Conventions Of A Thriller

There are many different things/conventions that can help create a thriller film and help the audience know what type of film it is. Here are some of them:

• Suspense - Suspense is when the audience is anxious and are uncertain about what will happen. It helps with a thriller as it can make the audience feel undecided or undoubted and now know what is going to happen.
• Red Herring - Is that something that is unintentionally or intentionally distracting or misleading the audience from the actual issue or problem. It often helps towards creating a false conclusion with the audience or characters in the film, to make the ending a surprise.
• Enigma - Enigma is a form of mystery or unknowing. It is used in thriller because it creates myusteries in the films and makes the audience puzzled because they want to know what this mystery is.
• Music - In thriller films the music that is mostly used is eerie music. It can be said to help add to any enigmas that have been introduced to the audience and can also add to any tension that is building.
• Crime - In most thrillers there has been some form of crime that has been committed and they are trying to find the culprit. This may include blackmail, murder or robbery.
• Criminal Characters - These are the characters that have committed the crime, they are usually that antagonist in the film.
• Twisted Romance - This is when there could be a romance between antagonist and a protagonisty, the affection is usually for a person that is bad for the other.
• Femme Fatale - Is a female character that is a mysterious and seductive woman, her charms would ensnare her lovers into desire and lead them into deadly situations.
• Props - Props such as documents, guns and weapons are used to add a little bit of action to the thriller.
• Dark Lighting (Film Noire) - This is can be used with accumulating shadows which is a thriller convention, tehy can be used to represent darkness and add to tension and eeriness that is created. A Film Noire is used to describe Hollywood crime dramas, the Film Noire period went from 1940s to 1950s.
• Love Hero - Love Hero can be said to be a protagonist that another main character may fall in love with.

Final Piece Idea Seven

This is our seventh and final idea for our media piece. This is our most thought through and detailed idea. We plan on using this idea for our final media piece as well all contributed to the idea and all like the plot. Our idea is based on all of the seven sins, and our idea took inspiration from the films Seven and Sliding Doors.
We first had many ideas for the name of this film like The Dead 7, The Number Seven, One Out Of Seven and 7Heaven. But finally we decided to go with the film name One Out Of Seven. Our film takes places in a fictional city called "Sin City", we are calling it this because it is based around all of the seven sins living in the city and the protaginists are all leading different lives in the city but are all linked when they are needed for a mission.

The film will have eight main characters, they will include a banker who the sins are after, and the seven deadly sins who are infact a team of seven assassins who work for the government as a team but sometimes independently.
The banker plans to reveal critical information about several banks inclusing the one he works for, this will have massive effects on the city as it could cause the banks to shut down as they are corrupted and have an influnece on the stock market. The seven deadly sins are all part of a team whose mission is to track down and kill the banker as if he releases secret information it will have critical impacts. Greed one of the members of the team was bribed by the banker to help him escape as he is greedy for money and it is also the teams mission to find who helped him escape and kill him even though he escaped.

The banker is the manager of the bank and thus knows all the top secrey information about all of the banks. He is a greedy man who is always wants the method that will only benefit him and earn him more money.

Pride is the leader of the seven deadly assassins, as the name portrays he is a very proud man and likes to be the leader and tell everyone what they should be doing. He detests being told what to do and always takes the credit as he belives he is the best.
Envy is the member of the team that has not got that many talents and the other members call him talentless, he is very envious of all the other members of his team and all other people around him as he belives they all have talents he doesnt and thus is very envious and a jealous person.
Gluttony is the member of the team that as the members seem is always hungry and is always eating food. He was first very poor and was anorexic, but as he got older he earned lots more money as the joined the team he become fatter as he spent his money only on food and nothing else.
Greed is the member of the team that is obssessed with money, like Gluttony he was poor but he began to have a greater lust for money as he grew up and earned more money meaning the greed for money was always increasing. This was his fault where he was tempted by money from the banker and let him get away because he would get money from it.
Lust is the only female member of the team of seven assassins. When she was younger she was not very pretty and any men would not go anywhere near her as she was so ugly. Then when she got older he become prettier as they days went on, because on this men started to want to be with her and she started to love all this attention from men and started to need men to make her feel good.
Sloth is the laziest member of the team. When the seven assassins are not in a mission or in a meeting about one he is always sleeping where it be on his bed or on the sofa. The other members are annoyed by his lazy nature as he always wants to take the quickest method or the easiet one as it is less effort for him even if it is not what they want.
Anger is the final member of the team and he is the one with the fiery temper. He is the member that is easily annoyed and has anger issue where he will start on anyone or anything. To help release some of his anger in himself he is regulary down the gym and on the punching bags to release his anger and feel a little more relaxed.

Final Piece Idea Six

This is our sixth idea for a film this idea is basic but has good storylines.

