Cape fear

In the film cape fear which was made in 1962, there are many conventions that are used and also i asked myself many questions about the clip such as:

• What is meant by Cape Fear?
• When the man is walking, why is he so confident and where is he walking to?
• Who is the man?
• When the man is walking, why is he walking with such confidence?
• Why is he being released from prison?

There are many conventions that make this a thriller. For example the opening half of the clip is in black and white and the writing over the top is in white. There are organs playing over the top and there is slow tempo music playing over the top which builds up tension and something scary or something bad is about to happen. Also the man is smoking a cigar whilst casually walking into a building. Also he is in prison and the policeman comes in then he walks out of prison. The black and white effect gives this a spooky and creepy atmosphere.

There are also many camera shots used. There is a long shot of the cars driving past and there is also a long shot of the town they are in which is very crowded and busy. There is a close up of the mans face at the end of the film which shows he is about to do something. Panning shots are also used throughout the film aswell.

Audience Questionaire

Name: Darren Powell

Age: 25

Gender: Male

Favourite film genre: Horror

Favourite thriller film: Sixth sense

Name: Kelly Powell
Age: 26
Gender: Female
Favourite film genre: Comedy
Favourite thriller film: The godfather

Name: George Tribe

Age: 17

Gender: Male

Favourite film genre: Horror

Favourite thriller film: The dark night

Name: David Tuck

Age: 45

Gender:

Favourite film genre: Action

Favourite thriller film: Avatar

Name: Casey McCabe

Age: 16

Gender: Male

Favourite film genre: Comedy

Favourite thriller film: se7en

Name: Sam King

Age: 18

Gender: Male

Favourite film genre: Adventure

Favourite thriller film: Fight club

Name: Paul Smedley

Age: 34

Gender: Male

Favourite film genre: Comedy

Favourite thriller film: Alien

Name: Sarah Hill

Age: 17

Gender: Female

Favourite film genre: Comedy

Favourite thriller film: Terminator

Conventions of a thriller

There are many conventions in a thriller which make it a thriller movie. There are a number of clues given to make the viewer constantly ask questions about what has happened, or what is happening. These are some of the conventions of a successful thriller film

• Fast tempo music which - builds up tension
• Things that make you jump
• Usually there is one victimised character
• Violent and fighting scenes
• Usually dark/night time
• Violence
• Tension is built up
• shock to viewer
• Screams from the movie
• Misty and spooky scenes
• Chase and fight scenes
• Complicated storylines
• Unexpected things occur

Horror films are different from thriller films. There are many things which make these two different from each other.

Thriller films:

• Make the viewer ask questions
• More safisticated
• Aimed for older people ( above 20 )

Horror films:

• See people getting killed
• More violence is shown
• Aimed for younger people and teenagers

Memento, 15

Memento is a thriller film rated 15 and made by Nolan.

There is many conventions in this film which make it a thriller film and not a horror film as violent things happen which we cannot see and we can only get clues as to why this happened such as:

• Neagtive effects at the start
• close up of someone holding a photograph
• slow but loud continuous depressing music
• black out when the man gets shot
• violence straight away
• tension is built up by the music
• shock when he got hit

There is also:

• sound of police sirens, show violence, but we cant see it happening
• depressing music
• close up of someone holding a photograph with blood on
• blood on mans face with a gun in his hand
• black out when the man gets shot
• close up of the man laying on the floor
• blood on the man laying on the floor
• blood on the floor, but we do not see how it gets there which shows it is a thriller and not a horror
• close up of blood dripping down a wall shows violence
• the film shows clips of what has already happened pr what hasnt happened to make the viewer want to carry on watching

Plans , Costumes and Places

This is the park where we will be filming our opening sequence. The dark tree's give this a good effect and makes it feel spooky for the viewer. Also the park looks very open, which shows that the victim is in the middle of knowhere and nobody is about when he gets murdered.


Plans:
We are going to film in the school daisy, which is a open park. This has lots of trees and a train track in the background, giving the film a creepy look and effect.
The film will also be filmed in a alley and in quiet roads, to show the victims pathway to his death and the quiet roads he is walking in.

