Mental health.

Our thriller is based around mental health problems; we researched all different kinds of ways mental health has been presented in several different films.

Most commonly silent, corrupted characters like ours are dressed in white, usually old clothing for example a night gown. Hair is usually long and dark or very pale almost ghostly.

We tried to find the perfect image to fit our representation.

Obviously our character will not look identical to this but we hope that our representation will be similar in order for the audience to understand the way we want it to come across.

Here are the links to where we found out this information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_featuring_mental_disorders

http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/mentalhealth/pages/mentalhealthhome.aspx


http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/category/blog/media-tv-and-newspapers

Looking at areas to film our thriller opening.

We were looking at different areas to film our opening and decided on this area because of the the amount of trees and the pathway.

The pathway shows how the girl is on her normal route home and the trees have an eerie look, and it gives us something to play around with when introducing the character of the mental patient.

Influential film directors.

When planning a film, you need to know you have good film director to make things happen and things to be just right.

Many believe Steven Spielberg can do just this, however I disagree.
I do not disagree with that fact that he can get things done and get the money in and profits high. But in some cases he tries to adjust. For example in J.K. Rowling's very famous Harry Potter novels he said that the films were going to be 'too British' and should 'either be American or animated'. Understandably, she turned him down because of how much he wanted to change the book itself.


I believe that with independent films like ours he will completely change it to how he likes and I don't want to take this risk. Martin Scorsese seems like a better director, he has not yet tried to change a persons novel into something it's not and has been a big success in Hollywood for many many years.


Another film director that is influential is Christopher Nolan, he has directed 'The Dark Night Trilogy' and just recently 'Inception' and 'Interstellar'. All films are massive successes and his work is inspiring to see that he has co-written and directed most of these films and incredibly done.

When it comes to filming a thriller I feel it's important to look at different film directors and look at their ways and theories of filming, you know if they work or not by how big the film gets, if it's a small independent film and it does really well, you can presume the director did an amazing job.
An example of this is Warp's 'Four Lions', it was a huge success in the United Kingdom and in several other countries.

Film companies for our Thriller.

I feel a big film company will do our thriller justice. For example Warner Brothers is a huge film conglomerate and is massive all around the world if a film like that could fund our thriller it would be incredible as we would be able to advertise in all different kinds of ways instead of just cheaper ways. We would know it would definitely attract our target audience because of their wide options for advertising.

It has done things like :

Looney Tunes

Terminator

Lord of the Rings.

Harry Potter.

and signed singers like:

Madonna

Lilly Allen 

All of these films/singers are now massive successes all around the world, I feel that this decision would be vital if we want our thriller to be popular.

Pitching our idea.

On Friday the 12th of December 2014, our group pitched our idea to our teachers so they could hear our plot and make any critical comments that they felt necessary.
We told them things like our target audience, our tagline, the movie length etc. This gave them a detailed idea on how our thriller will be made, what we need to include and research into before starting to film.

We need to research into insanity/mental health issues to avoid the problem of complaints from people suffering with mental health or involved with someone with mental health problems and if we portray it wrong we could get many complaints filed.

To avoid this problem the girl in our thriller won't just be suffering from mental health issues. We came up with a back story to try and avoid this issue. In the mental health hospital she was admitted to, they tortured her, ignored her and made her condition worse, so her mental health is a lot worse than any other person. This allows us to be more abstract with our opening in how we decide to represent our character (Chloe Francis).

A website I looked at to understand the representations of mental health is:
http://core.kmi.open.ac.uk/download/pdf/95481.pdf

The Kuleshov Effect

This is film editing technique demonstrated by a Russian film maker  Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s. It Implies that the actor is looking at something which may not be what it seems to be. 
for example:
This old man is smiling at his wife, and she is smiling back at him. 

However, if we remove the image of the woman and replace it with a young women in a bikini the representation of the old man will be changed completely from friendly old man to dirty old man. 

Age restrictions.

I believe that our thriller would be rated a 15.

Things included in a 15 rated film quoted by BBFC are:
" strong violence

 frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***').

  portrayals of sexual activity

  strong verbal references to sex

  sexual nudity

  brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence

  discriminatory language or behaviour

  drug taking"
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/what-classification/15

Although non of these will be included in our opening the opening atmosphere will be too intense for a 12 year old and leave them possibly emotionally/mentally scarred after seeing the girl in the nightgown and we plan for a murder to take place in the opening of our thriller which again would be very inappropriate for someone under the age of 15. We as film makers do not want to encourage this sort of behaviour on someone young as when they watch, they may feel this behaviour is acceptable and alright.

