think my group did achieve the targets set out and improved a great deal since our 'Collateral' remake.
Overall the process of filming the prelim wasn't too bad we were sure to film different camera angles so that the audience would be able to see exactly what the characters were seeing, although we did do many different angles we found that in the end we didn't need all of them and many were edited out. During the editing process, I was away for a couple of days so my group had to fill in on my behalf, but after looking back on the final prelim there would be a couple of changes that I would have made. Firstly, the 19 productions sign goes too quickly I personally think it would be better if it was a couple of seconds longer then faded out into our actual clip, that way the audience are prepared for our clip. Secondly, I would have used a low mysterious sound bed which would play throughout the clip to heighten the anticipation for what is about to come. I would have also changed the way the ghostly figure suddenly disappears as it isn't exactly clear as to what just happened. Despite this, I think the prelim does do what the task wants which was to show that "A character opens a door, walks into a room, sits down opposite another character and they share a few lines of dialogue", this did indeed happen. Also, I like that it has a eerie sense about it as it sort of gives us practise for our thriller which is to be horror themed.
We've created an opening using Live Type to introduce our production company which we have decided to call 'Nineteen Productions'. The reason behind the name choice was that nineteen could represent anything, 19 deaths, 19 people, 19 murders... etc. We've also put 'nineteen productions' into Korean characters or Hangul (한글) This has been done to add a more oriental feel too our project, as we would like our final to use hangul titles.
Many screenwriters tend to be writing scripts about young innocent girls being the main cause of problem in horror/thriller movies. After exploring many movies that use this idea, I thought using a girl in our group thriller would be a great idea to use, here are a few examples that use little girls as the rivals in their movies:
The movie Ju-on: The Grudge deals with a mysterious and vengeful spirit that marks and pursues anybody who dares enter the house in which it resides. As you can see, the images above represent a girl who is obviously the dangerous spirit in the movie. The girl above is shown to have bright green eyes, straight dark black hair that covers her face, a pale white face and is wearing a white dress. The pale white face and the white dress may represent that she is a spirit, however white also connotes purity and innocence in which she is clearly not.
As innocent as Esther may look, she certainly knows how to manipulate people. In the movie Orphan, a husband and wife adopt a 9 year old girl, who isn't as angelic as she appears to be. What I liked about Esther's role, is that she acts and dresses like any other ordinary child but really isn't. If the audience didn't know that this movie is a psychological thriller then I doubt that no one would suspect Esther's real motives and that she is in fact a devilish little girl.
The children is a movie about a family who are on their Christmas vacation which turns into a disaster as their children are infected by a deadly virus, once they are infected they begin turning on their parents and violently try to kill them all. After watching this movie, little Leah is the child that scares me the most; unlike the rest of the demented children Leah actually uses her child attributes to her advantage by crying out "Where's Mommy" in a sorrowful voice when she is about to be killed.
As we have been studying thriller/horror movies during media, I decided it would be a great idea to start watching various movies of the same genre. After studying the movies I have watched I wrote down a list of stereotypes and clichés that come up, in which I have found:
1. The killer is always killed by the hero- but sometimes the hero never checks to see if the killer is really dead bringing them back to life!
2. Despite all the evidence characters provide of a serial killer, the police will never believe you!
3. You should never turn your back, because the killer could always be right behind you!
4. The car will never work or may take along time to work if you want to escape
5. While running away from the killer someone will always fall down
6. Dark and rainy sceneries are never good, providing a eerie atmosphere for the killer to kill you
7. Dangerous weapons are always being left around
8. The mean slutty girl is usually killed first and in the worst way possible
9. Cats tend to regularly jump out and startle people
10. Characters will always walk bravely into basements or lofts but then act surprised when they are attacked
What drew me into picking this film was that it kept me hooked and intrested all the way through . The name of the two minute film is called 'Paper trail' the name itself was what made me pick it in the first place and untill now i haven't yet discovered the importance of a name . This name in particular to me is very mysterious it made me think : why is there a paper trail ? who is leaving a paper trail and why ? .
The sound is what filled my senses first , it was a scary almost alluring sound because i knew it would lead onto something important . The first image was of a box , i noticed that they showed all angles of the box which proved to the audience that it was indeed something important something to look out for. Overall what i really liked about this previous media students thriller is the various camera angles they used as well as the sounds that went with it, i also liked the pace of the film opening and thought it suited the name and the plot well.
