An Inspiration for a setting

Looking at different place around my local area, been looking into dark paths that seem to never end, also looking into forests and parks nearby, I've taken inspiration to where I want my opening to be set, I want the area to have a mystery to it that will intrigue the audience without even saying anything about it, for them to create puzzles in their head as to what is in the area we're looking at. A dark path could make the audience wonder what lies ahead, they may not want the characters to venture into the dark, because of what they think would be inside it, also with a forest, people are confused as to what they could find within a forest and anything could be in there. An area that someone has never been to is also a good place to set, if the audience have never been there then they won't know what to expect, therefore a place such as a space station would be a good place to set an opening, as let's face it, hardly anyone has ever visited one.

Movie opening idea

An idea I had for a movie would of been astronauts on a space station, and something invading the station and killing the people stranded there slowly one by one. The opening would be a ship docking into the space station, very slow with quiet slowly beated deep toned music, also with very low key lighting but with the key light being the sun, as they astronauts land their feet onto their new home for the next 3 months all is well as they make themselves comfortable with the atmosphere for the next few days, a creature that's unknown and unseen throughout the opening will be heard in vents of the movie, and you will hear that one of the astronauts' family would have been killed while he was up in space in only the first few days, making the main character upset as something big has been taken away from him, he has nothing to currently lose which will make the character strong through the course of the movie. Different sound effects will be dropping around when the alien has been heard but never seen. The opening consists of one quick death in an isolated room, where it's hard to see but you'll never see how he has been killed, the crew will not find the body floating around until later in the movie, most of the lighting of the opening will be low key with some high key points, the music will be slow non-diegetic sounds and also some diegetic music happily playing through the radio as they sit around and relax in the space station, completely unaware of the death of their friend. Until the main character finds him dead in the area he was killed in, no remorse will cover his face as this is nothing to him compared to what he has just heard regarding his family.

Six Feet Under opening analysis 

In the opening to Six Feet Under, you can hear straight away a happy tone of music with a bright but plain background, with a crow that flies overhead in the sky, the crow is used throughout the opening to symbolise death, so there are many different shorts of the crow, and the only time you see the full body of the bird is when it’s extremely far away from it, they use close ups and extreme close ups of the bird throughout the whole opening, they do this with nearly every other shot in the opening sequence, the fact that you don’t see a face fully in the opening with the close ups of different body parts or objects, can provoke mystery as people are going to be not able to see the full picture of what is going on, this will create a little puzzle in their head of them wanting to find out what is happening.

The whole way through the opening the lighting is of a high key lighting, but all extremely high key where you can see everything very clearly, although the music and lighting seem to enhance the feeling of something happy, all the scenes are used very clever to suggest death, such as when the death bed is being wheeled away with the camera, in the background it’s an extremely bright light with a silhouette inside it, symbolising passing over to the other side or “going into the light” this is commonly associated with death itself, also other things that can be suggested to symbolise part of the opening with death is, at the very first scene the camera pans down towards a tree full of leaves, and at the end it pans again to the same tree but the tree appears to be dead, this could also be indicating the circle of life as the opening starts and finishes with a very similar scene.

The items used throughout are all do relate to death, the person washing his hands with water can represent a surgeon washing before performing, or a murdered washing blood away from killing their victim, also when the liquid that is inserted into dead bodies is being poured, giving you an obvious example that someone has died, further leading onto the scene where the people are carrying the coffin in the graveyard. All of these items and places being used show the audience without thinking that this is clearly to do with someone dying, a murder perhaps, but all ending with certain death which explains the title of Six Feet Under.

The close up and long shot angles used, also a wide shot with one or two extreme close ups used, with the text of the producers and characters in the show popping completely in time with the music, on beat. An on beat piece of music shows that something is meant to be happy, compared to an offbeat track with usually indicated fear. The music as a whole is very contrapuntal with the footage being shown. The text sometimes follows the scenes, such as when the liquid is dropping the titles follow it all the way down, this engages the audience more because they have to follow what is being shown to them.

