Ideas for thriller

To gain inspiration for finding a thriller idea we used the internet, newspapers and previous experiences to help us come up with some ideas.
 
 
 

 
 
Firstly we used the bbc news website, we looked through many different articles and decided that nothing was really beneficial, so we did not generate our idea from there.

Similarly the newspapers did nothelp us to find a story that grabbed our tension and use in our thriller.

On the otherhand we found that using previous experiences and adapting them worked very well, as everyone had been through atleast one thrilling moment in their lifetime which could be converted into an adrenaline rushing thriller. This is what we generated most of our ideas from.

Kyle Cooper

Recently i have been watching interviews and examples of Kyle Coopers work, and have observed many different techniques and tactics he uses in most of his work to make it look very visually engaging and attractive.

For example in his Apple advert the text and objects are constantly moving into different areas forming different texts, this is very good and beneficial as it keeps the audience visually engaged encouraging them to watch on, meaning they are more likely to find out and possibly buy the product. He also uses a very wide vareity of colours, rather than just sticking to two or three, again this is very effective towards the viewer as it constantly engaging them within the advert, making them more likely to carry on watching it and finding out more about the product. He also has been involved with other big companies in advertisement such as Cannon and MTV.

Moving on from adverts but still staying along the same lines, his work in movies is still very similar. He uses the same technique as in his adverts; he likes to keep everything moving. For example in the opening of super man the text is always moving, with many different big bold colours making it very visually engaging.

Through watching his interviews i get the point that he is interested in paying close to detail, he says he is interested in very small thing such as cells and body parts. This is then reflected in some of his opening material as we see cells moving around rapidly. He also points out he likes to merge what we can see with what he can make, for example he says he can film a plant then put it on a completely artificial background making it stand out more.

Moving on from kyle cooper and doing some more research and found out other title designers and intro makers that dont use all the same techniques as Kyle, for example Jaime Caliri is a title designer and he has very different ideas to Kyle. Kyle wants the opening title sequence to be very eye catching to impress the viewers and make them want to carry on, however Jaime says that he does not want start with such a big boom as it may not fit opening scenes.

So from researching Kyle cooper and other opening title editors i know how to create an entertaining opening sequence and i will keep these skills in mind while im making my opening sequence for my thriller.

Thriller 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.

What is a thriller?

A thriller is a film that uses suspense, tension and excitement as its main elements, they tend to be very andrenaline rushing. Some key feautures used in a thriller is a red herring, something that makes people think that it is relevent when it really is not. Secondly plot twists are used, these are when the plot is thrown on its back to shock the audience. Finally another key feauture is cliff hangers, where the story suddenly stops at a vital moment wanting the audience to watch on. There are three main sub-genres in the thriller department, crime, physchological and mystery thrillers. Sometimes aspects of all three can be used together for extra effect. Overall a thriller is a tense movie that gets the audience pumped and there is almost always something to find out or solve.

My group

Our groups which we are shooting our thrillers were chosen randomly, my group contains Charlie, Will , Bo and myself. Also in class today we brainstormed some of our ideas and developed the ones we thought were the best. For example the one we developed the most was based on a crazy man in a forest who comes into contact with a group of AS students shooting a documentry.

Prelim video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3HJzfF49Is

Acount of prelim (post)

Using final cut was very complicated for the first time, it was a big step up from using software such as iMovie that i had previously used to make short films. However i started to understand the tools used to cut, edit and move clips around and things became a lot easier. I also learnt that it is very important to make log bins so it is easier to find different types of shots and sounds and they are all not mixed up. The choices in the editing process were not to difficult as it did not involve in any complex shots or story line. Overall after the work we did i felt more confident using the basics of final cut, however i need to work on the more complex things on th program to create a better effect.

Short Sequence

Over the last couple of lessons we have been using the shots we filmed from our prelim and editing them together to make them look more professional. We learnt how to put them together in order and at the right time. However along the way, through looking at detail we found out what we did wrong and how we should improve it.

We started by checking in on final cut, by clicking the settings button and ticking the box check in. From this we found our folder with all our shots and loaded them up onto final cut. Because some of the shots were not as good as others and mistakes were made we made to folders, one named " " and the other " " one contained the original shots. From here we went and looked through them all seeing which ones were good and not, the ones that were good we put in the "" folder to use in our sequence. Through looking at all the shots we immediately realised that we had made a mistake, we had filmed a bit above the set so it looks fake, normally we should check and see if anything is perfect on shot.

Once we had a folder full of the shots we wanted to use including wide shots, over the shoulder shots, close ups etc.. we started putting them together. In order to get the clips onto the timeline we had to double click on the clip which will then be loaded up onto a screen, from here we needed to trim them so we did not have lots of unwanted shots. To do this we press the I key which marks where the clip will start from and then with the O key marks out and where the clip will stop. When we all decided that we were happy with the timing of the shot we dragged it onto the timeline.

This process went on for a while as we had to get the whole prelim within the short film, through this process we faced some problems. For example on some of the clips it made a blip sound where a really small piece of audio had crossed over and made this sound. To prevent this from happening we added an audio fader which silenced out this clip.

So we have sucesfully put the small clip together using many different shots.