Representations on thriller films

Stereo types
After watching some thrillers i recognized that the majority of thriller films have a male as the main character. He always seems to find a way to become a hero and solve the problem in the end. This is very stereotypical as it represents the daily man of being the more 'powerful' and 'determined'.

I've seen this stereotypical behavior on films such as :

• I am legend 
• The usual suspects
• Inception
• Batman the dark knight
• Memento

Due to this i'll need to follow the conventions and do the same. Though it's not all cases where the male plays the biggest role. In the film Silence of the lambs a female plays the heroic role and sometimes a change to stereotypical behavior can be more effective to an audience.

Ethnicity
In most main stream movies today i noticed that it is very rare to find a protagonist character who is Asian. We decided as a group to go against this convention of a white male and try be different. We decided to get an Asian male to play the role of our protagonist character.

Opening titles

Within my opening titles i had to consider what font, size and colour will suit my genre most. Thriller films are serious films that build tension so i had to make sure my opening titles are serious and not look too playful.

This made me feel that keeping it simple would be a lot more effective as it will stop it looking playful, keeping the audience in place with the genre. I decided to use an American type-writer effect for my font, with the size being 24 and a white font colour. This makes it look simple yet serious due to the nice colour contrast the white font gives the black background.










For my first opening credit i decided to go a step deeper by making it stand out the most. I added graphics from adobe after effect to create this opening credit; as i feel that the production company is the most important and deserves the best title. I used a basic colour contrast of white text with a dark background. I also inserted an edited image of an angel, this represents the wings thats Third Wing Visuals provide.

Effects

While putting my footage together i experimented with some effects to make look more unique.

Colour corrector - I used this to darken my shots to show the audience the seriousness of what's taking place. I changed the whites, the blacks and the saturation of the frames; making each shot look sharper and better.

Bad TV - This was a special effect that i tried out which turned out very well. It got used on some of my CCTV frames giving the effect of the damaged CCTV footage.

Noise - A excellent effect that i used on all of my CCTV footage shots, giving that 'fuzzy' look to them. It was used to make it clear to my audience that the footage being showed is coming from another source (CCTV)

Additive Dissolve / channel Map / Fade in and out - These transitions where all used to make my titles fade smoothly with the footage taken. It helped the flow of the video as it's very smooth to see.

Edits

Sound

I've been experimenting with sounds and I've managed to come across some great sound effects on YouTube, which can be imported into my opening sequence. Knowing my sequence is based on CCTV footage i thought of a creative idea. Adding an effect to my shot would increase the audience's attention. This would be done by adding a 'Bad TV' effect to my shots making it look as if the footage is damaged.



This sound effect can be used to follow through with the visual of damaged CCTV footage. It it will make the opening sequence feel more realistic, as the audience will be hit with the diegetic audio of the damaged CCTV footage.

I'm going to have to import this audio into my project and only use it when 'Bad TV' is used. Making it fit in well with the visuals as it's in place with the Bad TV effect.

Research on opening titles

I managed to take this screen grab from Wikipedia, as it helped me learn more about  the structure of the credits within an opening sequence. Allowing me to maintain the structure and use it within my thriller opening sequence. It has also given me an idea of how many opening credits are expected within an opening sequence, now that this is kept in mind I'm able to show my knowledge that i have gathered from this research into my final product.

Films that inspired me

Recently i have been watching many crime related programs & films and i came across 'The Wire'. Within the opening sequence the mise-en-scene of specific shots inspired me and gave me some good ideas for my thriller opening.

This shot is a low angle close-up of a CCTV camera. My thriller opening is about a crime that has taken place & caught on CCTV. This has inspired me as it has visually showed me a way in which i can make it clear to the audience that the footage being played is through CCTV.

In this high angle shot it shows the recording of the CCTV footage, camera is tilted from a higher perspective & is in black & white. This has helped me gain ideas on how the CCTV footage in my thriller opening should look like & how we can make it clear that it's CCTV footage (black & white)

This frame from the movie Batman: The Dark Knight has inspired me in many ways, from the costume to the mise-en-scene. I like this image as it's dark. Batman is dressed in dark clothing despite him being the protagonist character; representing the current state of the situation he's in. This inspired me to use different camera angles to get this epic feel within a frame.