Friday 9 December 2011

psychological thriller - initial plot ideas

Basic ideas for our Physiological thriller opening

The initial idea we thought up was a girl suffering from delusions, and hallucinations however she is unaware that she is mentally ill and claims someone or something is out to get her but she cannot talk to anyone apart from her only trusted friend.

The basic plot of the film is as follows:

2 main characters: the leading main female character, and her friend.  

A few extras will be needed to represent the hallucinations the main actor is experience.

The opening scene consists of the main female actor talking to her female friend at a café.               She then describes to her friend at how she has been feeling strange recently, but does not establish her feelings that someone or something is out to get her. The main actor looks into the distance, and thinks she can see something, the look upon her face looks disturbed however she is abruptly interrupted as her friends asks ‘Is everything alright’ there main character looks at her female friend before hesitantly answering ‘yeahhh’  the main character looks back at what she thought she saw to realise it was gone. The scene then cuts to them walking home, they split up and the main character walks into her own house alone. A time lapse of the clock is used and the main character is sitting on her sofa smoking a cigarette alone, she is interrupted as her attention is drawn upstairs at a loud banging noise, she heads upstairs but as she does the lights flicker on the stair way, the main character does not seem to find anything upstairs and looks out the window, there is a flash followed by a figure pressed up against the window, the main actor is startled and falls backwards a second flash occurs and the figure is gone. Her attention then turns to the door banging and the phone ringing, she walks out of the front of her house looking left and right she notices a mysterious person in the distance who looks at her and moves quickly towards her, she then turns and runs back in the house where further strange things begin to happen, more banging as if someone is trying to get in, she opens the curtains and the figure is there again but vanishes as she looks away. Time laps of the clock again, followed by the character walking back to the café to have another conversation with her friend.

Although this seems block information it is only a basic idea, story boards and a structured camera shot list are to follow in the near future.



The plot of our film opening took inspiration from a variety of films the first of which was the strangers, as the majority of the film takes place in the house when strange things begin to happen, this relates to our opening as over half will be filmed from within a house, in which the female character will experience distorted reality as a result of an on-going mental illness which she is unaware she has, A strong point of our opening is that it is never established that the main actor suffers from mental illnesses leaving the audience asking questions as to what is going on, and why bad things are happening to the character.


Monday 5 December 2011

opening sequence - psychological thriller research

Themes
For mine and Harrys opening sequence activity we have decided to base the film on the genre of psychological thriller.

 The main themes we will be trying to identify during our opening sequence include:

Reality – this idea that the character will identify the realism of their life – Characters often determine what is real and what isn’t within the narrative.

Perception – the idea of the characters own opinions, point of views, and generally how they see the world around them. Usually characters may misperceive events which will affect their perception on the world throughout.

Mind –The idea of the characters location of consciousness (including personality, memory, intelligence, emotion etc..)  Usually the idea of narrative conflict is used to further alter the characters perception.

 Existence/purpose -the object for which something exists; an aim or a goal humans strive towards to understand their reason for existence. Usually the character will throughout from conflicted narrative, strive towards a purpose for their life.

Identity - The definition of one’s self.  Usually in the psychological thriller genre the character will have doubts or are confused about themselves in some way,  And try to rediscover there persona.

Death – The end of life’s journey.  Usually a character will be in fear or are fascinated in death.
  

Sunday 13 November 2011

Reservoir dogs opening scene analysis

Reservoir dogs opening scene

Camera shots

 -Production titles
 -The whole opening is then shot panning around the table at a medium close up level, showing each of the 8 characters as the camera pans around the table.

Characters

character types are very well established in the opening scene of this movie. In the whole oppening the camera is panning round the table, as Mr Brown is discussing the meaning of the song 'like a virgin', 6 of the men are wearing all black suits, some of them are smoking - reflecting the gangster genre of the movie, some are eating breakfast, but generally it shows that they are all relatively comfortable round the table with each other, having this random discussion about the song 'like a virgin'.

 Location

The location of the whole opening is set in a cafe in America, with 8 men sat around a table drinking cofee, eating breakfast, having a smoke - this connotes an element of normality to the location, a good setting to introduce the main character types, into a normal conversation.

Narrative

In the whole opening scene Mr Brown discusses with the other men round the table about a song called 'like a virgin'; the conversation isn't particularly linked to the plot, but it introduces each character by showing there relationships between each other from there individual inputs in the conversation - for example we can tell from the first scene that joe is probably the mob boss from appaearance and his low social input into the others random conversation.

