Thrillerwork - Final Idea Presentation - Feedback

We got a good feedback and our teacher told us that our idea is basically absolutely workable, but some things have to be thought about very carefully. The most important point, which really affects us, is that we can't introduce the killer and the cops. We can just go with one of them. Because we want to create a killer like the Joker in The Dark Knight, whom the audience sympathies with, he explained to us the structure of the movie:

1.

bank robbery - introduction of the Joker

2.

Batman is beating up criminals - introduction of Batman

3.

Batman gets confronted with the Joker and his Games - Batman vs. Joker

4.

Batman beats up the Joker - Batman wins

So we had  to make the decision whether we go with the killer like in The Dark Knight or whether we show the cops beating up or trying to beat up someone like in Miss Congeniality. We made the decision to stay with the killer, because that fits in more in our idea of a black humored thriller with a sympathetic killer.

We also probably won't be able to use the school kitchen and Devon is to far away to film there. So we need to find another kitchen location. I thought about checking out every boarding house and asking some of the day students, whether they have  a kitchen, in which we could film.

Another point is the meat and the organs. Our teacher told us that it is absolutely horrible to film with a heap of stinky meat, but I think if we want to keep the sequence realistic as possible, we will need to get through this. 

Thrillerwork Final Idea - Presentation

Thrillerwork - Feedback to my Ideas

Cooking For Children

Fin's feedback:

"It's very gruesome and is very good for story and facilities"

Xander's feedback:

"cool idea, similar to mine"

AMOK

Fin's feedback:

" This is more complex but still simple enough to film well. it could be a bit to grisly for some but it could make a very interesting plot and has potential for protagonists"

Xander's feedback:

Baader Meinhof Complex

Fin's feedback:

"I think this is a good idea, its simple and has a lot of potential for action and story. sometimes simple is good and thinking about set and time it would be easy for filming and use of props."

Xander's feedback:

Thrillerwork - My favourite Thriller and Opening Idea

My favorite idea is 'Cooking for Children', because I think, although it's just about a serial killer and two cops, through the perverse but also funny idea of that cooking show, it turns into something unusual and new. 
The absolutely objectively explaining tone of the 'moderator (Man Bites Dog) and the absolutely professionalism,which with the killer is cooking make the whole thing funny and entertaining, which is the actual perverse thing. Not the cannibal. The fact that the audience will be entertained by this cannibal. 
Sinister and slow non diegetic music at the end and a sentence like "The next episode will be released next Friday. As usual please don't forget to like and share this video." will bring the seriousness into it and will make clear for really everyone how disgusting and horrible this guy and his doings are.
This also will make the audience disgust by itself.

Thrillerwork - First Ideas for a Thriller

In the following text I will introduce three different ideas for a thriller and its opening scene.

1.Cooking for Children
Inspiration: 
-'Modest Proposal' by Jonathan Swift 
   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal)
- Hannibal Lecter

The movie is about two police officers hunting a cannibalise serial killer, who take and kills children. Than he make something like a cooking show for TV, in which he teaches different meals you can cook with that children. He loads this cooking shows up to the internet.
The opening scene would be the first cooking-show he makes.

Notes:
- meat and organs from butcher
- location: kitchen
- just one protagonist

 







2.AMOK:
Inspiration: German newspaper article, I read years ago

The film is about a school massacre, that happened years ago in Germany. Different students are telling months (maybe a year or more than that) after the tragedy in an interview what happened in the school. So the audience gets told the whole story from different perspectives and also gets a complete reconstruction of that day. Flashbacks and narrator voices of the students and also shots of the students telling the journalist, whose face the audience never will see (they just will hear his voice and maybe see parts of his body).
In the opening sequence the interviews start (quick cuts to give the audience a little look of the protagonist). It's a short time before first lesson starts. Students are sitting on the tables and talking. Non-diegetic narrative voices. The teacher comes in and the lesson starts. One student, a boy, is late. He is wearing black and is masked. In one hand he's holding a gun. A student makes a joke about his costume and that it isn't Halloween (that actually really did happen in the actual event). The boy raises his arm and points the gun on the student who made the joke. Cut to the title and end of the sequence. 

Note: Breivik and the massacre in Olso?

3.Baader Meinhof Complex
Inspiration: Simon Wood -> Baader Meinhof Complex

The film would be about a group of very radical political activists (like the RAF), who is against capitalism and kidnaps the president of a huge bank.
The opening sequence would be a video message the activist send to the public. It would be presented as found footage filmed.

Notes:
-location: could be a garage 
-'Reservoir dogs' ear biting    scene

Different Structures of Title Sequences in Thrillers

There are four different types of  title sequences:

Traditional:
A very good example for a traditional title sequence is the one of Alfred Hitchcock's  Psycho. Although there is a slightly stylised element in form of the grey lines moving through the screen, we have black back ground with white titles in front.
Another good example is the title sequence of The Sixth Sense.

 

 

Straight into it:

A film, that goes straight into the story and doesn't has a extra title sequences. A very good example for that is the title sequence of  Wes Craven's Scream. There are no titles at all and the film starts directly into the action.

 



 

 

Discrete:

A 'discrete' title sequence is a sequence, which is separate from the rest of the film and doesn't tell you what the film is about. But it can give you a idea of the tone and the genre of the movie. A 'discrete' opening sequence also is often animated and includes a lot of editing work. The opening of Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd is a pretty good example for that kind  title sequences. The animations give us a good idea of the tone of the movie. (dark and sinister, blood, dramatic non- diegetic music - horror genre)

 



 

Stylised:

A stylised title sequence is a combination of straight into it and discrete. The opening of the film starts straight into the action and then followed by a 'discrete' title sequence. The best and most famous example for that are the James Bond openings.

