Midnight Express Spoiler

Based on the true story of Billy Hayes, this film made in 1978 shows the harrowing story that he had to go through. Although this film made not need a spoiler as people may have already heard of the story of Billy Hayes, it can still be considered as a thriller because of the ruthless acts of violence and suspense.

The film Midnight Express is adapted from the book Midnight Express, written by Billy Hayes himself. There has been criticism from this film, even from Billy Hayes, mainly to do with the portrayal of the Turks, because they are portrayed differently in the book. The film shows the true story of how Billy managed to escape the Turkish prison, or what prisoners call 'catching the Midnight Express'. There were several failed attempts to escape the prison throughout the film, mainly by Billy's accomplice Jimmy. 

Dragged to the prisons sanitarium he is faced with the guard who's been torturing him in prison. When faced with fighting off the guard after he tries to rape Billy, he pushes the guard onto a clothes peg which brutally pierces through his head and kills him. Although the death was horrific, it was certainly deserving for the character who was the antagonist of our protagonist. Billy then dresses himself in the guard's uniform and reclaiming his money, Billy walks through the prison unnoticed to the front door. 

As he walks out of the sanitarium, another guard stops him and throws him the keys to the door telling him (in Turkish) to remember to lock up when he checks out. Billy walks out to the street, slowing down only briefly when a police jeep rushes past him. He runs away, the frame freezing on him as he takes a victorious leap. A title card tells us that on the night of October 4, 1975, Billy was able to cross the Turkish border into Greece and flew home to the United States three weeks later. The final shots of the film before the closing credits show Billy reuniting with his family and Susan, his girlfriend. In my opinion it was a very rewarding ending because for me I hadn't heard of Billy Hayes story so I didn't know the outcome of his story. So for me I wouldn't consider this a biography but more of a true story.

Audience Research

Runner Runner (2013): The new film starring Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck show that the average vote is 5/6 out of 10. The results are not as positive as previous audience research as Runner Runner has only just been released.

The film reviews show that the films starts progressively slowly which results in the viewers lack of interest throughout the film. There's a similar pattern in Runner Runner as there is in the film Fight Club. This means that because of the violence and action in the two films, it appeals more to men, as seen by the rise in votes from men.

What are enigma codes?

Enigma codes are questions that are not immediately answered and thus draws an audience into a text.Eg. a body is discovered at the beginning of a tv detective drama. The killer's identity is an enigma. We watch to find out who the killer is.

Enigma codes are used often in films. Two examples of where a question is answered later could be Inception and Shutter Island.

Audience Research

Fight Club (1999): I obtained these results from IMDb that show the ratings of viewers. They show that the average vote out of 10 is 8.8, which shows that there was positive feedback about the film Fight Club, especially since the film was nominated for an Oscar.

The chart below shows votes based on their gender. On average men voted 0.2% higher than women. This is probably because of the amount of violence that is contained in the film. Even more so, there are higher votes from people aged under 18 than people aged over 45. This is based on the fact that the film would appeal to a younger audience who can relate to release their frustration through violence. Plus studies show that an action-packed film can be a more appealing one.

                         

Thriller Location Ideas

Opening:

By using a figure on one of the pictures I took of my location, I am able to show how I would want the start of my thriller opening to me. The idea would be someone running through the woods. It's hard to show this with a 2D image but I hope that the idea comes across. I would also like to have close ups of the running in various camera angles.

For this second video I had the idea for the runner to come from the trees and become out of focus so that the idea is less obvious yet it still helps tell the plot of a thriller. In this video it shows that idea that I want to get across yet there still could be tweaking as the transitions aren't as smooth as I hoped. 

Although it may be hard to see but this video shows a long shot idea in which the runner runs from the left side of the wood and the right side of the wood. It would also help to show a low angle shot of the runner in between so that my opening has variety.

More Thriller Locations

To take to these pictures I went inside my chosen location which was at the back of Brands Hatch. I used my iPhone to take these pictures and chose various different camera angles that showed my selected location. I used a filter again to darken my images to show the genre that these images are for. I believe the location that I chose is suitable as a thriller location because it consists of mystery and contains a contrast of lighting.

For my thriller opening I'd like to try out different ideas. For example, I'd like to do various shots with the runner in the background. This picture below with a tree in focus is an interesting shot because it shows rule of thirds.

    

    

TV Drama: Areas of Representation

1. Gender
2. Age
3. Ethnicity
4. Sexuality
5. Class and status
6. Physical ability/disability
7. Regional identity

TV Drama: Technical Elements

1. Mise-en-scene:- 

• Setting and location
• Costumes
• Props
• Performance and movement
• Lighting

2. Camerawork:-

• Shot type and framing
• Angles
• Movement
• Position
• Composition
• Depth of field

3. Editing:-

• Sequence or order of shots
• Transitions
• Shot duration
• Pace and rythmn
• Continuity
• Special effects

4. Sound:-

• Diegetic: dialogue, ambient sound, sound effects
• Non-diegetic: voice-over/narration, contrapuntal sound, added music

Inception Spoiler

Inception is a sci-fi action film about a thief who possesses the power to enter into the dreams of others. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) doesn't steal things, he steals ideas. By entering himself deep into the subconscious of his targets, he can gain information that even the best computer hackers can't get to. In the world of corporate spying, Cobb is the ultimate weapon. But even weapons have their weakness, and when Cobb loses everything, he's forced to embark on one final mission in a desperate quest for redemption. 