We feel having this age rating will:
Reach our target audience
Not influence young children
Will be suitable for an older age range, hence why we chose the older age rating rather than the younger.


I believe that this age rating would be appropriate as I presume some of the things listed would be included in the rest of the film if it were to carry on.

IDEAS FOR OUR THRILLER OPENING

IDEAS FOR OUR THRILLER OPENING

 

 

 

 

We have had several ideas for our thriller opening. Firstly we wanted to research locations. We discussed different areas around where we live to see if they were appropriate to what we wanted in our opening. We wanted a forest like location to film in. Rachael suggested a location near where she lives. However, so have I, we have decided to take a look at both locations to see which one we prefer or which one is more suitable.

 This is the sort of location we are searching for to film our thriller opening.

We knew we wanted the atmosphere to be rather eerie and needed a character based around this atmosphere to make the opening tense. We decided to have a girl dressed in a white night gown, either a ghost or a mental institution runaway, we are undecided at the moment. We wanted her to be sat under a tree, and have another character running in the forest, on her way home from the gym or the shop etc. It was her normal route home, but this time the unexpected occurred. I thought different angles and shots crossing over of the girl and the white night gown girl to show how she's looking for her until they are face to face. I recently thought of two ideas to make the opening more effective. A. Have the camera zoom into her eye as if it was a flashback and have her at the police station trying to get her attention and then the credits, or just after the face to face encounter it go black with a slight ringing in the background then the credits coming on.



This is the sort of thing we are searching for,
for the girl in the mental institution.

Conventions of a Thriller.

‘Conventions of the Thriller Film Genre’

What is a thriller?
Supernatural, horror, suspense, sets an atmosphere (sinister, scary)
Literature, film, gaming and television. It includes numerous, often overlapping sub-genres.

Ingredients of thrillers: Fast paced, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more-powerful and better equipped villains.
Literary devices such as suspense, red herrings and cliff-hangers and used extensively.

Different types of thrillers-

Spy thrillers, James Bond, Bourne series. Spy is linked to government.
Political thrillers, hero must ensure that the stability of the government that employs him. Based on real events or things that could have/will happen. Olympus has fallen is an example.

Military thrillers- Saving Private Ryan, fighting in war etc.

Conspiracy thrillers- hero confronts the powerful group of enemies whose true extent and power only they recognise.

Medical Thriller- In which the hero is generally principled physician who must fight corrupt drug companies or colleagues engaged in unethical experiments.

Forensic thrillers-In which the heroes are forensic experts whose involvement with an unsolved crime puts their lives at risk.

Psychological thrillers-in which conflict between main characters is mental and emotional rather than psychical.

Horror thriller- Conflict between main characters is mental emotional physical etc.

Characteristics- Thrillers often overlap with mystery stories, but are distinguished by the structure of their plots.
Thrillers occur on a much grander scale: Crimes that must be prevented.
Standard plot elements include a sense of jeopardy.

Builds a climax to make the audience feel different emotions and feel more attached to the characters.

Film noir, French, taken on in Hollywood, detectives, raining, black, dark, hard drinking, womanising, bitter, compromised heroes, hero often killed.

Foreign cities, deserts, churches, subways, airports, Polar Regions or high seas, or even the woods.

 

 

 

 

Textual analysis of 'The Stepfather'.

Searching for locations for our opening to our thriller.

As we searched for locations we came across a pond which may be suitable for our thriller opening. 

As we searched around the pond we soon realised the pond was not suitable as it was not large enough for our task to be filmed nor was the amount of tree's enough to match the amount we wanted 

Another reason we did not like the location was the emptiness of the location, we wanted to film in an area where it would be over crowded with trees. Evidently here it wasn't. 

Textual analysis of opening to seven

OPENING TO SEVEN

The opening sequence to seven reveals a lot about the characters and the storyline to come. It suggests that there is a contrast in how the two detectives work. One is a man who values his job and his money, presents himself well etc. Whereas the other is a man who, although is passionate about his job, presents himself quite differently. The titles give the audience a glimpse of whats to come throughout the whole film drawing in the viewer to keep watching. Here is what I noted down after watching the opening 5 minutes several times.

