Sub genre's which inspire's me.

Thriller sub-genres.

Action
Psychological
Supernatural
Spy

The type of thriller that inspires me the most is psychological and spy type thrillers as they often require me to think deeply and in order to find out whats going on your have to think very hard and unravel it yourself. Adding to the deep thinking aspects of the thrillers they also tend to have interesting twists at the endof the film which are usually not of the initial expectations of the viewer.

One psychological thriller film that i have really enjoyed will be 'Butterfly effect' The butterfly effect is a common trope in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and with "what if" scenarios where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes.

News and current affairs

Pirates 'seize UK yacht couple'

The search for the British couple who were feared to have been taken hostage by Somali pirates.
Paul and Rachel Chandler, from Tunbridge Wells, were sailing their yacht - the Lynn Rival - towards Tanzania, when they released a distress signal.

This is more cover on their story

http://yachtpals.com/yacht-pirates-7055

This will be a very good choice for a thriller film as the story is very catchy and will keep viewers at the edge of their seats.

The use of fonts ( Extention task )

Fonts

For our title sequence we would need to consider the type of font we will be using as this is also an important factor in creating a sucsessful title sequence.


The main fonts that are generally used are ;
Serif ; (Examples of serif 'Courier and times') Identifying a serif font will be noticing the very simple small strokes at the end of each word.Serif fonts are most commonly used in formal way. Usually Serif fonts are found in newspaper's, example being 'The Times' Newspaper.Sans Serif ; (Examples of sans serif fonts 'Comic sans and Ariel') Sans serif fonts are usually informal and mordern. Unlike Serif fonts it hasn't got the strokes at the end of every word.


Font Analysis

As a class we breifly talked about the fonts used in two particualar film covers one of which was rocky ;

The film cover uses a 'Sans Serif' font.This font has been used to give the impression and impact of a 'Punch'. The bold letters also give a sense of masculinity and dominacy. Its also very simple and heavy font.

The film Pearl Harbor uses the font 'palatino' , which is a type of serif font . This font is used to give a old historical feel and represents the patriotic theme of the film.

It also shows the seriousness of the film

News and Current Affairs

I've been watching the channel4 news again today and have found yet another story that I think would be good as a starting point to a thriller trailer.

This is a report about a girl of only 15, that had been trapped amoung the rumble in Haiti for 15 days!

This would be a terrifying situation to be in, therefore I think it would work well as a thriller. The story would have to be altered alot to enhance the thriller aspect of it.

News and current affairs

Thriller films are often inspired by real life events.

Christmas day bomb scare

On christmas day a 23 year old Nigerian man attempted to blow up a transatlantic jet.
High explosives are believed to have been moulded to his body and sewn into his underpants.
He was immediately overpowered by passengers and crew aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253, minutes before it was due to land in Detroit from the Dutch capital Amsterdam.
The suspect was charged with placing a destructive device on the Airbus 330, which was carrying 289 passengers and crew, and attempting to destroy the jet.

Haiti earthquake

A massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the Caribbean island of Haiti . The earthquake struck in the most populated area of the country. The quake caused an estimated 170,000 people dead , 250,000 people sustained injuries, and as many as one million Haitians were left homeless.

In the nights following the earthquake, many people in Haiti slept in the streets, on pavements, in their cars, or in makeshift shanty towns either because their houses had been destroyed, or they feared standing structures would not withstand aftershocks .

I believe both these stories could be used as a basis of a storyline in a thriller as they are both current affairs in the news at the moment.

Use of fonts - extension task

Fonts

Seeing as we will be designing our very own title sequence it would be important to think very carefully about the type of font we choose to use. There are two main families of fonts ;
Serif fonts - such as times and corrier . serif fonts are generally more traditional and often slightly more formal than sans serif fonts.
Sans serif fonts - such as Ariel and Comic sans . sans serif fonts are generally more informal , modern and 'friendly'.

Font analysis




The film Pearl Harbor uses the font 'palatino' , which is a serif font . this particular font is used to give a old and historical feel and represents the patriotic theme of the film.

The film Rocky uses a sans serif font . the font used is strong and bold and very heavy , this represents the contense of the film. The font has a big impact similar to a 'punch'. the font stands tall and strong which symbolises masculinity.

Events blog diary.

I've been watching the channel4 news recently and have been looking for certain stories that may inspire me and my group for the trailer. The stories that did interest me and what I thought would be good to use in a thriller film, were the stories on british workers being held hostage in places that Iraq.
Peter Moore, a computer technicion working abroad had been detained in Iraq. He was used as a trading tool in the hope that his being there would get an iraqy man realised from a prison in America. During this two year period Peter Moore was subject to torture and mock executions. As I watched this report I realised that this storyline or even something similar would be great as a thriller film/trailer.

Types of Font- Extention task

As we will be designing our title sequence we will need to think about what type of font is suitable for our trailer. As a extention task I am going to list the different types of fonts that are available to use.

Serif- examples of sans serif fonts would be Times and Courier. To identify a serif font simply look for small strokes at the end of each word.

Serif fonts are most commonly used on more formal title sequences. Traditionally, serif fonts have been used on newspapers, formal newspapers in particular for example the Times newpaper.

