Costume Inspiration

The Road (2009)



Black Mirror: White Bear (2013)

Set Inspiration

Fish Tank (2009)
We are inspired by the sparse set decor of the room n Fish Tank and like the bottles and cans on the floor. We plan to use this idea in our thriller.

Inspiration

Minority Report (2002)
We were inspired by the idea of having a known routine way of avoiding danger. In the case of Minority Report Tom Cruise is avoiding spider robots by lowering his body heat by submerging himself in an ice bath. This got us thinking about ways for our character to stay hidden from the thing outside the door.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=901lYbPmqu4

28 Days Later (2002)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Alien (1973-92)

Character List

- 1 character
- Female
- Age 16-18
- Blonde hair
- White

Narrative Action List

·         -Panning shot of a hallway showing shopping trollies, Rubbish and graffiti

·         -Panning shot stops on a door

·         -Women runs into frame of the shot

·         -Mid shot of her running in and slamming the door

·         -Close up tracking shot of her pushing the fridge on its side blocking the door

·         -Eagle eye shot of her clearing the desk looking for something

·         -Mid shot from behind a bing of her clearing the desk

·         -Mid Shot of  her going to open up her going to open the cupboard

·         -Shot from inside the cupboard opening the doors moving stuff around looking for something

·         -A shot from under her bed

·         -She goes into frame and reaches for boxes under her bed moving stuff aside

·         -She picks up a box stands up and looks at the front of the box grabs it out of the box and throws it on the ground

·         -Mid shot of her leaning on the wall rolling up her sleeve

·         -Close up of her putting a device on her wrist

·         -Show of the box in focus and her out of focus with the instructions on the back of the box

·         -Moving Close up of her looking at the watch panting heavily

·         -The shot goes into slow motion with her breathing being the prominent sound

·         -A shot at shoe level of the door with a shadow forming underneath it

·         -The heart beat monitor showing the heart beat slowing down

·         -Camera pans up from the wrist to her face

   -Cuts back to the shadow at foot level 

Final Idea

First draft of idea:

Inside the apartment we see a grubby rusted door with dead bolts on it you hear footsteps and heavy panting coming from outside. The door is slammed open and a Women runs in slamming the door behind her. She bolts the door shut and pulls a fridge on its side blocking the bottom of the door. We start to hear knocking in the distant with gunshots in the distance with shouting. She then pulls a couch covered in old canned food and plastic bottles up towards the door propping it on top of the fridge. She then fumbles around the apartment looking for something. She then finds a old baseball bat and stand in front of the door and holds it ready to swing. The door then shakes being knocked and the screen cuts to black.

Final draft of idea:

You see doors on a long hallway it then stops on a door and a Women runs into frame, running into the door that the camera has stopped. There is shouting and screaming coming from the doors. She runs into the room and pulls a fridge in front of the door so it’s leaning on the wall. In the distance you hear banging on the door then you hear the voices get cut to silence. She runs around tearing the room apart looking for something. She then finds a box with instructions she takes out a device and wraps it round her arm. She holds the box looking at the instructions on the back. She leans back against a wall looking at the device on her wrist and the back of the box controlling her breathing. We see under the door a shadow come under the door and a cut back to the heart beat monitor slowing down.

Characters, cast and location

Character List

• 1 character
• 6-7 years old
• White
• Hair colour doesn't matter
• Small boy

Cast List

• Phil's kid

Location

• A room with a big window.

First Production Meetings - not finished

After we had split into groups we had our first production meetings. We discussed all our ideas for our thrillers and what we thought was each of our best ideas. We discussed all the details of our ideas that we might have missed when we presented them to the class so that we could all visualize every idea. We thought about what would be the most visually exciting and cut ideas that we thought would be too boring. We also considered out thriller genre and decided we wanted to build tension in our opening, which helped us choose our idea. I feel that our whole group had similar opinions on the favourite idea, which I felt was the one about a cannibal who serves human meat to guests. Once we had decided what were our best ideas, we narrowed it down to our favourite idea and started storyboarding it.


We are at the point where we have a storyboard for our main idea and a list of sounds and props that we need.