In this piece it starts of like an everyday life for a man who lives in the city. He is in the kitchen cooking in the frying pan making his breakfast and has some coffee. It seems like he is just an ordinary man in his home but in fact it is not his home, it turns out by looking at photos around the house it is someone else house and not his. He is infact a psychopath who is trying to live the life of another person without even realising it. When he goes up stairs he goes into the bathroom and brushes his death and shaves etc, but his ignores the room across the hall which is infact the bedroom. In the bedroom on he bed we can see a dead person on the bed, the guy is ignoring this because he is not mentally sane and is ill, he has forgotten the person is on the bed as he is insane. He has to make sure he gets out of the house and bring all his stuff before the owners of the house get back and see him and the dead body inside their house.

Final Piece Idea Five

This idea is a general one that two members of our group had thought of.

The idea film name for this is called Fade To Black. It first starts off with the credits, next we are at a hospital and there is one doctor pushing a trolley down a corridor. Next there are some patients and people screaming and running in the opposite direction down the corridor, one patient is running and they are looking all beaten up and bruised. There is now a scene where there is a child who is standing by themsleves at the end of the corridor and next the camera backs off into the distance and it fades to black.

Next we have the words 3 hours earlier across a black scene. Then we are transported to a playground and playing area. There are children having fun and there is also loud sounds that consist of laughing. This scene will contain long shots where we are able to see all of the playground, and also a strange lookign man that no one is paying attention to. The main is in the corner and blurry, he has teary eyes and is looking at his child playing with other children. It turns out the child playing is the same as the one standing by themselves at the end of the corridor and the man is one of the people who are running down the hospital corridor.

Final Piece Idea Four

This idea is inspired by the ITV psychological thriller drama Marchlands.










In the opening sequence there is a little boy who goes into the woods taking a short cut during the evening whilst going home. The little then does not come home and goes missing. It turns out the boy was infact drowned in a lake when going through the woods.
Twelve months after the boy went missing he has still not been found by the police so the mother takes things into her own hands. The mother seacrches herself for her missing son and whether or not he is alive. The red herring is a school teacher at the primary school he went to, he was in fact a main suspect as he was scene talking with the child last.
Finally it turns out that the mother is the actual criminal and she had killed her son and she had gotten sick and tired of him to the point of murder. The hero is the school teacher who was the main suspect, he was able to investigate the mother and her background and how she wasn't mentally sane  and finally catches her in the act when she is talking to herself about killing her son and the police later find the evidence that she committed the crime.

Final Piece Idea Three

This is our third idea which was done briefly and which doesn't contain much detail, we do not plan on using this idea but thought and described it none the less.
In this film it is about a ninja who is also a doctor and is trying to help people but has a secret side that no one knows about. The theme of the film will be a cross between cyber and steam punk. In our film there will be a femme fetale who wishes to uncover to the world his secret.

Preliminary Task Commentary

For our preliminary task we had chosen to film somebody walking into a classroom and sitting next to someone on a table and having a short conversation with them and then both leaving. For this task we had to create a script for our task and also a storyboard so that we knew what we were saying and how the shots were meant to be filmed. We did so as soon as possible because we had changed groups several times and had to get started quickly.

In this task we both took active roles in acting in the piece and another member of the group used the camera and filmed. Once we had finished filming our task we then went onto editing our task, me and Natasha both did the editing for the film. We used Corel Studio for editing our piece, I had already been familiar with the editing software so I was confident in using it but Natasha had never used it so I taught Natasha what to do and how to use the editing software.

In our preliminary task we had to include short reverse shot, we had some evidence of this in our piece but it was not framed well as the tripod which the camera was on was too high, we had needed to lower the height of the tripod so it matched eye level. Also we did not have any footage which had allowed for match on action, which we needed to include in our preliminary task. However on a lighter note, in all of our included footage we had followed the 180 degree rule which was another thing that was needed. In our preliminary task we did some difficulties with the editing software but managed to finish editing our final preliminary task.

Final Piece Idea Two

This is a idea which we all in our group had personally thought of and liked, this may be our final choice for our thiller film, but this idea needs some more thinking and more development where this is just a mere basic outlineof the idea:

In this film there is a ventriliquist who is actually an superior and smart mathmatician, when on screen they are always seen in a chalk background room with lots of mathmatical problems and probabilities all around the walls. They seem to be "controlling" another person to do crimes for them e.g. shop heist, mugging and bank robbery. It seemed like to the victim that the ventriliquist is "controlling" them and making them do all of these crimes by magic, but in fact it turns out they are using maths to work out probability on what the victim will do next and try to psyche the person out by predicting what they will do next but in fact is guessing what they will do and not actually knowing.
This idea was inspired by the film The Hunted

Final Piece Idea One

This is the first idead our had before chosing our final idea, we mapped them all up and here is the summary of the mapped ideas:
We had an area which in the film there has been some form of car crash that took place. We go to the scene of the accident and there is a child lying on the side of the road. Next to is a person who is running to the child that had been hit in slow-motion screaming "NO!" (that person being the child mother who they had just been walking across the road with) and they start crying and cradle the dead person by the road. Then there are flash backs to what was going on before the accident and flashbacks to what the mother and child were doing and what the person in the car was doing.

