What is a Thriller?

What is a Thriller?

By definition, a thriller is a novel, play or film with an exciting plot, typically involving crime or espionage.

Thrillers are notoriously known for creating suspense and often mystery through out the films, hence the word 'thrill' being apart of the word.

There many different types of thrillers, these include:

• psychological thrillers
• sci-fi thrillers
• action thrillers
• horror thrillers
• western thrillers
• adventure thrillers

In recent times the most popular genre of thriller has most obviously been action, as we can see from the IMDb popularity scale of thrillers:

1. Spectre
2. Secret in Their Eyes
3. Legend
4. The Hunger Games
5. Maze Runner

The reason for all these movies (considering they are action/thriller) are on the top of the popularity scale for thrillers is mainly because big companies such as fox who are funding these movies, are able to have much larger production funds. This essentially means they are able to have more expensive scenes (usually including explosions when talking about action) and are also able to fund their movies more. Generally, the younger generation who are the majority of the population who are visiting the cinema, or also usually more into action films. 

More established thrillers include:

• Seven
• Psycho
• The Silence of the Lambs
• Oldboy
• Black Swan
• Leon

As we can see from this list of the more established thriller films that much less of them are action and many more are psychological thrillers. In my opinion psychological thrillers have much more of a stronger long-term impact on viewers than action thrillers. Psychological thrillers actually get the viewers thinking and when done correctly are able to draw the viewers into the movie. With action thrillers most of the time the viewer's thinking is done for them and less of a thought process is required as the story line is usually more obvious.

My personal favourite thriller is Fight club directed by David Fincher with a cast who included Brad Pitt, Edward Nortan and Helena Bonham Carter. The movie is about an insomniac office worker, looking for a way to change his life, crosses paths with a devil-may-care soap maker, forming an underground fight club that evolves into something much more.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUXWAEX2jlg



3rd & 4th Production Meeting

Production Meetings

3rd:
In the third production meeting we developed our human trafficking storyboard even further. Adam handed us a storyboard sheet which allowed us to add much more details to each specific shot, such as sections for shot duration, lighting, shot angle etc.. We realised that most of the details we had decided then would most likely be changed or altered either as we progress with our storyboard, on the day or in editing.

4th:
In the forth meeting we started making a character and cast list. The characters were fairly easy to put on paper as most of our opening title is based around the characters and their actions. The cast list is not quite finalised but we've decided to use teachers to play the roles of the traffickers to help show a clear contrast in age between them and the girl. It would also make the idea of the girl being vulnerable more clear/believable.

1st & 2nd Production Meeting

1st & 2nd Production meeting

1st: 

In my group of three we started by all sharing our two favourite ideas out of our four. This helped eliminate the ideas which we weren't as interested in and highlighted the ideas which had stronger potential. Ideas which originally were not considered became considered as having other insights help see another perspectives on what would be visually interesting. We are produced rough storyboards of our ideas. The purpose of this was to help other group members to visualise all the group member's idea's.

2nd:
Rosie's idea of a girl who becomes kidnapped and eventually is turned into a human trafficker became very appealing to us as we were able to visualise a good opening title for a movie with the storyline. We began by making a more detailed storyboard for this idea which naturally pushed this idea to a priority position. Other group members idea's were not put out of consideration but our groups main focus was on Rosie's idea.

Dividing into Course Work groups

Dividing into Course Work groups

Our teacher put the whole classroom's names into a randomiser. This helped predict our groups in a fair way, eliminating friends working together and others not being in the groups they wanted. Having the groups chosen randomly stopped dispute about not being chosen fairly. The groups were split up into 3 groups of 3 and 1 group of 4. I was happy having one of the groups of 3 and being selected with Alec Heriter and Rosie. We seem to already have strong ideas which we are progressively building on. 

Opening Title Sequence - 4 ideas

Course Work Opening Title Sequence - 4 ideas (Thriller)

Story 1: 

A grandma becomes mental and tries to kill the young child (around 6) in the family. The rest of the family go away and leave the child with the grandma, even though they know the grandma resents the child and is a threat to her. The parents therefore leave the child with poison which she eventually kills the child with.

