To begin with, we discussed different ideas for our thriller opening among the group, we each decided it best to think of 3 ideas each then present them to the rest of the group.
My own ideas included, a flashback to a terrible experience the main character has suffered in his/ her life and cannot escape the memory. another idea was of some sort of mafia deal gone wrong, involving a chase scene. My third idea involved a teenage girl being stalked by a middle aged man, and she beleives he is folllowing her for an unknown reason, I did not have much planned for that last idea.
Another member of the group believed a flashback to the vietnam war would be a good idea, and that the character keeps halcunating his experiences of the war, we decided to use the idea of a flashback to vietnam and my own idea of experiences the character has been through and he cannot escape.
We felt that a certificate 15 was most appropriate for our Thriller, becuase it is an older audience, which is perfect for the thriller genre, as they tend to be aimed at an older audience. Another reason for this certificate would be the films content, although the opening of the film will not be graphic, the rest of the movie certainly will be, therefore a certifiacate 15 suits this film perfectly, as the film will have some violent scenes and strong language.
Apocalypse now is perhaps my favourite movie of all time, it is set during the vietnam war, and follows a U.S speacial forces soldier's journey through vietnam in order to find a U.S colnel that has gone mad and is working with camodian natives in his own faction, the government has decided he must be terminated of command and have chosen this special forces soldier, Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen) to do the job.
This Scene of the movie is perhaps the most memorable part of the whole film, it is one of the most iconic movie scenes in cinema history. It involves the air cavalry unit that is transporting Willard and his PBR crew accompanying him, to the Meecong delta. However, the drop off point is already occupied by the Vietcong. The air-cav form up and attack the village holding the vietcong forces, in a massive helicopter borne assault, whilst the destruction rages and the U.S forces annhialate the vietcong forces, the music blares from the command helicopter, 'Ride of the valkyries' a classicla peice that suits this scene perfectly... The audience gets a shiver down their spine as the music builds and builds up to the point when the helicopters fire and all hell breaks loose....
Due to copyright issues, youtube would not allow me to put this scene on the blog so i have posted a link below,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHjWDCX1Bdw
This is my favourite movie scene of all time, it is definately worth a watch.
The music in Apocalypse now is used perfectly, The opening credits song is one of my favourite tracks, it starts slow, with the sound of helicopters flying past, and as a huge napalm explosion bursts through the jungle, the opening lines of the song say, "this is the end...beautiful friend...." With perfect timing, it gives a real menaing to just this opening scene,
The song here is, "the end by the Doors". Throughout the whole movie, sound is used so well, it can build suspense or it could just be background noise.
Another scene in the movie which uses sound effectively, is when the PBR stops along the river at the last U.S army outpost before heading into enemy held territory. This scene shows how mad the vietnam war was, giving a sense to how crazy it could send the soldiers, showing a horrific side to the war. The sounds of echoing explosions, gunfire and enemy soldiers taunting the americans creates the scene beautifully. The soldiers here have all gone mad, due to the mad position they are stuck in, this whole scene draws in the audience to reveal the psychopathic part of the vietnam war.
This movie epic has very little faults, and shows so many different sides of the vietnam war, making this one of the best, most iconic war films ever created.
I will say no more on this movie, as it has to be seen to appreciate how amazing this film has been done, it is most certainly unmissable and I garuntee will be a very memorable movie to watch.
Our Continuity peice for media, in my opinion did not turn out as well as we thought, as we did not have the coreect music so we had to use the music we could find, which in my opinion does not suit the plot at all.
-Cast:
Darryle Hunt
Anthony Hall
Josh Fletcher
-Camera:
Ben Hilton
The plot of this continuity task perhaps needed to be explained more through the video, as I think it dod not reveal enough of the story. The plot involves two refugees running from a zombie infested city, being the only survivors seeking refuge in an abandoned building. The ending shot shows a zombie's hand slam onto the window of the room they are hiding in, showing that they have been discovered by those they were hiding from.
We were very limited on time and props in this peice, but this was due to poor planning as we could not decide on an idea for our peice which wasted too much time. In the end the peice trned out ok, but I beleive it could be vastly improved if we had planned it more thoroughly and chosen appropriate music for the video.
for props we used, a replica rifle, a replica pistol and one camoflage jacket, if we had planned the peice more effectively, we could have got together more props in order to improve the Mise-en-scene and add to the storyline of this peice. the props we did have however were good, and I thought they made it look like the characters had been scavenging for equipmen they could use.
