Props

Props is the next eliment we need to look at. Although probs may seem like such a small part that they arent important because its just a few objects in the blackround but actually props are vital to complete the mise-en-scene and they are needed to make the set realistic.

The sort of props we will need are to have the right table  layed out in the conferewnce room with maybe some papers and a glass of water and an American flag.

These will complete the offical/presidential look.

We will also be using the props to inform the audience of who the characters, like flags for the different country leaders. And giving the secutary and adviser the stereotypical costumes.

storyboarding

Storyboarding is a very important part to preparing for creating a filmed sequence. You use it to place each individual shot, who you can see, what you can see and the different angles.
It helps film producers visulise what their scens will look like and notice potenial problems and prevent them.
Each of the four Mise-en-scene, Sound, Editing and Camera work can be annotated and involved in the drawings.

Here is a picture of our storyboard:

Results from our questionnaire

I took the task of asking the age rang of 15-18 our questionnaire, these are the results i gathered:

4/5 chose Comedy as their favourite film genre, from that i feel it would be important to include a section of comedy in any type of film as another way to entertain the audience.

Inception and Paramormal Activity were the most commenly watched of the this of thirllers from the questionnaire. Both films have a sense of unrealism to them and are able to grap the audience very well.

This is a list of the describing words of the feelings people get while watching a thriller: scarey, erotic, addrenaline rush, terrified, jumpy, intreeged, scarey, jumpy, addrenaline,exciting, confusing, suspended, scarey, on edge and exciting.

Questionair

Name:

Gender:         Male    Female

Age:            15-18          18-29          30+

About Films

1) What is your favourite type of film? Please list 1-5, with 1 being your favourite and 5 being your least favourite:

Action/Adventure    Documentary    Drama/Romance    Comedy     Thriller/Horror

2) Which of these thriller films have you watched?

Shutter Island (psychological)                      X-Men First Class (action/sci-fi)

Scream 4 (comedy)                                      Saw 3 (horror)

Paranormal Activity (supernatural)  Inception (psychological)

Fair Game (political/conspiracy)                 The Ghost Writer (supernatural)

State of Play (crime)                                     Rise of the Planet of the Apes (action/sci-fi)

Contagion (disaster thriller)

3) Of the thrillers that you have recently watched which did you enjoy the most and please sum up the experience and pleasures of watching it ?

Favourite recent thriller ________________________________

Three words that describe the experience of watching that film

1. _________________   2 _______________  3 _______________­

Costume research

We now have set what our final idea is and have created the image in our heads what the title sequence will go like, so now onto the detailed research.

We don't have extremely complicated costumes luckily.

American President:

• navy coloured suit
• white shirt
• simple blue tie
• a same badge pined onto his jacket collar of the American flag

British Prime Minister:

• male
• navy coloured suit
• white shirt
• red or light blue tie
• UK flag badge

French Leader:

• woman
• smart, not bright coloured suit
• french flag badge

Russian leader:

• male
• black suit
• white shirt
• black/white tie
• Russian flag badge
• short hair
• 60s

Chinease leader:

• male
• black suit
• white shirt
• block red tie
• chinease flag badge
• glasses

General:

• male
• army combat uniform
• badges/medals
• short cut hair
• big black boots

my synopsis wordle

this wordle shows that camera and sound are common but editing and mise-en-s aren't as big so i may need to concentrate more on them.
other big words are wires, device and computers which are the bases of the cyber sub-genre.
wordles are a good technique that can be used to see what has been written about and what needs more writing about.

Title sequence synopsis

Working Title: ‘Call Me’

‘Darkness Falls Upon Us.’

The opening sequence of our film will begin with the pounding sound of footsteps up a floor. Shortly following will come the sound of non-diegetic orchestral, eerie music. A cross cut to a room with a series of computer screens one of which showing someone coming online. The diegetic sound of a computer making transactions would then be heard. The camera would then cut back to the walking in the hall way, but this time the camera angle would be a low angle shot of the man making him look large and powerful. The beating of his feet would continue building tension. Jumping back to the organised business room with computers, the screens would show the next two people from the group video call have come online and the last one is just switching on. Cutting back to the corridor the camera would be tracking forward behind the President and General. Ahead of them two brawny body guards would open the double metal doors. The president would then give the nod as if to say, ‘thank you’ and ‘its safe’. We will then have an ellipsis technique of editing to cut from when the doors are opened to when he sits down. He starts to address the other world leaders in a political format and informs them the entire dark situation that he fears the world will plunge into. While the President is talking the camera tracks down along the wires connecting the computers, into the wall until it gets to a big bundle of wires crossing and placed in the nest of wires is a tracking device flashing red. The non-diegetic music would be building tension as the camera moved along the wires and it would climax when reaching the hacking device.

