Lesson on what is a Thriller

It is hard to describe what a thriller is, due to the amount of emotions that most people feel during a thriller movie. This is why is it known as a meta genre. There are many different types of thrillers. The most common types of thrillers are thriller horrors, psychological thrillers and action thrillers. The most successful thrillers are those which play with our most basic worries. It does this by drawing horrible, sick and repressive thoughts in our minds. These thoughts are usually violent, sexual orvoyeristic thoughts. These are the thoughts that create the feeling of tension and fear, and make our hearts beet faster and the adrenalin to feel bigger. This raises what’s called questions or enigma codes in the mind of the viewer like "what happens next?" and "will he get away?".

Most thrillers have what is called a universal theme. This is usually how the characters within the movie are struggling with things such as love, death and money. It is all of these struggles which usually enthral the spectator. The directors also enthral the spectator by making them feel tension through the sense of delay. This is effective as the spectator feel relieve when something does happen, as the tension has snapped.

The thriller genre can also be viewed as sadomasochistic. This is where we as a viewer receive, enjoy watching things like others suffering. This is usually the reason why directors put sick, un-humorous scenes in films.

A thriller must evoke visceral, gut-level feelings rather than more sensitive, delicate emotions.

Introduction to Final Cut Pro

In this lesson we were introduced to a unique editing program called 'Final Cut Pro'. Luckily enough at Hurtwood House, the school have invested in buying a selection of top quality Apple Macs, which is vital to final cut pro, as the program only runs on the apple software.

We began by finding our tape of shots and making a new folder called the 'log bin'. From here we looked through the whole tape and selected out all of the shots we wanted. We would then cut each shot, re-name it and drop it into the log bin.

Once we had sorted out each shot, we could then start to play around with what order we wanted each shot to come in the scene. To do this we would select a shot, cut it down to the small part of there shot you wanted in the scene and then drag it down onto the time line. We would do this until we were happy with the scene and it played the whole way through nice and smoothly.

The last thing that we would look at would be the volume. We would look at each separate shot on the time line and adjust the volume so it sounded exactly the same as the last shot. Once this was done we would be finished. We were then told to go and apply all these techniques to our preliminary tasks.

Shooting the Prelim Task

Last week on Friday, me and a group of three other people filmed a prelim task which was story boarded and organized and set up before hand. The piece was filmed in the film studio and took the good part of an hour to film. The film studio was the perfect location for this as there was a set built in with a door for the actor to enter from and then a window for the protagonist to sit by. I was given the role of director, so I had to organize all of the actors, instruct the camera man on what I wanted him to do and also help out anyone with anything they needed. Some of the things that I had to monitor were:

1) 180 degrees rule
2) Camera shot angles
3) Camera positions
4) light and sound

When to begin filming and when to cut the film With the lighting, I wanted to create a darkish look in the room, with one light on from overhead, keeping the actors lit but then also a blue light coming through the window creating an effect of daytime outside. The reason why this worked is because it enabled us to have continuity of lighting and create a feeling of realism and believability. Overall the day was a great success for the group!

Introduction to video cameras

This lesson was focusing on the specifics on how to use a video camera. To shoot our practical work, our school uses a Sony pd170.

We learnt about how to adjust the specific technical aspects that allow you to shoot good quality consistent audio visual material.
First we learnt the basics of the video camera, such as how to focus the camera and how to zoom in and out. We learnt that there are two different areas of zoom on the camera. We then went on to learn about the more vital and specific details on what a video camera can do. These are things such as how to change the shutter speed. We learnt that shutter speed needs to be adjusted to the action in the scene, for example, a faster more action packed scene would probably have a faster shutter speed to emphasise the pace of the scene. We also learnt about white balance, and how you need to change the white balance depending on whether you are using false light (light bulbs or stage lights) or natural external light (daylight). You can also use the gain on the camera, which enables you to borrow light and enhance / exaggerate the existing light the camera can see. However, gain should be kept on 0 at all times if possible to create a naturalistic feeling in the shot. It is also possible to control the exposure, which is the amount of light enabled to enter the cameras lens.

The last thing we learnt in this lesson is how to set up the tripods, which was fairly straight forward. We learnt that we had to bubble the camera whenever we change the shot type, and make sure the bubble is in the circle before shooting.

My Course so far!!

What I have learnt and achieved so far in Media Studies:

Considering I started Media Studies two weeks later than everyone else, I feel I have made a fantastic recovery. I have nearly caught up with all of the practical work and have finished all of the classroom work that I missed out on.

I started out with a theory lesson where we were really learning the basics on camera techniques and editing techniques. When I say this, I mean things like shot types, and editing cuts and so on. The real basic stuff which a media student really needs to know. This was very useful to know as I now understood the foreground of what I was going to be learning about in media. Since then we have began to look into the same sort of things, but in a lot more detail. For example, we have been looking at much more complex shot types and ways of editing films and scenes.

Recently in class, we have begun to look at sound usage in films as well, for example non-diagetic sounds and diagetic sounds. We have also learnt about more basic things like soundtracks and ambient sounds. To put our knowledge of all of these things (Cinematography, Misen-scene and sound) we were given prep where we had to break down the five first minutes of a film of our choice and then write an 800 word essay on what techniques the director used, why he used these techniques and the effect they had on the viewer. I was very pleased with the results that I got back for this. In the last lesson we then had to do the same thing, except for this time it was in test conditions. We also had to do it on a film which we didn’t know and only had an hour to do so. It was a lot harder but it is what we will have in the real exam (50% of our grade).

On the practical side of things, I am yet to catch up on everything that I have to get done. I have done everything except for a photo shop workshop (why I haven’t got any photos on my blog yet) which I will get done as soon as possible!

My first practical lesson was on how to use a camera. I had this lesson with Matt and I was very interesting, as we were introduced as a class to the pieces of equipment that we would have to use over the next two years. In this lesson we only touched down on the basics like how to change the shutter speed, and how to zoom in and out and so on. We then had a practical session where we had to film a short 5-10 piece of film, which may sound easy, but is actually quiet a challenge for the first ever time using one of the cameras. It was lots of fun though seeing the potential of everyone in the group. We have now been told that we are doing a scripted scene this week in the film studio which I am really looking forward to, and hopefully will learn lots more at.

Practical skills

So far I have had two practical workshops.
Due to me missing out on the first two weeks, i am still on the catch up so i am yet to have a photoshop workshop. Luckly enough i arrived just in time to have a tough yet exciting workshop on how to use the standard filming camera ( the pd170).
This was very interesting for a few reasons. the first was because it is what i will be using for the next couple of years. The second is because this is what the jackass crew used to film jackass.
Just yeaterday i had my first experience of trying to make a clip of film using the pd170. During this time i discovered how much time really goes into making a piece of film, and how much work was going to be requiered of me over the next two years. We only made a simple piece of film which lasted around 20 seconds but even this took us around 30 minuted to get all the shots perfect. The scene included a man entering the room, wiping his forehead and then moving out of the room. In order to get this right we had to have 100% concentration.
Bye Bye