Thriller Conventions For My Movie

To make a great thriller that the public will watch and enjoy, it needs have a range of all these points:
 Sub genre - horror, political, supernatural 
 • Young attractive woman (side kick) 
 • Sound Important (non-diagetic, diagetic) 
 • Love Interest 
 • Alcohol (recreation, problem)
 • Threat - Deadline 
 • Setting (night/shadows)
 • A McGuffin 
 • Problem to be solved 
 • Red Herring
 • Fast paced action 
 • Chase scene {car, running} 
 • Cliff-hanger
 • Obstacles 
 • Suspense {Enigma} 
 • Villain (powerful relentless) - Revenge
 • Death - no consequences
 • Femme Fatale 
 • Male Hero

Opening Scene Evaluations

Brick- Is about a teenage loner who pushes his way into the underworld of a high school crime ring. He did it in order to investigate and find out about the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend. The opening scene of Brick starts of calm with nice and gentle with also usage of of non-Diegetic tone. This is extremely effective because it causes tension and there has not been a violent scene in order to feel the sense of danger that the audience feel. Another important part of the opening scenes were the camera shots.  The camera shots were used extremely well when they used a graphic match with the dead girl and how they zoomed into her hand. The interesting thing about it was they did not show how she died and this makes the audience want to know how. 

The opening to the film Zodiac had a much greater impact on the opening. The opening became tense due to the boy and girl being in the car in the middle of nowhere. When the first car unexpectedly approaches and parks next to them, we think that something was about to go on but it was uncertain. When the second car approaches and hearing the skid noises, we suspect that something was going to happen.  What creates greater impact was that these two people are in the middle of nowhere which makes us think nothing's going to happen. The tension continued to increase when the unknown driver got out of his car and shot the boy for a reason we might not have known off. The opening started off slow, but we would have thought it to be a romantic scene by the boy and girl clearly being together. It is clearly shown that the girl just wants to be with the boy by the way she speaks to him and move in closer. But the story ends up leaving us as the audience bamboozled. 

Foundation Portfolio

Match-On-Action is when the camera focuses on a character when they are doing an action. This could be the first shot. Another shot could be the cameras focusing in the action as the character continues doing it. Match on action basically means, when something happens in the scene and where there is a cut, the same piece of action may be going on.

Shot reverse shot is used in the film industry as a technique where a character is shown looking at another character. Then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Due to the characters shown facing opposite directions, the viewer then assumes that they are looking at each other. Shot reverse shot was an important feature of the ‘Classical’ Hollywood style of continuity editing.

The 180 degree is just a guideline that states that if two characters in a scene are together, they should always have the same left or right relationship to each other. The rule basically states that a camera should always remain on the same side of an imaginary line. This rule is extremely effective because it enforces continuity within the film. This rule cannot be broken because it will only leave confusion to the audience especially if the scenes are; sports, conversation or a chase. 

Preliminary Task