 Genre

The opening of this film is definately appropriate for the genre for a number of reasons. The dress codes of the men are all very gangter themed as 6 of them are wearing all black suits - this from appearence gives audience imagery of organised crime. The character types also reflect the genre of the film as all the men wearing suits look about middle aged, wheras joe and Eddie both are wearing normal clothing and Joe looks relatively old- just from this we can assume the hierarchy of there particular organised crime system as joe from appearence seems to be the mob boss - the fact he is wearing normal clothes and looks like the oldest makes his character stand out more, wheras all the others are wearing suits shows them more as henchman.

Is it an effective film opening?

In my opinion I believe that it is an effective film opening, mainly because it outlines character types distinctively well.




 

 

 




Analysation Of preliminary task

 Planning/ pre-production of preliminary task

  In my opinion our planning could of went much better, as we never really created a structure for our filming; we made a storyboard, however, that was lost through filming, aswell as the fact that people in our group were absent for a few days. We also didnt have time to make a script, so had to generally improvise a script during filming.

Filming 

Filming went better than the planning, as we got a lot of decent shots that we had designed on the storyboard, however,  we had problems filming also as people in our group were absent during  some of the days of filming, so we had to change a lot of things about to try and still make it work within the deadline. There was also a major flaw of continuity in our task; because our filming took place on different days, our actor Jordan was wearing different clothes in the exchange of certain shots, so one shot he'd be wearing a hoody, then he enters a room and is wearing a shirt!

Editing 

This was my first attempt of editing a film and in my opinion was my favourite part of the task. Generally, for a first go i thought it went reasonably well, i thought that editing in the music was a great idea to run through the whole of the film but changing volume throughout, I thought the song (Tool -  Lost Keys) was a good song for the task as the whole feel of our film was to be quite trippy, and i think song really reflects that. Again though, there were problems with editing, mainly our fault in continuity, but i think the timing in exchanging of shots could have been tweaked better.

My preliminary task

This is my finished preliminary task, which is now on youtube.


Production roles:
Harry - Filming/director
Josh -filming/sound
Jordan - actor
me - actor

Thursday 20 October 2011

pulp fiction analysation of camera shots

In this scene shows vince and jules openng the boot of the car, a low angle shot is used as if to been shot inside the boot looking towards the two characters. The use of the low angle shot makes the scene seem in power of jules and vince as if the  two caharacters seem a bit intimidating.




This is further use of low angle shot of jules; the way the camera is positioned makes jules look in power and intimidating in comparison to the man on the chair. The misc en scene of the shot also shows what seems to be a standard living room and the dress code of Marvin (the black man in the corner) suggest more normality, thefore the fact that the scene contains normal civilians in an average flat suggests that vince and jules are ruthless, hostile and intimidating.





 

In this scene extreme close ups are used throughout to demonstrate the particular use of heroin, it is important for the audience to be aware that the drug is being used by vince in the film, as it is important for the storyline as the audience need to be aware that vince is intoxicated and has heroin on him in a further scene.







This is a use of an establishment shot in the film, the misc en scene shows tension or urgency in this scene as the traffic lights in the background are red, this shows that vince illegally passed through traffic lights indicating a form of urgence or recklessnes.








In this scene a close up of vince is used holding a needle, the exppression on his face shows the pure tension of the scene.





 

Me and the media

why have you chosen to do media?

I have chosen to do media because it is an intresting and creative subject, I also wanted to do it at GCSE level but it clashed with my other subjects. I very enjoy films and listen to a lot of music so media is a subject that i generally am enjoying.

what other subjects are you studying?

The other subjects that i am studying, on top of media, is psychology, history and maths.

who is your favourite band (s)/artist (s)?

I like a lot of different genres of music, but some of my favourite artists include
Sublime
Rage against the machine
System of a down
choking victim
notorious B.I.G
john butler trio
Cypress hill
just to name a few...

what are your favourite T.V programes?

south park
family guy
american dad
malcolm in the middle
fresh prince of bell air

what is your favourite film?/ who is your favourite film director?

My favourite film of all time is probably pulp fiction, and my favourite director has to be Quentin Tarantino.

What magazines do you read?

I dont usually read a lot of magazines, i used to buy total guitar mags when i was much younger, and also used to read a lot of old Marvel and DC comics.