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.