Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Monday, 22 February 2010
ScreenPlay
It’s a dark windy night, not many people are around on the streets.
See a girl walking down the street up towards the train station. She gives of an uneasy vibes and is walking really fast.
We see from the ‘stalkers’ point of view we watched her go into to the station then shortly follows after her.
She walks into the station down the stairs to the platform. She feels like someone’s behind following yet when she looks no one is there.
Whilst she is waiting at the disserted station she sees a black figure across on the opposite platform staring at her. She’s feels uneasy tries to look closer.
Suddenly a train races past.
We see clips of the breakup of her and her boyfriend. He gets violent and she leaves. He is extremely anger. This is accompanied by the train noise.
The train passes and then she looks back across to the platform to find he is gone.
Concisely she gets on the train to her destination.
We go to a clip of the CCTV of the stations she gets off and see that the same man is there waiting for her.
The train arrives and she gets off and he goes to grab her however a crowd of people come to the station to witness so he stops.
She walks out of the station unharmed yet he takes pictures if her.
We zoom out of the picture and see all the picture of him and her of when they were together to pictures of her by herself of with friends.
See a girl walking down the street up towards the train station. She gives of an uneasy vibes and is walking really fast.
We see from the ‘stalkers’ point of view we watched her go into to the station then shortly follows after her.
She walks into the station down the stairs to the platform. She feels like someone’s behind following yet when she looks no one is there.
Whilst she is waiting at the disserted station she sees a black figure across on the opposite platform staring at her. She’s feels uneasy tries to look closer.
Suddenly a train races past.
We see clips of the breakup of her and her boyfriend. He gets violent and she leaves. He is extremely anger. This is accompanied by the train noise.
The train passes and then she looks back across to the platform to find he is gone.
Concisely she gets on the train to her destination.
We go to a clip of the CCTV of the stations she gets off and see that the same man is there waiting for her.
The train arrives and she gets off and he goes to grab her however a crowd of people come to the station to witness so he stops.
She walks out of the station unharmed yet he takes pictures if her.
We zoom out of the picture and see all the picture of him and her of when they were together to pictures of her by herself of with friends.
Treatment
Title
The title of our thriller is ‘Lonely’. We have chosen to call it this because it explains how both our main characters are feeling throughout the film. However it is not apparent that both characters are feeling this until the end because the protagonist turns out to be not as innocent as we think she is. Our title is conventional to the thriller genre because it creates questions to the audience. This will appeal to our target audience because they will be film lovers and interested in who’s lonely in the film.
Target Audience
Our target audience for our opening thriller sequence is ages 15-20 it will also appeal to both genders. It will appeal to any type of teenager because of the main themes which are love, break up to obsession. However because of the location and type of actors I feel that our opening won’t appeal to upper class people. It will be set mainly in a train station and the actors will be played by working teenagers. This means they will probably not be able to relate to the characters lifestyle which will be revealed in the whole film. The media consumption of our target audience will be mystery book and detective programs. This is because our film raises a lot of questions to our audience and they will find it interesting trying to figure who really is the killer.
Technology
The technology then we will use during the production of the opening sequence are a digital camera to record all the sequence, I movies on an I Mac and music making programme. We are going to use these technological devises because they are easy and simple to use and they are also accessible to us as students for free. Also we are able to create effects with editing which will help our story. The problems will be facing will be that there will be no special in our movie. This is due to the program we our using and our budget would not fund the effects, such as explosions or aliens landing. Also there are a very limited variety of cameras as well not many cameras we could use. This will create problems sometimes because we will have to film the same thing over and over and this could create problems it might not be the same every time we shoot it. For our titles the programs we are going to use are fireworks and maybe flash. Fire works is software which allows you to make your own images and incorporate typography. This program is like a different type of photo shop it is good that we are going to you this because it is going to allow us to be very creative with our titles. Lastly we are going to create our music for our thriller on a programme called garage band. I have never used this before so it may be a
challenge.
Representations
James will be played by Jamal Smikle who is one of the media students that make up the production team that made this thriller. we have chose this person to play this certain character because the appearance of him fits certain stereo types for instance the way he dresses. Which is that black men are thugish and bad people. That why we feel he works well for the stalker role.
Carla will be played by Stephanie Osborn, a student at Havering 6th form. We have chosen this particular actress because of convenience reasons because our the actress who looked exactly like her dropped out. we went for a certain type of girl because she fits the basic apparence of a female thriller antagonist. We believe this to be vulnerble nieve looking woman. We feel the fact that our actress has blonde hair and blue eyes makes her perfect to be the victim. For our whole film she is perfect because she turns out to be the protagonist but ue to her appearance she is least likly to be suspected.