The music starts off being slow and builds up throughout the opening, which then calms down and becomes slower again, with less texture of instruments making it represent the concept of the circle of life again, where it starts slow and ends slow. The music completely stops/becomes very quiet when the scene where the fully alive and well flowers come up, and they track the speed up the flowers death, flowers are considered to be beautiful and representational to health as they are a gift when someone is in hospital, but to see them die very quickly on screen gives them a completely different meaning to the audience, instead of them being related to happiness and health they are related to death and decaying, just like the opening progressively shows.

Disturbia

To make a thriller, something important is to open the movie with some form of action scene which Disturbia does very well, starting off with a slow tranquil opening in a brightly coloured area, being paced out to an action scene, unexpected by the audience in the movie there’s a quick car crash which leaves the audience in question seeing if the father of the teenager is alive or not, another important aspect of the movie is to keep the views wondering, not knowing if everything is okay, and in this scene, the point in which the dad has been wounded makes them curious if he’s okay or not. Sadly the father dies during the car crash, leaving the boy desolated, this furthermore carries on to another important part of making a thriller movie what it is. To make the main character in the movie miserable or to take something away from them that is important and in this case it’s his dad, after a court hearing you can see that he is extremely upset and grumpy, then his freedom is slowly taken away by being put under house arrest which also makes him unhappy, slowly decreasing the characters moods.

                There’s a massive change in the character from the start of the movie, which is vital so the character doesn’t become boring through the movie, from being upset, angry, depressed or grumpy from the beginning of the movie, he soon meets a girl which certainly changes his mood from the opening, which is making him happy and excited through the course of the movie, also somewhat stalking her from the beginning as he is clearly interested, through the movie this feeling increases and you can see him becoming more nervous as the movie progresses around this girl, gradually increasing his mood as she does little things that take away his heart. On a news report through the movie it states that “A blue mustang with a dent on the front was involved in a crime” later in the night you see outside the window next door to the house there’s a man with a blue mustang with a dent on the front pulling into the drive, this makes the audience think and wonder about the mysterious man next door, if they pay attention to the small details through the film. Slight jumps and scares are important throughout the movie, as it becomes tense about the man in his house, the characters mother grabs his shoulder and both the characters jump, making the audience snap out of concentration on the man’s car, which disappears when the screen next looks towards that general direction, using the enigma code by leaving one of the puzzles unsolved, this is confused even more when you next see the car during the next day, but you can see that there is no dent, leaving the audience confused as to what happened to the dent that had been imprinted upon the car.

                Building tension then releasing it happens a lot during a thriller film, that is used in order to thrill you just like the genre suggests, as the boy looks through the gap in the fence through to the man with the blue mustangs house, the character comes across angry and scary as he asks questions in the general direction of the boy, getting slowly closer and building a lot of tension in the audiences mind, which is then changed and the tension is dropped when the man proceeds to pick up a small animal with care, and he is changed to be seen as kind and affectionate, which switches the audiences mind very quickly. At some points the tension builds up and then there is an anticlimax, such as one scene there is a point where the man being accused in the heads of the audience as the supposed “killer”, without any further actions in the movie proving it, he is seen with a knife going near a woman he has just bought into his house and the extreme close ups of the object unnerve the audience and make them feel as if something terrible is to happen, which then all that happens it the man takes off the price tag from the woman’s dress, so the tension is dropped. From earlier in the film where the mysterious stranger is seen with the knife, you can see (again with extreme close ups to build more tension) him running towards her and her screaming in the house which then the attention is drawn away, making the audience more scared as they cannot fully see what is happening, to add more tension onto that, the man appears staring at the camera used to look into the event, as if he has committed a crime which convinces the audience of their questions, only for the woman to calmly leave the house and to walk back into her car and leave, dropping all our thoughts.

