Thriller Planning // Mise-en-Scene

Thriller Planning // Sound Design + Soundtrack

The soundtrack is one of the most important aspects of an effective thriller, whether it be a gritty modern thriller or a classic film noir, a soundtrack (or lack thereof) is incredibly important in setting the right tone and getting the audience's blood pumping. A well made and well matched soundtrack can make a sequence much more exciting or tense, but if the sound is lacking, the film can just be made to look amateurish and cheap. When planning this aspect of the film, as with any other part of it, I felt it important to first evaluate the resources available to me, and then develop my ideas around that. I could only use a soundtrack without copyright, which meant using a piece that was either original, from a copyright free sit, or from before 1956. I felt that this was extremely limiting in terms of sound design, as many soundtracks would likely clash with the gritty tone of the film, clash with on-screen action or be too recognisable (many productions use free, creative commons tracks).

Thriller Planning // Plot + Narrative

The plot is the rigid backbone to any piece. Without solid narrative development, no matter how good your Cinematography, acting etc. is, you will be unable to make a cohesive or interesting text, and therefore anything of any quality. For this reason, there was much deliberation over the plot of our thriller, with many revisions and changes before settling on a final idea. The initial idea was a simple pursuit sequence set in a wide open space such as a marsh or field, inspired by No country For Old Men, with a psychopathic murderer chasing down and executing a helpless victim. The idea of this was to provide a simple basis on which to build up the other aspects of our thriller, such as cinematography and editing, which would have worked but it was felt that the idea was too simplistic and defied justification, logic and any hooks or cliffhangers for the audiences interest.

Thriller Planning // Locations

Based on Earlier planning and discussions it was decided that our piece would use a wide open space as the primary location. Most thrillers, particularly modern ones, fall back on the genre convention of urban, claustrophobic spaces and this was a cliché I felt particularly mindful of avoiding, largely due to a shortage of gritty, urban and reasonably empty areas within Norwich, which is not particularly urbanised. For that reason I began to think about more rural locations which could be used. This location type was chosen because it was reflective of the moral vacuum of the characters as well as carrying connotations of exposure and isolation, something used to effect in the opening sequence of Essex Boys, but especially in No Country For Old Men. In addition, it would be a fairly practical location type to shoot in as it is usually comparatively empty. Fortunately, I live within reasonable distance of several open areas, such as parks and fields, that could be shot in. I scouted several locations and evaluated them for their appropriation to the task, the level of traffic and ease of reach. PowerPoint compiling and evaluating possible locations after the jump.

Thriller Research // Essex Boys Opening Shot Analysis

Essex Boys Opening Analysis by LarsosMedia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ05xM4bhB0 (0:00-5:46)

Go Watch // Quadrophenia

"Mod is youth subculture of the early to mid-1960s, Focused on fashion and music. The subculture has its roots in a small group of London-based stylish young men in the late 1950s who were termed modernists because they listened to modern jazz."

Quadrophenia By Franc Roddam, is a highly influential youth drama film following the highly notorious mods and rockers subculture of the 1960s. Produced and scored by classic mod-affiliated rock band the who, the film follows Jimmy, a mod living in 1965 London, who by day works as a mail-boy at a publishers and at night parties and drops pills with his friends all members of a mod gang, united by a taste in suits and R&B. The film not only works as a hedonistic, portrait of one of the most celebrated subcultures in the world, but also as a commentary of youth identity and materialism. There are many iconic moments within the film from the infamous "We Are The Mods!" scene to the ending upon the white cliffs, this film is exemplary of how to make a high quality youth drama, a film I believe anyone who has ever been or still is a teenager should watch.