Dividing Into Groups

We were randomly divided into groups of 3 or 4 for our coursework project. Some of us had issues with our groups so there was some moving around between groups, but my group stayed the same. I'm in a group of 3 with two other girls. At first I was worried as I don't know either of them very well, but I feel that it's actually a good thing as we will be more focused on the task and have very different ideas. I have good first impressions of our group as we work really well together and have progressed really quickly in our first production meetings.

Initial Coursework Task Ideas

1. A group of 19-21 year old girls who decide to pull a heist, robbing a painting from an art gallery in London. The film is based on their run from the police and the aftermath of the heist.


The opening sequence is as series of close up shots of the girls preparing for the heist, like hands putting stuff in bags, lighting a cigarette, putting on lipstick, loading guns. The credits flash over the screen in white as this is happening. The sequence would end with a shot of the girls walking out a door in slow motion while the title comes up on the screen.


2. About a school shooter, following the life of the shooter leading up to the shooting itself. We would find out his motives for doing the killing and see his normal life.


The opening for this idea would be the guy packing a gun into his bag and then cut to him cycling to school. There would be large doors into the school which the guy would walk through. You would then only see the doors but hear the sounds inside of screams, gunshots and then finally silence. The shooter would then walk out in slow motion and red and blue lights would flash on his face as he falls to his knees. The title would play as the screen fades to black.


3. About a stripper who murders her private clients and guts them to sell their organs on the black market for extra money. The film would follow her life and why she is doing this.


The opening would be shots of her getting ready, putting on lipstick, getting dressed, doing her hair and makeup. At the end of this she would slip a knife into her garter and walk out onto the stage through a curtain, which would close and we would then hear men cheering.


4. A serial killer who murders people on the tube at night. Follows both the killers life and the police searching for him, eventually the stories cross over when he gets closer to getting to caught.


The opening sequence would be of peoples legs on the tube. The camera would follow people from a tube carriage to outside the station from really low down do it was just filming legs and feet. The camera would eventually focus on one persons legs and follow them out the station before panning out when they're outside so you can see their whole body.

Completed Prelim Task

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n0aWEIxNdY&feature=youtu.be

The Actual Coursework Task!

 Video

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

Prelim Task: Editing

After we finished filming our footage for our prelim task, we went to the editing suite to start post production. We first were taught how to use the editing program, Adobe Premiere, to cut our footage together and make it flow smoothly from one shot to another. We learnt how to choose when we wanted a shot to start/end by pressing 'i' on the keyboard when we wanted the shot to start and 'o' when we wanted it to cut, standing for 'in' and 'out'. We started with a shot of one of the actors walking through the door and then cut to a shot of her walking towards the other actor. Even though we filmed the shot walking through the door in a different part of the room and after we had filmed the next scene, it still looked like she was walking in as we edited it into the beginning of the scene.


We were careful to put our cuts in the right places and fit them in with the dialogue to ensure the whole scene flowed together and held continuity. We did this by watching through each shot and cutting and pasting in at the same points of dialogue. It was really helpful having shot each scene with the full script as it meant we could reuse shots and had a lot of freedom as to what our final product would look like.


We worked in a group of three rather than a one or two, which proved more difficult for me as it slowed the whole process down. However, we all had a go at editing and helped each other out, putting all our knowledge together giving us a nice final outcome.

Kyle Cooper: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Title Sequence

I love this title sequence because it really effectively evokes a 60s atmosphere and is beautifully colored and animated. Coopers graphic design skills are truly flaunted in this sequence and the results are really fun to watch. 

The animated silhouette style is very reminiscent of Saul Bass' work, a nod to the 50s film noire genre and a tribute to Bass' iconic style. The limited color palette of red, black and white really gives us a sense of the crime/thriller genre without even telling us anything about the story. 

As the sequence is animated we don't meet any of the characters, yet are still drawn in by the story created by the animation. In many ways the audience is more intrigued to continue watching as the opening makes you want to meet the characters and see the location of the film.

http://youtu.be/X5GvytClDx4

NOT FINISHED

Kyle Cooper

                                              

Kyle Cooper (born July 1962) is an American opening title sequence designer who is credited with directing over 150 title sequences including a The Mummy and Se7en. He gained an MFA in graphic design from Yale School of Art before co-founding the creative agency Imaginary Forces in 1996. In 2003 he founded Prologue Films, which is responsible for creating title sequences for The Incredible Hulk and The Walking Dead. Kyle has been nominated for five Emmy Awards and won an Emmy for his work on the 81st Academy Awards. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf2yk1x-Fis

Prelim Task: Shooting

We started our prelim task in a group of 3, with 2 people acting and one of us filming and directing. I was the joint director/cameraman in our group and shot the footage for our prelim task on the Sony FS100. We were given a storyboard with some dialogue and a variety of different shots on it and I recreated these by directing the actors in my group. For each shot we did, we ran the whole scene, so that when we edit it we can have a variety of options for cutting together shots. 

