Research Task - Madeleine Spencer

Taken

 

·         Footage from a video camera of a birthday along with creepy eerie music suggests to the audience that something has disrupted that equilibrium, it also adds importance to the girl within the birthday.

·         The point of view of the handheld camera is significant as introduces our protagonist without any dialogue as the father, and the person that filmed the hand held footage.

·         The editing is significant as it fast cuts the shots breaking the flow of the sequence.

·         The mise en scene within the scene is significant as there is a clear contrast between the life portrayed in the hand held video recording footage and the footage of the protagonist at home. Within the birthday scene the costume the characters are wearing are bright and the house is portrayed as homely with normal home appliances. However it cuts to his house which is bland, simplistic and lacking sentimental items which suggests to the audience the protagonist has lost the essence of their life and isn’t happy within his life, reflected in his home.

·         The lighting is significant within the opening as it goes from high key low contrast bright lighting within the birthday scene to very dark low key high contrast lighting at the protagonists house.

·         The creepy non diegetic music is contrasted with the diegetic voices within the birthday scene which suggests to the audience something has happened after that event. The sound is slow paced adding to the dream like state of the protagonist within the opening scene.

 The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVLJkIZvFlo

 

·         Many close ups, adds significance to what we are seeing –eyes, fists, tires

·         Shots of a man drowning, some ambiguous shots adding suspense to what the audience is seeing

·         Fast paced editing matching the fast paced music

·         Low key high contrast lighting, limited amount of colour however when there is colour it is bright orange flames

·         The music is fast paced all non diegetic adding tension

·         The mise en scene makes many of the shots appear ambiguous and non realistic, however ultimately showing destruction

Casino Royale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epxYm3OouQA

·         Ambiguous location, deserted, isolated

·         Extreme long shot of the car pulling in to the shot, informs us there is no one else around and we do not know who is in the car

·         Low angle shot of the man getting out of the car, the lighting creates shadows and the angle suggests the character has power and allows the audience to see the location

·         Sound- diegetic sound of the car pulling in, the lift and the footsteps reminds the audience how isolated the character is, the non diegetic creepy music makes the sequence appear eery

·         The lighting is significant within the sequence as it is low key high contrast. There are many shadows suggesting it is night time and also making the location appear isolated and deserted and adding suspense

·         The costume suggests the importance of the characters and the mise en scene suggests that the location and sequence is focused around business. The mise en scene is not distracting from the action within the scene or the characters.

Momento

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z87iY8rPJF8

·         One long take of a close up of someones hand and a photography – ambiguous

·         Music- instrumental slow paced

·         Ambiguous opening – we do not know who the character is or what they look like

·         When we see the protagonist he is behind the camera, we do not know what he is taking a picture of or why he is taking a picture

·         Close ups of his belt and blood running and a bullet shell

·         We then see a body faced down, we do not know what has happened

·         The lighting is low key high contrast which creates shadows on the protagonists face suggesting he is a dangerous character

·         Music becomes even more creepy, diegetic music is almost silent, there is no dialogue

The Stepfather

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UsTuzcPU2I

    Establishing shot panning onto house 

  Sound- instrumental music creating tension, gets deeper as we get closer to the house 

    Medium shot of the characters legs – ambiguous

We then see the character looking at himself in the mirror

·         It then cuts to a close up of him washing blood off his hands – ambiguous, we do not know what he has done or who he is

·         Then tracks in on a close up of the character looking straight down the camera lense

·         Music increases with violins creating an uncomfortable eery effect

·         The lighting creates shadows on his face

·         The mise en scene makes the room appear ordinary

·         The juxtaposition between the child cycling down the road and the character washing blood off his hands creates dramatic irony as we know something that the other characters on the street presumably don’t

·         The colour has a lot of red contrasting with white and blues.

Research Task by Thomas Barrow

44 Inch Chest
Camera Work:


This opening scene starts off with a close up focus pull on what we can only guess is shattered glass, but we do not know why or what it actually is.


When we get other high angle and low angle shots of this area, we see that more of the place is a bit smashed up, maybe someone has broken into the house?


The panning shot when it moves round the corner is a really good effect as we just see the body on the floor. We do not know if it is a dead body or if someone is in to much pain to move. From this shot we see the place is still smashed up and we know a little bit more about the surroundings  




With the close up of the body's face we see that the man is clearly in a state with his hair a bit messed up, also i picked up on that the eyes do not blink for a long time, so to begin with we don't know whether the body is alive until the blink then we see. This is still asking questions to the audience as we don't know why he is on the floor, why the place is trashed and who is this person? This is a 14 second stare till we see the blink 








Mise en Scene
In this we see a dog, which seems to be a poodle, under the bed. Now this is strange as when we see the bloke on the floor, he looks like a strong man. You would expect him to have a bull dog. Also if you look very closely the dog seems to have some mark on his eye, which could mean, if someone has entered the house, they have hit the dog or maybe some off the smashed glass has hit the dog.

 


During the panning scene we notice the back door open which could mean whoever has done this has entered or either escaped through the back door. But this raises so many questions which a Thriller is aimed to do to the audience.
The questions I am asking to myself at the moment are:


Is it a robbery?
Who is this person?
Why is the house trashed?
Who has done this?
Is it a robbery?

