Treatment

Casting

• Director:Craig
• Producer:Sean
• Actors:Unknown
• Cameraman:Sean/Craig
• Sound engineer:Craig
• Mise-en-Scene manager:Sean
• Cinematography:Craig/Sean

Plot and make-up of story

1. Small room (maybe a cupboard)-Top light
2. Flashbacks of running through a busy street away from antagonist
3. Back to cupboard-hear door open and hear movement of interrogator
4. Flashback to over-coming obstacles to escape capture (jumping wall, climbing fence, under barriers...)
5. Back in room and gag is removed so he can speak (only see hands and silhouette of antagonist) and questions begin e.g. "Where is it" and "What have you done with it?"
6. Door is kicked down by a man with a gun who shoots the interrogator and then opening titles begin

Sound
Mostly diegetic in the room and non-diegetic in flashback (soundtrack-chase music)
Only dialogue when interrogation is in full swing

Strap-line and title

• Title- Hush
• Strapline-Stay calm, Keep quiet, survive!

Ideas Focus Group

Idea Focus Group

Idea One

Man A finds a bag looks inside and decides to take what ever might be inside. Man B follows him also wanting whats inside the bag. Man A realises and tries to run away from Man B by running through/around/over obstacles and in doing so drops the bag from a bridge and it floats away to a bank where the camera pans up onto who will be the main character finding the bag and puts it on his back and walks away.

Idea Two

A drug deal is under taking when a sound of police sirens spooks them both and they run away. The dealer is then chased by an under cover police officer in plan clothes. The dealer hides and eludes the police officer where then he walks away from the camera and the credits roll.

Idea Three

A shot in a small room of a man tied up to a chair being interrogated while having flash backs of running away from an unseen antagonist. He over-comes obstacles to try and escape but ends up being caught and in the situation we see him in the first place.

Thriller Openings

Thriller openings

1) Memento

Conventions: Include blood, guns, bullets, murder

Camera: Black and white, close up 

Editing: the film is being played backwards

Sound: low toned music 

Mise en scene: Broken window, abandoned warehouse, hotel room, dirty car

2) Brick

Conventions: Dead body 

Camera: Extreme close up

Editing: Dissolve, shot reverse shot, graphic match, flashback, slow zoom

Sound: Bells and guitar soundtrack, school bell.

Mise en scene:

3) Zodiac

Conventions: strange weird attitude

Camera: Tracking shot, slow motion

Editing: Non diegetic caption

Sound: Soundtrack, fireworks, car horn, screeching tires

Mise en scene: Night 4th july

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No Country For Old Men

No Country For Old Men

This film is set in rural texas where a welder and hunter Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) discovers the remains of a drug deal gone violently wrong. He leaves the crime scene with more than two million dollars in cash, rather than report the discovery to the police. because of this a psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), on his trail as he murders anyone who gets near him or in his way. Meanwhile a laconic sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) struggles to oversees the investigation and fails to thwart his crimes.

suspense and shock

Thriller Hitchcock model 

A Hitchcock film often begin with a crime and the accusation of an innocent bystander. The accused could contact the authorities where the problem would usually be solved but instead the poor bystander runs from the law which further puts him/her at risk. An example of this is in 'The 39 Steps' 1935 and 'North by Northwest' 1959. In The 39 Steps the suspense films abandon both thrills and suspense when the falsely accused character finally reaches safety.

Suspense

Suspense is when the audience knows what the characters don't, it is the anticipation of what is going to happen next. An example of this is if there is a class full of students being taught by a teacher and the camera reveals that there is a bomb under the table to the audience but the students and teacher does not. The audience will be anticipating what's going to happen, will we be saved? will the bomb go off? this is the suspense.

Shock

Shock is when the audience does not know what is going to happen. If the class full of students being taught by a teacher does not reveal the bomb under the table but just goes off without warning killing everyone present this is what we would call shock.

Conventions of a Thriller

A thriller is commonly about a hero the protagainist trying to beat the villian the antagonist. A thriller also contains fast pace editing and it uses suspence which build tension and are meant to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. All the tension which is built up through out the film with chase scenes and pursuits all lead up to the climax which is usually the villains plans being destroyed by the heroes actions, this is where the tables are turned on the villain where now the hero is on the upper hand. The sub-genres of the thriller are spy, legal, psychological, political, mystery and crime. The common thriller includes murder, menace, mystery and paranoia. The central plot o fa thriller is good vs evil, justice vs injustice it involves the characters on a dangerous mission to escape what seems an impossible situation, like in the mission impossible films, it seems impossible for the protagonist to come out on top but then there is a plot twist and the mostly troubled, multi faced, morally complex hero 'saves the day'.