The two main characters in are James and Carla. James is the antagonist and Carla is protagonist. James is a person that has one main interest in life. He doesn’t like change and gets easily attached to people. He is a black teenager who is hard to get to know and has mysterious aspects to him. Carla is what seems to be and innocent girl and very friendly. She appears to be naive however has a harsh temper and a taste for revenge which we find out in the end of our film. Prop’s theory is that he that film follow the same clear structure this is that they have a fairytale ending and there’s a hero. Our film in general does not follow his character types this is because there is not clear hero in the whole film. Also it another reason why it don’t follow his theory is because of the red herring that is used which is a typical thriller convention which misleads to audience with a twist at the end. Our characters are represented in a bad light because one is a stalker and the other is a killer.
Narrative
Our film is about a teenage couple break up. James (antagonist) becomes obsessed with his ex-girlfriend and who ever she dates. He can’t let go and wants to be in her life so he starts to stalk her. He tries to kidnap her while she’s on the way to meet another boy but he fails because there is a crowd watching. These types of awkward occurrences keep happening and he keeps missing the opportunity to kidnap her. So he them takes picture of her and all the people she meets up with and mysteriously all boys she starts dating end up dyeing. All fingers are pointing are pointing at him. Goes to prison but insists he is not a murderer and in the end the twist is that she was killing them all along because she wanted to take revenge on him.
In the opening sequence Carla is on her way to the station to go meet her friends. As she is walking to the station her ex boy friend is stalking her and he is watching her from in the bushes. When she at the station she sees a man all in black starring at her. She is left uneasy and doesn’t know it’s her ex boyfriend. A train races past and we cut to flashbacks of her and her boyfriend breaking up. When the train passes the man in black is gone. Little does she know he is waiting at the next station! She gets off the train and we see this all on CCTV. He goes to kidnap her but her group of friends come and meet her so he can’t grab her. We see him taking pictures of her when she is hugging a boy and we zoom out of the picture and see all the other pictures he has of her and other people. This clarifies to the audience that he is stalking her.
Conventions
There are two conventions that we are using in our thriller opening scene are flashback and foreshadowing. The main one is flashback because it helps the audience to understand what is happening in the opening. It shows the history of the relationship between protagonist and antagonist. Also we use foreshadowing to show the type of person he is and the characteristics he has. Plus we will use this convention to be the way that we move the story along in the film. The sub genre our thriller falls into the slasher/stalker. This is because our thriller is about an ex-boyfriends obsessions which turns him into a stalker.
Style and iconography
The effect we trying to certain our opening sequence is suspense. The way we are going to do this with the camera is by the variety of shots we are going to use. For example point of view shot to make the audience feel what characters are feeling. High angle shot when he is going to try grab her to show how oblivious and vulnerable she is. In contrast low angle shots to show the antagonist as being dominant and unpredictable. The way we will show suspense through our editing is through the good use of dynamics in the pace of the editing. The pace will be fast with lots of different angles of shots this will help to show that she is being followed and is scared. However the editing will slow down so we can shock the audience at certain parts, this mean we will be in control of the audience emotions. We will use costumes to signify that there is a clear antagonist by him wearing all black. The props are going to use for him are a camera and loads of pictures. This will signify that he a stalker. Finally the music and sound effects we are going to use will tap on to our audience’s emotions. The music will accompany the editing by being asynchronous. We have decided that we would like to use a type of music called Dubstep. This type of music is purely about the beat and can be quite scary to listen to. Finally we have chosen this type of music because it is currently popular with teenagers at the moment and they are our main target audience.
Institution
An independent film company will be the type to produce my thriller, this is due to many factors. I would say an independent company like film 4 would be ideal to produce my thriller. This is because of the location, it is local and well know. Unlike Hollywood companies which locations are fantasy and unrealistic. Also the content is a bit controversial because it shows teenagers in a bad light and companies in the big 6 wont want to attach there name to something like that in case they get a bad name, which gives them an overall bad reputation. Also the acts are British and this will not appeal to other countries and film 4 films are only available in England Finally I think that our film will be exhibited on the internet this is because of our target audience which is teenagers. I feel that this will be the best place for it to be shown because teenagers use the internet and there are many way it can be advertised on there. For example pop up web banners, games and YouTube trailers.
The title of our thriller is ‘Lonely’. We have chosen to call it this because it explains how both our main characters are feeling throughout the film. However it is not apparent that both characters are feeling this until the end because the protagonist turns out to be not as innocent as we think she is. Our title is conventional to the thriller genre because it creates questions to the audience. This will appeal to our target audience because they will be film lovers and interested in who’s lonely in the film.