Costumes:
Murderer: Dark clothes, and a black coat.
Victim: Normal everyday sixth form clothes such as black trousers and shoes and a jacket

Places we are filming:
In school classroom
School Daisy
Forrests
Fields

Our plot synopsis

In our thriller movie me and my group come up with our final idea. This idea was created by all of the group.

At the beginning of our opening thriller film there is a number of shots which are varied of Casey leaving his house and walking towards the park. This will then be followed by Casey walking into a park and walking towards the murderer. The murderer is walking towards Casey and this is then followed by Casey on the floor after being murdered, with blood on him and the floor. The murderer then runs away down the main road and the way the camera is held shows the viewer that he is being chased.

Thriller Plans ( locations )

I chose this because we have a scene where we are being chased by the police and we can use this road to do the chase as the setting in appropriate. This is a local main road and if we have cars in the background this would be a good effect and successful to use.


This is a picture of Morden park. I am going to use the main scene of the opening movie in this park because our man being chased will run into the park to try and hide. When the man gets caught and stabbed to death, he will be laying here.

Thriller movie planning

My group for the thriller movie is me casey and danielle. We come up with many ideas such as

• Revenge
• Flashbacks
• Murder
• Relationships

In our thriller movie we come up with the idea of a flashback. For our idea we planned that the first shot is to be a close up of one of us laying on the floor looking like they have been murdered. We was thinking about having this with many close ups such as the

• room he has been murdered in
• the weapon used to murder him
• the people/[person who murdered him
• the things and clues around him

Our main idea for this would be a bunch of photos that show him before he was murdered. We was thinking of a close up of somebody holding the photos and looking through him them before he was murdered but the end photo is one of him laying on the floor with blood on his face like the close up at the start. We will then have a flashback of all the things that have happened in his life to result into the murder and why he died. This will make him wake up. As this is the opening sequence we will then make the film look like the whole film is about revenge on the character who murdered them. This will be the opening sequence of our film as it will leave a good cliffhanger to end it as people would want to carry on watching the film to see what happens next.

What i did last lesson

Last lesson i learnt about the mark sceme of the media exam.
Breif: The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of 2 minutes.

Also we got a mark scheme which i am aiming for a level 4 in which is excellent, and most people in the class will be aiming for this to.
There are 3 parts of the mark scheme including Research and Planning, Practical work and Evaluation.In lessons at the moment we are currently focusing on the Research and planning section.

In the lesson we also learnt about the conventions of a Thriller movie which included.

- Shock tactics
- Strange and tension building music
- Tension throughout
- Jumping
- Ask questions
- More sophisticated/intelligent characters
- dark (night time)
- Violence
- Unexpected
- Scream sound effects
- Mist/fog
- Split personality
- Complicated
- Crime

Towards the end of the lesson we started to watch a film called Memento, which was a American film made by Nolan in 2000 and was rated a 15.
I started to look out for the thriller conventions and many of them were present. For example at the start of the music was eerie and creepy music, which built up tension for the viewer and made me want to carry on watching the film. Also there was violence almost straight away as one character murdered another but we could not see this. This leads on to what we also did in the lesson which was comparing a thriller movie with a horror movie.

We learnt that a Thriller is more safisticated, people ask themselves questions about the film, they are aimed for more older people and thrillers dont show an actually character being killed.

We also learnt that in a horror you see people get killed or murdered and that horrors are aimed for younger people and teenagers.

In the future i will now know the difference between a thriller and a horror.

WWW, EBI

WWW: Our continuity task was successful in the filming and editing. We had to improvise our filming at one point as one of our group members was absent. However we was successful with that as we filmed everything we were supposed to. We used shots successfully in our short film and tried to use each shot type. Our editing also went well because our film showed continuity throughout as each shot was flowed into another shot.
EBI: Our peice would of been even better if we stuck to our plan. The idea we originally created was not what we decided to film as we feel we come up with a better idea. Also our film would of been even better if we added in more shot types. Due to one of our group members being absent we changed our idea to a more simple idea as there was only two of us and both of us had to be in the film. As our film was only 47 seconds we could of also made our film a bit longer and added in more interesteing shots and made the film intself more interesting.

