Research into film credits.

I researched into what needs to go into film credits and found the following list, however as we are only making an opening sequence we will only need the opening credits:
Opening Credits:

• Title-The name of the film
• Cast/Starring-Main characters only
• Commentary by
• Presented by
• Narrated by
• Writers/Creators-Adapted by, Based on, Written by, Screenplay by.
• Production/Editorial-Produced by, Directed by.
• In association with
  

Closing Credits:

• Cast/Performers-In order of appearance
• Advice/Consultants-Technical advisors
• Combined credits-Produced and Directed by, Written and Directed by, Written and Produced by.
• Crafts-Animation, Camera, Costume, Design, Floor and Studio management, Lighting, Make-Up, Sound, Special effects.
• Editorial and Production
  

Shooting schedule

please click this or the schedule for full detail

Details of email to Regent Hotel

Hello,

My Media Studies group and I are currently filming for our A level coursework, an opening sequence of a Thriller film, for this we need a shot of a woman walking out of a traditional Georgian style town house and down the front steps.

Would it be possible to use the front door and steps of your hotel to film this shot, the sign on the front of the building will not be on show in the shot so the buildings identity will not be known.

We are flexible with the time at which we can film, however it would need to be daylight and preferably weekends and at a time when we would not be in the way of your guests or affect the daily running of your business.

Many Thanks

Chris Shutes

Meeting 14

Date: 25/02/09

All present

We uploaded our shooting schedule and sent an email to the Regent Hotel in Cambridge to ask for their permission for us to film their front door and steps.

We started to research into what needs to be in the credits and who needs to be mentioned.

Storyboard

This is our storyboard, it shows a rough view of the shots that we are going to use in our opening sequence and the time that they will appear for.

Mise En Scene - Photo props

These photos are to be used as props, to be put into photo frames and used in our opening sequence to emphasise the mise en scene of the shots, as it shows more of a background to the storyline and starts the audience guessing about who the man in the photos is. They will be used in the POV shot when the intruder looks at his surroundings in the bedroom.

Possible Location Continued 2.

I visited Cambridge during half term, and noticed that a possible location could be Regent Hotel on Regent St. and is 3/4 of a mile from the station, it has the suitable attributes for the shot we want and is easily accessible for the group compared to traveling to London.

Meeting 13

Date: 23/02/09
We researched further into possible locations and discussed what Chris had found when he visited Cambridge. We thought that the Regent Hotel in Cambridge would be more suitable as it will be easier to gain permission to film and its also closer so we wouldnt be wasting valuable time traveling to London.
We also took photos of the woman who will be in the bed, and an unknown man, these photos will be put into frames and then onto the bedside table for when we film them in the opening.

Possible Location Continued.

Date: 12/02/09-13/02/09
I visited London for these two days and while i was there i looked for any possible houses or appartments that we could use in our opening sequence.
The first row of houses that matched what we thought would work well and that we had discussed and researched earlier was Bedford Row. To get here we would have to get the tube to either Chancery Lane or Holborn and then walk for around 10-15 minutes. This is shown by the photo on the left.

The second possible location that we could use is Holland Park, Kensington where we would have to either get the tube to Holland Park and walk for less than 5 mins as it is just outside the station, or to Shepards Bush and walk for about 10 minutes to the Royal Crescent, also in Kensington, Holland Park, this one is shown by the photo on the right.

Meeting 12

Date: 12/2/09

Clarice absent family commitments

Uploaded filmed storyboard

Made adjustments to timing

Meeting 11

Date: 11/02/09
All present.
We completed our storyboard and filmed it to find that we could lengthen most of the shots and add more credits at the beginning before the film starts as well as while the opening is playing.

Representation in Psycho

In the opening scene of Psycho, an Alfred Hitchcock film, we see two people on a bed together. The woman is made to look innocent as she the underwear that she is wearing is all white, she also has blonde hair, Hitchcock believed that women with blonde hair looked virginal. The audiences perception of her changes however, after we hear her talking to the man about his wife and how she does not like being secretive and meeting up with him in her lunch breaks.
When the woman is driving through the rain in the dark, there is creepy music which builds up the tension and all these factors are very ominous making the audience think something bad is going to happen. However when she arrives at the Bates Motel the music has stopped but we then see an old, scary looking house in the distance with one light on, creating suspition in the audience. This all changes when she is greeted by a pleasant man who is polite to her and helps her with her bags, however the suspition is once again aroused when he hesitates over which room to give her. Later on we see him looking though a small hole in the wall, by now the audience know that this man is the protagonist and expect something to happen.
Fourty-Five minutes into the film, this woman is murdered, we only see the sillouhette of the killer but it looks like an old woman, as we see her hair and the style of her clothing and assume it is the mans mother. Our suspition is confirmed when we see the man come into the room and look shocked to see her dead on the floor and think he is trying to protect his mother by clearing away any evidence and removing the body. However at the end of the film, we find out that it was not his mother that killed her as she is already dead and he has been keeping her in the basement, but in fact he dresses up to look like her and kills the woman.