Target Audience
Our target audience for our opening thriller sequence is ages 15-20 it will also appeal to both genders. It will appeal to any type of teenager because of the main themes which are love, break up to obsession. However because of the location and type of actors I feel that our opening won’t appeal to upper class people. It will be set mainly in a train station and the actors will be played by working teenagers. This means they will probably not be able to relate to the characters lifestyle which will be revealed in the whole film. The media consumption of our target audience will be mystery book and detective programs. This is because our film raises a lot of questions to our audience and they will find it interesting trying to figure who really is the killer.
Technology
The technology then we will use during the production of the opening sequence are a digital camera to record all the sequence, I movies on an I Mac and music making programme. We are going to use these technological devises because they are easy and simple to use and they are also accessible to us as students for free. Also we are able to create effects with editing which will help our story. The problems will be facing will be that there will be no special in our movie. This is due to the program we our using and our budget would not fund the effects, such as explosions or aliens landing. Also there are a very limited variety of cameras as well not many cameras we could use. This will create problems sometimes because we will have to film the same thing over and over and this could create problems it might not be the same every time we shoot it. For our titles the programs we are going to use are fireworks and maybe flash. Fire works is software which allows you to make your own images and incorporate typography. This program is like a different type of photo shop it is good that we are going to you this because it is going to allow us to be very creative with our titles. Lastly we are going to create our music for our thriller on a programme called garage band. I have never used this before so it may be a
challenge.Representations
James will be played by Jamal Smikle who is one of the media students that make up the production team that made this thriller. we have chose this person to play this certain character because the appearance of him fits certain stereo types for instance the way he dresses. Which is that black men are thugish and bad people. That why we feel he works well for the stalker role.
Carla will be played by Stephanie Osborn, a student at Havering 6th form. We have chosen this particular actress because of convenience reasons because our the actress who looked exactly like her dropped out. we went for a certain type of girl because she fits the basic apparence of a female thriller antagonist. We believe this to be vulnerble nieve looking woman. We feel the fact that our actress has blonde hair and blue eyes makes her perfect to be the victim. For our whole film she is perfect because she turns out to be the protagonist but ue to her appearance she is least likly to be suspected.The two main characters in are James and Carla. James is the antagonist and Carla is protagonist. James is a person that has one main interest in life. He doesn’t like change and gets easily attached to people. He is a black teenager who is hard to get to know and has mysterious aspects to him. Carla is what seems to be and innocent girl and very friendly. She appears to be naive however has a harsh temper and a taste for revenge which we find out in the end of our film. Prop’s theory is that he that film follow the same clear structure this is that they have a fairytale ending and there’s a hero. Our film in general does not follow his character types this is because there is not clear hero in the whole film. Also it another reason why it don’t follow his theory is because of the red herring that is used which is a typical thriller convention which misleads to audience with a twist at the end. Our characters are represented in a bad light because one is a stalker and the other is a killer.
Narrative
Our film is about a teenage couple break up. James (antagonist) becomes obsessed with his ex-girlfriend and who ever she dates. He can’t let go and wants to be in her life so he starts to stalk her. He tries to kidnap her while she’s on the way to meet another boy but he fails because there is a crowd watching. These types of awkward occurrences keep happening and he keeps missing the opportunity to kidnap her. So he them takes picture of her and all the people she meets up with and mysteriously all boys she starts dating end up dyeing. All fingers are pointing are pointing at him. Goes to prison but insists he is not a murderer and in the end the twist is that she was killing them all along because she wanted to take revenge on him.
In the opening sequence Carla is on her way to the station to go meet her friends. As she is walking to the station her ex boy friend is stalking her and he is watching her from in the bushes. When she at the station she sees a man all in black starring at her. She is left uneasy and doesn’t know it’s her ex boyfriend. A train races past and we cut to flashbacks of her and her boyfriend breaking up. When the train passes the man in black is gone. Little does she know he is waiting at the next station! She gets off the train and we see this all on CCTV. He goes to kidnap her but her group of friends come and meet her so he can’t grab her. We see him taking pictures of her when she is hugging a boy and we zoom out of the picture and see all the other pictures he has of her and other people. This clarifies to the audience that he is stalking her.
Conventions
There are two conventions that we are using in our thriller opening scene are flashback and foreshadowing. The main one is flashback because it helps the audience to understand what is happening in the opening. It shows the history of the relationship between protagonist and antagonist. Also we use foreshadowing to show the type of person he is and the characteristics he has. Plus we will use this convention to be the way that we move the story along in the film. The sub genre our thriller falls into the slasher/stalker. This is because our thriller is about an ex-boyfriends obsessions which turns him into a stalker.