With the question "Is it a robbery?" i don't think it is because we see a screen smashed up. If you were robbing the place the last thing you would want to do is smash the TV, you would want to take it. So why have they done this?


      


With the glass shattered on the floor it would relate to how the man is feeling on the floor which gives a nice effect. By looking around the place whatever has happened must have been seriously bad as its just not a few smashed glass the furniture is completely ruined. Looking at what the man looks like, we see that he is wearing quite casual clothing and by looking at the place we does have some nice things (when not smashed up) so he is a very upper class person. But we don't even know if its his place


Sound
The soundtrack in this Thriller opening is contrapuntal sound, it just does not go with the images at all. Its about love and unless the film is about the bloke losing his loved one, and he has trashed the house himself, but it doesn't go with what we are seeing. That is the only sound we hear in this, we don't  hear the dog at all, the wind coming through the door, just nothing.

Editing
The editing in this intro is very slow cuts which asks questions because we see a lot more with the time they give us to see. Looking at the title, 44 Inch Chest, this means anything, the edit shows a line under the title, which could mean 44 Inch Line. My guess is that the film is going to contain a very big bloke which people wont want to mess with.


Inception - YouTube Clip

Camera Work

This is another good opening off a Thriller as straight away it asks questions. We see this character in a close up shot, which shows us his facial emotion. We see that he has been washed to shore for some reason, which we don't know why that is. Who is this person? Why is he in the sea?

Then we go to this, to a flash back of two children playing in the sea, from a point of view shot from where he is laying now. These children could be anyone, but the little boy could be him. We have no idea what is going on? This is exactly what a Thriller should do! Maybe the children have some relevance in the film

We have a point of view shot looking down on the body which shows a gun being pointed at the body. This could show he has been washed onto a restricted area or the place is very high secure. This shows the character is dressed in a grey outfit completely soaked. We don't know where he is? Who is he? Why does he have a gun pointed at him? 

The extreme long shot shows this building onto of some cliff. We don't have a clue what country it is, why does that building have to do with that character, who lives in there? We know that its going to have someone wealthy and powerful because of the size off it and it could lead to trouble or something.


Mise en Scene

We have this prop of this character, which we don't know who it is, spin this object which that camera closes up onto. This obviously has some relevance too the film. We don't know why the character spins it, what it is, or what does it mean? 


The gun shows that the character who owns the building has power as he has security surrounding the area and they drag him into this massive room with a big table which shows his wealth. The lighting in the room is very dark and mysterious, low key, which shows that something bad may happen and that its not a place to be.

Editing

The shot with the flash black is shot in slow mo to show that he is in a flash back, maybe a bit confused what is going on and as he has just come out the sea he maybe a bit dazed. 


The whole intro has slow cuts to build more questions and maybe because he has just come out the sea he is feeling slow himself so they have made the cuts slower

Sound
We start off by hearing the sound of the crashing waves which implies that its going to be a calm and relaxing opening but when we see the man laying on the floor we notice that this is contrapuntal sound. Also the dialogue tells us about the characters, such as the old man is very husky and old, the other character does not speak at all, probably because he has done something wrong but why is he eating in his building?


The Dark Knight
Camera Work
The opening of The Dark Knight starts of with an extreme long shot a city in what we can only guess is in America and we see that it is at day time.This is to show some sort of location on where the film is going to be set or something is going to happen in this location.

The over the shoulder shot is used from the front off the character here to show what the charaters look like. By the still we see on the right, they are both wearing clown masks which tells us they are hiding there identy from people, only assuming that they are going to rob a place but we don't know which one and why they are. This also hides there facial emotions so we can't tell


This is a brilliant high angle long shot of these two men in clown masks zip wiring across two peoples. We see that it is a very long way across by this shot and that they are extremely high. This could show that these men are very confidant as this is a very dangerous procedure. Also they are planned by the way they don't speak during it.


Mise en Scene


The setting of the place they have randomly started shooting in is discovered by the massive vault they break into, by this we can assume it is a bank robbery. This shot tracks into the vault with low key lighting. The size of the vault means there could be a lot off money leaving this bank very soon. We still don't know why they are stealing this money or who these people are? Only assume that its a group of gang members stealing a bank.

The costumes in this thriller is what we can expect. In some thrillers we don't normally see the face off the villain. In this they are using Clown masks to hide there identity. They are all wearing suits which is not what we would expect from a bank robbery, also they got out the car with the masks on. No one noticed this in the street and if someone saw a mask and a bank, you don't want to be inside that bank.




Editing

During the scene where they are shooting at each other the speed of the edits get really quick to show impact the action going on. This puts the audience on the edge of there seats as you really want the good guy (who we assume is the office guy) to win this battle. They use this by the speed off the cuts. Most of this is very speedy as it is a very quick procedure and they have to get the job done as soon as possible

Sound

The film uses good diegectic sound when they fire the gun when they run into this building. This would of been done in post preduction to make the sound effect more effective to the film. By using the gun we know that they are powerful men and are very dangerous.

