Mind mapping Idea's and Notes

Below are a bunch of un organised notes and ideas of what we could include in our opener, we all started to form ideas and discussions writing everything down of what we thought could work for our thriller opener.

Editing our Continuity Task

We had a go at editing on the iMac's for our continuity task, using different editing techniques and forming the camera movements, match on action and shot reverse shot.

 

Continuity Task

PLAN

These are some rough notes for our continuity task, to test out filming and using cameras. Using listing to display idea's to use to create a good piece of film.

FILMING

We did a continuity task in our groups to start to learn how to use the camera's to film different movements, angles and shots as well as editing the footage together so the shots all form together and make sense.

We began to plan for our continuity task and develop ideas, keeping in mind that we had to plan for our opener and shots which we could use again.

We decided to do a crime investigation scene, with an interrogation between a police officer and the suspect who they thought did the crime, the officer acted angry and frustrated at the suspect as they kept denying everything that they were accused of. 

We used a match on action shot for the officer opening the door angrily and slamming the files down on the table. 

Shot reverse shot was used when there was dialogue in-between the two people when the interrogation was taking place.

Also using extreme close ups to show the frustration of the officer getting denying answers from the suspect.

Wide long shots were used as the first shot to show walking down the corridor to the door to the room.

Analysing a Psychological Thriller

Release: March 12th 2010

Cast: Leonardo Di'Caprio, Mark Ruffalo

Director: Martin Scorsese

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Crime, Psychological Thriller

Directed by Martin Scorsese, Shutter Island is a psychological thriller looking into the murder. In a psychiatric hospital fortress on a deserted island by a woman who has seemed to have vanished from her locked cell room. 

Features of a Psychological Thriller

- The character often has shaky camera's and very close up shots to show emotions of how they're feeling and/or their mind state 

- Often the storyline doesn't make sense till the end of the movie

- This film is a 15 for certain scenes in the film which may be disturbing, violent and gory 

Camera

The camera shots throughout this film shows lots of extreme close ups in the characters faces, to show the audience the emotions and feelings of the character; especially the one who have mental illnesses. There, is tracking shots going into the the hospital through the gate way and showing around the hospital,  also there is lots of wide shots showing the scenery, it shows the island when they are on the boat going towards the island and others where Dicaprio's character is searching by the rocks for clue to where the woman disappeared. These show aspects of a thriller as they create along with dark colours and low lighting a spooky, scary, creepy atmosphere where the viewer is constantly wondering. 

Mise-enScene

Mise-en-scene in psychological thrillers but also especially in Shutter Island show low key lighting and dark scaled colours, there aren't any vibrant or very warm feel in colours to the film. The costumes are professional and based in the 1950's when the film was set in, the mental patients wear a typical bland grey colour that patients would wear in a psychiatric hospital. The opening shot to this film is seeing nothing but thick fog, it creates a mysterious tone and makes it intriguing to the audience to what the next shot will be.

Sound

Sound is used to create a thriller like atmosphere to the audience, making tension and warning that something is going to happen. In the first shot low orchestra music is used as a forewarning that something is coming, it also adds to a scary atmosphere coming up now 

The trailer above

The First opening scene, I couldn't find the opening scene when they first arrive on the island on youtube:(

Starting to look and analyse other film openers

FILM OPENERS

We started off in class by looking at other film openers, by watching these I could analyse what was good about them and how they showed the genre of which they were trying to portray in the first few minutes. It was very useful to see the similarities and what would possibly be viable for our group to be able to mimic and adapt for our film opener, to also represent the genre we choose to explore.

This is the grid that we filled out in class to see similarities of Se7en, Fight Club and Good Fellas

Se7en was an opener I particularly liked as it was simplistic and clear to the audience of the genre the film was going to be based around, whilst also showing details of what would appear in the film without giving away too much about the plot. It was interesting to watch and invited a lot of questions to what was going to happen in the film, with it's very close up camera shot and shots of crime photographs along with suspenseful opening music and sketchy titles it was a great opener to a film.

Welcome to Athena's AS Media blog

On this blog I'm going to be mapping my progress with my group to our final 2 minute film opener and how we got there.