Style and iconography
The effect we trying to certain our opening sequence is suspense. The way we are going to do this with the camera is by the variety of shots we are going to use. For example point of view shot to make the audience feel what characters are feeling. High angle shot when he is going to try grab her to show how oblivious and vulnerable she is. In contrast low angle shots to show the antagonist as being dominant and unpredictable. The way we will show suspense through our editing is through the good use of dynamics in the pace of the editing. The pace will be fast with lots of different angles of shots this will help to show that she is being followed and is scared. However the editing will slow down so we can shock the audience at certain parts, this mean we will be in control of the audience emotions. We will use costumes to signify that there is a clear antagonist by him wearing all black. The props are going to use for him are a camera and loads of pictures. This will signify that he a stalker. Finally the music and sound effects we are going to use will tap on to our audience’s emotions. The music will accompany the editing by being asynchronous. We have decided that we would like to use a type of music called Dubstep. This type of music is purely about the beat and can be quite scary to listen to. Finally we have chosen this type of music because it is currently popular with teenagers at the moment and they are our main target audience.
Institution
An independent film company will be the type to produce my thriller, this is due to many factors. I would say an independent company like film 4 would be ideal to produce my thriller. This is because of the location, it is local and well know. Unlike Hollywood companies which locations are fantasy and unrealistic. Also the content is a bit controversial because it shows teenagers in a bad light and companies in the big 6 wont want to attach there name to something like that in case they get a bad name, which gives them an overall bad reputation. Also the acts are British and this will not appeal to other countries and film 4 films are only available in England Finally I think that our film will be exhibited on the internet this is because of our target audience which is teenagers. I feel that this will be the best place for it to be shown because teenagers use the internet and there are many way it can be advertised on there. For example pop up web banners, games and YouTube trailers.
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Monday, 1 February 2010
Speed!
Speed is an action thriller with Keanu Reaves as the protagonist and Dennis Hopper as the antagonist.
There are many typical conventions that turn up in thrillers. The way to show a convention is through a code most thrillers use these conventions in order to keep the audiences at the edge of their seat and thrilled. These are fore shadowing which can be shown in the narrative of he media text. a flash forward or a flash back the way thrillers may code this is through special effects to get from the present time to the flash forward or back like for instance in Final Destination there is special effects because we see the actual car crash happen in the boy eye before it happens. Or red hearing which is a wring lead this when the audience is made to think some thing, when actually some thing else is happening. For example in fight club the audience is made to think that that the antagonist and protagonist are two different people when in fact they are the same e person.
the typical convention that normally show up in the opening sequence of thrillers are normally flays backs or flash forwards like for instance in Passenger 57 an action thriller the opening sequence is of the protagonists wife getting killed.
In the opening sequence of Speed the title sequence is going doe an elevator shaft which lead the audience to think some thing is going to happen in this elevator. The first screen shot is of the word ‘CAUTION’, .
through using the convention for shadowing the audience straight away the audience are lead to think that something is going to happen because some one is where they shouldn’t be. There is any innocent patrol officer just making sure the area is safe we are lead to think that he is innocent because there is a clear shot of his face. Then we see that there is some unfamiliar in this part of the building whilst the officer is walking closer to the unknown person there is tense build up music to try and set the atmosphere that some thing is about to happen.
Then meet a possible antagonist because of the work he does. Antagonist in thriller mainly do manual labour work with there hands, they also so work in very lonely work areas. This man is possibly and engineer of some kind because he has a tool box that appears to have tools inside. He can also be considered as a protagonist because the camera slowly tilts ups his body then you almost see his face then there is a fast paced cut to the back of his head to heighten the audience suspicion in the character. Then the audience can defiantly tell that he is an antagonist because he stabs the officer is the side of his head the shot is of the back of the officer’s head to tone down the killing. Then it cuts to a close up of the killer’s face this man shows no remorse for what he has done however he does not look like he is insane so it gives the feel that he has a bigger plan than jus to kill that one officer.We the cut to a close up a woman handing over some documents to some men all these people are possible protagonist because they have respectable job because they work in an office. All these people pile in to an elevator to whilst the are going up the elevator the camera keeps cutting to the elevator shaft to indicate that some thing is going to happen the convention used hear is foreshadowing.
In conclusion this film does not show many conventions in the opening sequence how ever it has shown us clear who one of the characters is.
Dark Knight
Dark Knight
The other Thriller opening i have looked at is The Dark Knight. The type of genre of thriller this is is an action thriller. This is also evident in the opening due to the reference of violence straight away. I only looked at the first five minutes of the opening. Here is the opening from YouTube.