Now that we are well into the academic year, and in the middle of our prelim we've realised that we should back up our work to our had drives. Since we all have nearly 40 posts each now. This was due to one of our blogs being lost on blogger.
The Ring(2002) is the American remake of the Japanese film Ringu(1998). The two differ but there is a lot of intertextuality between the two films, especially the two scenes shown in the video below.
Sadako in The Ring, resembles an old woman. Her face is wrinkled, and a discoloured indigo, she also has long black hair. She is fast to get up from the ground, and the camera focuses on her wrinkled skin and feet. We can already see her face, and when she moves she also 'flashes' as in she can do some sort of transportation. She is based on western folklore of ghosts being able to disappear and then reappear again, there is also the idea that she must be see to be scary.
Whereas in Ringu Sadako's movements are slow, she spends most of her time crawling on the floor. The camera focuses on her long unconditioned hair which covers her face and upper body. It also seems that her fingernails have been pulled off, which also adds fear to the film. Her skin is a pale white colour with a slight indigo tint. She gets up considerable slowly compared to her American remake. Her there is more fear in the unknown, as we can not see her face. When we do see Sadako's face, it is shocking as she has a droopy eye. This is based on the Japanese folklore tale Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan.
Also in the American remake, we can hear the sound of water, which although it made sense since Sadako has just come out of a well, it make the film even more unrealistic to me. I think that the more silenced version, Ringu gave emphasis on small sounds. In my opinion, Ringu was much scarier than The Ring. Although I live in the western world, I found the Japanese horror to be more fearful that the American. I think that in our thriller film, we will try to incorporate aspects of oriental horror/thriller. Taking inspiration from characters like Sadako.
In one of our previous posts we uploaded pictures of us doing some extra filming practise due to the fact that we felt we needed to work on it before the real filming commenced . During our editing we realised that the shots we took weren't as good as we expected them to be, we're hoping to develop our skills further within the next few weeks we have left.
We filmed and edited this video before we learnt how to add sound or titles therefore there aren't any , in this clip we practised different angles, we had : over the shoulder , panning , mid-shot , zooming in & out , tilting . We also used effects for our transitions i.e : fading . Even though the quality of the video wasen't up to parr we still used it because we wanted to show that we as a group are willing to try over and over till we eventually get it right.
This film to me embodies what our film is trying to achieve , it has a main character who is a girl seeking vengance , this youtube clip above is the first two minutes of the film . I like how the sound isn't that scary it's more playfull and almost from the victorian era . The colours used are red, white and black all indicating to the audience that this film will be a thriller . These colours connotatioins include ,: love , danger , blood , innocence and evil .
When you see an image of a girl with red eyeshadow crying at the beginning of a film you automatically think , why is she crying ? who did this to her ? what happened ? and is she going to do something about it ?
We notice the colour of her eye shadow we then link it up to the other images we see at the beginning such as a knife and then we put two and two togethere and that's what hooks us in .
As you can also see theres korean writing and then a english translation underneath , for our thriller we were thinking of doing the same thing yet formatted differently .
Overall though this film is what i'll be visiting again and again for maybe some intertextuality and inspiration.
We've come across an article on the guardian about ghosts, why women make the scariest ghosts. Below are cuts from the article which we thought were related to our research, and can help to influence having a female ghost in our thriller.
The writer mentions the Japanese films Ringu and Ju-on, and also shutter which is Thai. Who have female ghosts, in Ju-on and Ringu the ghost is an Onryu, this is a type of revengeful ghost. Both ghosts drag themselves across the floor, Sadako from Ringu has a droopy eye, and no finger nails. Which causes the viewer to view her. The character in Ju-On is intertextually related to Sadako. Their pale complexion and unconditioned hair which falls across their faces, also adds fear to the character. Viewers are scared of the unknown, and their faces happen to be unknown.
Here the writer goes on to talk about the stereotype of woman, and how it is portrayed in thriller films. A woman may be stereotyped as passive and obedient whilst a female ghost can be angry, vengeful and violent. 'The reason for the success an ubiquity of such female ghosts is a mixture of female desire, and fear of such empowerment.