We first shot our medium shot, which gives an audience a sense of a story and has a conversational feel. I did this by setting up the camera relatively far away from my actors and getting them to hit marks laid out with tape to ensure they were both in the shot. Next I filmed an over the shoulder shot of both of the actors, which gives a sense of the actors point of view and adds realism, as you are seeing exactly what the character sees. I did this by placing the camera behind each actor from a slightly higher angle to get the best framing. After this I did close ups of the actors faces. These shots were my favorite as they have a very personal feel and can make the actor look very vulnerable or very powerful depending on their facial expression and the mood of the piece. I did this by zooming in the camera and making sure I was very finely focused, as close ups are not very forgiving if they're not in focus. 

After filming all the shots we were required to film, we decided to film some extra shots to make our final product more interesting. I got my actor to walk through a door and out of the frame and then back through to make the audience think she was entering and leaving the room through a door even though she wasn't. I really enjoyed filming and directing our piece and feel that I learned valuable skills to help me in filming my thriller.

Se7en (1995): Opening Analysis

Se7en opens with a series of short clips of a pair of worn down male hands cutting and writing on photos and sheets of text.

The prominent colors in this sequence are red and black. These are considered warning colors in nature, and therefore we know early on that this film is going to be a thriller/horror. The color red is shown when you see the hands placing photos in liquid, suggesting that this person is developing photos for some reason. 

There is a lot of shocking and disturbing imagery in this opening, such as the person cutting off their own skin with a razor blade and sorting old photos of children and family. These actions suggest that the owner of the pair of hands may not be mentally stable and is possibly a serial killer or psycho. 

The fact that we only see hands and no face gives a strong sense of mystery and suspense. The identity of the man is kept secret for the entire opening, so we anticipate who they are and want to keep watching so that we can find out. The lighting of the clips is low key and this adds to the mysterious nature of the opening. We associate darkness with the unknown and the dangerous, so this is effective in building tension.

The opening is made up of lots of short scenes played after each other. The short length of them makes the whole atmosphere very tense as you don't get to really see what's going on. The scenes are joined together with straight cuts, cross fades and a fade to black. The cross fades make the sequence seamless and make it feel eerie as the scenes overlay each other. This overlays effect is disturbing in some ways and looks almost ghostly.

At some points nearer the end of the sequence, we see scribbles and indesice characters flash up over the clips. This makes the footage look disjointed and broken. The scribbles are white, which gives a strong contrast over the darkness of the clips themselves, emphasizing this darkness. 

Everything in this sequence is shown very close up and there are no long or mid shots whatsoever. This allows an audience to focus on the objects themselves, such as the razor blade, and makes them think about why the objects shown are being shown. These close ups are very suspenseful as we can't see the whole frame and therefore come up with our own conclusions on what is going on.

All the clips are filmed with a mounted, still camera. This makes an audience feel very observant, as though you're actually a part of the scene itself. It doesn't allow for any distraction from the imagery we're being shown.

The music in the scene is very disjointed sounding, making you feel uncomfortable from the start. This music is paired with screams, which are ominous and fit with the horror genre. These screams tell us that the hands in the sequence probably belong to a killer, as they make you think of a woman being murdered. There's no dialogue in this opening, making the whole thing more mysterious and tense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k2gsEI34CE

Cameras

On Friday we looked at cameras and I learned a lot of things I didn't know how to do before like white balance and how to zoom to focus.

SONY HXR-NX5

The Sony HXR-NX5 is a compact HD camcorder that is ideal for filming in many conditions and situations. I liked the layout of the controls and found that it was relatively easy to find my way around them and figure out what they all do. This camera had a 20x optical zoom which meant it was easy to focus and get closer to the action if you were filming in a war zone or similar environment. I thought the camera was a great size for a handheld but was quite chunky when mounted on a tripod making it a little difficult to maneuver, however overall I really loved using this camera.