This opening is similar to the opening of Law Abiding Citizen in the sense that it goes straight into the action. This is typical of an action thriller because the opening is there to set the tone for the rest of the film. Like I learnt before music is also a big contributing factor whilst setting the mood and atmosphere for the rest of the film. The music in this is very atmospheric its quite calm and not over powering however it creates tension for the view. The music hits a climax when the action happens like when the man shots the window and you see a shot of the glass shattering. The music in the opening underlines the parts that the producer wants the audience to be shocked and confused at. The music in the opening is a way of controlling the audiences emotions which is also a common tool used in thrillers.
This also conforms to the typical style of an opening to the thriller it leaves the audience with questions in there head. Who is the joker? Why are people getting killed that apear to be on the same side? Are they taking revenge? Why are they wearing the odd looking masks?
The camera shots used are very specific. For example at the very beginning we have an establishing shot that shows you where they are. Then after you have a zoom into the mask that the criminals are all wearing. Then after all the action we have a close up of the real jokers face.
Zoom shots are used to make you specially see something that is important to the rest of the storyline. This is like Close ups as well, they are used to show true emotions on characters faces. These camera shots are typical of the opening conventions of a thriller. They help with the storyline and sometimes are there to mislead as well as support the story. The editing is also likely of a thriller this is because of the fast pace whilst the action is happening. The editing is also asynchronous to the music.
In the beginning we experience two of the conventions mislead and a twist. This is when all the criminals are talking about the joker and it is made out to the audience that he has sent them out to do the robbery for him and that they are part of his team. However at the end of all the action the real joker is revealed this twist helps us to understand why all the other criminals where killing each other. Mislead and twists are typical conventions of a thriller, from this I may consider using one of these techniques in my thriller because how effective I have seen them to be.
In conclusion I think that this thriller opening was a good one to look at in terms of the conventions used. I have also learnt a lot from this from the effective use of camera angles and shots. What specific things need to be focused on more to help the story within camera shots. As well as that I learn how effective the right music can be to control the emotions of the viewer. This also adds to the intensity and suspense which is what makes a thriller a thriller. However in this clip there is new use of titles so I will have to look at another opening to see how effective this can be when used correctly.
The other Thriller opening i have looked at is The Dark Knight. The type of genre of thriller this is is an action thriller. This is also evident in the opening due to the reference of violence straight away. I only looked at the first five minutes of the opening. Here is the opening from YouTube.
This opening is similar to the opening of Law Abiding Citizen in the sense that it goes straight into the action. This is typical of an action thriller because the opening is there to set the tone for the rest of the film. Like I learnt before music is also a big contributing factor whilst setting the mood and atmosphere for the rest of the film. The music in this is very atmospheric its quite calm and not over powering however it creates tension for the view. The music hits a climax when the action happens like when the man shots the window and you see a shot of the glass shattering. The music in the opening underlines the parts that the producer wants the audience to be shocked and confused at. The music in the opening is a way of controlling the audiences emotions which is also a common tool used in thrillers.
This also conforms to the typical style of an opening to the thriller it leaves the audience with questions in there head. Who is the joker? Why are people getting killed that apear to be on the same side? Are they taking revenge? Why are they wearing the odd looking masks?
The camera shots used are very specific. For example at the very beginning we have an establishing shot that shows you where they are. Then after you have a zoom into the mask that the criminals are all wearing. Then after all the action we have a close up of the real jokers face.
Zoom shots are used to make you specially see something that is important to the rest of the storyline. This is like Close ups as well, they are used to show true emotions on characters faces. These camera shots are typical of the opening conventions of a thriller. They help with the storyline and sometimes are there to mislead as well as support the story. The editing is also likely of a thriller this is because of the fast pace whilst the action is happening. The editing is also asynchronous to the music.In the beginning we experience two of the conventions mislead and a twist. This is when all the criminals are talking about the joker and it is made out to the audience that he has sent them out to do the robbery for him and that they are part of his team. However at the end of all the action the real joker is revealed this twist helps us to understand why all the other criminals where killing each other. Mislead and twists are typical conventions of a thriller, from this I may consider using one of these techniques in my thriller because how effective I have seen them to be.
In conclusion I think that this thriller opening was a good one to look at in terms of the conventions used. I have also learnt a lot from this from the effective use of camera angles and shots. What specific things need to be focused on more to help the story within camera shots. As well as that I learn how effective the right music can be to control the emotions of the viewer. This also adds to the intensity and suspense which is what makes a thriller a thriller. However in this clip there is new use of titles so I will have to look at another opening to see how effective this can be when used correctly.
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