Possible Locations

We are thinking of shooting the scene of the woman walking down the steps (shot 11) in London. We want a house that has steps leading up to the front door as we can shoot up at her and get the door an her into the shot at the same time. We need a location that will not mind us shooting on it so a house may be un practicle. There are a lot of hotels with the backdrop we need so we will enquire into using one of them .

Meeting 10

Date: 10/02/09
All Present
We produced our storyboard ready to film and upload and then researched into possible shooting locations on the internet. We found a picture of the kind of house we want to use for the morning scene, however we still need to visit London and Cambridge in order to actually locate one of these houses and find out how we will get there if we decide to go back and film.
The picture above is the type of house/hotel/apartment we want to use, we found this by typing in london town houses.

Meeting 9

Date-09/01/09
Chris absent due to dentist appointment.
We edited blog entries and wrote up any entries that were missing so far.

Representation in Silence of the Lambs and Usual Suspects

The opening scene of Silence Of The Lambs shows a woman running in a forest. I high angle shot is used to make she look small and vulnerable.She is very out of breathe and because of the low key lighting and racing me music we think that she is running from someone or something.It is not until she comes to some obstacles that we realise she is on an obstacle course, at this point we still do not know why. She looks strong and Determined because of her being able to complete the obstacles she comes across. She is called over by a man who is of a higher power than her as she refers to him as sir. We now find out that it is a police obstacle course because he is wearing an FBI cap.

Her strong persona is not the same when she is indoors and surrounded but people that have more knowledge of the job than her. We are shown her in experience by her intrigued look at the guns being made. She is shown to look weak and insignificant when in the lift as she is surrounded by tall men in uniform and she is in tracksuits and a lot smaller than them.

The signs in the headquarters look very formal because of their bold font and boldness. The people there look like they have for experience and know what they are doing where as she doesn't know where she is going or what to do. When standing in the office she has her hands behind her back this shows respect for the person she is waiting for as he is of more authority than her. The photos on the wall indicate something bad because of them being of body parts and also the creepy music that is being played.

In the film Usual Suspects the opening credits are shown on what appears to be a camera panning across a lake or water. The writing is long and scratchy which is not very friendly. This continues for a long time and we are held in suspense as we are waiting for something to happen.

It then cuts to a man looking troubled in a low key lighted room. He looks as if he is trying to kill himself because he is in a ring of fire. He is approached someone wearing a black coat we do not know anything about this person but we can tell by the mans reaction that he is the antagonist. We do not know the relationship between these people. We then here a gun shot and a fire ball explodes from the building. We are left no knowing what has happened. Through the opening Credits an eerie soundtrack is played but then stops when the man appears.

Representation in Psycho

In the opening sequence of Psycho we are shown an Innocent looking blonde woman, From Hitchcock's representations this would indicate her hair colour to make her look innocent and virginal. She is wearing white which is another indication that she is an innocent person. This is soon contradicted when she says to the man she is with "Should you not be getting back to your wife?". She knows that he has a wife but she is still with him during her lunch break.

When driving it is raining very heavily this indicates something bad is going to happen or is happening. Our thoughts of something bad happening are confirmed when a big spooky house appears on the horizon. The thoughts of badess as soon soon frozen. When the manager of the hotel is friendly and pleasent looking.She find out that he is not all that he made out to be when we see him looking through a peep hole of her in the shower.

She is murdered in the shower of wha we think to a be an old woman becuase she is wearing a skirt and shall. At the end of the film we find out that she is not infact a woman but a man dressed up as a woman.

Analysis of A Clockwork Orange

For my research in to a thriller I watched Stanley Kubrick's, A Clockwork Orange, it is a very different sort of thriller where Kubrick expresses his view of futuristic Britain, the main character in the film is a young man called Alex who causes havoc with his 3 friends in a gang. The storyline follows some of the crimes he has been committing, it follows in to his time in prison and how he copes with it, getting involved with a releasion programme run by a psychologist who says that he can turn a former criminal against there previous views and make them horrified when they see what they have done. He goes through this programme and is released from prison, and comes across the family he traumatised and begins to get his comeupance even though he has been "healed". After trying to commit suicide through being mentally tortured by someone he assaulted before he was in prison. He ends up in hospital and you slowly see the psychologists work being undone and you see Alex not being horrified by seeing his previous crimes.