This time, Cobb won't be taking an idea but making up one. If he and his team of specialists succeed, they will have discovered a breakthrough in the art of psychic spying. They've planned everything to perfection, and they have all the tools to get the job done. Their mission is complicated, however, by the sudden appearance of a foe called that seems to know exactly what they're up to, and precisely how to stop them. As Cobb returns to his home and embraces his children, the final shot of the film shows Mal's (his wife) metal top spinning on and on, hinting that Cobb, after all, may not have successfully returned to "reality."

However, just before the film cuts to black, the metal top begins to wobble, which indicates that this is not a dream, confirming that Cobb was successful in his mission, and is in reality, reunited with his family.

Se7en Title Sequence Re-make

For this task we were given a set of pictures in which were were asked to re-create the movie Se7en Title re-make. This helped us learn how to use final cut pro and helped us to ensure that we knew how to fit scenes together well.

Mind map for Dexter Opening Sequence re-make

Credit to Liam Sewell  http://liamsewellasmedia.blogspot.co.uk/

Our group for our Dexter re-make included Priscilla, Adam, Liam and me. We all participated in the work, filming or both. In the end I think that we worked together well and used our mise-en-scene to the best of our ability.

Shutter Island Spoiler

At first glance, the 2010 movie stars Leonardo Di Caprio as U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He's been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn't been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. 

Teddy's investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals "escape" in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything - his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.

But what we find out is that Teddy is a World War II veteran and coming back from the war in which he became the maintenance man at his own apartment building and he was never really a U.S. Marshal. He was married to Dolores Chanal, but has no children and he is a pyromaniac who burnt down his own apartment, killing four people - one of which was his wife. He also thought to have made up the conspiracy that there is a twisted plot as to why he's at Shutter Island's hospital.

In his extreme mental distress at learning that his fire killed his wife, he broke down and disso­ciated himself from reality. He created a new history. In this new history, a hideous man named Andrew Laeddis (really a reflection of the ugly and unbearable side of himself) was the man who “lit the match that caused the fire, that killed his wife.” Andrew Laeddis was sent to Shutter Island. To explain his own exis­tence on Shutter Island, Teddy Daniels remade himself as a U.S. Marshal, orig­i­nally sent here to hunt down Andrew Laeddis.

In reality, the newly incar­cerated Teddy Daniels was declared insane and was sent to Shutter Island. At Shutter Island, Teddy became the subject of an exper­iment. The exper­iment was one in which the psychi­a­trists would attempt to implant false memories into Teddy’s mind. Teddy, in a state of delusion, claimed that he was a U.S. Marshal to justify his presence. He met Dr Cawley who invented Rachel Solando for him to hunt down. Dr Sheehan, posing as Teddy’s fellow Marshal and partner Chuck, stays close to him to push him in the right direction. He encourages Teddy to continue the hunt (“I've never quit anything”); instills paranoid fear in him (the mausoleum scene); and plays upon that paranoia (urging him not to go to the light­house in an exercise in reverse psychology), all in an attempt to ensure that he reaches the light­house (in a highly unstable state) for the final event.

When Teddy reaches the light­house, he is confronted by the incon­sis­tencies and flawed logic of every­thing that he has been going through. He is presented with a far more reasonable expla­nation, though it is a fabri­cated one. This is the point at which the exper­iment is judged to have either failed or succeeded. If Teddy accepts this ficti­tious account, the psychi­a­trists have succeeded in attempting to implant a false memory into a patient.

Teddy has been through this before, and he now realizes that there is no way out of Shutter Island. He tells the doctors that he accepts their narrative in order to avoid lobotomy. However, sitting on the steps outside, he recon­siders and decides that lobotomy would be better than chasing Andrew Laeddis for the rest of his life: he figures they’ll just try to keep forcing this lake house narrative on him over and over again. When asking whether it’d be “better to live as a monster or die a good man,” Teddy is making a choice to take the lobotomy and thus die a good man. He refuses to accept the reality that he is just a main­te­nance man whose wife died because of his pyro­mania, and is instead perpet­ually stuck in a delusion in which he is Teddy Daniels, U.S. Marshal hunting down Andrew Laeddis (an entity created in his disso­ciative disorder), the man who killed his wife.

Fight Club Spoiler

The film 'Fight Club' stars Edward Norton as a depressed young man who doesn't like his work and gets no sense of reward from it, attempting instead to drown his sorrows by putting together the "perfect" apartment. He can't sleep and feels alienated from the world at large; he's become so desperate that in order to relate to others he's taken to visiting support groups for patients with terminal diseases so that he'll have people to talk to.

