Thriller Posters

Out of these three horror posters, my favourite one it the Saw poster. As it is not telling you much about the film, or what happens, but what you first see, is this chair that does not look at all comfortable, and you see these women boots that are chained to it, which automatically makes you think it is a women sitting there, until you move up the picture and see that there is a women's head on the body, which completely throws you, and what you thought you new about the film all just changed, and you are back to knowing nothing.

What is a Thriller?

A Thriller is a meta-genre, this is the emotions and reactions that should come from it, for example fear. Thrillers rely heavily on the plot, fear within the audience, suspense, apprehension or basic worries which people have. These can be simple fears that make the audience emotionally involved. They usually contain universal themes and work with a sense of delay, as they use the time that the audience sitting there waiting for something to happen, to build up suspense so the audience become even more scared. Thrillers as a genre work because they are sadomasochistic, as the audience likes to see somebody else feeling discomfort, to make the audience believe what is happening they use ambivalence, and too make them emotionally involved in what is happening. There are various different types of thrillers:
Espionage/Spy Thrillers. E.g. James Bond
Psychological Horror. E.g. Saw
Supernatural Thrillers. E.g. Drag me to Hell
All these genres are classified and identified by their key conventions, which are their intricacy of plot, a focus on fear, a complex unraveling narrative, a sense of delay, apprehension and suspense, and enigma codes, which are mysteries and questions, that the audience will be asking throughout the film as to what is happening, meaning there is something unknown with the audience.
Other conventions are that the audiences are pleasure derived from the discomfort of individuals, and voyeurism, meaning to be aware of something that the character isn’t. If a thriller contains each of there conventions it makes them a good thriller and it fulfills the expectations that the audience have.

Account of editing preliminary Task

We used final cut to edit our Preliminary Task. To gain access to the programme we had to enter a password and then find our groups filming, which our teachers had kindly uploaded for us. We then double clicked on it and got to our work place where we were then able to edit the sequence. There are two screens, both in the top right hand corner, in one you can let one sequence take play at one point, and have it start at another point in the other box. It is important when cutting the sequence that you put the sequence into the timeline and then cut out the different shots by pressing “I” when it starts and “o” when it ends. Then this single shot you will have as a separate file. Once you have done this with the whole sequence, we needed to then put them all together and in the correct order, then beginning and ending to make everything fit. For this, we just needed to take the shots and put them in the correct place on the timeline so it all fitted and looked smooth. As our microphone on the camera had a fault on it, we just did a voice over for the sound and added that on at the end.

So far on our course

So Far In Media

Over the past four weeks, there has been a far amount to learn in media. From analysing a clip from a TV Drama, to an introduction to Photoshop. It has been a lot of information to retain, and there is still more to come.

One of the first things we learnt in the first week was camera techniques, there is the EWS- extreme wide shot, WS- wide shot, ELS- establishing long shot, MS- mid long shot, LS- long shot, MS- mid shot (head and shoulders), CU- close up, ECU- extreme close up. These are essential things to know, as you need them for analysing an extract. We then went on to learn about another camera technique angles. Low angle, eye-level, high angle, worm’s eye, canted and bird’s eye.

The angle of shot is the direction and height from which the camera takes the scene. The view point is the apparent distance and angle from which the camera views and records the subject. POV- point of view is a shot made from a camera position close to the line of sight of a performer. A two-shot is a shot that has two people in it together.

We then went on to learn about another form of camera technique, movement. You have, pan left and right ( where the camera swivels and the base stays in the same position), crab left and right (the camera moves left or right) , track in and out (the camera itself moves smoothly towards or away from the subject) , zoom in and out (the camera does not move, the lense is simply focused in and out), ped up and down (the camera moves up and down the shot) and tilt up and tilt down ( a vertical movement of the camera, while the camera is in a fixed position).

Editing techniques were the next thing on out list to learn. The main eight that we were advised to learn well were, jump cut, cross0cut, cutaway shot, reaction shot, insert shot, buffer shot and fade/dissolve mix. These are all forms of a cut; cuts are used to change the scene, compress time, and carry the point of view or to build up an image or idea.

All of these different camera movements and editing, were then all used in various lessons, to practice our analysing skills, when analysing an extract I find it helpful to make a table with the following headings, ‘camera shot, camera angle, camera movement and edits.

We then had an introduction lesson into Photoshop, where we learnt all the basic tools, and then some that our teacher thought would be useful to know. We then went out took some photos of ourselves in our group, and had a practice editing the photos using the new tools we had just learnt.

