Other films we liked and disliked

Liked Taken

 

 

We liked the choice of soundtrack to create a sense of suspense and tension. Also the plot and narrative which created a lot of enigmas, with the sharp editing to how quickly the scenes change, especially in the scenes of racing and fighting, this puts the audience at the edge of their seats expecting the unexpected.


Disliked
Reservoir Dogs

We disliked reservoir dogs as we felt the scenes were quite simple with a lack of realism which created boredom and therefore we wasn't interested in watching the full trailer.

The Silence of the Lambs Analysis

The silence of the lambs

The narrative of this film is, chronological. There are four main enigmas; which keeps the audience 'hooked', as it makes them ask questions as to what is happening in that scene. At the start of the opening the setting it very dull and mysterious. It  begins with a long shot of a woman running, consequently straight away we have the enigma code  ‘why is she running?’ and ‘who is she?’ it isn’t till shortly after until the action codes reveals information about her. 

 Expositional dialogue and props were used in the opening sequence; this is when a piece of dialogue or prop is said or used to expose a piece of information to the audience that they need to know. This happens when an assumed colleague shouts “Starling!” we are introduced to this female character by her second name, Starling. This makes the film seem more realistic for the audience. Also, an expositional prop is used to show who these characters work for. Consequently a mid-shot is used when the female is first introduced; which shows the small writing on her jumper that says 'FBI', also the colleague of Starling is wearing an FBI hat, we now know that they both work for the FBI. This piece of information did not need to be verbalised.  This moves the narrative along quickly and easily.

There is a shot of the FBI’s motto on signs in the police training ground; this just reinforces the location of the characters and the main starting point for the narrative of the story.On the way in, Starling is high-fived by a female character, and she greets her with her first name, Clarice; this piece of expositional dialogue shows that she is accepted by others. Although, a following shot shows that maybe she doesn't fit the success criteria as she is a lot shorter than the other characters in the shot, it may suggest that she is less able or at a disadvantage compared to the others due to all the characters being male may also suggest that it may be unusual for a woman to work in that occupation. The proximity of the characters may suggest that even though they're psychically close, they're worlds apart in ability. Clarice is placed in the middle of the shot to show that she is the main character and that full attention should be completely be on her.  She is also wearing a different colour which makes her stand out even more.

Clarice's facial expression is very scared when she gets to the entrance; a close up is used to show this. You can see that she looks very pale, this could be due to being scared of what she's about to unravel within her encounter with Hannibal. The lack of make-up shows that she doesn't really care too much about her appearance and she is purely there for work purposes, despite the male attention she gets.

When Clarice goes to see Hannibal, she enters the safety precaution  of the extra gate, we then she a shot of one of the police officers on the outside looking in on her. This emphasises she is alone and vulnerable, however she is protected. As the camera tracks her going down the cell block, we meet an eyeline match; where the first cell mate is pushed against the bars trying to grab Clarice, this shows an old fashioned 'traditional' cell. It is almost dungeon like, very empty and dark. As Clarice walks to the chair, we can see that the main focal point is on the chair, a spotlight is used to emphasise the end of her  journey down the cells. This also juxtaposes with the normality, as we usually associate a spotlighted chair with being the interviewee, however in this case Clarice is in control, although she doesn't feel it.

Animatic

Throughout our animatic we used a variety of different transitions, the main one we chose to use was cross dissolve, but we also used transitions such as fade to black. We used cross dissolve to move from scene to scene smoothly without any jerks. We also used fade to black to change it in order to give variety.

In the first scene of our thriller we used an establishing shot to show an unknown location, which then cuts to a POV shot of a young girl (who could be seen to be the victim) leave that location.We chose to have the location and the identity of the young girl unknown in order to create suspense and mystery for out target audience.

Directors that have influenced me

Directors that have influenced me…

Steven Spielberg is an American director whom is undoubtedly one of the most influential film personalities in the history of film making, he is one of Hollywood's best known directors and is one of the wealthiest film makers in the world. Spielberg has countless credits to his name as a producer, director and a writer.