A Red herring is something in a film which distracts your attention from the real issue. It is related but not identical to the real plot line.

Thriller

Thrillers usually have a set of rules which the stick to and follow with every film. An example of this is James Bond where he breaks into the villains compound gets captured where the villain confronts him tells him all his plans and then orders someone to send him to some strange kind of death, like being thrown to the crocodiles. Where then Bond escapes by using some kind of gadget Q has given him and foils the villains plans. 

The best example of keeping to the rules of the films are in the animation Road Runner where the rules are as follows 

1) The road runner cannot harm or upset the coyote expect by going 'Meep! Meep!'.

2) No outside force can harm he Coyote, only his own ineptitude or the failure of acme products.

3) The Coyote could stop anytime - if he were not a fanatic.

4) No dialogue ever, except 'Meep! Meep!'.

5) The road runner must stay on the road - otherwise logically he would not be call called road runner.

6) All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters - the Southwest American desert.

7) All materials, tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from Acme corporation.

8) whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy.

9) The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.

Thriller recipe (James Bond)

James Bond

Recipe for James Bond Thrillers:

A James Bond film consists of the following; a dashing, sexy, brave and heroic secret agent. A eccentric villain of equal strength hell bent on taking over the world or blowing things up and causing destruction. A number of gorgeous women and exotic locations not forgetting the martinis, shaken not stirred. And finally a number of eye popping stunts and action scenes which can sometimes be completely absurd.

James Bond also known as 007 is a british secret agent, created by writer Ian Fleming in 1953. James Bond started by featured in twelve novels and two short story collections. But the fictional British secret agent who's been adapted for television, radio, comic strip and video games as well as being used in the film franchise which started in 1962 with Dr. No which starred Sean Connery as James Bond. There has been 23 Bond films where the most recent being Skyfall starring the most recent Bond, Daniel Craig. He is the sixth actor to play Bond the others are:

Sean Connery

George Lazenby

Roger Moore

Timothy Dalton

Pierce Brosnan

Daniel Craig

There are other things which make James Bond who he is these include the Bond car. The Bond car is a high performance sports car stuffed with gadgets. The most famous of these is the Aston Martin DB5 where Bond could eject the seat with a red button under the gear stick. The DB5 first appeared in Goldfinger in 1964 driven by Roger Moore. The most recent Bond film Skyfall made a reference to this classic car and the well known ejection button.

 

The way James Bond is sold to the public also helps to make the films such hits for example the posters advertising the new films are usually filled with guns, suits, women and action.  

Examples:

These posters show what the film entails and hints at the story line. It entices the audience both men and women by showing both sexy women and men in the posters. It always has his pistol in the poster to show he is dangerous.

The action scenes are always fast pacing and is usually either James Bond being chased or him chasing someone himself, with a scattering of explosions, gun firing, fighting and general destruction.

Preliminary task evaluation

For our preliminary task we had to show someone entering a room walk over to someone already in the room have a conversation and then someone storm out. When filming this we didn't really write any planning down but we did have an idea of what we wanted to do and just worked on and change this as we filmed. As there are only two of us in the group it is some times more difficult when having us both on screen at once. This entails a lot of cutting out of walking over to the camera when editing the clip. On the other hand we both work well together and it allows us to alternate and try all the roles of filming. Overall the task went well and i am happy with the results.

craig and sean preliminary task

Craig and Sean

Sound

Sound

Diegetic:

Diegetic refers to the world of the text, it is sounds that the characters would be able to hear. For example dialogue, sound effects, music with a source within the world of the film e.g. a radio.

Non-Diegetic:

Non-Diegetic refers to everything outside the world of the film, it is sounds which the characters would not be able to hear. For example voice over, soundtrack.

On-screen sound- the audience can see the source of the sound.

Off-screen sound- the audience cant see the source of the sound. 

Off screen sound enables the extension of the diegetic world.

Parallel sound matches the action on the screen for example in a chase there is a fast pace soundtrack.

Contrapuntal sound does not match the action for example in a chase there is a slow pace soundtrack.

Sound bridge creates a smooth transition between one scene to another, the sound 'bridges' across the two scenes.

North by Northwest

North by Northwest

By Alfred Hitchcock

North by Northwest is a thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by Ernest Lehman and staring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason.

The film entails an innocent New Yorker advertising executive who is mistaken for a government agent (George Kaplan) by a group of foreign spies who want him dead. The spies chase who they believe is the government agent while he looks for a way to survive and prove that he is not who they think he is.