                The movie as a whole is paced out, from an action scene at the beginning to slowly revealing a storyline, as at the beginning half of the movie it seems to mainly be happy and ordinary, just like most lives, then it slowly creeps out to be unnerving and somewhat scary. Also an important part of a thriller movie is to make the movie from the perspective of the underdog, as the boy has lost everything, his family and his freedom, he is clearly the underdog in this state, and the mysterious man is most oppressor or the stronger character in the movie. The underdog in a thriller must be the man that prevails and goes forward to achieve a goal that from the movie seems to be nearly impossible yet they will always be able to succeed. From a point in the movie the mysterious man appears in the house, with the underdog afraid due to his change of character throughout the movie, the mysterious man is extremely friendly with the underdogs mother and she is the same with him which begins to create tension without a scene that is supposed to be a regular scene, this builds up as the man getting close the his mother which makes the audience again wonder if what is happening is safe, or if everything is normal? Using the whole storyline as the enigma code, confused as to if this man is actually doing anything wrong or it’s just our thoughts convincing us that he is indeed a killer.

                Through the anticlimaxes in the whole of the movie, towards the end of the movie there is a scene that completely unlocks the puzzles being created throughout the whole film and lets the audience realise that this man is indeed actually the killer that we all concluded to ourselves so long ago. As the underdog is being pushed down and secluded through emotions and by the man he fears, it seems like all is at an end, all the people that could possibly help have been taken and his mother is no longer safe, yet to make the thriller complete, the main character must overcome all the obstacles that stand before them. At the end of this movie the underdog does rise up beyond all the odds that suggest that he won’t and that he will fail, the whole of the last scene is tense as all the over scenes in the movie would have built up to the last climax. Creating an enclosed and scared atmosphere with dark lighting during tense moments, the underdog is trapped between the floor boards attempting to break his way through. Chasing is a key element in a thriller movie, being chased or the feeling of being chased makes the body tense up and have the burning feeling in the back of the neck that creates the atmosphere that you are being watched or that you can feel the characters in the movie are being watched or followed by the oppressor, the underdog in this movie is stuck in the murderers house which would unnerve you throughout the whole scene. As all the climaxes have an anticlimax it makes the audience think very hard towards the fact that they might just not believe what their own mind is thinking. With lots of bumps of tense moments, to calm and happy moments, scary scenes and a tonne of emotion, this makes a thriller and uses the enigma code to its finest, also using all these aspects to make a good storyline. Keep the audience wondering.

Source of Inspiration #2

While watching movies varying from different genres, I seem to notice the the "dumber" more unintelligent characters seem the be the young blonde female actresses in the movies, obviously acting stupid for their part, this has become somewhat a stereotype where if a girl is blonde she's already judged as being less intelligent, but this is also this is accompanied with the stereotype that they are also attractive. I thought that for my movie, the females that would be killed throughout my film would be young and blonde, to fit the stereotypes and to also make it seem more obvious that something is going to happen with them. As blonde is also a bright colour, making a blonde female wearing white clothing seem more happy and cheerful, the exact opposite of what I want my movie to be

About my Thriller

The setting of a thriller movie can be anywhere whatsoever! It can be held in a dark area or a house, a lightened area or anything, in my view, a thriller should hold things with mystery behind them, where ever the movie is set, be a forest or a house in fact, there has to be a certain mystery behind that area, a little secret that is kept within the housing or within the forest, something that someone doesn't know abouut but wants to find out.

The theme of my movie is a simple girl taking a quiet gentle jog through the forest when the audience is set to believe that she is being watching, and the main theme is that a man has been taking women and killing them throughout the years he has been living there, you can see that he is familiar with the way he does his killings and he thinks about what will happen after, a silent killer that slowly takes away his victims, but only from certain families, the audience must figure out the rest.
With the ideology in my thriller, I see all as equal, although the antagonist in the movie is killing only the females, towards the end of the movie the women strike back and kill the antagonist, provoking women’s power and that men and women are equal a like. I've excluded racism but not certainly using characters that die in a specific religion, ethnic group, or anything other in that matter.
The women targeted in the movie are young blonde women and girls from rich families, as they are seen as stereotypical characters to be killed, that do nothing for themselves and get their families to fund and pay for everything, the fact that they’re young and blonde is decided by the antagonist, a young blonde actress that would be susceptible would be Anna-Sophia Robb, and other actresses such as Willa Ford. Tobin Bell, an older actor that can clearly have a past that’s judged by the audience. The characters will be innocent yet spoiled and snobbish young blonde girls, and an older man who can be signified as creepy and scary to be around. Also Nicholas Cage as a man taken under the antagonists control that suggests things to the girls running past.