Born on December 18th 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Spielberg was an amateur film maker as a child. He went on to become enormously successful and an Academy award winning director of films such as Schindler's list, the colour purple and E.T. In 1994 he co found the film studio Dreamworks SKG, which was soon later purchased by Paramount in 2005. His films have explored primeval fears, in films such as Jaws(1995), or expressed childlike wonders at the marvels of this world and beyond, as in Close Encounters of the Third King (1977) and ET(1982). Spielberg has also tackled literary adaptations to films like The Colour Purple(1985).  Spielberg is also well known for his impressive historical films, Schindler's List(1993), which won seven
Academy awards, including Spielberg's first win as the best director.

As a director Spielberg was a massive influence as he is seen to be one of the best directors of all time, which is shown throughout his impressive work. I have watched several of his films enjoying every one making me watch more and more of his exciting work as he never fails to deliver.

David Yates is an English film maker who has directed feature films, short films and TV productions. He rose to the mainstream after directing the final four films from Harry Potter. His work on the series brought him major recognition and commercial success. Yates' following projects include; Tyrant(2014) and Tarzan(2016).

Early in his career Yates directed a variety of short films, where he eventually became television director including the State of play(2003), which he won the directors Guild of Great Britain Award. Yates is also a founding member of Directors UK, he has also had a close relationship with the Warner Bros as a director/producer.

Yates has been an influential participant as he has directed such interesting and intense films such as Harry Potter which is one of the most popular films world wide.

Martin Scorsese is an American director, producer, screen writer, actor and film historian. Scorsese is regarded as one of the most significant and influential film makers in cinema history as he is part of the new Hollywood wave of filmmaking. In 1990 he was the founder of the film foundation. His work consists of Shutter island, Boardwalk empire, Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street, The 50 Year Argument and Untitled HBO Rock n Roll project. Scorsese's most famous work addresses themes such as Italian-American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, modern crime and gang conflict. 

With eight director nominations to date, he is the most living nominated director. Since the epic historical drama Gangs of New York(2002), he is also well known for his collaborations with very popular actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio. 

Scorsese has influenced me in my work as he explores many different themes that link well will thrillers.

Rough Cut and Audience Feedback

This is our rough cut for our opening. When making this a large amount of our filming was seen to be in slow motion, as this represented the theme of the opening 'stalking', this emphasizes how stalking is done over a long period of time, as the stalker wants to gather information on the victim, getting to know their daily life routine. A variety if shots were also used to film props such as a knife, which we decided to take out as we felt this would give to much of the storyline away. To begin we used an establishing shot as this shows the setting and environment the stalker and victim would be seen in creating a sense of realism. However i filmed two different locations and chose to use the second location as the quality of the setting and shot were much better than the first, as the first was seen to be too short and too blurry. In the establishing shot we also tried to try and include half of the street in order to set the scene and allow the audience into clues, however we had to cut down the clip as we felt as if it dragged and would of made the audience lose concentration and become bored.

In our rough cut we planned to use a close up image of a knife. However we chose to take this out of our opening as we felt the storyline would have been given away. Also the shot would have shown a sense of physical violence which is not the theme of our opening, and we therefore didn't want to take the focus away from the original story line.





In our rough cut we used the font and effect Pull focus however we changed this to soft edge. Pull focus blurred the image to make the text the focus. However our aim was to make the image behind the text to be the main focus to the audience, as it fits our storyline therefore the blur of the image took the impact away from the image. Whereas the soft edge had a more of a delicate touch.

Also in our rough cut we also had no music as we had not created our sound track as we was creating a sense of the film as,  we was not sure on the type of music we wanted to create a sense of stalking. As we wanted the music to be soft to create a sense of sympathy for the young victim.

Audience Feedback
All of our class viewed our rough cut and gave us feedback on what was effective and identified where there was room for improvement, here are some of our classes feedback;

Positive
Narrative is Clear
Good use of camera work with a variety of shots, especially in the scenes of the young girl held hostage
Good and clear storyline which relates well to the target audience
Good use of match on action and establishing shots.

Improvements
Edit the scenes of the victims movement to creates the sense of  realism
Edit the fonts used as they were a bit to bulky
Cutting from one scene to the next needs to flow more smoothly

All negative feedback has been taken into consideration and will be changed and improved. We edited some camera shots and movements. We cut some down as they were seen to be too long which created a sense of tension, however we also lengthened some shots as this creates a sense of suspense. All the feedback negative as well as positive has had a major impact on our opening extract, and created a whole new range of ideas that we experimented with.