The task given was to put randomly placed clips taken from a film called 'Arlington road' togethere in the right order and then after we were meant to go out ourselves and create our own sounds for the clip . We edited the clips on final cut pro , we found putting the clips togethere slightly challenging because there were no sound so we had to use the knowledge on how film openings start to finish the task. When we finally managed we went through the finished clip and wrote down things we might want to look out for like : a car door slamming , birds tweeting , traffic noise and footsteps . However after we finished finding the sounds needed we came back and realised that none of the sounds fit with the video , we decided to use a heart beat sound effect from soundtrack and we made it so the heart beat increased graduly to add an effect .
After this task i found that my understanding on editing and using final cut and sound track pro increased and i felt more confortable with the editing process. What i will work on for the actual 2 minute thriller is practising on creating noise that can acutally be used to inhance our thriller .
We've drawn our storyboards for the prelim and made an animate of them using Final Cut Pro. The storyboards are a rough idea of the shots we would like to use in our final version of the Prelim.
Today, we are starting our prelim. This is another sub-project where we will demonstrate all that we have learnt up to now, in filming, recording and editing both visual and audio.
Our brief is to: film the following sequence, make sure to use at least one match cut, and example of a shot/reverse shot and showing your understanding of the 180 degree rule (by not breaking it!)
"A character opens a door, walks into a room, sits down opposite another character and they share a few lines of dialogue"
Since our overall project has been on Oriental-horror we've decided we would like one of the main character to be a ghost, we would like to have been more specific and chosen a Japanese Ghost or Yurei such as an Onryo to relate this to our project. We would have liked to of used a specific costume but due to the lack of time and preparation we've tried our best to incorporate a ghost into our prelim.
Opening film structures are very essential when creating any kind of film , there are a wide selection to chose from depending on the type of mood you want to create . The four structures i'll be exploring today are discrete , narrative , credits over a black screen and stylised openings . What i noticed between the four opening structures are they are all very different , you can have very conplicated and really edited structures to very simple ones overall though all of them are used due to it's effectivness .
Se7en
Se7en is an example of a 'Discrete opening structure' , this type of structure is very heavily edited often including many images ,effects and black screens with titles. What makes it 'special' is that everything is edited so well and so often that it creates a spooky vide which is great for thrillers, also the audience can catch a glimpse of clues that might tell them what the films about which is a very great way of getting the audience engaged and thinking . However what allured me into liking this way of opening a film is that for my media task was for my group to make a two minute thriller opening and it has to be very effective because thats all we're going to show an audience and the whole point is that we leave them wanting more . This film se7en through using a discrete opening structure has made that two minute task ,possible ,in my opinion.
The next opening structure is called 'Narrative' and it's basically when the opening mainly involves the 'credits' and the 'location' , i find this structure not as appealing because the credits are very bold and out there which i believe takes away the scary vide that i would like to assume thriller openings should have . I watched the opening to the film 'The Shining' and at first i couldn't tell at all that the film was a thriller infact i was rather puzzeled that my media teacher showed it to us , the only way i got even a hint of danger was when a car was zooming past in what appeared to be a chase .
My teacher told us that this film is an excellant thriller and that it's worth watching but i think that because we only have two minutes to show people that our film is a thriller this form of opening won't be any good to use .
'Credits over screen' is the third opening structure i looked at , this is a very simple way in which to open a film . During the opening a black screen would appear and then the credits would be placed within the black screen. I think it can be effective because the colour 'black' is associated with danger , darkness and the unknown which i like . If i were to use it though it wouldn't run all the way through my film , only at a certain point to add or create a scary effect .
Example from : Donnie Darkco
Finally the last structure i looked at was an 'stylised' opening , this to is a very heavily edited form of film opening and just like the discrete structure it to uses many editing techniques.
The video above is from the film 'The taking of Pelham 123' due to the fast paced edits , intresting transitions and tons of images of the location of the film it both excites me and hooks me right from the word go.
Overall though i think all of these film opening structures has something great to offer however i find the opening which are heavily stylised as the most effective . When it came to deciding as a group on what we might use we all liked the discrete form .