The story and events of this movie are unfolded by the actions taken of the antagonist. The scenes shot and the camera angles will show what is unfolded, without an over use of dialog. Different camera angles will be seen in different ways, whereas some of the POV shots can make the audience seem uneasy, and some shots could make them seem comfortable watching it, creating different effects with different camera shots.

The special effects will involve lightening and dampening of colours in different areas, some and most will be low key and high key lighting. The sound and music also will be added to the effects, with the high key lighting the music will be happy and bright, as it should seem, but even with high key lightening, if the music changes then it completely changes the outlook of what the audience perceive, most the of the music will have a sinister sound throughout the course of the movie.

The iconography is important, the items we will use could be things such as an axe in the wood, with the correct camera angles and sounds it could make the audience have different feelings towards the object that is there, the clothing worn and the items held and used by the actors and actresses will alter the perceptions of the audience.

The soundtrack that inspired me: Necrotizing

Something that inspires me to create a thriller is in fact a soundtrack I heard over 2 years ago, an opening to Whitechapel's album "The Somatic Defilement", this song is titled "Necrotizing". The track is an instrumental that has been textured with creepy and sinister sounds that define the track, it opens with what sounds like high pitched sirens and drilling sounds, multiple different drills setting it to be clustered with no fixed beat, which makes things unnerving to hear. This makes me sum up a thriller film, to be creepy and scary for the audience, so this soundtrack fits very well. It also has a distorted voice, a voice that has been lowered while explaining something somewhat disturbing, this is also reminding me of a thriller film that has anticlimaxes with and again to make someone seem uneasy while watching the movie when a tense moment arrives. The soundtrack builds up from nothing into a thick texture of sounds, much like a scene in a thriller film that quickly or slowly builds up tension in a scene that can scare the audience, which the distorted voice helps to do to all the listeners of the sound track. The voice is confusing as we aren't completely sure why he is saying what he is saying, we can question ourselves to why and come up to many different conclusions but not necessarily being right. The puzzle is unanswered, which in a thriller film the enigma code is for man different puzzles in the film, and on the soundtrack the voice recreates this in a way. In a thriller movie however the enigma code is usually answered, and this code in the soundtrack may also be answered if the album is fully listened to, as the opening in a thriller movies starts the code, the opening in this album does the same. 

  Shawshank Redemption 

I quickly noted down the times and what happened during them, what sounds I could hear, what I could see, where the titles came in, the angles that the camera pan at, what camera angles that are there. What time the parts finish and what time they start. So I could easily plot down my timeline with ease and without making a mistake, reducing the time it would take me.

I plotted down a timeline where I put all of the times of things that happen during the opening scene. I used the black lines to indicate the times of where things happened, (the longer the line, the longer the action, and the shorter the line, the longer the action) some where rather long compared to others being short, where the titles that popped up during the opening scene came in for a short time, and some camera angles stayed for a long time. I plotted down the times so it's easier to understand on the timeline itself, with lines indicating what each of the black marks represent.

In a House, In a Heartbeat

This track starts off very quiet, from no noise whatsoever that slowly increases. The only instrument to start off with is a piano playing in high pitched notes, a repetitive pattern also. A very quiet and hard to hear bass tone creeps into the tract moments before another layer is added, this layer is an acoustic guitar, all the instruments are playing in time with each other and on beat but after 0:32 the sound is completely stopped and halted to a silence. The acoustic guitar and the piano come back in but this time with an electric guitar playing on an acoustic setting, playing lead over the top of it, also as it comes back into the music a ghostly sound occurs but then fades out after a few seconds, you can also notice soon after that a drum beat has come in, with again, all the instruments in time with each other. The texture is somewhat thick with a reasonable amount of layers of instruments, this is played repetitively and the ghostly sound occurs at points over the track to slowly build up the tension in the music. After 1:49 the drum beats come in with a more aggressive tone, with more notes being played harder and at the same time as this, the ghost-like noises are constant and playing throughout the track, this raises the level of volume that the other instruments are playing at, but only slightly. This is played repeatedly until 2:15 when all the instruments play slightly louder again and the drums become even more violent. Another layer of electric guitar is added with chords in minor positions to help increase the volume and make the sounds more constant and the chord shape makes it somewhat more saddening/scary yet effective, again this is repeated until another point. At 2:40 another guitar is added making the texture even more slightly thicker, this guitar has a lot of distortion on top of its sound, making it sounds like cracks to add a creepy effect, and also with the added instrument the sound volume has increased again, this is all repeated as the climax of the song, where at 3:30 all is halted to a complete silence again. A piano playing unnerving notes in sequence to each other making the listening uneasy, these notes are also cleverly played with a very, very slight tempo change between them, so small that it’s hardly noticeable, but this makes the notes of the high pitched piano unbalanced and offbeat to each other with effects the sounding, making it seemingly scary.