Analysis Of Thrillers - The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption:
In the sequence from Shawshank redemption we watched the scenes were the main character had locked himself into the announcement room. When he was in there he turned on the speaker and on the speaker he played some music through a music player of that time, the music is what sounded like Italian women singing but we are unsure what they are saying. From this scene we get the feeling of being tranquil as the sound of the music was quite calm and peaceful as it played all throughout the prison. Also from this same music we are unsure what the women are singing about so we cannot tell if it is about something happy or about something sad but in the moment we continue to listen to the music regardless as it is what all of the other characters and people are doing all throughout the prison.
This is an image of the prisioners listening to the music through the speaker system:

Analysis Of Thrillers - Psycho

Psycho:
In the sequence from the film psycho we watched was about one man that had just been killed. We can see the man driving up to a house in his car and then waking up some large steps to a house, before he enters the house he turns round to see if anyone is behind, from this we can tell the character is anxious or even nervous that someone might be following, and from this is an audience we can tell that later something might happen to him as he looks back and over his should to see if anyone is there due to nervousness. When the man enters he goes up the stairs and goes to walk through a door, but before this happens the shot then changes to a shot at from the ceiling looking down at the floor. The feeling that we get from this is a sense confusion or that it is odd because we are now suddenly above all of the action. Viewers could possibly be unsure what just happened and this leaves in them in confusion, as back then there was no rewind so see what actually happened. Then the man is stabbed in the face by a person who came from the door which it seemed he wanted to walk through. It changes to a shot where it is close up and it is following the man as he is falling down the stairs. The music during this scene started off to be quiet but changes to somethinf more quick when the man is then stabbed. This music has a emotional impact on the audience as it can make us feel how intense this situation is and how it makes us very anxious and worried about if the man will live or not. Just from watching this scene the enigmas we get is who is the man that is trying to kill the character, e.g. why is he trying to kill him or will he live after this attack.
This is an image of the house which the man is entering momentarily:

Analysis Of Thrillers - Strangers On A Train

Strangers On A Train:

At the start of the film we can see two separate men only from their waist down walking towards the train station from two different directions. One man on the screen is constantly walking from left to right, whilst on the other side the other man is walking in the opposite direction going from right to left. With this movment we can tend to feel that something is wrong, as the man who is walking in the wrong driection (right to left) is the bad character because he is going in the opposite direction than what we would usually think. The enigmas we get form this is who are these two men on the screen, it can be said they seem like two different ends of the spectrum, one of men is wearing white shoes and the other is wearing black/brown shoes, one man is walking right to left whilst the other is walking from left two right. Both going to the same place but in separate directions. Another enigma we get from this sequence is who is the good guy and who is the bad guy, some would guess that the good guy is the man in white shoes because the good guys usually were bright or white colours, and they guess the man in black shoes to be the bad guys because in films they usually assume the bad buy to wear dark and black colours. Also at the end of the sequence we get to where two men meet and start to converse, we can see a shot of both of their shoes, it can be said to compare them with black vs. white, the two seem just like two ordinary men until they start conversing and we find out one is in fact a famous tennis player and one is crazy rich man who wants his mum killed. A final enigma we get is what will the man do, for example will he actually kill this man’s mum and if he will tell anybody about what he experienced today. Another thing that happens in this sequence is the shot of the train on one track and its coming into lots of different tracks and being confused. This could be linked to the famous tennis player where he meets this one man and then he gets tangled up in his plans and confused about what he has to do.
This is an image of the two men's shoe's whilst on the train:

 

Auteur Thoery

Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Hitchcock was an English film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema, in both silent films and early talkies, he was billed as England’s best director. Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades. He is often regarded as the greatest British filmmaker.

Examples of His Films:

Psycho (1960)	Vertigo (1958)	Rear Window (1954)	Strangers On A Train (1951)
Stage Fright (1950)	To Catch A Thief (1955)	The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

Now he is still high recognised and praised, he came first in a 2007 poll of film critics in Daily Telegraph which said: "Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from us) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else.”

Hitchcock fashioned himself a distinctive and recognisable directorial style. He pioneered the use of a camera made to move in a way that mimics a person’s gaze. He framed his shots in a way to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy and used innovative film editing. Many of his films feature fugitives on the run from the law alongside “icy blonde” female characters.

