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.