Thriller Research // No Country For Old Men (2007)





"In rural Texas, welder and hunter Llewelyn Moss discovers the remains of several drug runners who have all killed each other in an exchange gone violently wrong. Rather than report the discovery to the police, Moss decides to simply take the two million dollars present for himself. This puts the psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh, on his trail as he dispassionately murders nearly every rival, bystander and even employer in his pursuit of his quarry and the money. As Moss desperately attempts to keep one step ahead, the blood from this hunt begins to flow behind him with relentlessly growing intensity as Chigurh closes in. Meanwhile, the laconic Sherrif Ed Tom Bell blithely oversees the investigation even as he struggles to face the sheer enormity of the crimes he is attempting to thwart. - --IMDB user Kenneth Chisholm

No Country For Old Men (2007)

Written and directed by: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Starring: Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin

Evaluation Of Preliminary Task

Storyboard:

Thriller Research // Dead Man's Shoes (2004)

"Richard returns home from military service to a small town in the Midlands. He has one thing on his mind: revenge. Payback for the local bullies who did some very bad things to his brother. At first his campaign employs guerrilla tactics, designed to frighten the men and put them ill at ease. But then he steps up his operation, and one by one these local tough guys are picked off by the terrifying angel of vengeance that Richard has become."

Dead Man's Shoes (2004)

Dir: Shane Meadows

Screenplay: Paddy Considine & Shane Meadows

Starring: Paddy Considine, Toby Kebbell, Gary Stretch

Thriller Research // Battle Royale (2000)

"Forty-two students, three days, one deserted Island: welcome to Battle Royale. A group of ninth-grade students from a Japanese high school have been forced by legislation to compete in a Battle Royale. The students are each given a bag with a randomly selected weapon and a few rations of food and water and sent off to kill each other in a no-holds-barred (with a few minor rules) game to the death, which means that the students have three days to kill each other until one survives--or they all die" -from IMDB

Battle Royale (2000)

Dir: Kinji Fukasaku

Screenplay: Kenta Fukasaku

Starring: Takeshi Kitano, Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda

Go Watch // The Perverts Guide To Ideology

"Ideology-a set of conscious and unconscious ideas that constitute one's goals"

Starring Slovenian philosopher Slazoj Žižek, this film presents some really interesting ideas on more than a few things, particularly related around 2 main points 'Ideology' and 'How cinema reflects Ideology' . It is incredibly dense and often hard to follow, with so many ideas flying around at once, but if you have the desire and patience as well as 2 hours+ to watch then try and make sense of it, you will find a very rewarding and actually kinda funny critique on many of the hidden messages pervaded within and outside the world of cinema.

Camera Training // still Images

Shot Types by LarsosMedia

I made this because it was homework. screenshot for "long shot" is taken from the film 'How I Ended This Summer'.

Summer Task // Film Noir

Black Cinema 

Film Noir (translated literally as black cinema) as a genre refers to a period of stylish Hollywood crime drama ranging from the early 40’s to the late 50’s, famous examples of the genre include Carol Reed’s  ‘The third man’ (1949) and John Huston’s  ‘The Maltese Falcon’ (1941). Films of the genre typically encapsulated dark, cynical narratives based on crime fiction novels of the great depression containing moody detectives with swanky hats and seductive ‘Femme fatales’ with cigarette addictions, as well as a low key black and white aesthetic borrowed from German expressionistic cinema  and a taste for the smoothest of jazz.

Both La Confidential and La Noire were produced long after the classic period of Film Noir, but as may be clear from the setting, character types and the themes presented within the short clips they are both in debt to the classic genre. They conform in very similar ways to the conventions of the film noir genre from the gritty urban location, 1940’s time period and jazzy soundtrack. They bear a common resemblance to the cynical attitudes classic to the film noir genre as the narrators scoff at the idea of Los Angeles as some form of urban paradise, although this is more evident in the La Confidential clip, a self-referential nod to film noir commonly used in many other neo-noir’s. 

Welcome! // Student questionnaire

Name:

Lars Ohrvik-Stott

GCSE Results: 

• English Language-A*
• English Literature-A*
• Media Studies-A
• Religious Studies-A
• Mathematics-A
• ICT-A
• Science(B)-A
• Science(additional)-B
• French-B
• History-B