Production Companies

Walt Disney Pictures

Founded: 1928

Owned by: Walt Disney

Disney Pictures is classified as one of Hollywood's "Big Six" film studios.

Films made by this company include: Tangled, Peter Pan, Lion King, Bambi, Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Alice in Wonderland. 

Warner Bros. Pictures

Founded: April 4, 1923

Owned by: TimeWarner

It its the worlds biggest studio.

Films made by company include: A Clockwork Orange, Harry Potter Franchise, The Hobbit franchise, V for Vendetta and Horrible Bosses,

MGM

Founded: April 17, 1924

Founder: Marcus Loew

'Once the largest and most glamorous of film studios'

Films made by this company include: Of Mice and Men, The Pebble and the Penguin, The Man in the Iron Mask and 22 Jump Street.
20th Century Fox

Founded: May 31, 1935

Founders: Darryl F. Zanuck, Joseph M. Schenck

Films made by this company include: Titanic, Night at the Museum, The Croods and the Star Wars trilogies.

Universal Studios

Founded: April 30, 1912

Owner: Comcast

Films made by this company include: Jurassic Park, Bruce Almighty, Back to the Future, Liar Liar and Pitch Perfect. 

Thriller case study: Director

For my thriller case study on directors, I have chosen to look at James McTeigue as he has directed one of my favourite thriller films; 'V for Vendetta'.

 

James McTeigue (born 29 December 1967) is an Australian director, secondary director and art department worker.

Art department runner work includes Wicked and The Edge of Power.

 

Growing up, he always enjoyed films but until he went to university he had no intention of working in the field of directing.

He began as a third assistant director in Aussie films, and eventually worked his way up to first assistant director.

In 1999, he signed on as first assistant director for 'The Matrix'  (written by the Wachowski brothers) and worked on both sequels. He then continued working as Assistant Director for 'Star Wars: Attack of the Clones' (2002).

He's is best known for by his feature directorial debut in 2006 with the Wachowskis' screenplay, V for Vendetta, where again, he works with Natalie Portman.

His directing for V for Vendetta resulted in him being nominated for 'Most promising director' and 'Best dramatic presentation'  

He then went on to helm Ninja Assassin in 2009 followed by The Raven (2012),

 

 

Use of cutaways

The Kuleshov Effect is the idea that the cut away in a scene can change the meaning of a simple emotion. This helps viewers to derive a deeper meaning from a sequence of shots rather than just watching it and experiencing the expected emotion.

I have done this post to show how cutaways
can change how a scene is viewed.

The first cutaway can be used to show that the man is appreciating the view in front of him.

Whereas, the second use of cutaway can be used to show that he is attracted to the girl.

 

 

Age restrictions

In my opinion, our thriller should be rated a 15 due to the contents involved.

Although the BBFC does not cover any of the themes involved in our opening; such as:

" strong violence

frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***')
portrayals of sexual activity
strong verbal references to sex
sexual nudity
brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
discriminatory language or behaviour
drug taking"
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/what-classification/15

By these guidelines, our thriller wouldn't be classed as a 15, but because of the theme it includes (escapee mental institutional patient), we feel it would emotionally or mentally scar/frighten anyone under the age mentioned.

We also had to consider what we would include if we were to carry the film on, and in our opinion, we think a few of the above themes could potentially be involved.

Storyboard

This is the storyboard which we will keep referring back to during the filming process of our thriller film.

We feel that it allows us to stick to our originally story without going off track or changing the camera shots.

Ideas for our thriller opening

To begin with, we wanted to decide which location would be best for our thriller opening.
Our initial idea was for it to be set in the woods, as we thought this was an ideal setting for a thriller movie. This was also a convenient idea as we know places which we can film in. Rachael had suggested the forest near where she lives, however, there has been another which could be more suitable. We have decided to look at both locations and think about which would suit our film more.

This would be our ideal location for our film as it gives off quite an eerie atmosphere.

In our film, we wanted the audience to feel relatively tense throughout it all. Due to this, we have decided on what we feel would be a good storyline.
We have chosen to have a girl dressed in a white night gown so she looks like she has escaped a mental institution, our idea is to have her stood behind a tree whilst another girl is walking on her usual route home. There are a couple of ideas we have on how to make the movie exciting, one of them is to have the escapee and the other girl stood face to face and the camera would just black out and there would be a ringing in the background as the credits roll, the other was to have the camera zoom into her eye as if it was a flashback and have her at the police station trying to get her attention and then the credits.

Searching for locations

This was our initial idea for where our opening sequence should be shot.
We originally thought of this because it has the pond which would have been ideal for our movie.



However, we realised that this was not the best location for our movie because there weren't enough trees to match the amount we feel we need.

The main reason we chose not to use this location was because it was too empty and our film requires it to be over crowded with trees.