The scene will create a ton of suspense because the audience won’t have a clue about who the character is, where they are or what the importance of the characters or the situation is. The shots of the computers will bring forward the importance of technology in the thriller, signifying the sub-genre of cyber. The non-diegetic music will be used to convey the suspense and seriousness of the situation despite the fact that the audience is given very little else to play on. Finally when the camera shows the President and General the audience will know that they are watching a cyber/political sub-genre of thriller.

The title sequence with holds the information of where the location is although they will be able to work out it’s the American President and other leaders of the world. The audience will hear that there has been some sort of disaster but won’t find out the details and the withheld information about the tracking device should hock the audience as they will have to know who is listening in and why they are.

Presentation

Thriller Ideas 2

The pit went quiet well and we have now settled on the Cyber idea. But the idea has changed now, i don't think that's a bad thing , changing your idea as you go along is all part of the process of coming up with a great idea.
the title sequence in now beginning with the video conference of the leaders of the world. we wont be hearing all the conference as it's best not to include lots of the dialog in the first two minutes but better to keep things simpler. the sequence would end with a shot of wires with a tracking device enbeded in them showing the audience that more is going to go wrong as such an important conversation is being listned into by unwanted ears.

watching

We recently watched a documentary called 'Watching' on the open sequences of thriller movies. It looked at the title sequence of movies such as Seven, A Touch of Evil and The Shinning. Important people like Thomas Sutcliffe, Director Jean Jacques Beineix, Stanley Kauffmann, Kyle Cooper and Orson Welles spoke about their opinions of title sequences and what they think is important. 

I learnt things like how a film beginning needs to "seduce their audience into long term commitment." 


"A good beginning must make the audience feel that it doesn't know nearly enough yet, and at the same time make sure that it doesn't know too little." this means you want the audience to understand the nature of the film but to also keep them interested, but without telling them too much so they aren't interested. You need to audience to not be able to take their eyes off the screen.


"A favorite trick of Film Noir" is when the beginning of the movie is like and ending.


I hope i will be able to inject some of the information i learnt from watching this documentary into my thriller title sequence.

thriller ideas presentation

We designed a presentation on Microsoft PowerPoint to present to the class and our teacher, and to explain our 4 thriller ideas.
The four ideas were :
1. Shellshock - following a solider just come home from war and sufferers from post traumatic stress. He comes home to no welcoming party or family and friends, just him, isolated in an apartment where he gets flash backs from the war explaining why he is so messed up.(a physiological sub-genre )
2.Cyber - is the break down for society in the not so distant future. Because of a world wide disaster humanity retreated into their own homes only to communicate via the Internet. The streets are empty, leaving it to the leaders of the world to try and fix the disaster by getting people back outside. (a disaster/political sub-genre)
3.the Egyptian boat - this idea evolved from the story in the news where an Egyptian boat set alight. It is based around Egypt and Iran having a business meeting about oil. the Americans didn't want this to happen so sent an undercover man to stop the deal from going ahead by burning the boat. ( a political sub-genre)
4.Snowstorm - This idea came from our brainstorming session on the news story about the shocking snow storm that hit the East coast of the U.S. the movie is all set in an isolated house with one man living alone in it. the storm causes him to become trapped in his home eventually riving him crazy until he dies.

We each had one idea that we were going to explain to the class ( i had the cyber one). The set up of PowerPoint worked really well for how we wanted to present each idea. We could use one slide to summaries the whole thriller movie idea, not writing everything but the main points so when we would talk through them we wouldn't just been reading it off the screen. Then we used another slide for the opening 2 minutes sequence. Making each slide clear and easy to read is important for appearance but they look better with some colour and images as a blank back round with just writing can be too boring.

more thriller ideas

Our group came up with a few final ideas that we presented to the teachers, but none of them were quite right. We needed a story that was more original and that could grab the reader within the first 2 minutes but not be too much.
Over the half term i was away in Mexico and New York. New York is a very popular location for films, and obviously it would be pretty difficult to film our thriller title sequence located there, but it was a great place for inspiration. I wrote a list of ideas when ever i saw one. But another good place for inspiration is in the news. It can come from Internet websites or from reading, but a lot of the subjects in the news could be turned into very good stories. As i was on holiday it was difficult to access the Internet but i managed to a few times.
On Monday 31st's lesson as a class we chose the topic of 'The 7 billionth person being born'. From that we went around the room bouncing ideas of each other and we must of come up with around 20 ideas. Using each other is the best way to come up with great ideas, as it isn't just in your head and you can develop the idea together with the help of others ideas and opinions.
We later spilt up into our thriller groups to come up with some new ideas for our title sequence. Using a technique of bouncing ideas off each other with news headlines as the main topic really worked well for our group. This is what the class as a whole had done earlier. We generated lots of little story ideas from this and have selected a few good ones which we think we could develop well and use to present to our teacher. 
We learnt a lot from these lessons of generating ideas and there for are about to develop them better and linking that with the essay work we are also doing we are able to represent the few characters in a lot of detail about their age, class and gender.