No Country for old Men : Coin toss scene

No country for old men is no doubt a tremendous film, and one of my favourites to date. The ' Coin toss ' Scene is fantastic, and even the inanimate food wrapper deserves and Oscar for its performance! 


The scene begins with a long shot of the open desert, with a small convenience store and gas station tucked away in one corner ( use of rule of thirds ). This shot shows the absolute desolation of the area, and gives the sense of isolation, and possibly entrapment, with nowhere to run. 


The scene is then put inside the convenience shop itself, showing the main character, and the store owner. 
The body language between the two is very noticeable. Both stand sturdy and sure of themselves to begin with. This shows almost a wild west style ' showdown ' between the two. As the scene progresses however the shop owners stance, and facial expression show he is faltering. He is confused and slightly worried about the intentions of the other character. The main characters body language shows hostility and seriousness the entire way through the scene up until the last moment.  

The shots used in this scene define the characters also. High angle shots are almost always used on the main character, to show he is imposing and powerful. The tension in the scene comes when the coin is tossed. A close up shot is used in this instance, and this adds to the intensity. The result of the toss is not shown however, and this scene genuinely gets my heart beating every time. The main character delays in telling answer of the toss on purpose to build suspense. 

The room the entire way through the scene is very dull, and the main characters face is slightly shadowed. This is a thriller convention, and adds to the mysteriousness of the main character. 

Initial ideas

Here are some of our initial ideas, kindly put together by Catrin Hamer. Most of our ideas to begin with were based on a psychological element, agreed unanimously to be one of our personal favourite type of thriller. This type of thriller makes you think, and really makes you want to find out the conclusion of the story. Suspense and tension were key here. Eventually we settled on Beck Bigwoods idea all agreeing it had the strongest plot line.

Thriller opening ideas mind map

View more presentations from Catrin Hamer.

Casting

Rebekah Bigwood as The Lady in the Gas Mask

Becky from our group has been chosen to play The Lady in the Gas Mask. Our reasons for this include the fact of convenience, as it's easier to choose somebody from our group to be apart of our film as then we don't need to sort out filming schedules with a lot of people. By view of appearance, Becky is a good choice as she has a feminine build to clearly show that the character in the gas mask is a woman. She is also fairly tall, which adds to the character's feature of intimidation and power – this goes against many film conventions of women being submissive and powerless to the comparison of men. Also she has longish brown hair which is a feature we wanted for the character, and extends on what she and her features represent i.e. brown hair is fairly generic and not necessarily modern which could build on the fact that gas masks were also used in wars a long time ago which perhaps could represent the duration that this woman has existed. There is also the point that Becky owns the appropriate clothing and props to be used for her character.
In high school I worked with Becky in making videos for certain subject projects and she is a very agreeable person to work with and also holds fairly good acting skills.

Jos Banham as Rhys

Again, for convenience we decided to choose Jos to play the character Rhys to prevent having to arrange a filming schedule with people outside of our group. Rhys is a character that looks fairly normal but in fact is not; and Jos is pretty ordinary looking and has a fairly casual personality which fits the appearance of our character. As Rhys is meant to look fairly ordinary, but in actual fact is not. He is also relatively tall and has dark hair, so could come across as frightening and suspicious is filmed in the proper way to emphasis this. We chose this kind of character in order to show the audience that ordinary-looking people can have severe background stories and problems; the casting of Jos allows us to create this illusion of a normal person.

Rough cut Feedback

On Thursday 25th November we  screened our rough edit of our thriller to other media and college students. We hoped to gain constructive criticism as well as some positive feedback from the session so we can make our final edit the best it can be. 

Here are the feedback questions that will be handed out to viewers:

What did you think was going on during the film?


What do you think the rest of the story might be?


What are your thoughts on the characters? (whether you liked them, your interpretation of them)


Do you think the music was appropriate for what was happening in the film?


What was your favourite aspect of the film?


What improvements do you think we could make to the film?

Character development and backrounds

As a group we all had a pretty good idea of what our 2 main, and only characters were going to be like. The idea was first put forward by Becky and then further developed by the group. We all had our own inputs and ideas into what each character should be like in every way; appearance, background and peronsality.  Our group member Catrin Hamer took what we said away and produced the final characters we were going to put into our Opening. Here are the links to her ideas:

http://catrinhamerasmediablog.blogspot.com/2010/10/character-background-rhys.html

http://catrinhamerasmediablog.blogspot.com/2010/10/character-background-lady-in-gas-mask.html

Thriller opening Synopsis

As a group we collectively discussed a basic 'frame' as to what our thriller would entail; the content of our film, how the rest of the film may conclude, and how our character ended up in the woods in the first place. We came up with the idea that the Lady in the Gasmask was a childhood hallucination, and a life long 'companion' of our character Rhys, and that as he grew older Rhys was continually told how his imaginary friend was just that. . .imaginary. It was further discussed that as he was told otherwise, he grew more hostile and frustrated. . .causing the Lady in the Gasmask to follow suit. 