Looking more closely at the opening sequence, it begins with the credits on simple red and blue backgrounds, in the first shot you see Alex and his gang sitting in a very elaborate milk bar with naked maniquin style tables, the shot zooms out from first looking at Alex's with a smirk (pic below) on his face and then as the camera tracks out you begin to see his surroundings of the milk bar and his friends; Pete, Georgie and Dim sitting with him (pic 2)and the public at other tables.

The scene is mildly psychadelic and not like anything that would normally be seen, this causes suspense mainly because of their atire (white shirt, tight white trousers, bowler hat, one eye with fake eyelashes, and a cod piece) that is abnormal to the audience, especially when the film was first shown (1971). The background music also builds tension, the main instrument used in the background is a Theremin, which produces a very erie sound and matches how psychadelic and mysterious the first shot is along with a drum build up it really .

Alex begins to narrate the beginning of the film and does so throughout, this proves confusion as you are seeing him but also he is narrating it himself, the way he talks also confuses the audience as he does not use normal english and instead uses a slang similar to cockney in which words do not always make direct sense. "I can only be concerned about my own Booky Wook, plus in a matter of fact its a reference from clockwork orange, where he rhymes all sorts of words to make language, which just becomes a white noise, a blur, stand out, so we recognise that we are alive in the moment and don't live in the slue of mediocrity, that at any moment just by being a bit silly that we can puncture pomposity" (Russel Brand - Have I Got News For You)

Possible Location

This is an idea for the location of our opening sequence, the layout for my bedroom which i made using paint. My bedroom has a suitable layout for our desired effects and staging, the bed is central in the room, there is a bedside table and also a dresser which makes for simple placement of props and the room also has a small window which could help to create the atmosphere that the audience expect.

Meeting 8

Date: 04/02/09

All present

We produced a storyboard of our opening on which we decided on the lengths of the shots, the angles and camera movement, however when we come to film the storyboard we may find that we need to lengthen or shorten the times we have already estimated.

We also discussed our ideas for the location and thought that the scene in the bedroom at night would be best if the bed was in the centre of the room with enough light from the windows and space to walk around the bed, this led us to the conclusion of using Clarice's room as this fits the all the aspects we are looking for. For the scene in the morning where we see the woman coming out of her front door and down the steps we thought there could be suitable houses in Cambridge or London, therefore we will need to visit and note down the locations we find to feedback to the group and decide on the best option.

Expansion of Scenario 2

Our confirmed scenario consists of a young girl being asleep in her been she is a teenager. We can tell this because of the things in the room there are photos of friends, Books,Posters and make up on the side.Whilst asleep a man comes into the room and looks around her room. He gives the impression of an intruder. He walks across the room looking at the photos of her and different males. He walks across to beside the bed and looks at the photo. At this point the phone on the bedside table rings and she is disturbed from her sleep. He backs away so she cannot see him and lurks in the darkness. She reaches out and looks at the text which tells her to meet someone. She goes back to sleep and doesnt notice the man in her room. The next morning she awakes and acts as normal she heads straight out of the front door dressed for work. On the door step is a Letter which she does not see and walks over.

Analysis of The Life of David Gale

To research into thriller films and the aspects which help to create a good one, I watched a film called The Life of David Gale (2003) written by Charles Randolph and produced by Alan Parker, Nicholas Cage and Nigel Sinclair.