Many of his films have twist endings and thrilling plots which feature depictions of violence, murder and crime. Although many of the mysteries function as decoys or “MacGuffins” meant only to severe thematic elements in the film and the psychological examinations of the characters.

MacGuffin is a plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist and sometimes antagonist, is willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to pursue, protect or control. However a MacGuffin can sometimes take a more abstract form, such as money, victory, glory, survival, power, or love. An example would be the mineral unobtainium in Avatar.

Hitchcock's films were strongly believed to have been extensively storyboarded to the upmost finest detail. He was reported to have never looked through the viewfinder, but in publicity photos he was shown doing do.

Even though storyboards had been made, there were certain scenes were the shot had differed from it significantly.  Even though Hitchcock had a great deal of preparation for all of his movies, he was aware that the actual film-making would often differ from the best plans and was flexible to adapt changes and needs of production, and still had normal hassles faced during film production.

Questionnaire

Questionnaire

1. do you watch thriller films?

Yes

No

Sometimes

2. How old are you?

1-10

11-20

21-30

31-40

41-50

51+

3. are you male or female?

Male

Female

4. what do you like particularly about thriller films?

Close ups

Tension

Jump scares

Build up

Other? Please specify

………………………

5. what is your favourite thriller film?

Psycho

Strangers on a train

The Shaw shank redemption

The taking of Pelham 123

Other? Please specify

………………………..

6. what thriller subgenre do you prefer?

Romantic

Action

Comedy

Psychological

Horror

Sci-fi

Adventure

7. what do you hope to see in a thriller?

Violence

Death chasse

Everyday life

Other? Please specify

……………………….

8. what colours do you expect to see?

Red

Black

Green

Blue

Pink

Yellow

White

9. do you like to work out the story?

Yes

No

10. what accents do you expect?

Irish

German

American

English

Italian

Treatment

A banker threatens to release harmful information about the bank that he works in. the bank manager contacts a team of seven assassins or more so contacts the assassin of greed (maisie) in particular. Greed goes in and speaks to the bank manager and gets the details of the job. Greed comes back out of the bank and calls the rest of the team on conference call. All this point you see parts of the face of each particular member of the team (maybe on the same screen) each assassin is doing a task corresponding to their sin (e.g. wrath is punching a punching bag or gluttony is eating) the assassin of pride calls in greed to formulate a plan to take out the banker.

The team meet up, make a plan and proceed to act upon it. The banker somehow gets away scot-free. Pride the leader of the group has to find out who helped the banker get away. This leads to pride going through questioning the members to find out who helped the banker get away. Finds out it was greed, and deals with her accordingly (kills her)

(Plot twist)

At the end of the film sloth kills pride for reasons not yet known.

Analysis Of Thrillers - The Taking Of Pelham One, Two, Three

The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three:
The opening is structured as at the beginning of the film it is an establishing shot, from this shot we are able to tell that we are in New York as we can see lots of yellow American style taxis, we also can see that the main characters is going from a cab to into the subway. The music at the start of the film is that it is very intense, fast and upbeat, aggressive and the music does not go anywhere. The music also links with the title where the titles match with the rhythm of the music. From the opening sequence we can tell that all four of the men in film are linked to each other, we can tell this because all of them are wearing coats, have glasses on and is wearing a fake moustache. When the men are getting on the train we can guess that the boxes all of the guys are holding have a bit of significance where there is a long shot of each of them showing the boxes, it could be gathered that in all of those boxes there is a gun because all of the men hold them close to them and as they are trying to take over a train and it can be said they need some sort of weapon to show they mean business. On each stop of the train there is a new man that appears and comes onto the train. The first is the weak one in the group, we can tell this because he is ill and he keeps checking the time and looking at his watch and from this we can tell that he is also very nervous and shows he could be the weak guy. The second guy is the flirty guy in the group, he can tell from his movements and actions e.g. checking out the woman, that he is very confident in his self and might see himself as a ladies’ man, another way we can tell he is confident is that he even takes off part of his disguise where he takes off his glasses whilst the others still have them in. The third guy who gets on the train can be said to be the tough guy of the group, he has a big build and when he walks onto the train he barges past other people, this can show that he might be a very aggressive person. The fourth and final guy who goes to the train is the leader. We can tell he is the leader because he is the only one with the gun out and is calm and quiet when he comes on screen, he is also smiles at the guy when he goes to the train showing how calm he is and this also shows his authority where he is the only one with a gun, and it can be said he is the one that starts off their mission by going into action by going over to the new train driver and telling him he is taking this train.
This is an image of the fourth man talking to the train driver in the opening sequence:

Preliminary Task

This is mine and Natasha's preliminary task. In this preliminary task we included match on action and the 180 degree rule.