Mise en scene He is very well presented, wearing a suit, values his job. Tidy apartment. Contrasting from the scene straight after in the other man’s flat, very untidy and messy, dead body on the floor. The location where the two characters are talking outside looks fairly, rough and not well kept, which shows the man uses his money wisely to make sure he is well kept and tidy. He as a person contrasts from his area. Metronome symbolises his life ticking away. Morgan sleeps the right hand side of the bed maybe showing he wants someone next to him or he’s lost someone and is used to the routine of sleeping on a ‘side of the bed’.

 Camera Angles. During the street scene brad walks into people showing he’s not familiar with it, but Morgan knows where he’s going-tracking shot. Extreme close up shots, title sequence, emphasises what it’s about. In the sequence certain words came up.




Sound It begins silent but cars driving past, emphasises silent. Morgan doesn’t care about the noise; he’s used to the amount of crime etc. Sets the location/genre. Finished on Morgan and lightning strikes, when he falls to sleep, signifying that something worse is going to happen.

Barthes Narrative Codes.

Roland Barthes invented 5 narrative codes: This is when the audience will 'presume' the next logical step of the actor. For e.g. Packing a suitcase- the next logical step would be to see them leave to go on a trip/holiday/leave to somewhere else. Mystery code/Enigma code- This is where the audience is meant to think if they carry on watching they will be shown the answer to something, for e.g. seeing body parts of a 'killer' throughout the film and at the end revealing their full faces etc. The semic code-This is where things have symbols for things for e.g. garlic hanging from the walls would represent a vampire being around or near their house This is used to make sense of the cultural/social side of the character. In James Bond films there would be Aston Martins and Martini's showing his wealth etc. This is Binary Opposites, black v white, hot v cold, male v female etc. In our preliminary task we used 3 of these codes: Code of opposites, action codes, cultural code. Code of opposites was used when me and Rachael were talking on the stairs, I was in a dark blue colour whereas Rachael was in a light pink showing the contrast of good and evil. Action Code when Rachael walked up to the door implying that she was going to walk through, with that being the 'next logical step Cultural code, it was cloudy showing the typical weather in England, we are white showing our ethnicity. We spoke with a British accent, we wore stereotypical western clothes,hinting we were English.

AS MEDIA PRELIMINARY TASK EVALUATION.

AS Media preliminary task evaluation. from Charlotte2498

Our preliminary task.

This is our preliminary task we created in September/October. This was our first time using professional equipment like camera's, editing software and music editing.

Storyboard

Our storyboard is fairly detailed to show the basic story of our preliminary task.
Although some of the shots have changed slightly like the last shot for example has slightly altered to what we actually did, we did this because we believe it was more effective to have a shot of the other persons face than the distraught person because it leaves the audience wanting more and on a cliff-hanger. We felt that the shots we used were useful to give a detailed understanding of our preliminary task, using a range of shots to complete this.
I felt our storyboard was useful in the fact, we kept referring back to it whilst filming to either alter or double check our preliminary task was exactly the way we wanted it to be.

ANGLE SHOTS.

Here is an ECU also known as a extreme close up. It is classed extreme because it is focused on just one part of the body.

 Here is three angle shots, this shows Rachael using the same action but from three different camera angles. 

This is a two shot where two people are in the scene at once.

 This is an establishing shot, this shows where the scene is set.

 

This is a point of view shot, this shows what I am able to see and how I am feeling based on Rachael's facial expressions.

First Task For AS Media.

We have been set a task to create a short video of someone entering a room, walking across it and having a short conversation with another person in the room. We will be using different angle shots including, match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule, this will keep continuous movement throughout the scene and build our experience using, editing and create short films.





180-degree rule

 Is a basic guideline regarding the on-screen spatial relationship between a character and another character or object within a scene.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Hello and welcome to my blog!:-)

My name is Charlotte and I am a year 12 Media student. Although I have never studied media before I believe that I will enjoy the subject and find it fun and very interesting. I enjoy singing, dancing, acting and playing guitar. I am interested in media and filming; I like to create and edit videos and make them interesting and fun to watch. I have never made a ‘proper’ video before so this gives me the chance to try and be professional about it. I am looking forward to creating exciting, interesting things that you will all enjoy watching.