Audience

The 'Uses and gratifications' model suggests audiences watch certain things for a various number of reasons.
Diversion- To escape from everyday life.
Personal identity- To create their own identity from characters or celebrities in media text. Entertainment- As a mean of relaxation, enjoyment and emotional release. Purely watched for the 'fun' of the experience.
Surveillance- To gain information and knowledge.
Personal relationships- Use the media text for emotional and other interaction, for example, substituting soap opera's for family life.

Three theories I now know are: identification and sensitisation, cultivation and reception. The identification and sensitisation theory is split into two parts;
Identification: The idea that if you see a reflection of yourself in a character, you are more likely to change your behaviour.
Sensitisation: if you recognise something that has happened to you from a film/source of media, you are more aware and likely to do something about it.

Cultivation: a general idea that if something is seen enough in TV programmes and movies, it is more acceptable or understandable if it happens in real life.

Reception: a readers response to something. For example, if the readers share a cultural background, they will interpret the text in a similar way.

Textual analysis of Se7en

Conventions of a thriller movie

What is a thriller?
They can be covered into supernatural, horror, suspense, they set either a sinister or scary atmosphere.
Literature, film, gaming and television, it includes numerous, and occasionally overlapping sub-genres.

What should be involved in a thriller?
Fast paced, frequent action, and resourceful heroes.
There are other literary devices which should be included to a successful thriller; such as: suspense, red herrings and cliff-hangers.

Different types of thrillers.
There are many sub-genres of thriller films. For example:

Spy thrillers- Spy thrillers of often linked to the government in some way, films which can come under the 'spy thriller' are: James Bond and the Bourne series.
Political thrillers- Usually based or inspired by true events. One example of this is 'Olympus Has Fallen'
Conspiracy thrillers- hero confronts the powerful group of enemies whose true extent and power only they recognise.
Military thrillers- contain fighting in war etc. Saving Private Ryan for example.
Medical thrillers- The hero is usually a  physician who fights corrupt drug companies or colleges involved in unethical experiments.
Forensic thrillers- Often has the hero as a forensic scientist who have their lives put in risk because of an unsolved crime.
Psychological thrillers- in which conflict between main characters is mental and emotional rather than psychical
Horror thrillers- Conflict between main characters is mental emotional physical etc.

Characteristics of a thriller movie
A thriller movie is identified by the structure of their plot. They are often overlapped with mystery or crime stories.
Usually they build a climax to make the audience feel connected to the characters and feel different type of emotions.

Foreign cities, deserts, churches, subways, airports, Polar Regions or high seas, or even the woods, are usually the main settings for a thriller film.

Barthes Narrative Codes

Roland Barthes created 5 narrative codes, which are:


Action code- This is when the audience will 'presume' the next logical step of the actor. For e.g. Packing a suitcase- the next logical step would be to see them leave to go on a trip/holiday/leave to somewhere else.

Mystery code/Enigma code- This is where the audience is meant to think if they carry on watching they will be shown the answer to something, for e.g. seeing body parts of a 'killer' throughout the film and at the end revealing their full faces etc.

The semic code- This is where things have symbols for things for e.g. garlic hanging from the walls would represent a vampire being around or near their house. |

The cultural code- This is used to make sense of the cultural/social side of the character. In James Bond films there would be Aston Martins and Martini's showing his wealth etc.

Code of opposites- This is Binary Opposites, black v white, hot v cold, male v female etc.

In our preliminary piece, we used three of the above codes: Action code, cultural code and code of opposites.

The action code that was used was when Rachael walked up to the door, implying that she was going to walk through it, as this was the 'next logical step'.

The cultural code which we included was hinting that we were English, as it was cloudy it showed the typical weather in England, we are white showing our ethnicity, we spoke with a British accent and wore stereotypical western clothes.

Code of opposites was used when Charlotte and Rachael were talking on the stairs, Charlotte was in a dark blue colour whereas Rachael was in a light pink showing the contrast of good and evil.

Analysing a TV drama

AS media preliminary piece

Here was our preliminary piece task

Storyboard

This is the storyboard which gave us the basic story to our preliminary piece.
Although some of the shots have been slightly altered, for example the last shot has been changed  a little to what we actually did, this was because, we thought it was more effective to have a shot of the other persons face than the distraught person as it leaves the audience wanting more and being left on a cliff-hanger. We felt that the final range of shots we decided to use were useful in giving a detailed understanding of our preliminary task. I believe that our storyboard was useful as we kept referring back to it whilst filming to either alter or double check our preliminary task was exactly the way we wanted it to be.

Preliminary task

For our preliminary task, we have been  asked to create a short video of a person entering a room and having a conversation with someone else. In this video we will have to include different camera angle shots such as the 180-degree rule and shot/reverse shot. Hopefully by the end of this, we will be able to build our experience using the equipment, editing and how to successfully create a short opening to a film.

Angle shots

This is a point of view shot, this shows what the other character can see and how they feel based on the facial expression of the person they are looking at.



This shot is known as the establishing shot, is shows where the scene is set.


When two people are seen in this shot, it is known as a two shot.

Three angle shots:




This shot is an extreme close up, it is called and extreme because it focusses on what section the body.