Before I started this project I did a lot of
research into media products and their conventions. I started off by analyzing
movie posters such as ‘Olympus has fallen’, ‘Shutter Island’ ‘Saw’, ‘World War
Z’ and ‘Man on a Ledge’ (add screen shot
of work) In doing this I was looking for the similarities and differences
in them on their methods of conveying the thriller genre. What I found was that
they used a lot of shadows and darkness, which created a mystery and suspense
with a little ‘fear of the unknown’ as you cant, really tell what will actually
happen.
I then looked at the content of an opening movie
scene. I broke these down into sections of, setting, character, themes, props,
narrative and style (camera technique, lighting). Looking at the style
particularly helped me define genre conventions as it allowed me to see how
they used the camera purposely capture the scene from an angle or perspective
that would lead you to believe a set emotion, for example, in ‘Olympus has
fallen’ you are watching two characters in a boxing ring. The tone is set by
showing a shot of their feet as you can see that they are just circling each other
and neither of them are particularly aggressive which creates a friendly
environment and leads you to believe that neither of them are hostile. (Add
clip of OHF)
I also found when looking at ‘Olympus has fallen’
that simple things such as worsening of the weather conditions created tension.
I then looked more closely at specific scenes and
questions such as ‘How are women represented in the scene?’, ‘How does the
location and use of light and dark depict the emotional landscape of a
character?’ and ‘How is sound used to create suspense and other effects in the
scene?' (Add screen shots of blog) By
doing this it allowed me to look more closely at the individual aspects of
thriller conventions such as sound. I was then able to see how important these
different parts were and the way people were represented while also seeing how
it was all conveyed.
All of this helped me to become more familiar with
the genres conventions.
I believe that I was fairly successful in
conforming to the thriller conventions. I tried to develop my own sound track
and sound effects that were similar to those I had seen in other products. I
also tried to convey and develop narratives and themes I had previously seen
while also setting them in a location typical to that of a thriller product. I
believe I achieved this by working specifically on individual aspects such as
genre, mise en scene, location, narrative, theme and camera work and editing.
Genre:
When It came to making my own thriller I decided to
also work with a subgenre of horror and this is conveyed by the use of a
distorted nursery rhyme (play sound as I say the next sentence) as
it takes away from the characters their innocence and adds to the fear and
suspense, as the track takes away the ‘natural order’ and expectations of
nursery rhymes which normally connote a sense of safety and security.
Mise en Scene:
In the scenes of my thriller that are filmed in the
living room (show still images of the scenes) the lighting is
fairly dark. I also found this was true to real media products (insert clip from example) and it was
used to generate a sense of suspense and fear.
I used close
up shots of key characters faces (show stills) to help draw
attention to the importance of the character and what they were saying. We can
see examples of this in ‘Olympus has Fallen’ and ‘Body of Lies’. Where the use
of a close up allows us to know the importance of items and the specific
characters. (show stills from Body of Lies and Olympus has fallen).
When I first started filming I intended to film at
a time of day that meant the lighting would be naturally low. This is because I
wanted to create natural shadows that would add to the fear and isolation that
I previously found had been conveyed in media products.
However this didn’t workout because it was far too
dark which disrupted the quality of the picture so instead I filmed during daylight
and used sound effects and a sound
track (screen shots from garageband/ clip previews) that would
create a greater sense of fear.
Location:
Other media products that I looked at before I
started my project were ‘Cabin in the Woods’ (show stills), ‘The
Blair Witch Project’ (stills) and ‘Eden Lake’ (stills).
They all used the woods to convey entrapment, isolation and fear (add clip), which are reoccurring
themes. This research helped to influence my choice in location because I
thought I could replicate this sense of fear, entrapment and isolation. I
thought that I could used a wooded lake area (show stills) near to my location, that was both accessible and
suitable to attempt to convey these reoccurring themes.
Narrative:
From my research I discovered that typical thriller
narratives are of death, being watched, being followed and being deceived. I
believe my thriller conveys all of these as in the beginning of my opening you
get the feeling that Charlie is being followed and watched. Then by the end of
the opening you are led to believe that the characters die and there is also
the possibility of deception developing later on by the father and his
past
Themes:
My previous research into the content of opening
and other thriller products showed me that typical themes of a thriller product
are entrapment, isolation, family, responsibility, fear, protection and the
unknown. I found examples of these in ‘Shutter Island’, ‘Olympus has Fallen’
and ‘The Strangers’ (show example
clips). This made me want to develop
a few specific themes such as isolation and entrapment, which are typical
themes along with revenge.
Camera work and editing:
When creating my product I tried to use a variety
of shots such as, mid shot, long shot, close up, tracking and panning because
when I was researching media products I found that a variety of these were used
to help not only keep the attention of the audience, but also to convey a
specific emotion or to create a certain atmosphere. Therefore I tried to get a variety of shots
but not all of these made it into the final edit as perhaps due to lack of
experience, they didn’t all work out how I had hoped or I simply had too much
footage.
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