Preliminary task

The Shining, opening credits review

The Shining

At the opening of the movie “The Shining” a loud slow soundtrack begins to play, with a lot of pausing on a low noted track, making that atmosphere of the area this is set, more creepy than normal, with a high and wide shot on the camera to open at the camera swoops into the mountainous area above the water at a high speed. The camera then beings to go onto a bird’s eye view of the car in a woodland area, this provokes the feeling of being isolated and abandoned as the shot is taken at an extremely long distance from the car showing most of the surround area and giving the viewer more of a prospective of just how large the area is and just how alone the car is. The car continues its journey around the mountainous area overcoming different scenery as it travels, still completely alone and isolated, the music later brings in strings being plucked and distorted over the thumbing low bass sound to add a creepy effect.

                If the soundtrack was completely different, and then to be added to the movie scenes then it would give the viewer and completely different outlook on the whole scene. For instance, if the music was a happy upbeat tone then the connotative of the viewers imagination would think that it’s a family on a road trip towards a holiday, but the soundtrack being creepy and uncomfortable makes you believe that at the end of this journey something may happen, and makes the audiences mind unclear of where they are heading, this also created the questions of, who is in the car? Where are they going? What will happen to the people? Before the movie has started the audience has been engaged with thoughts about the lonely car in the vast mountainous area.

                 Many long shots are used around the car to show the audience where the car is heading to and to give them a clearer mind of what is going to happen, although with this movie the car is heading into what seems like more nothingness, an endless journey into the unknown which again keeps the viewers confusion of where they are heading to and why they are going there, further leading onto the character development being created in the imagination of the audience without even seeing a single character as of yet. The titles emerge as you draw closer to the car, and they scroll up the screen in a brightly coloured font which can make the background seem darker than it is, they move at a constant speed relatively fast up the screen, maybe provoking the speed of the car and the views patients in wanting to know what will happen next, keeping it fast paced.

                As the camera comes off the car and into the forest where there are no signs of life creating a more mysterious setting, the music comes in louder with drowned out screaming, more effects on the string noises and more creepy sounds to make the viewer more uncomfortable, this attempts and succeeds to make the atmosphere more intense and frightening as now all you can see is lonesome wilderness and odd sounding musical tracks making the audience again feel uneasy, before hand it also goes into a close up of the car, giving hope to the audience in that one of their many questions will be answered. The credits when the title come up also slow down as it goes off the focal point of the car making the audience concentrate more of the credits rolling past. Although all the lighting in the scenes are bright, it also creates an area of mystery in what is going on and why at this time of day? Why so alone in such a big area at a supposed busy time of day?

                The loud thumping noise comes back in when the music dies down a slight bit and the car comes back onto the screen, again making if come back from being frightening and scary to being mysterious, after it quickly moves onto a huge building that is in the middle of nowhere, still strongly enforcing some of the audiences questions, and colours and lighting of the house look old and dark which can again make the building seem like a panicky area. You can gain some of the story line by denoting the house, as being a big manor that the people are clearly driving towards but in a connoting way, you may wonder that is this some form of ritual place? The music may suggest and the emptiness of the roads from the opening, but with a densely populated area in by the large dark building.

WELCOME

I just read Sam Allen's blog and I promise you I won't be as cheesy as him :') I'm looking forward to finally be able to create sequences on a screen and just learn about how everything in media industry works, and I'm especially looking forward to learning all the camera angles and how they create different effects!