Reflections on editing

When me and my group were editing our thriller we added in many things to make it look even better. We added in transitions and effects, but we tried to make it include continuity. We followed the rules we were given, for example we added in each shot we were asked to use. We used match on action shots, the 180 degree rule, eyeline match, and shot reverse shots. We also added in the title at the beginning which was " preliminary task " and our names. As continuity is important in the task, the Mac computers helped us make editing easier as we could add in many more things and cut and crop each shot to make our film show continuity.

Wallander ( Firewall,BBC )

Wallander is a thriller movie. We know this because of the conventions this movie. We know that Wallander is a thriller because:

• Eary music at the start of the movie.
• The blood is shown on the window, but we do not know how this got there.
• A man has been beaten up and looks lik he is about to die, as he is shaking and there is blood on him, however we do not see how this happens, which makes the viewer ask themselevs questions about how this happened.
• Tension is built by the slow music.

Feelings created:

• Nervous
• Uncomfortable
• Unsure
• Depressing

When watching the opening sequence of this movie i felt nervous as i was unsure about what was going to happen next. This made me feel uncomfortable and depressed as something bad happened and we dont know what is going to happen next.

At the start of Wallander we can see the sea and the camera is panning over the sea with the fields in the background, suggesting that this is set in the countryside. We can see the waves crashing and hear the waves hitting the shore. We can also hear the helicopter flying over the hills and fields. There is then a close up of two characters from behind walking away from somehting quickly. This makes us think something bad has happened or is aobut to happen. The camera then does a tracking shot of the two girls walking. We can hear these girls breathing heavily which also created a nervous feeling for the viewers. We then see blood on a window, which is believe to be a taxi and thw window of the taxi. Then we can see a man has been attacked as he is on injured and his eyes r flickering, suggesting death. Furthermore the following shot in a tracking shot of the two girls walking and breathing heavily and one of the girls face has cuts and blood on it, this is then followed by a close up of one of the girls carrying and then dropping a knife covered in blood. All these clues suggest that the girls have stabbed and murdered the man in the taxi.

The girls are wearing clothes which are not very smart and are ripped and look old. Also one of the girls has red in her hair suggesting that she is chavy and looks like a miserable character who has had a hard life. this is emphasised by her facial expressions.

This clip of these two girls shows them after they have stabbed the man in the taxi. This close up helps us see their facial expressions which shows that they are nervous and very scared about what has happened. Also the car is in the background with shows that the girls are the main characters and the main concentration in this shot.

reflections on filming

When filming our scene, our group added in many shots which showed continuity throughout the scene. We used a shot reverse shot to show two people talking in a conversation, we then changed the shot to a 180 degree rule, this shows continuity. Also in our clip we used some crops to make it look more realistic for the audience. For example we used school books, pens and some chairs. We filmed our piece in a media classroom.

Continuity Editing

Continuity editing is used to make the edits between shots unobtrusive as possible. This is why we do not notice editing most of the time as it seems natural. The shots appear to flow from one to another to show continuity.

There are 4 basic techniques of continuity editing such as:

• Master shot



• 180 degree rule



• Match on action



• Shot reverse shot

These are all shots which make continuity in a scene.




A master shot is a film recording of an entire dramatized scene, from start to finish, from an angle that keeps all the players in view. It is often a long shot and can sometimes perform a double function as an establishing shot.

Shot reverse Shot

Planning the sequence

In the last week in Media we have done many things in our preliminary task. Once we got into groups, we come up with storyboards on what each of us thought would be a good idea. We then put all the best ideas together to form the main scene of our task. As we started to film we had many ideas, but we filmed our idea we had had chosen. We filmed each shot twice as there may be some mistakes. In our second lesson of filming one person from our group was absent which meant we had to improvise and film with two people.

Task Set

In our group we were asked to create a short film and were given things we had to add in. We were asked to film somebody walking through a door, sitting down in a chair and having a conversation with someone else. However we had to add in many shots and shot types to make this more effective. Also each shot had to flow into another shot to show continuity. We showed continuity throughout the task which was set. For example when the person walked through the door we showed continuity as we changed from each shot as each item was in the same place and the flow of each shot was continued.