Storyboard

Thriller Opening: Initial Ideas

These our mine and Emily's first thoughts and ideas for our thriller opening, we're going to do further research to help us develop our ideas further. 

Genre Conventions: Thriller

A thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, gaming and TV. They're often fast-paced with frequent action full of suspense. Thrillers are broad as there's many sub genres for example: spy, political, conspiracy, military, medical, forensic, psychological and horror thrillers. A thriller usually consists of a battle between the protagonist and the antagonist, as the characters and story develops through a chain of bad events tension is being built for the climax.

Typical CEMS conventions seen in a thriller:

• Low key lighting to create dark lighting and set the mood.
• Sound track is often dark and creepy with low tones to set tension, or loud sudden sounds for effective jump scares.
• Costumes are varied, however, they're really important and often in thrillers the antagonist is seen wearing dark clothing and a mask to disguise them which adds mystery to the film as it's unknown.
• A variation of camera shots are seen, but a main one used is low angle shots which shows dominance of a character usually either the villain or hero.
• Often there's use of quick cuts between shots, usually used to suddenly to scare the audience due to surprise. 
• The location of a lot of horrors usually have something in common, for example, it's usually a dark location such as an abandoned house or the woods. The location is often either of the extremes, either it's set in a remote area with no one around or a really populated city/area, but what both of these have in common is that they both provide tension as it's unknown where the villain is going to attack.

Thrillers are often cliché in some aspects purely so it grabs the audience and the audiences emotions so they can relate to it which helps the audience feel what the characters may be feeling, this makes the films personal to the viewer creating a more realistic feel.

Although opinions and feelings of thrillers vary from person to person the main intention of thrillers is often to keep the audience on edge through high-levels of anticipation, uncertainty, anxiety and tension. When you put it like that, makes you wonder why we endure such films.

Lighting Practice

This shot the light is dim and is underneath me this makes the person seem quite
dominant and scary and is often used in thrillers. Because the light is so dim
and the shot isn't close up the background is completely black and makes it look
as if I am walking through the darkness.

This shot the bright artificial light is to the side so half of my face is in the
dark and half in the light which creates a mysterious effect.

Similar to the first photo the dim candlelight is beneath me which enhances the
shadows on my face and makes it look scary as it's low key light.

This is a shot which is backlit by artificial light, a bright light behind the
object in the foreground creates a silhouette figure of the object/person
in front. Also, this can create shadows. Making it look mysterious.   

Natural light and backlit light. This shot is taken in natural light, so
colours are natural and nothing is exaggerated as no
artificial lights have been used. As well as natural lighting, this shot is
also displaying backlit lighting effects, because the light from the sky
is giving the trees the silhouette, dark figure.

Se7en Textual Analysis

Se7en textual analysis from amyheald

Title Analysis: Penny Dreadful

Penny Dreadful Title Analysis from amyheald

The "Penny Dreadful" Opening Scene:

Adobe After Effects Practice: Titling

2D MOTION TRACKING

I spent some time editing in Adobe After Effects and I tried out 2D Motion Tracking.


To practice for the Thriller opening I tried out 2D motion tracking on Adobe After Effects, this will help me in the editing process of the thriller opening task as I will be more familiar with the editing software, and rather than using the standard Adobe Premier Pro software for the titling, I could possibly branch out to make the titling of the thriller opening more advanced.

                                       

 On this task I focused primarily on the titling and how it would follow the motion of the footage to make it look and feel more natural.
Overall, I am pleased with the final outcome, although it is a little patchy in places and needs improvement as this is my first time using Adobe After Effects.

I used this YouTube tutorial video for inspiration and help: