Lighting Practise

In this picture we used the natural light in the background to show that something can happening in the background as well as the foreground at the light is behind him.

 

In this picture we used the natural light to show focus on my face to make it stand out from the background and to make hair much brighter to show the strong contrast of colours .

 

 

In this picture we used artificial lighting to make me appear sad and in despair and I am intently looking at the camera to express this emotion .

 

 

 

In this picture we used multiple lighting to emphasis the emotion of him being happy, as one light shining the light from a low angle and one from the right, showing him to be smiling and overjoyed of what's happening in the view hidden by the camera .

 

In this picture we used the artificial lighting and concentrated it on one side of brad face to cast a dark shadow on the part with no light to emphasise the aggression brad has towards what's happening behind the camera.

 

In this picture we used the same lighting as the previous one but its less concentrated to express a much more relaxed situation yet the disperse of light suggests brad is plotting something evil of mischievous.

Paramount Pictures

Today, we begun our case study on the company 'Paramount Pictures', and what kind of films they produce in which are popular.


 Paramount Pictures was founded by Adolph Zukor, Jessie L. Laskey and W.W. Hodkinson in 1914. The film company has made many famous franchises' films, such as Transformers and G.I. Joe. It is seen as one of the 'Big Six' of Hollywood, producing entertaining films, often more-so aimed at males. They aim to make much more action oriented films using digital effects to maximize their special effects and potential realism; not producing an animated film yet. Many of the films are fictional, but have a base that has been worked off, such as the Transformers' films and Titanic being based off the true story.

One of the main type of films that Paramount have made that is popular is psychological thrillers. Examples of these are 'Shutter Island', 'The Conversion' and 'Rosemary's Baby'. These are all popular as they have induced their audience within the films, and made them enjoyable overall. I have looked into reviews from the following websites.Rosemary's Baby Review
Shutter Island Review
The Conversation Review
These reviews all have some things in common that they talk about. One of which is an interesting protagonist. This is done by giving them a niche feature, such as in 'The Conversation' where the protagonist is bad at their job, but is quite an important job. This is important as the protagonist has to be interesting to watch, or the audience may not enjoy the film.
It was also common to hear about an interesting plot. The plots of each are well written and, while not all original,(Rosemary's' Baby is quite similar to Psycho), it still has a reason to watch. In the case of 'Rosemary's' Baby' it was still different to 'Psycho', even if both protagonists were widows.
One complaint I saw from 'Shutter Island' was that is was too 'classy' for it's setting. This is important as the props and background had to be considered, but quite new and classy furniture was around on an isolated island full of mental people. The use of mise-en-scene is key to thrillers, and wasn't used as effectively as others.
There were also many other thrillers that I looked into as well.


The Film "Zodiac" was based on a true story that revolves around the "Zodiac Killer". The people that are more aware of the Zodiac Killer will already be more aware of the real life event and so will be a little harder to impress but for the newer audience you need to feed the story in a way that everyone would enjoy.
"The whole story is very chilling and kept you going.
The Zodiac Killer is a case that forever will remain a mystery and it was a
great idea for a film" one public reviewer stated on the IMDb website, and
the film gained an overall rating of 7.7 on the same website.It seems as though the film was a very effective thriller and
was received very well by critics. The look of the film was largely revolved
around the real 1970's case, so it is filmed in an aspect that would be similar
to the movies seen in the 70's. This helped to create more of an atmosphere
because you were made to feel as though you were looking into the past.
 Psycho (1998) is a fictional remake of a horror thriller of
the same name about a woman who is murdered in a motel and her sister, boyfriend
and a private investigator try to find her (because they don't know she was
murdered).The film received a review score of 4.6 on IMDB and many or
the reviews question why the remake was actually made because the original
Psycho was a classic film."My biggest question is "Why did they re-make a
classic Hitchcock movie?" It's a "no-win" situation", one
person said.The film did not receive very high review scores wherever you
look and thus was a very unpopular movie.

Textual analysis on the se7en opening

I made a Prezi of the opening to Se7en about the editing and the Mise-en-scene, etc. used .

Director/Producer case study

In the link is are presentation of a director/producer of our choice and we decided to do J-J Abrams link to Glog

Thriller opening task , planing and ideas

This is a mind map of our ideas we considered our thrillers opening to have, however all the ideas on this mind map are not fully finalised .

Preliminary task evaluation

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to the video on YouTube  

 

 

 This is the link to my evaluation piece .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

proof of the shot reverse shot

 

 

proof of the 180 degree rule

 

 

How I used Barthes code in my preliminary task

There are 5 codes Barthes came up with ; Semic, action, enigma, cultural and the opposition.

Semic code: the Semic code is something in the production which symbolises something e.g. in our preliminary task we used a gun which symbolises murder and violence which happens in our narrative. Therefore watching the gun you can see the protagonist going to shoot the antagonist and kill them for something they did wrong.

Action code :  Action code is where you do something and then has a result e.g. in our task we reloaded the gun and then raised it for the result to shoot it .

Enigma code: The enigma code is something that creates mystery for effect and in our task we did that at the end being the last lines 'it's over' giving a false ending as you don't know what happens next .

Cultural code:  is the props used in the production and there meaning of how they are used socially and culturally . e.g. for a rich person in a film they would wear a suit and have a expensive car. In our task we wore hoodies to show that socially we are rebels to society .

The code oppositions: This code is where binary opposites are used e.g. black v white and hot v cold .

Main conventions of a thriller

A thriller is a broad genre of literature ranging from film to gaming and is on television.

They are often fast passed with a lot of action and usually consist of a protagonist who has to overthrow the antagonist who has a lot of power and money compared to one man who has nothing.

The climax of thrillers is when the protagonist beats the antagonist.

there are many different types of thrillers too, for instance;

Spy thriller - which the plot of the thriller is pretty much the protagonist trying to beat the government or organisation single handily with high tech gear, James bond is a typical film of this type of genre.

Political thrillers- they are quite the opposite to spy thrillers as the plot is to stabilise the government and to overcome political issues standing in the way.

Military thrillers- these thrillers are both historical and have a lot of action as they try to mimic real time wars or something similar with the same effect and are unpredictable of a good or bad ending .
saving private Ryan falls under this genre.

Conspiracy thrillers- There just like the spy thrillers but the protagonist has nothing and not one in the public or close believe him as they are brainwashed by the government ideological views.
The TV show utopia falls under this genre.

Medical thrillers- This type of thriller is uncommon as the story is based around a hospital with cases of a patient who needs saving and the doctors encounter problems in the way.

Forensic thrillers- usually consist of crimes which need to be solved and there are a lot of questions to be answered.

Psychological thrillers- this type of thriller is quite strange as it doesn't follow the same trend of a protagonist and a antagonist as the story is about a main character who has a mental conflict with themselves and the whole story could be to stop this or to understand it.

some thrillers utilise the false ending to put people on edge ; its when the film appears to be over yet questions are still unanswered.