In many ways North by northwest is a successful thriller for example a thriller is characterised as fast pacing frequent action. This is common in North by Northwest, as there is a lot of action in many of the scenes. For example the crop duster scene where Cary Grant playing the character of Roger Thornhill is attacked by a crop duster plane.

Cary Grant is a resourceful hero as he manages to thwart the plans of the more powerful and better equipped villains. An example of this is in the auction scene where he uses his cunning to get out of a tricky situation.




The macguffin is the plot line which keeps the story moving but isnt what the audience is focusing on. In north by northwest the macguffin is the villians trying to keep the CIA agents from finding out their plans to smuggle some microfilm.

Sean and Craig's Interview

scene analysis

Zombie land final scene

Chapter 26 1:12-1:16

Craig Haxell

Zombie land released in 2008 is an action comedy horror that entails a shy young college student travelling to reach his parents through a zombie filled America. Staring Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus, Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee, Emma Stone as Wichita, and Abigail Breslin as little rock. Along the way he meets up with a boisterous zombie hater, gun toting tough guy hell bent on finding the last Twinkie. And a pair of scamming, scheming sisters on their way to an apparent ‘zombie free’ amusement park.

 The scene I am going to be analysing is the final action scene where the two sisters are trapped on a ride ‘blast off’ and while Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) leads the huge group of zombies away, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) goes to their rescue.

The first part of the scene shows Tallahassee running to a fair ground stand. The stand has lights all around the outside and a large top light inside. This makes it look like a safe haven compared to the darkness around it. It then jump cuts from angry zombies running towards the stand and to Tallahassee closing the shutters and preparing his weapons, this combined with the slow non-diegetic eerie music and the sounds of zombies builds the tension. At 0:33 in the clip it shows a birds eye view showing the number of zombies and the danger that Tallahassee is trapped. The mise-en-scene is contrasted to the situation because there are light colours and coloured bears in the stand which are associated with happy safe fun times when it isn’t for Tallahassee. The sound of the gun sots are louder than everything else and one shot is used as a sound bridge as Tallahassee aims the gun at the camera it jump cuts to Columbus slamming a door open and running out with several zombies chasing behind him in slow motion and then to the two girls still trapped in the ride franticly hitting a zombie as it tries to climb up to them.

Editing like this slows done the speed of the action as in turn the amount of action decreases. It then pans up from a pile of corpse to Tallahassee twirling his guns in his hands while western style music is played. This is used to show him as a hero and a winner as comes an end to the slow motion and the end of the mad panicking action from before.

At 1:47 in the clip as it slowly pans from in front of Columbus to over his shoulder everything but the for ground is out of focus putting the audiences attention on Columbus. It then reveals a zombie that is dressed as a clown. This shows a huge contrast. A clown is seen to be funny and silly where as this clown is far from the norm, this shows the viewer that something unexpected is going to happen.

The scene has almost no dialogue the story is told by the sound effect, which is the voice over of Columbus, which is seen to be what he’s thinking. This gives the director the ability to speed up or slow down the sequence just by the pace of the sound track playing. It also builds the tension and allows the viewer to take in all of what is happening. The way the rules are edited show how the change in Columbus attitude and the way he thinks he should go though his life and as the ‘don’t’ drops at 2:02 of the clip it shows the moment that the idea clicks in his head.

Zombieland final scene

craig and sean media video

Psycho

The film Psycho is based on the novel of the same name written by Robert Bloch. It is a story of a boy (norman bates played by Anthony Perkins) and his mother. The macguffin is about a woman (Lila Crane played by Vera Miles) who stole $40,000 from her boss and ran away to live in secret with her lover (Sam Loomis played by John Gavin). While trying to avoid the attention of the police she stops off at an old hotel just off the motor way where she meets the boy and his 'mother' (who has been dead for years), in his mind he takes on the role of his mother and becomes jealous of the young woman staying in the hotel. He/she stabs the woman to death in the shower and leaves the mess for the son part of his mind to clean up.

http://youtu.be/8VP5jEAP3K4

The audience is taken by surprise because they never really see the mother side of Norman Bates and when it is revealed who has murdered Lila Crane, it shocks the audience and fits the pieces together. The film made $50,000,000 in box office which shows it success. its success is linked to the fact that there was nothing made like it in its time so even though today it seems timid and not very frighting back in 1960 it was terrifying!

Welcome to Craig Haxell's thriller blog. I am studying thrillers in media at robert clack school. i will be posting coursework as i complete it.