During class our task was to reorder a set of clips that were all placed in a different order, after a while of experimenting with the clips we found that the correct order would spell the word "UNFORGIVEN". As the clip never had any sound, we had to go out and create our sounds which would fit into the clip. Soon after, we got sounds like a car door slamming, the rustling of leaves and water dripping etc. During the editing process, we found that the sounds we recorded didn't fit properly into our video, so instead we chose to use sound taken off from YouTube and add it into our clip.
The pictures above identifies our group using "final cut pro", and inserting our music from "sound track pro". Because our Foley sounds weren't as good as we expected we decided to get a heartbeat. Initially, we were going to use YouTube to get the heartbeat we needed, however we found that we could get the sound of a heartbeat from sound track pro. We then added the heartbeat and inserted a music bed of an instrumental. After using sound track pro, I realised it was a hard experience getting use to how to edit sound on there I feel that I need to enhance my skills in this area, so that once we start editing our thriller I will be fully knowledged on using sound track pro and possibly final cut pro.
A way a film is structured is very essential, if the audience isn't captivated they may lose interest and perceive the rest of the movie as uninteresting. There are 4 different ways to how a movie can be structured and these are said to be: discrete, narrative, credits over a black screen and stylised editing. In this post I will identify what these structures are and show some title sequence examples of the 4 structures.
Discrete title sequences are often heavily edited, they stand apart from the rest of the movie due to the amount of editing that has been used in it. This type of style uses many transitions, edits and fonts drawing the audience in without them getting too bored. An example of this is the movie "Se7en" which explores the mental state of mind of a sadistic serial killer, murdering his victims according to the seven deadly sins.
A narrative opening is when credits are playing without no interruption, these type of openings usually make it easy for the audience to understand the location of the movie, for example in "Panic Room" we see the credits being placed on top of buildings which seem to look as if they are in New York.
Credits over a black screen, is simply title names being placed over a black screen. From the movie "Donnie Darko" you can see the same type of structure being used. Although, this opening will be easy to make it isn't anything special and loses the interest of the audience. However it can build tension and add more suspense to the story line.
Stylised openings are a structure that includes many editing techniques, it takes a long time to produce but it is interesting to watch how these effects come together. The title sequence of "The Taking of Pelham 123" uses many edits, they use fast forwarding techniques and use many transitions in terms of a scene sliding into the next.
After seeing many of these openings, our group chose to use a discrete title sequence as it is effective and isn't too edited neither too plain to watch.
During class, we watched a series of student films who worked on the same project as us which is to create a title sequence for a thriller movie. After seeing their examples, we saw what could be our outcome to our thriller opening and whether it would be successful or not.
The link above is an example of a student film called "Victoria" which shows the sinister ways of an innocent ballerina, whereby their opening could be a psychological thriller much like "Black Swan" which also uses the same plot, this could be an example of intertextuality as they have used the same themes as "Black Swan".
This is Tatsuya Fujiwara, He is famous for his lead roles in Battle Royal and the Death Note live action films. Death Note is a psychological thriller in which Tatsuya Fujiwara plays Light Yagami, The best student in his college. He finds a Death Note, and at first thinks that it is joke and decided to test it out, on a criminal on death row, the next morning the death of the criminal is reported in the newspaper. Light becomes known as 'Kira' meaning killer as more and more criminals die a special investigation team try to find Kira's identity and capture him. Light is arguably justice, as his intentions were to purify the world but a murder is a murder and he is seen as the evil character. Whereas his role in Battle royal differs completely, he plays the hero in a terrorist film.
This is him in Death Note as Light Yagami, the combination of his brown hair in comparison to the other characters black hair, the lighting and angle of lighting on him, and of course the Shinagami (God of Death) who lingers around him, help to create an evil aurora and look.
Then there is his role in Battle Royal, where he leads the 'wild seven' against the terrorists. He is the Hero instead of the villain this time. The lighting and emotion in his face show that he is a victim here.
There is also the camera angle which helps to portray a character. Here Tatsuya Fujiwara, seems lost and innocent. The shot used is a high angle shot which also causes the character to look powerless and weak.
Props can also affect how the audience view a character for example,
Put a gun to a characters head, and he is probably deserving of this which means the audience view him as evil. However...
Give the character a puppy, and he is completely innocent.