Jos then took this information, and developed it further into a synopsis. Jos also came up with the idea of drug involvement, and then developed a storyline that combined a mental illness (schizophrenia) with drug abuse, we then all agreed that this was an appropriate storyline. It was then decided that to make our opening more exciting and interesting, we would feature the ending of the film at the beginning. The rest of the film will then entail the reasoning and build up to our conclusional opening. This technique was inspired by the film 'Brick' (2006), which proved it to be a successfull way of ordering a film. Also the idea of jumbling the order of our production will further enhance the conventions of a thriller, this mixed up technique will primarily confuse and disorientate our audience; causing them to feel un-easy and slightly uncomfortable, but also keen to watch the rest of the film. 

Case Study: Watchmen

Case Study: Watchmen

Institution

Name: Watchmen 

Director: Zack Snyder 

Producers: Lawrence Gordon, Lloyd Levin, Deborah Snyder

Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures, Paramount Pictures

Release date: 6th March 2009

Country: USA

Genre: Superhero / Thriller  / Action / Crime

Budget: $130 Million

Gross revenue: $185,258,983

Running time: 162 minutes 

Audience:

Many sources in magazine reviews, and on websites ( IMDb , Rotten tomatoes) suggest the main audiences for this film were middle aged men, sci-fi fans, and of course fans of the original graphic novel. Unfrotunatley there is little in the form of graphs and surveys carried out to portray this, but certainly the websites i mentioned earlier are built primarily of middle aged men. This audience does make sense in some ways, as the film is most certainly aimed at an older audience. The scenes of gore, or otherwise disturbing ones are anything but suitable for younger children. Along with the not-so-easy to follow plot line its doubtful this is the kind of superhero film that children should be watching. 

Technology:

Watchmen is one of those films which really takes full advantage of our most up to date film tech. Asides from multiple shots which would have required helicopter, scissor lifts and cranes to film, CGI played a huge part in this film. Extensive pyrotechnics and elaborate make up was used to really recreate the images portrayed in the original graphic novel. 

The most obvious use for the CGI is the character Dr Manhattan. This is a rare case of a character that is shown the entire way through a film using CGI technology. There really wasn't any other way of giving an appropriate image of what his character is supposed to be like. For the most part, this tech was used superbly and without flaws, his character looks amazing the entire way through the film. Other uses for the pyrotechnics, and CGI was ' Nite Owl's ' flying machine, which had flame-throwers and gadgets galore.  

Some of the make up and CGI really did help with some of the more gory parts of the film too. The first one that springs to the front of my mind is a prison scene where a character gets his arms cut of with a steel saw. 

Another technology which people often forget about is the sound. Sound has a massive impact on a film, and can change the entire mood for a scene. Digetic, and non Digetic sound is used incredibly well in this film, and often creates some of the most hair raising, heart racing scenes altogether. The music used really does turn this film into a real and effective thriller.

Conformities to the codes and conventions of the thriller Genre:

Throughout this entire movie, codes and conventions are met and used admirably. 

Bars are a common theme in watchmen, from simple grates to real prison bars. These help to give the sense of being trapped and isolated. 

This shot shows Rorschach behind bars in prison. This gives a sense of him being trapped, and isolated. The lighting is dim, and his face is partially hidden, giving away little of his feelings or emotions of the current situation. 

The theme of running water ( or other liquids ) is often used in this film also. In a large majority of the scenes, its raining for starters. Second, at the end of the opening sequence, blood is shown flowing from the body of ' The Comedian ' into a drain. This is a classic convention used in ' Psycho' which many people are familiar with. 

Throughout the film, as expected with superhero films, masks are commonplace. This convention of thrillers is definitely covered. Masks cover the face of the hero's, and give away little of their character making the viewer confused as to exactly what they are like, or their true intentions. This adds to the suspense a lot of the time, and really can confuse and disorientate the viewer, as a thriller should! 

In many Rorschach's scenes street lamps are used to show what kind of character he really is. He is often illuminated by street lights showing he is a good character, and underneath his crude role as a superhero, his intentions are good deep down. 

The camera work in Watchmen is always used very cleverly. It is used to make the hero's seem much more intimidating and powerful ( high angle shots ) and to make the ' bad guys ' look vulnerable and weak ( low angle shots ). 

This film is no doubt an excellent film, and conforms to the conventions of a thriller in almost, if not every way. 