The paralell, non-diegetic sound track to this is a very dark and myserious and fits perfectly with what is going on. It wouldn't work if it was a very happy soundtrack.


Se7en
Camera Work

The use of point of view shot is used here to show what we assume is the villian is seeing. What we see is some sort of book or letter, we are unclear. We see the pen cross out some words for some reason, maybe he is trying to pick something out from this. This is very mysteroius and confusing which is what a Thriller aims to do.

The use of extreme close ups on the characters hands shows him moving pictures around that place but these pictures are unclear on what they are and the face they are using mainly close ups and extreme close ups, we do not know who this character is. Hiding the identity of a character is what a Thriller normally does.

Mise en Scene
Everything in the scene is very old fashioned by the way we see the old photographs and books that we see. We see a shot where pictures are being dunked in somel liquid so this assumns that it is a dark room.

This could tell us something about the character that he is probably a photographer but the writing in the books doesn't make much sense on what he is doing. As it is a dark room they are using low key lighting and using some red gels to give the effect.

This shot shows the character crossing out the eyes of this picture, this could mean that he wants this person dead but we don't know why. We don't even know who this person is and by doing this in a dark room, very isolated, its going to be a one man job. The low key lighting could tell us something about the character that he is unstable?

Editing

The opening is very jumpy cuts and flashy to make the audicence very confused. Maybe to show death and the speed of the cuts is very fast, to make it very effective instead of watching everything that he is doing.


I noticed they use a disolve in this but not fully, we some some image past this letter but it does not fully disolve. This could mean there is something behind this letter, like a meaning, but we are unsure why?


Sound

The parrel sound track is used in this very well, as the opening is very mysterious and that goes perfectly with it. They also have used no dialogue in this which makes it even better as we cannot predict what this character is going to look like or if its a man or a women. By this it makes the opening even better as it rasies more questions.

Jaws

Camera Work

The extreme close up in the sea shows that she has swam in the middle of the sea and that we can see that she has swam so far away from the shore. The low key lighting is used to show that it is set in the evening time as well. The shot is also in a point of view shot to make out that we are in the ocean with her. This is a pretty calm scene and we can see only a part of the character.

The worms eye view looking at the women swimming could make us assume that someone or something is following her. By the title "Jaws" and its under water we can assume that it is from the shark and something bad is about to happen. The lighting is well used in this as they used low key lighting and then a very high intensity light shining to look like the sun.

Mise en Scene

The long shot is used here to set some setting. We can see that it is set in the evening by the low key lighting. The fence may be there for a reason for people to stay out of the sea because of the shark but we do not know who these characters are only that they have some bond with each other.

This long shot shows that the day is clearly in the evening with the light from the sun shadowing the character. This is a shot which shows that the characters are relaxed and enjoying themselves which is different from the other Thrillers i have analysed because it starts off calm.

Editing

The editing in this opening is quite strange as when the shark attacks the women the pace off the edits does not change. This maybe used to show the full effect of her getting munched on. This could be more effective though if they did pick the pace up of the editing because it may make the audience feel more shocked by it. Even though we can predict this is going to happen.

Not many editing techniques are used in this they could of chosen a dissolve, a wipe or a fade but mainly most of these Thrillers are just using Cuts. Maybe this is because cuts are used for quick transitions in action.

Sound

This Jaws soundtrack is a classic soundtrack which everyone knows. It is used in the shot when the women is in the sea. This is used to build tension and suspense. This is also contrapuntal sound as it does not go with the shot.

The screaming in this, is a great effect to use as we do not see the shark at all in the opening sequence but because she is screaming we know that something has attacked her. When the women is in the water there is no dialogue, the silence is very effective because it is calm till the sound track starts.

Final Movie!!!!

This is our final movie that we are very please with and happy with the out come, Enjoy!

Editing

After filming, we had to go edit our shots. To do this we had to use the Apple Macs because they had Final Cut Pro, which is a good program to use for editing. Once we had uploaded all the clips onto the program we could then choose the shots we wanted and delete the rest. Then we had to cut some of the shots to make them the length we wanted and because we wanted it to be in black and white, we had to add that effect.
Then we had to choose how we were going to join all the edits together. We decided to go with fade to blacks and cuts.                                               
We then had to put the movie into a program Garage Band to get some sound effects and a sound track. Because we had the character knocking a door, opening a door and closing, we had to make the sound effects come in at the perfect time. We also had a cat in the scene so we had to add a cat purr into it as well. For the sound track we decided to go with something dark, creepy and mysterious. Once all the sound had been added we had finally finished everything. 

Filming

This is some pictures of the group filming.  This scene a medium long shot and was to show that the character is all dressed up for an interview in the middle of the hallway waiting. From this we go to various different shots to show his emotion. 


To put some effect on how nervous he is, we decided to try and make some water drop from his forehead down his side. 

This scene we wanted a over the shoulder shot over the character whilst he is walking to the interview room. We shot this scene a numerous of times to make sure we got a smooth shot. We tried Maddy walking, Maddy on a chair whilst Matt pushed her and Maddy sitting on a chair whist she holds on to me and pulling her along. We decided that Matt pushing her gave us a good smooth shot.