In the following clip most of the 'straight into' part was cut out. There is only the end of it and the 'discrete' part left 

 



Genre

A genre (from Latin: genus - race) is a category, in which you separate different media pro-ducts, which have special points in common. Examples for film genres are horror films, drama and thriller. This genres can also be separated into different sub-genres (political thriller, psycho thriller).

Movies of the same genre always have some things in common. So a thriller always has a hero, a bad guy and a mystery. The thriller genre is different from most other genres, because on the surface many of them look totally different from each other.

So are in the psycho-logical and supernatural thriller Red Lights, which is about the mystery of a magician and a scientist, who try to solve it and gets confronted with super-natural happenings, no guns, no big explosions and no police man.

 That stands in opposite to the action-thriller US Marshals, which involves a lot of shooting guns, explosions and policemen.

Nevertheless they have some basic things in common. We have a hero in both films, as well as a bad guy, as well as a mystery, which has to be solved and in both of the films we have a twist in the plot. The thriller genre uses suspense, tension and excitement as it main themes.   

Although a lot of thrillers are very different from each other, thrillers of the same sub-genre show a lot similarities. Often already the posters are quite similar.
This poster are from movies of the thriller  sub-genre crime(gangster)-thriller. 
All of them are quite dark and you can't see much. That symbolizes the mystery of crime and the secrets the men have. The guns or dead bodies are signifying violence, which also every of this movies has in common. 
Also the dark hues of the colors are quite similar.
The whole expression we get from this poster are mysterious and secretive and we know that this men are involved in mysterious and criminal things.

         

But there are much more thriller sub-genres than just the action, psycho-, supernatural and crime thrillers. There are political thriller like JFK or All The Presidents Men, which can be set against the backdrop of a political struggle, justice thriller like 12 Angry Men or Runaway Jury, which are about court cases.

I would like to make a crime thriller, with a psychopathic bad guy, who not only attacks the psyche of the main characters but also attacks the psyche of the audience and make them feel uncomfortable about themselves, because it always fascinated me, when the bad guy in the movie broke  every rule, even the rules of the bad guys, when he did the most horrible things, which disgust and shocked the audience up to their innermost, but always was liked by the audience. You could even laugh about him sometimes. But always a cold chill run trough your back, when this guy appears. Examples for this characters are: 'Hannibal Lecter'(Silent of the Lambs), 'The Joker' (The Dark Knight)and the contract killer in Road to Perdition. 

'Final Cut Pro' - Introduction

Following steps explain how to open your project in 'final cut pro':

1.Open the 'Final cut server':
Double-click on the 'Final cut server' symbol.
2.Find your shots:
- Open the 'productions' at the left hand side in the upper corner.
- Click through the folders till you have found your project
  (for an example: Prelim - Simon - 'names of the members of your    group'
3.'Check out':
After you have double-clicked on your project, click on 'check out'. Choose the place, where you want to save your project (like desktop). Tick 'keep media in project' and check out. 
4.Open your project in 'final cut pro'
Open the folder, where you served it, and double-click on the 'final cut pro' file. Now your project should open in 'final cut pro'.

Prelim Editing with 'Final Cut Pro' - Evaluation

During the prelim editing we have edited the stuff we shot at the prelim shooting. 
First we created two new bins(files), one called 'crush bin', in which we put all our shots, and after that a bin called 'log bin', in which we put the shots from the 'crush bin' we wanted to use in our final project.The left 'project window' shows you a single clip you have chosen before.
Then we started to pull the shots, we wanted to use for the beginning into the 'timeline' and cut them together (IMPORTANT: If you cut on the movement of something, the clip becomes much more alive and fluent). The outcome of that cutting we could see on the right project window.
SAFE YOUR PROJECT EVERY 2 SECONDS (APPLE/S). It's a real pity, if your program crashes and your group loses everything you've worked on.    

As I had feared, our bad planning during shooting the scene made it very hard to edit the shots to one product, because we hadn't got enough shots and perspectives. However we managed it and the outcome, although it could be much better, was not that bad. Moreover we got experience in working with a professional program like 'final cut pro', which I think is much more important than hand in a perfect product.
Our teamwork was sometimes good, but often bad. Vinnie and I worked most of the time alone, which was not alone the girls fault, and we weren't the same opinion a lot of times, because Vinnie is more focused to finish the product very fast and I'm more focused to work very detailed, but I lose the focus to finish the whole product.So theoretically we could and we did supplement each other , but we also hindered each other. But we managed it, finished a average product and collected experience and information to edit a film product with 'final cut pro'. 

Road To Perdition - Poster Analyze

The clothes, the warehouse-lights and the machine gun give us a 'american prohibition' and 'mafia' feeling. The boy is standing behind one of the mans arms. That symbolizes that the man is the boy's protector, maybe father. This is also reinforced by the gun, which gives the man something threatening. 
The dark shadows in front of them and the light behind them symbolizes their journey from the known into the unknown.That also gets reinforced by the rain, which symbolizes a disaster or ending of something. The covered faces tell us that they are hiding from something in the darkness. The shadows and the light also symbolize evil and good and the light/good(the boy and his protector) is surrounded by the shadows/evil(mafia).
The different of levels of brightness around both and the gun in the mans hand shows us that he was a part of the mafia and did bad things and creates the expression of innocence in regard to the boy. The light in the darkness also symbolizes hope.
The headings reinforces the meaning that the man did bad things. The boy is carrying him out of the darkness(hell/perdition) into the light(heaven). The rain, which symbolizes angel's tears, and the form of the light, which looks like wings, reinforces this expression.
The poster tells us that this movie will include violence and gangster, but also will tell the story of the relationship between protector and boy and the dramatic story of 'saving the mans soul'.