Modern thriller openings

History of violence

History of violence meets a lot of conventions of a thriller through the use of suspense, pacing and and sound. 'Suspense' is used effectively right from the beginning because there is not a lot of sound and we feel suspense because there is a lack of knowledge of what is going there is no indication of what the film is about. Also there is the use of 'slow pacing', which made this thriller effective because it added to the suspense building up until we found out that the two men are murderers. Last but not least he use of sound was effective because they used mainly diegetic in the opening scene which helps give a primary feel of the tense atmosphere in the scene.




Zodiac

Zodiac meets the conventions of a thriller through tension and suspense and stimulates the viewers mood. During the first scene suspense was built as an element of surprise and fluctuates because at first everything seemed fine even though the girl seemed a bit uneasy for coming late, then they reach the mountain edge and they are happy but when the the black car pulled up suddenly caused a feel of worry especially when the girl would not say who it was, then when it came back there was an very high suspense as the driver of the black car came out but we could not see what he looked like and walked towards them and killed them, Th beginning is quite fast paced except those moments of high tension and suspense.


No country for old men

No country uses suspense and sound quite differently. Suspense is very predictable in this thriller, it starts off quite innocent after the guy gets arrested but as soon as escapes and starts using the police car and stops a man for no reason and suspense builds as he walks up to the man with an oxygen tank type of weapon. Sound is all  mainly diegetic and except when there is a guy who does a voice over at the beginning.

How to film a thriller

How to film a thriller

The thriller conventions that I managed to detect that are in this film:
parallel & digetic sound, low-key lighting and fast editing as well as a variety of shots.


Low key lighting

The use  of low key lighting is like a connotation of how unclear the mystery is and how its very eerie.











Fast Editing

I could not create a gif but in this part of the clip there is a lot of fast editing. Fast editing is a good signal or sign that something sudden is about to happen and the speed that is used can show you how fast its going to happen. it can also suggest that the character(s) are afraid.








Close-Up

Using an extreme close up is useful because it gives the audience a strong relation of how he is feeling according to his facial expression and the way it takes up the majority of the screen not giving the audience a choice to look somewhere else.









Low Angle

The use of this shot is that it give the audience an idea of what the creature maybe without revealing for example from this shot we assume the creature is a snake or something close to the ground.











Extreme Close-Up

Using the technique of an extreme close up  is helpful for adding a dramatic feel to a certain scene.

First Production Meeting

Working title:
In my group:

Gottfried Nortey // Writer and Editor
Tino Chimunye (me) // Producer
Elijah Jace Smalling // Director
Leon Macauley // Camera man

ACTORS:

Gottfried Nortey - Main Character (Victim)
Tino Chimunye (me) - Killer (Gottfried's Shooter)
Elijah Jace Smalling - (Gottfried's Avenger)

Extra's
Leon Macauley
Denis echessa
David Awabona

Our storyline is based on a famous rapper named 'Nortz' who happens to have a lot of beef and a lot of haters. Nortz has a very close friend called Eze, Eze has sworn to protect and watch Nortz's back at all times, but soon these words are put to the limit when Nortz is shot dead by a hit man while he is on tour how will Eze get revenge?, does he have the time the courage to do so?

Shot list

Risk assessment

Locations planning

Preliminary task

Preliminary task

Evaluation

In the preliminary task, me and my group (me, Leon, Elijah and Gottfried) created a scene where there was a boy who's at school. This boy is very hungry and keeps asking for food, but no one wants to give him any. Can this day get any worse? He soon discovers the answer to this when he finds out one of his friend is talking to his sister!

Match on action
For our match on we used a clever idea where Gottfried (the hungry boy) was staring at his watch waiting for lunch time, and then the watch turned into an Oreo which his friend was eating. We thought this was useful as it resembles how he's hungry and things seem to turn to food the more and more he thinks about it.

Eyeline Match
For our eye-line match we had Gottfried looking at his watch and then we cut it to a birds eye view of his watch.

Shot reverse shot
The closest we came to doing a shot reverse shot was over the shoulder, when Gottfried was asking me for the an Oreo.

180 degree shot
In our task we 'forgot' about the 180 degree rule and as you can see we switched sides accidentally


Personally I think out of the three our 'match on action' was very accurate because we got the right same size and shape looking objects and it was relevant to the plot of the story.

Our 'Eye line match' I also thought was pretty accurate but could have been improved it by cut back to Gottfried's face.

Next our 'Shot reverse shot' was weakly accurate could have been significantly improved by have the characters looking at each other off screen, to have a better effect of 'Shot reverse shot'.

As I said our 180 degree shot was very inaccurate as we switched side so next time we need to remember the rule when we are filming.

The most positive elements of our preliminary task was our 'match on action' and 'eye line match' and we should improve our 'shot reverse shot' and '180 degree shot'.