Sans serif- examples of sans serif would be Ariel and Comic sans. In comparision to serif, sans serir fonts tend to be more informal in the shape and form that they take. Unlike serif fonts, sans serif doesnt have the small strokes on the end of each letter. In doing this, the word appears to be more informal. The 'SUN' newspaper uses a sans serif font as the newspaper it self in my opinion contains stories of an informal nature e.g page three girls and sports.

In the lesson today we breifly analysed typograghy/fonts on two film covers, ive decided to pick Pearl harbour as the cover i will analysis breifly.

Why is the serif font used on this particular movie cover?

* fomal therefore reflecting the seriousnesss of the film as it is about the world war 2.

*The letters are all capitals, represting the masculinity of the soliders.

*Letters also standing straight(not italic) also representing the stern attitudes of the soliders.

Definition Of Suspense

What is suspense?

• The state of being undecided or undetermined
• A state of usually anxious uncertainty, as in awaiting a decision
• The growing interest and excitement felt while awaiting a climax or resolution, as of a novel, play, series of events, etc.
• Rare suspension or interruption, as of a legal right.

An example of a typical series of a 'Suspense' ...

What is suspence?

The web definition of Suspense is : a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. If someone were to ask me what the word suspense meant, I would say that it is the feeling being completely helpless. For example, if a person were to act in a certain way knowing that what they were doing had no certain outcome, suspense would build up as they are waiting for the action that followed there own. During this time the person would feel helpless. Basically suspense is present most commonly when a person doesn't know what is going to happen next.

Edit skills Audit

This lesson has introduced us to the practical side of media studies. During this lesson we have learnt to edit video clips with the BAIT tutorial. To begin with we started with the simple process of choosing what part of the clip we wanted to use. To do this we would click 'i' to start and then 'O' to end the clip. In doing this we would cut out the 'action' stage of filming. Secondly , and once we had chosen the specific part of the clip we would then drag it down to the time line. At this point we could do a number of different things e.g razoring the clip(cutting it), extending and shortening the clips and layering clips. The picture above shows the editing process and is an example of the work I did today.

Technical Audit Of "Bait Tutorial"

In this lesson i learnt very basic but important skills in

"Final Cut Pro" (Bait Tutorial)

These skills will later on help me alot in my final project that we will be doing later on the year.

Such skills are

• The "Razor Blade tool" this tool cuts a film clip in half depending on were you want to edit the clip
• Dragging of clips with the double headed arrow to change the length of the clip
• Marking of "In and Out" points in the viewer window
• Dragging of clips onto the time line
• Layer Clips

Video of a "Final Cut Pro" Tutorial

How is suspense created in the film 'What lies beneath' ?

There are many ways in which the film ' What lies beneath' creates suspense for example . When Clarie is looking through the window with a pair of binoculars and is spying on her neighbor and one minute he is there and the next minute hes not. This makes both Claire and the audience pondering on his whereabouts. However ,the next time we look he is there. This results in both the audience and Clarie are shocked. The build up of suspense and tension is made by the use of silence and the use of dark ominous tones.

another example would be ;

when the claire picked up the phone to doublecheck if her husband had called 911 to confess about his previous fellonys , when in actual matter of fact instead he had diled 441 . when she learns this she is baffeld and so are the audiance. whilst she was checking the phone she was standing infront of a bathroom mirror and all of a sudden her husband apperes in the mirror behind her and tries to suffocate her with a peice of cloth that we interpte to have some kind of chemiacal on it. After the struggle we see claires whole body becoming weaker and weaker as she tries to escape the wrath of her pscotic husband.

CITY

This image was taken outside our college and has been used to represent the word ''city'' In my opinion the quality of the picture could have been better, but while noticing the quality of image I realised that by having such a roughly drafted picture, it creates a better sense of reality. strangly this image was captured on a typical monday morning, with people on their daily commute, feeling rather mundane. Nothing in this image has altered, it is as real is the city that surrounds it.

Calmness

As a group, we decided to use a kettle to represent calmness. We felt that 'having a cup of tea' is traditionally shown to 'calm' a situation or to have a break.

Calmness is defined as composure: steadiness of mind under stress. Calmness is the mental state of being free from agitation, excitement, or disturbance. Therefore we felt that a kettle is a unique way of portraying calmness.

Passion

Passion

The word passion can is described in the dictionary as ; a strong feeling or emotion or a feeling of strong sexual desire.

The above picture indirectly captures the emotion of passion. The reason behind this choice of photo was that a condom is used by lovers in an attempt to display the passion between the two of them. This photo also promotes safe sex and the idea that if passion is ' a strong feeling or emotion' then a condom should be used to prevent the lovers of any potential sexually transmitted infections.

The shot itself was taken solely of the condom from an angle and it was zoomed in putting an emphasis on the condom. My group and i felt this image was a unique and creative way of displaying the emotion of passion.

What is suspense ?

The definition of suspense can be descried in many ways for example the following ;

- Apprehension about what is going to happen

- keeps the audience on our toes , seeing as we do not know what will happen next

- suspense creates tension and keeps the audiance engaged

- suspense is descried by big time director Hitchcock by the 'Bomb theory' , this theory is the idea that in order to create suspense the audience need to have some information that the characters in the film do not posses.

A great example of this would be clip from the film above ' what lies beneath ' .