G321 Preliminary task - The passing hat!

Here is our pre-lim task, trying out various shots and getting a feel for the equipment! Enjoy !

Equipment + Prop list

Luckily we went pretty minimal with our opening, to avoid continuity problems when we were shooting on multiple days.


Equipment:


Tripod - We used a pretty standard tripod for this shoot, kindly provided by Reepham College. 
















Video camera - For our camera we used a fairly standard, hand held digital camcorder. It used DVT's and was nice and easy to use. These were also supplied by Reepham college. 






Props we used were:


Gas Mask


Kindly Provided by Elliot Bigwood, this played a vital role in the convention of obscured faces in our opening, and it was a proper gas mask! real scary. 













Blood Capsules - The blood capsules were pretty simple non-toxic halloween type stuff! They tasted pretty awful...but they did get the job done! We managed to use them in a number of effective shots. These were provided by myself. 

Storyboard / Drawn shots

Thriller opening script ( lack of! )

In our thriller opening, there is actually no spoken word whatsoever! The nearest we get to that is heavy breathing. We decided as a group that the effect we wanted to convey, we thought it would be much more powerful to have some non-digetic sound in the form of music, and one or two digetic sound effects.

Considering the character is alone throughout the opening ( or is he? ) speech would be pretty invalid anyway!
Our masked character's mysteriousness ( shown mainly by the obscured face ) would be improved with a lack of voice too.

Audience questionnaire group analysis

As a group we analysed our questionnaire and how useful it had been to us, where we went wrong and what we could change / improve. 

1) Please select your gender…

·        We asked for this information to identify the gender of the majority of thriller viewers, different genders would probably require slightly different content within a thriller film.

·        We found that within our sample group the majority of thriller film viewers was male.

2) What age category do you fall into?

·        We asked for this information to be able to suit our thriller to the majority age category, different age groups will require different content.

·        We found that most of the asked audience was aged between 16-18

·        Our thriller is intended to be aimed at this audience, as we have included violence and more-adult themes.

3) What type of sub genre (of thriller) do you prefer?

·        We asked this question in order to establish what most popular ‘sub-genre’ was among our selected group. We will then be able to write our thriller to suit our target audience.

·        The results show that the most popular sub genres are horror and psychological thrillers.

·        Our thriller film is going to be psychological.

4) What would you be looking for in a thriller?

• We require this information in order to gain ideas for our thriller, we will consult these ideas (the most popular and relevant) when it comes to writing our thriller.
• The most popular themes within a thriller was gore, unexpected endings and twists.
• Our thriller will therefore include violence and ‘red-herrings’

5) What is a recent thriller film that you have enjoyed?

• This question was asked so that we can get a rough idea of what sort of thriller our main audience would enjoy, we can therefore take inspiration from these films.
• The most popular film was ‘Shutter Island’, selected because of it’s suspense and plot twists.
• We will therefore include these conventions within our thriller to suit our audience.

6) What kind of characters would you expect to be featured within a thriller?

• We can utilise the answers from this question in order to design our characters and what good character conventions an audience is looking for.
• We found that mainly people expect murderers, psychopaths and victims within a thriller.
• We therefore will include these characters; we have created both a villain and a victim.

7) How would you describe an ideal villain? Visually and personality wise.

• We need the information from this question to give us an idea of what our audience is looking for in their ideal villain; we can then meet these expectations when it comes to character design.
• Our results showed that people generally wanted a villain with intelligence and mystery about them.
• In our thriller our villain will be female, dark and mysterious.

8) What is an ideal location for a thriller film in your opinion?

• We can use the information given to determine the best location for our thriller film, according to our audiences expectations.
• Our results identified that people generally wanted a space that was normally associated with safety, in order to make the audience unsure and no longer feel safe.
• One of the second highest rated locations was a forest, where we will be filming our thriller as we feel it fits the story line better.

9) Where is you favourite place to view a film?

• We can use this information to determine what the best hypothetic release for our thriller would be; cinema release, straight to DVD, or simply an exclusive internet release.
• The highest rated place to view a film was the cinema.
• This means that if we were to release the film the best way would be to release the film in the box office, so that it would attract more of an audience.

10) Which would you rather do? (Various different places to purchase or see a thriller film)

·        As the previous question, we can use this information to determine what the best hypothetic release for our thriller would be; cinema release, straight to DVD, or simply an exclusive internet release.

·        Again, people chose to view a film once at the cinema.

·        This means that we would release our thriller in the cinema as it would probably be more successful that way.

Thriller Questionnaire Results

View more documents from MissBehaviour.

Media Questionnaire

View more documents from MissBehaviour.

Watchmen - Rorschach's rather graphic scene!

