An Introduction to Thrillers

We talked about what made a thriller film. We spoke about the obvious choices of thriller films, they were:
Tense atmosphere; dark lighting; dramatic plot twist; suspence; jumpy music; unsual angles; shakey camera angles; POV'S; fast paste camera work; climax; naturalisic and sub plots. To us all of the above were all combinations in a thriller, so when we are making our thriller movies we need to take these in to acount. If we want to make a professional looking thriller we will need to watch all different kinds of thriller movies, look at different techniques used to make our movie just as 'thrilling' and cutting edge.

This part of our introduction helped to get the idea of what our movie needs to be like, I think this was a really vital part of the course to start building our awareness top thriller films.

We were also introduced to Thriller films bywatching previous years openings.

This gave all of us a good incite of the quality of film we expected to produce. One I would like to comment on is one called 'End of the Line'. It opened up on shots of the setting around London, using diegectic sound of traffic and sirens, this was effective to help build tension of panic. One shot at the beginning was an extreme wide of the London eye, they had left the camera to film for a period of time so in editing they could speed it up and use the effect of time passing. This really set the scene well of day to day London.

We then had a sequence of film based around who we presume is the 'villain' of the film, with quick jump cuts of his home and him at a computer at a fast paste to build tension. This worked well as it made me want to know more about this specific character. Using over the shoulder shots we see pictures of crime scenes being uploaded to a memory stick, not showing us the whole screen was effective as it left the other parts a mystery.

Using hand held in the next sequence they had our supposed 'villain' storming down the street, having this effect it made us feel like we were walking with him.

We then see him end up at a unknown area of London and give someone else a document, who then passes it on for money, after this the film ends. This was good idea as it introduced a story line to there film and leaves the audience wanting more.

Throughout this sequence of film there is a continuous piece of music played, in mimics the beat of a heart. This helps to add extra tension, keeping the audience on the edge of seats.

I did feel their title sequence needed more work, However they may have felt it was better to spend more time on the actual footage than the title sequence.

This was a really good way of introducing us to thriller films also looking different shots it helped to give us a wider idea of what we will need to achieve on the course, and now we can also start to thinking of ideas.