Initial Ideas For Thriller

Preliminary Task Evaluation

AS Media Preliminary Evaluation from El_Lester

Conventions Of A Thriller

What is a thriller?

A thriller is a genre of literature, film and television programming that uses suspense, tension and excitement as it's main elements. A thriller often includes 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 are used extensively.

Conventions of a thriller film (typical features)

1. Low key lighting.
2. Quick cut.
3. Shadows.
4. Tension music.
5. Changes in camera angles.
6. Diegetic sounds (breathing).
7. Black and white shots.
8. Montages.
9. The protagonist will be at the mercy of the antagonist.
10. Binary oppositions (complete opposites) by Levi Strauss e.g. good vs. evil.
11. Cheap surprise (an easy shock generated by a sudden unexpected noise/action/movement).
12. Make it personal (protagonist's family is kidnapped).
13. Theatre of the mind (doesn't show the audience everything forcing them to imagine things). 

Types of thriller

1. Spy thrillers – e.g. James Bond
2. Political thrillers – e.g. Argo
3. Military thrillers – e.g. Saving Private Ryan
4. Conspiracy thrillers – e.g. The Insider
5. Medical thrillers – e.g. Coma
6. Forensic thrillers – e.g. The Bone Collector
7. Psychological thrillers – e.g. Seven
8. Horror thriller – e.g. The Silence of the Lambs
9. Legal thriller - e.g. The Pelican Brief
10. Crime thriller - e.g. No Country for Old Men
11. Supernatural thriller - e.g. Flatliners

Some key characteristics of a thriller

1. Often overlap with mystery stories but are distinguished by the structure of their plot
2. Thrillers often occur on a much grander scale: crimes are more serious
3. Standard plot elements include a sense of jeopardy.
4. Climax: when hero finally defeats villain, saving him and others.
5. Some thrillers are influenced by film noire and tragedy, the hero can get killed.
6. Often take place wholly or partly in exotic or dramatic settings e.g. cities, deserts, churches, airports, subways, Polar Regions, the woods or high seas.

Practice With Titling

In today's lesson we practised making titles using Adobe After Effects. I learnt how to blur titles in and out of the screen, I found this a very useful skill. I might use this effect in my main task.

Finished Preliminary Task

This is my finished Preliminary Task.

Post-Production : Utopia Case Study

Post-Production (Case Study: Utopia)

In the article, written by Stephan Kelly, we learn that post production is the act of editing shots and clips after they've all been put together to create an episode/film. Post production is normally used to edit or adjust colours on a programme in order to make it  bolder, brighter and more visually appealing to the viewers of said programme. An example of where post-production is used is in the programme 'Utopia'. The creators of Utopia aimed to give the show a 'comic book look' and to make it look quite vintage, In order to achieve this goal two comic book artists, Marc Munden ( also the director of 'Utopia') and colourist Aidan Farrell, spent time precisely colour correcting each shot/clip in post-production using a grading software called Nucoda Film Master instead of a brush or pen. They did this to make skies look bluer and more vibrant and to make the grass appear greener and lush. Vibrant colours are used in post-production to create a more non literal feel to the show, perhaps this is to remind the audience that the storyline of 'Utopia' is based on a comic book and whatever happens within the show shouldn't be taken so seriously. 

Here is an example of a shot in 'Utopia' that has been edited in post-production.

Completed Storyboards

This is the story board for our groups preliminary task, since making the storyboard we have made a few changes to our film from the ideas that we've presented on the storyboard. However we made sure to use the same camera shots as we originally planned, as well as a few others.