One day on a business flight, he discovers Tyler Durden played by Brad Pitt, a charming rebel who sells soap. Tyler doesn't put much stock in the materialistic world, and he believes that one can learn a great deal through pain, misfortune, and chaos. Tyler challenges his new friend to a fight. Our Narrator finds that bare-knuckle brawling makes him feel more alive than he has in years, and soon the two become friends and roommates, meeting informally to fight once a week. 

As more men join in, the "fight club" becomes an underground sensation, even though it's a closely guarded secret among the participants. 

First rule: Don't talk about fight club.

Second rule: Don't talk about fight club.

But as our narrator and Tyler bond through violence, a strange situation becomes more complicated when Tyler becomes involved with Marla, played by Helena Bonham Carter, whom our narrator became infatuated with when they were both crashing the support-group circuit.

The narrator soon realises that Tyler Durden is in fact a split personality of the narrator and Tyler is actually part of the narrator. Tyler then informs the narrator of his plan: to blow up all local credit card buildings, and by doing so corrupting the society in which they live in. The narrator is determined to stop it and he informs Marla to leave before bursting into one of the buildings and disarming the bomb in its bottom.

Tyler fights the narrator, pulls out a gun and carries him to the top of the building. However, since they are the same person, the narrator realises that the gun is in his hand and in order to destroy Tyler, he shoots himself in the jaw. Tyler disappears from the narrator, because finally he has killed him/himself and Marla and a group of Fight Club members arrive, and together with the enlightened narrator are watching the credit card buildings fall down.

Thriller Locations

The thriller location that I have chosen is Brands Hatch. The reason why I have chose this location is because the atmosphere is eery as I would probably film it at the the back of the field located at Brands hatch because there is woods located there.

There are also certain props I could use that exist there such as an abandoned tree house and several fallen trees. Using Photoshop, I was able to edit my images to give a better idea as to why I chose my location.

The images below show some shots taken to show my location:

This image here is a landscape view of the field in which paths are shown. These could be used to lead the character across the area.

This image here shows a close up of trees on the pathway outside, with the forest in the far background. This could be used to a long distance to show a character behind the trees to create an eery effect.

The image above shows the location but with a road meeting a path which could be used to show a car pulling up to the side, and a low angle could be used to show someone getting out of the car.

Thriller Sub-Genres

This video tells us of the different types of information that you would need to know for thriller films.

1. Enigma code - gradually finding things out, building suspense and drama for the film.
2. Types of thriller - Thriller sub genres

• Conspiracy thriller - This type of genre plays with the identification of good to overrule the evil in the world. An example of this could be 'the Da Vinci Code' because there is a conspiracy about whether there is more to the christian era than meets the eye.

• Crime thriller - usually represents action in a psychological way. I would say 'the Usual Suspects' is a crime thriller because they play on the idea of revenge from the criminals that were rounded up as suspects and then get revenge on them later.

• Natural Disaster thriller - shows natural disasters in a way which should be resolved. An example could be '40 days and 40 nights' because the film is about the trip that they face while struggling tihe the everyday natural disasters around the world.

• Mystery thriller - follow the protagonist in solving a mystery, for example Denzel Washington plays an army officer in search to find the mystery and justice over a female commanders heroic acts that lead to her death.

• Psychological thriller - shows the characters views and the torment that they go through in order to create suspense and drama, for example in Fight Club Edward Norton plays an office worker looking for a way to change his life but in the end the narrator was struggling with his identity creating a fictional person.

• Supernatural thriller - the protagonist or villain usually have a supernatural gift thats able to get to the source of the problem. An example of this would be The Sixth Sense. Starring Bruce Willis, the Sixth Sense is about a boy who communicates with spirits that don't know they're dead seeks the help of a disheartened child psychologist. 

3. Linear - one type of action results in one response

Napoleon Dynamite Title Timeline

Title Timeline for Napoleon Dynamite:

• 0:03 - Fox Searchlight Pictures

• 0:10 - and Paramount Pictures Present

• 0: 17 - in association with MTV Films

• 0:28 - Starring Jon Heder

• 0:33 - As Napoleon Dynamite

• 0:43 - Jon Gries

• 0:50 - Aaron Ruell

• 0: 57 - Efren Ramirez

• 1:05 - Tina Majorino

• 1:13 - with Dierdrick Bader

• 1:22 - casting by Jory Weitz

• 1:30 - music by John Swihart

• 1:41 - Edited by Jeremy Coon

• 1:48 - Production Cory Lorenzen

• 1:57 - directer of photography Mumn Powell

• 2: 05 - executive producer Jory Weitz

• 2:16 - Produced by Jeremy Coon . Chris Wyatt . Sean Covel

• 2:25 - written by Jared Hess and Jekusha Hess

• 2:34 - Directed by Jared Hess