At the beginning of the film, we meet a man called David Gale, and see that he is a member of Deathwatch, an anti-capital punishment activist group and a teacher at the University of Austin. After a lecture, a good looking student called Berlin tries to seduce David into raising her grades, however he declines and this results in her getting expelled from the University. At the graduation party, while David is in the bathroom, she enters and once again tries to seduce the now drunk David who gives in. However it is not how it seems, in revenge to David not giving her the raised grades she wanted she uses physical evidence, for example a bite mark on her shoulder, to get David accused of rape. She then leaves town and drops all the charges, making it look as if she was too scared and distressed to go through the the prosecution, this action results in David losing his job, marriage, son and the role as an activist in Deathwatch due to all the bad pubblicity. This is what causes David to become an alcoholic. After his wife and son move to Spain, so that his wife Sharron gains custody of their child, David becomes very good friends with Constance Harraway, another member of Deathwatch. A few years later Constance is found raped and murdered in a kitchen, David is convicted for this and is helped by an attorney that means well but is not very effective called Braxton Belyeu. Awaiting his execution in a few days, David agrees to tell his story, for a fee, to Bitsy Bloom, a journalist from a major newspaper who brings with her an intern called Zack Stemons, however she prefers to work alone and refuses to have the intern with her during the interviewing.
Bitsy sees that the details that David is giving her do not add up, this is when a stranger manages to get into her motel room and leave evidence (a video tape) hanging from the ceiling, the content of the tape suggests that David has been framed for a murder he did not commit. As the interview and investigation continues, Bitsy comes to the conclusion that it was not the rapist and murderer that recorded the assult, but that Constance commited suicide as she knew that she would eventually die from Leukemia. Bitsy also suspects Dusty Wright, a man who also once belonged to Deathwatch before he was asked to leave, and a good friend to Constance. This thought leads her to his house where she finds a letter addressed to her and inside the video which proves that Constance commited suicide.
She desperately tries to get to the courthouse in time, the car breaks down forcing her to run however when she finally arrives she finds that David has already been executed and has died an innocent man the tape is then released to the media who go mad over it.
The interview fee is sent to David's wife and child in Spain, along with the postcard from Berlin in which she confesses that the rape incident was fake and apologizes. Another tape is delivered to Bitsy, in this one it shows Dusty Wright confirming that Constance is dead and David leaving his thumb print on the plastic bag Constance had used to suffocate herself. This is when the characters and the audience realise that these deaths were all in the name of Deathwatch to show that capital punishment is not effective an that all three, maybe even David's attorney, had planned everything.
This film is a hybrid thriller with crime, there is a lot of tension building music and it manages to keep the audience on the edge of their seat and they are guessing what is going on right from the very beginning. Also, this film is not filmed in chronological order, it starts off in the past then flicks between present and past throughtout the film when David is in prison telling Bitsy the story. Another thing i noticed was when he tells a different story about a certain part in his life and it then changes from the present to the past, we see very quick flashes of words such as 'pain', 'stress' and 'death' on handwritten notes.

Expansion of Scenario's

Scenario 1 could very easily be filmed using a suitable scene at my local church and it would not be too hard to gain permission for filming there as we would only be using the church yard.
As for use of a coffin the school drama departmant still has a makeshift coffin that was used in a production and so we may be able to use this.

Scenario 2 would be simple to film in any 3 of our rooms, Clarice's room is especially good as her bed is positioned centrally in her room and make it easier to achieve the shots we want. There are also very few props for this scenario and those that we do need would be easy to find.

Analysis of Silence of the Lambs and The Usual Suspect openings.

The first thriller opening we watched was Silence of the Lambs, where we first see a woman called Clarice running through a wooded area. There is creepy music in the background which makes the audience think that Clarice is running away from something and as the camera stays on her actions, there is a high angle shot which makes her look harmless and innocent, therefore the audience see her as the protagonist. The music gets faster which builds up tension, however we then see an assault course which suggests that she is stronger than we think. There is then a deep, confident man's voice and it sounds as if he is saying 'darling' this completely changes the audience's perception of what is happening and as the man turns around we see a bold, formal, military font on his black hat, in white letters the initials FBI which helps the audience to understand what is going on.

In the next scene there is a long shot of a building which looks like an academy for police officers. Clarice is walking through the building at quite a quick pace and there is a diagetic sound of people working around her. As she gets in the lift we notice that she is the only woman, wearing grey and the men surrounding her are all very tall and wearing red which shows that she is different to the rest of them and the audience focus on her. It then cuts to Clarice walking through the corridors and tracks her while she is on her way to a man's office. On the way she stops at another office where there are two men in suits talking to each other, they talk to Clarice as if she is a young girl, in a patronising way suggesting that the men are more powerful than women. When Clarice gets to the main office we see a reaction shot of her face, looking very innocent when she sees the photos of the victims, the music is back and it is creepier than before.

The second thriller opening we watched was The Usual Suspect, this also started with creepy music. The credits fade over the top of what looks like water and as time goes on the music begins to get less tense as the instruments used sound more light hearted, like the piano. There is then a cut to a close up of a match being lit which creates confusion in the audience. The lit match lights up the area so we can see what is around and the man who lit it looks as if he could be the antagonist in this film. Upstairs we see a man however it is just his sillouhette and then it starts to rain heavily. Then we see someones hands and the other man's face with a low husky voice, this makes the audience believe that he is the antagonist and the other man now becomes the protagonist. Then there is a gunshot, however we do not see anything, the cigarette in the victims hand drops to the floor and the focus on the fire caused by the cigarette, the music is back also. After watching the opening, the audience is left in the dark as to what is happening as nothing is revealed and a lot of confusion is created.

Meeting 7

Date: 29/01/09
Chris absent due to hockey.
We discussed and learnt about representation in thriller films through the aspects of age, gender, sexuality, disability, wealth/class and ethnicity. We talked about things such as, how money is the driving force in many thrillers, making it a MacGuffin, and that a disability like mental illness is normally perceived in a negative, clinical, sexual, mysterious and dark way.
We also watched two thriller openings and analysed them, these two films were The Usual Suspect and Silence of the Lambs.