Thriller Rough Cut

This is our thriller rough cut. We have used a night filter to make it look more like night and achieve a better mise-en-scene however we chose to film in daylight for better quality causing it to look more like dusk than night. During this project, a few problems occurred with filming due to the dark rooms being closed when we wished to film and having to re-do arrangements more than once.

Possible Titles for the thriller opening sequence

• Development
• Developer
• Photograph
• Depth of field
• Obsessed
• Obsession
• Digital Night

Thriller Animatic Sequence

Here is our animatic sequence showing a rough outline of the scenes we are going to shoot. Each storyboard still is in place of each scene. We have added in some transitions to show how our final video will switch from scene to scene. Our draught soundtrack has been added to the Antimatic sequence to give a feel of how our thriller opening will build suspense and work.

Animatic drawing research

An animatic drawing is basically a prototype for a film, it is to see if the sequences look good and work together this is used in every single animation film e.g. shrek. Our animatic drawing for our AS thriller course work is focusing on photography, how we aim to do this is to use photos to tell part of the story which is used in a lot of successful thriller movies. The music we are conducting using garage band has to suit the drawings and we have to make sure that it works as a production. We have researched thriller music extensively and have watched opening sequences from such films as face off and Matrix and by closely analysing them and by taken notes on the techniques they use we can adapt them. We are going to make our animatic drawing using final cut which is a good program and we have used it before so we are familiar with the possible techniques. I think that doing a animatic drawing is good and bad. It is good because you can take advantage of using the music to get the full feel of suspense in needed places but by the same token it is bad because you cant use the same techniques because it might not work, the most you can o is get rough feel of how you would like it to turn out.

Soundtrack Research

We researched our soundtracks by looking at thriller soundtracks on youtube such as the saw soundtrack and final destanation and seeing what made them good, we then thought of some ideas and which soundtracks we liked and compiled our soundtrack to have similar features. When researching the soundtracks we considered what would go well with our video and modeled it around our storyboard and visual ideas also. As more research we looked at clips which in movies helped build the suspense and added similar clips to our soundtrack to achieve the same effect.

Starting Ideas For Thriller Opening

Our main idea for our thriller is photography. The idea originally came from the student thriller opening "negative" but the theme is used in may other thrillers such as "momento". The idea of using photography is a more psychological approach to the thriller genre. The opening sequence will start off set in a dark room with the camera focusing on a picture of one dead women. The scene will then flashback to the three women walking down a street in Cambridge. The camera will then follow the three women down the street for a few seconds. The camera would then change to a view of the front of them as they laugh and stumble down the road. After this shot the location will change back to the the dark room. The next photo will be on a table, it is a picture of the three women together, and a hand will come from the side to put crosses through two of the women's faces. There will be one girl left without a cross, which starts to ask questions. The location again switches back to the three women as they split up. one walks in one direction and the other two leave in the other.

The lighting will be low or coloured red (for example in the dark room) to effect the viewer via the mise-en-scene. Also the editing pace will be slow until the events in the opening start to un-fold. We have chosen the setting to be Cambridge and the surrounding villages to make a more natural environment which will make our clip more natural and the viewer will find more to relate to and will raise complex questions.

negative

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=l6Ppf-HHsWY

Negative is a succesful thriller opening. The first generic convention which was introduced to me as a viewer, was the looped spine chilling sountrack played throughhout the three minutes of film. The second give away of this films genre was the creepy waviness of the text as it came into focus on the screen which was infront of intresting abstract images. The first acting sequence in the opening is the breif shot of a boy looking around then walking off which is well used, because you start asking questions which is what a thriller is.A thriller is a book or film which is designed to keep the reader or viewer on edge with suspenseful and sensational action. Thrillers are enjoyed by many people because of the suspense in the film and the complex plots. In negative the most affective shots are close ups and point of veiw shots. The first close up shot is looking at a series of pictures which introduces the possiblity of a stalker in action. The thing i enjoy about thrillers is how many times you change your mind about what the twist will be, alos i find that you have to whatch some films through twice to see how the twist at the end impacts the whole thing.