CANON 5D

The Canon 5D had the highest image quality of all the cameras we looked and this means its used for a multitude of situations, from small scale youtube videos to TV to feature films. I found that this camera was the hardest to use partly due to not having a zoom function meaning you had to manually focus it yourself with a tape measure. I also found that with the stunning quality came a sacrifice of the nice user interface of the other cameras and that most of the fine tuning had to be done on screen rather than with separate buttons. This camera was small and had a replaceable lens which allows for adjustment depending on what you're shooting for.

SONY NEX FS100

The Sony NEX FS100 is quite a low cost camcorder that produces shots with a low depth of field, similar to a film camera. We found out that these cameras are ideal for shooting music videos as they have good memory and shoot in really good HD. I liked this camera as it was relatively easy to use and find my way around the controls. One of the best things about this camera was the easily interchangeable lenses, which allows for creative freedom and a variety of different kinds of shot. 

The Shining (1980): Opening Analysis

The Shining opens with a shot of an isolated island in the middle of a huge lake. You get a sense that the landscape is vast due to the reflection of the mountains in the lake, making the land look massive. This gives the viewer a sense of being very small in comparison to nature, that nature is very powerful in this opening.



The use of a crossfade transition is applied in this opening and is effective in giving a sense of a change in location and time. It makes you feel as though you are being taken on a journey and you feel this because the transition seems very natural. It keeps the continuity of the sequence going.



The credits that roll in this opening are a bright turquoise blue, which makes them stand out from the landscape. The first credit we see is "A STANLEY KUBRICK FILM", which captures the audiences attention as Kubrick is very well known.



One of the most captivating shots in this sequence is the drone shot that swoops down behind the yellow VW and then flys off the mountain. This gives the viewer a sense that the point of view of the camera is a bird or something flying and at one point that its of someone in a car. This is significant as Kubrick is trying to manipulate the audience psychologically from the very start, so we know that the rest of the film will be exciting. It gives us a sense of the genre of the film, a psychological thriller.



At the end of the sequence we see a ski lodge, indicated by ski lifts, with cars parked outside so we assume this is where the yellow car is headed and therefore assume that this is the setting for the rest of the film.



This opening has no dialogue or characters introduced, so it is quite impersonal but intriguing as you want to meet who's inside the car. Instead of dialogue there is music playing which helps pull you in to the scene.

Dead Mans Shoes (2004): Opening Analysis

The film opens with a series of home video style clips. These have a homemade feel due to being filmed with a hand held camera.

These childhood clips and spliced with long shots of two men walking down various paths. The juxtaposition of these two styles and subject matters gives a sense of nostalgia and suggests that  the boys in the childhood videos and the men walking, which infers that they are brothers.

When the childhood videos play there is a grainy effect over the video telling us that the videos are old and adding to the sense of nostalgia they give you. The transitions in these parts and very quick which gives a fast pace, but between the shots of the men and the home videos the transitions are very slow with gives a sense of time passing. These slow transitions are fades meaning you can see both images, making it smoothly and gently fuse together the two scenes.

In the videos from the past the setting colors are bright like reds, yellows, pinks and blues. This is a contrast to the coloring of the setting of the countryside that the men are walking in which is mostly green and grey. This gives a sense of childhood compared with adulthood.

The childhood scenes also have a golden yellow color added to them which gives a sense of warmth and nostalgia.

The way that the scenery of the men walking changes from fields to forest and back to fields lets you know that a long time is passing and they have been traveling for a long time.

There is no sound apart from an acoustic song in the background which sounds very emotional and reminiscent. It mentions being on the run which seems to tie in with the imagery of the men walking away. The fact that there's no dialogue adds mystery and keeps the audience from knowing very much too early.

I feel that this opening tells us subtly that the two men are brothers who are running away from something and that we understand this through the use of home videos and music. 

Introduction

My name is Coco and I'm studying Media, Art, English literature and Sociology at Hurtwood House. I love art and film and spend a lot of time at galleries and watching films in my free time. My favorite films are Leon the Professional,

The Dreamers,

Labyrinth,

Pans Labyrinth 

and The Secret Garden. 

I love Guillermo del Toro and Lars von Trier.

I'm studying media as I'm interested in pursuing film at university and media studies allows me to get familiar with using cameras and being in a similar environment to a real film set.