Teacher Feedback

Your idea is strong but I have concerns regarding your proposed 'scenes of torture' - you need to think very carefully about how these will be put together. Remember that if I am not happy that you have behaved sensibly and safely through the filming process I can and will refuse to let footage be used.
I also suggest that you do some test footage of filming the TV screen or maybe even use a computer screen.

shot 1: mid shot- this shot shows a dvd player closing
shot 2: camera is zooming in on the dvd footage
shot 3: close up of the victims head panning down to his feet.
shot 4: camera is panning around the character who is watching the footage
shot 5: mid shot of the torturer pulling a paper bag of the victims head
shot 6: close up of the victims face.
shot7: close up of the characters as he realises who the victim is.
shot 8: zooming in on victim being tortured
shot 9: camera is panning around the victim being held in in a bowl of water
shot 10: camera moves above the table and looks down on it.
shot 11: close up of different weapons on the table.
shot 12: torturer holds the gun to the victims head and pulls the trigger
shot 13: as soon as the gun goes off the screen goes black and the film title appears 'final cut'

Student thriller analysis

I throughly enjoyed Surface. What I enjoyed about it was the fact that it kept cutting from the shots of the movie which were quick and loud, to the titles which had a dark, gloomy,mysterious background. This was done to build up tension and to make the viewer want to see more. The font faded in and out slowly to the music which added a creepy feel and the music is again quite mysterious and soft when on the title screen but when it cuts to the short clips of the sequence it has sharp loud noises and the sound of a girl struggling to create tension.

thriller openings include:

All thriller openings must have:
Titles,
Diegetic and non-diegetic sound
A variety of shots
Some of the generic conventions of a thriller

Things to consider:
Transitions
Movement within the frame
Feasability - Health & Safety
Technical aspects

Analysing Of Previous Student Thrillers

After analysing an existing thriller opening we analysed a student thriller opening.

I decided to do Negative.

The good things about this sequence is that it created alot of suspense and mystery. It also showed a flawed male lead as the bad guy. It started the web of intregue by getting you to ask questions like 'who is the woman?' and 'why is he following her'. It also shws some quite clever shots of the guy fiddling with some negative film strip and editing it together. The titles came on in an interesting way by coming in with some sort of wavey effect which could represnet the fluid used to develop camera footage.

The problems that I found with this is that it didnt reach any kind of climax and the music di drone on lowering the suspense. Also alot of the footage was quite quite boring and again it dragged on. Also you see the stalkers face which lowers the mystery.

Our idea for a thriller opening sequence

For our opening sequence we came up with one very clear idea. We decided to open it with a shot of a person putting a dvd into a dvd player. On the dvd it will show footage of a man being tortured and eventually killed. Will also cross that over with actuall shots of the torture and murder.

We decided to do this because we thought that we could fit the most thriller conventions into this sequence. We could also create alot of fear and suspense with some simple but effective shots.

Analysis of a real thriller opening

We needed to do an analysis of a real thriller opening and i chose to do 28 Days Later. I really liked this sequence because it created alot of question from the moment it started.

This opening sequence also complies with lots of the thriller conventions. Firstly it creates an enemy, the virus, but it doesnt give too much away so it still has some fear of the unknown. There is also a flawed male lead who doesnt listen to people and ends up getting killed at the start. There is also a vunerable female character who also gets killed because she cant defend herself. The tense music that plays throughout the sequence increases the fear and builds up for the climax where the people get attacked.

The way that the title of the film is introduced is interesting because not only does it introduce the name of the film it also introduces the next scene by saying in the bottom corner, 28 weeks later.... which cleverly indroduces the name of the film and the next scene in one go.

Homework for tuseday

- Write up a comprehensive analysis of a real thriller opening sequence.

- Write up a comprehensive analysis of a student thriller opening.

- begin brainstorming, blog all ideas and analysis.

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