Feedback from our pitch

We pitched our idea's and the rest of our blog to the class to show them what we were thinking of doing and this is the feedback we got:

Everyone thought our logo looked professional and would have a great effect on our audience.

Another thing people said was that our idea of showing an illness or a psychological problem was a good thing and that we could show this discreetly in the opening sequence without giving too much away. For example if someone in the film suffers from paranoia maybe.

These are just brainstorming idea's obviously and we may use something completely different.

Mood Board

This is a selection of photographs that we have looked at in order to try and influence our idea's for our thriller opening.

Production Logo

Epic productions is the name of our production company. We wanted to keep the name short but strong, to promote ourselves with a positive image. We thought that with this name that it would set out our goals to be a global company. The word epic implies sense of drama and quality to the products this company will make.

20th century fox analysis

We think this logo is particularly good because of many elements, the sound is important as it is intense and has the drumming sound as if to be a build up to something big, symbolising the film as something big. The fact it shows Hollywood in the background shows it is a film with huge status and only the best quality actors are going to be associated with this film.

Universal Logo Analysis

We decided to choose this logo as we think it represents its global presents. It also symbolizes that it's brightening up the world, just like the sun. The sounds like a fan fair, which is used when something important is about to happen. We think that is a bold statement showing the kind of influence they want.

Alfred Hitchcock essay"Why thrillers thrive". 1936

The article is explaining how a thriller is meant to create fear but make you feel safe at the at the same time."We have to project ourselves into their consciousness". We think that he means a thriller pulls you into the film its self maybe without you being fully aware of it. where as a horror film tries to place you into situations that you are not comfortable and beyond. We think that most horror films try to force the audience into the film unlke thrillers that are easy to pull out of if you feel uneasy.

Panic Room

As the title suggests, the film is about a safe room within the main characters house.
The opening sequence has panning cameras over new york, the second biggest city in the world, which has millions of different rooms. This isolates the characters and also the audience, by pulling in the viewer to believe that it could happen in any room within the city. This fits in with the thriller convention of abnormal happens in normal, everyday places. It shows a long shot of the sky lie from the ground, as if from a view point, with a calm and sunny day.

opening sequence analysis: Vertigo

Vertigo is a 1958 thriller movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In the first part of the opening sequence you are shown a section of a woman's face in a close up shot, you are seeing so little in the picture yet you can tell so much by using your own imagination and slight eye movements. Just from seeing the eye movements it makes you think that the woman is scared, anxious, paranoid and possibly like she is about to have a panic attack when her eye widens and her pupils seem fixated on something. Of course none of this is definate but these thoughts are the viewers being manipulated by minute movements triggering huge speculation. After the opening sequence moves on you are shown a sequence of difference coloured circular shapes spiraling towards you, this in my view gives you the effect of "Vertigo". The spiraling shapes coming towards you makes you feel like you are falling continuously, however it seems like just before the spiral hits you, or you would hit the floor if you were falling, the shape disapears and another apears in the distance doing the same as the previous shape. This gives the typical thriller film suspense, showing when something builds up so much that you almost expect it to happen, for it then to just fade away and start again, this is important to thrillers as when you do get to the end with the big finish there is so much suspense that it can be a relief for the viewer to watch, however if there is no big finish then the whole film can feel lackluster and a disapointment.

The music to the opening sequence follows the same kind of key as the spiraling shapes as the music starts off soft then builds up with dramatic effect enough for you to expect a big noise and action, but just soothes off, calms down and begins to build up again.

If you add all these effects together you feel engulfed into the film with the music, close up shots of the eyes and the falling sensation. All together it makes the opening sequence dramatic and sets the scene well for the rest of the film and gives you quite an obvious link to the fact that this is a thriller.

preliminary task evaluation

Our preliminary task came out very well as the final product had good continuity, showed a variety of different camera shots as well as the fact it looked fluent.

We used a long shot to start with to see Connor walking towards a door which was next to the camera so it looked like he was walking towards the camera to start with, this gives a a good establishing shot of the surrounding area and gives you a good look at one of the characters.
After this we shot an extreme close up of the door handle as Connor opened the door, followed by a long shot of Connor coming through the door on the other side. The key to making this look good is to make sure you have good continuity and fluency. This is why when editing this section we made sure that the amount the door was open when we left the extreme close up was the same as when we started the long shot on the other side of the door.
Then we showed a reaction shot of Adam when Connor walked through the door. Once again fluency and continuity were both good.

Overall i think that the preliminary task went really well and ended up looking great after some good editing work.

Preliminary Task

This is the embed to our preliminary task;

preliminary task infomation

For our preliminary task we had to film a sequence of different camera shots to the best of our ability to show our camera skills, and then to edit our work to show good continuity. The camera shots we had to present are:
Establishing shot
Close-up shot
Match on action shot
Reaction shot
Long shot
Filming a conversation

The task should demonstrate; match on action shot reverse/shot and the 180 degree rule.