Our next practical lesson was learning about the camera and tripods we would be using over the next year. I was not here for this lesson, but I was given a sheet with some information as to how the tripod functions, and some tips on the camera. We then went on to using them in our next practical, in our groups, shooting a 20 second clip of our choice. This was to practice basically everything we had learnt already, and to make mistakes so we didn’t make them when it comes to the really important filming.

We have briefly been introduced into sound, for the purpose of analysing a film extract. There is background sound, sound effects, diagetic, non diagetic, ambient sound, dialogue, monologue and soundtrack.

The final thing that has been introduced to us in media is our blog. We have learnt what a blog is what it does and how it works, I will be using this blog for the next two years to record everything that I do in media.

Two main key words I have learnt and need to remember are:

Juxtaposition- making something out to be something it is not later going to be.
And
Mise-en-scene- is an expression used in theatre and film to describe the design aspects of a production (the clip in the frame of the shot).

Introduction to Still Cameras

Introduction to Still Cameras

Composition:
Photography is a visual language which our universe in starting to understand more and more. Understanding how it works is one thing but we also need to know the vocabulary that comes with it. The main vocabulary is, shapes, textures, patterns, lines, and colours, shade of light to dark and sharp to blurry images. Just like we learn to arrange words into proper sentences, in order for what we say and read to make sense, we must also do this with our visual elements, in an organized manner, in order for our photographs to convey their meaning clearly and vividly.

Composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements or ingredients in a work of art, as distinct from the subject of a work. It can also be thought of as the organization of the elements of art according to the principles of art.

The Rule of Thirds:
This is one of the most popular rules in photography.
It is based on; imaginary lines that are drawn dividing the image into thirds both horizontally and vertically (like a noughts and crosses board). The aim is to place the important elements of your composition where these lines intersect. Using this rule, helps produce nicely balanced easy on the eye pictures. You have to position things relatice to the edges of the frame, this helps get rid of ‘tiny subjext surrounded by vast empty space syndrome.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

For our preliminary task we shot in one of the media class rooms. This location ending up working well for our task, as the lighting was good to work with, the the ambiance the room gave worked. I helped set up everything at the beginning and instructed the actors as to what they were to do and where they needed to be. My other job was also to stand out side and tell Archie when he needed to enter the room. I thought that the lighting should be dark with some light so you could just see their faces and body, this gave the effect or tension and something bad happening in the scene. The lighting was effective as it showed Millie scared and Archie as a big guy who was forcing Millie to do something. Our camera was set up correctly, we did colour bars at the beginning on the tape for 30 seconds and set up the exposure and aperture right, the only issue we had with the camera was it had a faulty microphone, so we would just have to dub the voices in using a voice over. At every shot we made sure the tripod was level and at the right angle. We checked the frames on each shot to make sure they were correct, and each take we did, we repeated to make sure we had the best shot we could get. The angles were appropriate for the shots, to make Archie look like the more dominant one and Millie to look weak. We used the storyboard to shoot our shots, and we started with all our wide shoots first, and had our actors run through the storyboard over and over again until we thought we had all our shots we needed. We then did the same for are mid shots, close ups, point of view shots, and our different angle shots. The reason for re taking all the shots, is so in editing you can cut the ones that you do not think fit as well, and have the clip looking natural.

Synopsis of Thriller FIVE

The story is set in 1963 in the American countryside. A 52 year old American man, Ryan, who needs to seek revenge of the murder of his wife. His wife, Suzy was a lot younger than him, she was 29 at the time of her murder, also an American. She was murdered by the wife of the man she had an affair with. Ryan was quite a spiritual man, not Christian, but Black Magic. He has as ritual that he wants to perform to regain his wife, and the only way it can work is if he uses victims that resemble his wife. It takes him a year to collect his four victims He chose them as they all had different characteristics to his wife. His four victims were Ella, Estelle, Caroline and Harriot. Mean while, the daughter is witnessing all of these women being taken away and never seen again. On the fourth victim she plucks up the courage to go down to the basement were she has been told not to go, she then hears screams and other terrifying sounds. When the time comes for the fifth and final victim the ritual says it must be the family bloody of the man. Unfortunately Ryan has turned completely delusional and the only person he then sees that has his family blood and reminds him of his wife is his only daughter. The ritual does not end up working because the daughter isn't actually his, his wife had an affair with the husband of the women who murdered her and the daughter was his and not Ryan's.

Shining