I recently re-watched the film ' Watchmen ' and found a particular scene I really enjoyed, and it also conformed to the convention of a thriller quite nicely! 




The scene is called "Dogs get put down." this scene is quite graphic but, this does add to its tense effect. The lighting is low throughout the scene, giving a veil of mystery. A red herring is also used in the form of shadow, and the camera angle gives a sense of voyeurism.  I personally love this scene, and even when i re-watch it it gets my heart going! 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45V6db9CKcc&feature=related


Unfortunately embedding has been disabled on this one, but here's the link! ^

Location

Location, Location, Location....

This post was made by my group member Jos Banham

http://josmedia.blogspot.com/2010/11/location-location-location.html

We went to look for locations around the Reepham area... We found a couple of places in 
Reepham but the brambles and other plants were too overgrown. 
We had a look near Cawston on Marsham Heath and have decided to film there...

Here are some pictures of the location we are filming at:

This location has been selected as it uses the conventions of a thriller in that it
is in a big crater, which refers to the feeling of being trapped...

Also, the trees could represent bars, another thriller convention...

Shooting Schedule

Shooting Schedule

2:30pm

• Arrive at Cawston Heath
• Begin to set up all of the required equipment

2:45pm

• Begin filming the flashbacks - Gas mask woman and Rhys

3:15pm

• Begin filming the rest of the thriller opening - Gas mask woman and Rhys

4:00pm

• Pack away equipment

Story Board and transitions

http://rebekahbigwoodsasmediablog.blogspot.com/2010/10/storyboard-and-transitions.html

Thriller opening soundtrack.

In our group, i was given the task of finding ( or creating ) a soundtrack to play for the entire duration of our opening. First of all i looked for some pre composed music on the site freeplay music. I found an appropriate piece of music, but it wasn't long enough or exactly what we wanted. So I set out to edit it on garage band. Taking inspiration from the ' Dead Space' game trailer, and various other thrillers i edited it to what we wanted, adding sound effects in at the same time.

Analysis of Thriller openings.

Gothika - 2003


Gothika's opening scene immediately gives a strong sense of what type of film you are about to watch. The first shot is of a high security prison of some kind, surrounded by cages and grates. This instills the feeling of being trapped, and unknowing of wether something is being kept in, or out. The non diegetic sound of stringed music, violins ect. make a foreboding atmosphere. As the screen lightens enough to see, a woman's face is revealed, and she is clearly distressed. This shot is a close her, with her face covering the entire screen, and looking directly into the camera, making the audience feel connected with her, and possibly giving a ( false? ) sense of vulnerability. The interviewer ( played by Halle Berry ) has make upon, and her costume is designed to make her very good looking. This is known as the halo effect ( Thorndike ) when a good looking person is perceived to have a good personality. The camera is often looking from outside the cages, making the viewer feel like they are looking in on a private situation, and not supposed to be there. This also conforms to the thriller convention of voyeurism to a certain degree.
 
                                                                             Brick - 2006

                                                 
The opening scene of 'Brick', starts with some classic thriller semiology, in the form of running water, running into a dark tunnel. This often represents life running away so to speak, and has been represented in various ways before, such as in a bath down the drain. A body is then brought into shot, bringing death into the story. A unknown character sits and looks upon the body. This begins to make the viewer wonder if this figure is responsible for the death of this person, and starts to build suspense from there.  The next scene is of a large, but deserted area, full of sharp, straight buildings and objects. A note is left for the main character, leading the viewer to believe that obviously what the note ays is private. The scene in the phone box makes the viewer realize that the main character is being watched by someone, although not necessarily a bad character. The girl becomes flustered when a black car ( signifying death or danger ) roars past, creating intimidating digetic sound. This builds suspense and anticipation, making you wonder what exactly this girls connection to the person in the car is.

The book of Eli - 2009


' The book of Eli' begins in an eerie forest, with little movements, but falling ash. The large trees symbolize bars, or cages, giving the sense of being trapped. Coupled with the empty environment with no movements, this gives a strong sense of isolation, and entrapment. As the camera smoothly pans around the forest, the non digetic sound track changes in tone slightly, as a gun comes into shot. This change in music symbolizes a significant object, building tension as the camera continues to pan around. The next thing to come into shot is a body. This instantly makes the calm forest seem like a dangerous place to be. The dim blue light also gives a shroud of mystery to the situation. The camera pans very slowly, and very smoothly giving a greater sense of anticipation.
A man in a gas mask eventually becomes visible. The covering of his face conforms to the convention of thrillers. The scene builds up a huge climax with building percussion and strung sound, then it stops, only to the sound of heavy breathing, presenting a quick anti-climax. Then a rapid motion of events is put into slow motion to show the absolute precision of his shot.