Preliminary Task

This is my groups final Preliminary Task cut after edit....

From Dawn till Dusk

'From Dawn till Dusk' is a film directed by Quentin Tarrintino and stars him and George Clooney as two brothers and professional thieves. The plot goes on to lead the film into more of a horror as it involves vampires and too much gore for it to be a thriller. However the opening scene is set in a road side shop in the middle of the desert. This place is made out to be very unglamorous, which is exactly what gives it a thriller edge. This is done by the costumes of the characters, who supposedly live there, all of which are old and drab looking. The shop itself is more of a shack and is in an awful state in this desolate location. This image created, in comparison with normal society, looks very backward and almost menacing in the way that its the only place for miles around, if anything was to happen to anyone nobody would ever know. We have taken some of the features from this, such as the dull lighting and used them within our thriller opening to give it a desolate and menacing look.

1408

Like Silence of the Lambs and Heavenly Creatures, 1408 is not actually a thriller, however it features characteristics of a thriller. The basic plot is that there is a writer who travels around supposedly haunted hotels and stays the night in the to prove that they are not haunted. This eventually escalades into him recieving a postcard inviting him to the Dolphin Hotel in New York, where he comes across a room which truly is haunted, in which he loses his mind. The films genre is more towards horror, however the clsoe up shots of the writer cause confusion and build up suspence in the audience's mind because they cannot be sure of what is coming next. The most fitting part of this film into the mise-en-scene of a thriller is the setting of it, the majority of the film is shot in one hotel room where the character is completely isolated from everyone and everything. This mise en scene connotes the feeling of entrapment that we are trying to create in our thriller. It is for these reasons we have included fast paced editing, similar to that of 1408, to cause confusion within the audience and a small isolated place, the freezer, to create the feeling of entrapment.

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The Third Man

Although the setting of this film is completely irrelevant to our thriller, there are some very notable camera angles used that could be very powerful if used in our opening. The majority of the shots use strong noir lighting and very long shadows, giving the impression that the city looms over the character making him look very small and insignificant. Shots similar to these would work well in our thriller, especially in shots #3, #7 and #15, on the storyboard. I think this because these shots are the only ones that feature low angled images of buildings, especially shot #3 as the arch way is similar to some of the arch ways in The Third Man, which all are very effective with this kind of shot. The director of The Third Man uses this range of shots to connote good and evil in a number of ways. The most effective of which is how he makes the main character seem to be good and the city to be evil. He does this by using shots which give the impression that the city is looming over him, making him look small. This gives the city the illusion of a massive size advantage over him making it seem dauting and evil

Heavenly Creatures

This film has many characteristics of a drama, however the final scene of Heavenly Creatures features many aspects of a thriller. As the audience are expecting to see the mother's murder, they are already in a state of suspence, this is reinforced by the camera angles used during this sequence. There is a good variety of close-ups, including shots of the characters feet while they are moving and their faces, showing their emotion and causing slight confusion. As this scene takes place in a woodland environment the camera uses this to its advantage by shooting from behind from trees and various other forms of forestry. It is also because of this woodland setting that the camera angles used are influencial to us, as the majority of our thriller opening is also set in a woodland environment.