We used a few different camera angles in this clip, but ultimately not enough. the opening shot is a tracking shot of the two characters opening a door and running down a corridor to seek a hiding place from their pursuers. This shot is effective becuase it shows movement and you can see exactly where the two characters are running to. The camera shot of them inside the room is goodbecuase it shows both characters talking to each other, and you can see them fully in the shot and all their actions and emotions are clear. The final shot is in my opinion the best in the peice, it is a moving shot from the back of the room which moves up to the window, this shot adds a feeling of being in the scene with the characters, the only issue with it is that the camera is quite shaky, making it seem ameture.
The sound in the continuity peice is not as effective as it could be, for example, the music in the peice does not suit the mood of the scene at all, and needs to be changed dramatically. We should have used a peice of music that bilds suspense and adds the feeling of a chase, and tension in order to attract the audience and have them on the egde of their seat. Also, the dialogue scene is not very effective becuase the characters voices are too qiuet and unclear to hear them enough, making this scene ineffective becuase the audience cannot hear what the characters are saying to each other well enough.
Another problem with our continuity peice, is that it is too similar to what most groups would do for this task, we should not have done a typical chase scene, and instead chose something different that other groups would not have thought of.
Overall I am dissapointed with our continuity peice, but it should help us to learn from this experience and make our thriller much better than this, with more planning and different storylines.
Se7en is an excellent film in the thriller genre,it uses many techniques of building suspense effectively and keeping the audience guessing throughout the entire movie, with plenty of plot twists and turns, it is one of my persoanl favourite films in the thriller genre.
The particular scene I wanted to put in this blog is the 'sloth' scene, but due to copyright issues, youtube would not allow me to put that video on my blog, so instead I chose the opening title sequence. The opening titles of Se7en throw the audience right into the plot of the movie, although not known to the audience at this point, the title sequence is actually the villain in the movie and his psychopathic notes.
The camera angles in this scene are used in a very clever way, so it reveals enough to show how mad this protagonist is, but does nothing to reveal his identity to the audience at this time of the movie. The main angle used in this opening sequence is a close up shot, and several extreme close-ups of the protagonists notes and his activities, this adds more and more mystery to this person, who the audience knows nothing about right now, this captivates the audience into watching more of the film, drawing them into the plotline.
The setting and Mise-en-scene in this opening are used effectively becuase of the dark atmosphere it creates and some of the objects you can see in this opening shock the audience, for example in one of the notebooks, there is a photograph of a hand with broken fingers, this image will shock the audience but draw them into watching the film becuase they think they might find out why it is there. Becuase of the lighting in this scene being so dark, it adds a dark, threatening feeling to this opening scene, making the audience feel slightly threatened by the film already, drawing them in further in order to see the full story behind this opening scene.
All of the important parts of a thriller genre are shown just in the opening scene of this thriller, in the scene i wanted to put in this post, i felt the thriller techniques were used more effectively to building suspense, and a scare for the reader at the end of the scene, if you want to watch that scene, search "se7en sloth scene' on youtube, I beleive it is the most effective part of the film for building up suspense.
Overall the opening titles of Se7en are very effective at grabbing the audience's attention and giving a prequel to the plotline of this fantastic movie.
Action thrillers: An action thriller will largely consist of, as the name suggests, action scenes. these will usually involve one main 'good' character fighting a main villain in the film. They sometimes contain a plot that involves a limited time to complete their mission.
Crime thrillers: A crime thriller is slightly different to your average thriller becuase most of the time, these are from the criminals point of view instead of the hero's. These types of thriller's are often based around mafia orginisations or murders, etc.
Disaster Thrillers: This type of thriller is fairly self-explanatory, it involves a major natural disaster affecting the main characters and their race for survival. The main characters are usually depicted to be the average person, giving a more realistic feel for the audience.
Drama Thrillers: These types of thriller are usually slow paced compared to other thriller types, and they often have more in-depth storylines and reveal more of a backstory to the plot.
Horror Thrillers: This type of thriller will contain more gory events and explore the emotion of fear. They are usually over the top when trying to scare an audience but are still effective in doing so.
Psychological Thrillers: These thrillers can be scary and clever depending on the plot. They might focus on a persons mind going mad and a mysterious plotline.
Supernatural Thrillers: These thrillers are fairly self-explanatory, they will mainly involve a main human character who is fighting against something supernatural.
Media is used in the modern world in a whole range of different things, an example would be Television, the internet and video games.
The most common media elements I interact with would be, Cinema, video games and the internet. Media is everywhere in today's world, from small posters in the street to adverts on cinema screens. The internet is a larger advertising tool than anything else becuase so many people use it, making it an excellent source to make money and for company's to advertise their products online.
Advertisement breaks are on almost every TV programme, usually every 10-15 minutes in a programme, this is the TV companies main source of income, companies pay them to advertise their products on the TV channel after the programmes.