A big house is located in the woods. The fact the house is isolated would be made clear by the little surrounding events taking place in that area. The family would be shown driving off and away from the house after saying goodbye to their young daughter who is left sitting on the porch steps of the house. The husband says to his wife 'everything will be alright' (only dialogue in the opening title sequence). The child is then shown walking/touring around the house, a follow shot from behind would be used to display this. A close up shot would be used to highlight the child's possession of the poison in her right hand. She'd eventually reach a room where her grandma is present. The camera would slowly rise displaying the grandma looking down on the child.

Story 2:

A teenage boy was set up at school which led to him being expelled and the police getting involved. Even though the boy didn't plead guilty he was sent to prison for an unfair sentence where he was abused and mentally and physically scar'd. The only way he could protect himself was by becoming more aggressive and dangerous. He forever wanted to take revenge on the teachers who weren't fair to him at school and contacted the police about what he'd been set up to do. When he leaves prison he has no job/money and eventually cannot even afford food, therefore he becomes a cannibal and plans his revenge against those who did him no justice at his old school. 

A student is working in his dormitory at boarding school. The surrounding setting is dark (night time) and only his work light is on in the room. A flashlight then points into the dormitory window so he therefore goes to check what is is. Nothing is there. There then is a slight knock at the window and when he checks nothing/nobody is there yet again. The work light suddenly flicks off and the window smashes through. At this point the room is pitch black and the only sound heard is the window smashing.

Story 3:

A nanny goes to pick up the child she looks after from school. They usually drive home but it was a nice day so the nanny thought they'd walk home through the park (school is 15-20mins walk from home). When the nanny arrives at the school the weather is already much worse compared to when she first started walking. The child she looks after is around 6-7 years old. They eventually reach the park where it is almost completely dark as it is not lit. As they walk through the park they get lost and a chain of events begin.

The nanny and child start walking through the park (most follow shots used). Sound effects of rustling leaves and trees whistling would be added to add to the background noises. The nanny realises that the have taken the wrong route but tries to keep calm in the situation. They are unable to see as it's very dark so they therefore cannot figure out where exactly they are. The child starts complaining/whining which adds pressure to the nanny. Eventually the child starts crying which adds attention towards the two. The nanny starts getting distressed and starts walking much more quickly but she eventually trips on a stick. Her legs starts bleeding and she's quite badly crippled. With the nanny bleeding from her leg is laying down on the floor and at this point the child begins to cry hysterically. 

Story 4: 

An evil teenage son in a farmer family tries to overtake an kill his whole family. He does this by using farming equipment such as pitchforks etc and eventually taking his baby sister as a hostage. The grandpa in the family ends up killing the evil son by using his dog (who has an extremely aggressive nature) to find him. The dog attacks the evil son and eventually killing him but brings the baby sister back and safe.

The scene would begin with the grandpa shouting 'where has he hidden her?!' in distress but is helpless as he's aged and incapable of finding the evil son by himself. A barking dog with a metal chain would be tied around the grandpa's chair. Close up shots would be shown of the grandpa's face and of the barking dog's. This would prefreably located on a porch of a house with a grey/foggy surrounding. The teenage boy would then be seen running with a baby through the woods. The baby in his hands would be crying (helps add to the distress of the situation). The dog would then be released by the grandpa and the dog runs off into the foggy distance barking repetitively. 

Prelim Task

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BBASVOJWsg&feature=youtu.be

Preliminary Editing

Preliminary Task Editing

After collecting all of the film from shooting on the previous friday, Fernando, Thomas and I all went to the studio yesterday to edit everything we had shot. As we shot from a story board, we based most of our shooting angles around the ones they had given which cut out the time which would have required us to think about which shots to use when. 

Using the editing software Adobe premier on an Apple computer, Thomas, Fernando and I all took turns in using the mouse and keyboard allowing us ultimately to have a shared, equal view on the outcome of our piece. 

Fernando has a fair amount of experience on the canon 5D (camera we used to shoot) so was able to do more creative shots such as the focus pull.

We all gave cutting an editing a go and we noticed that most of the film we shot we unnecessary to use in our final piece.