Audio Research

For our audio research im torn between a more
abstract composition of music or either a more
conventional tone of music in relation to the thriller opening.
As our storyline is unconventional and has a twist in the end, a more abstract sound would create suspense and ambience, also adding a meaning behind to our thriller. However as our thriller is more mainstream and would be produced by film production companies such as paramount pictures, 20th Century Fox , Universal etc.

Composed by Balthazar, the first soundtrack is from Winter Voices, a game a narrative-driven, episodic, role-playing game set in an imaginary and timeless world at the start of the Industrial Revolution. The battles' music reflects the intense emotions of the young character and the dreamlike atmosphere in which they take place. The electronic soundtrack first starts off with a drum that slightly sounds like a metronome, the music then builds and an electronic piano comes in as the music crescendos, different instruments then follow creating tension.

 

The next sound track starts off with a drone, following orchestral violins and other string instruments with a drum. This composition has a great effect as it keeps the audience guessing and if used in our thriller, it would keep the suspense going and also would createa spooky ambience. As sound is a very key aspect of any productions, we have to keep in mind what effect we're trying to convey and what sound would best suit to it.

 

 

Thinking outside the box: Foreign Expectations Of A Thriller!

Hansel and Gretal (2007)

After a stressful day, and spending the night in, I decided to watch a Korean Horror film Hansel and Gretal. The film is subverted from the original Brothers Grimm tale and similarly reminded me of Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber series.

The film starts off with Eun-Soo driving whilst
 talking to his pregnant girlfriend. A quarrel arises which leads him to crash and becomes unconscious. He suddenly wakes up to find himself in the deep dark forest to which he sees light from a lantern that a young girl is carrying. She introduces herself as Young-Hee as they head for her house where she and her family live. Their large house is in the middle of the forest called the "House of Happy Children". After entering the House, many cynical secrets are discovered and revealed  to Eun-Soo which he tries to run away from.

Watching the first two minutes of the movie showed traits of both a thriller and a horror film. The beginning is first set to introduce us to the deep dark forest which gives the sense of entrapment, being lost, a claustrophobic impression. The Soundtrack for the two minutes similarly remind me of The hand that rocked the cradle in the way that the music sounded childishly cynical.



At the start of the film, extreme close up shots were
used to show the toys the children would play with. however with the low key lighting accompanied by the cynical soundtrack, an element of unease is created within the audience.



The use of showing children's toys in a faded sort of effect look almost washable, as if it were only vivid memories. The shots look as though there are two shots of two different locations applied to on which confuses the viewers as we aren't what images should our eyes be concentrating on.


Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the twisted unexpected end to the movie. Even though this film is a horror, however i felt that the plot was creative in the sense that it was simple and unexpected at the same time.

I'm listening... Slender Man Sounds- Audio Research

As I do with my free time, I venture out into playing games and one which has recently caught my eye (or should i say ear!) is Slender Man. The successful horror game is where you are set in the dark forests with a torch and the aim is to go find these pages. however doing this you get the Slender San who occasionally appears in front of you, or to which you might run into. If you stare at the Slender Man or you hover around the are he is in or too long it is game over for you. Whilst playing this game I was influenced by the backing track of this. The emphasis of the footsteps and the crunch of the leaves made me feel cautious of where i was moving my avatar. With this sounds of the wind, birds tweeting were also accompanied to make the experience seem more realistic. The static electric guitar sound give it an edge to the audience as the obscured sound rounds off the game when you die in the hands of Slender Man. Even though this isn't a film and is only a game, I think that the influence in anoher media concept could be applied to our coursework. Both the game and out film have similar motives in which they are able to start to scare or in fact literally scare the audience. What we want for our audience is to be able to experiance the thrill and the rush of adrenaline to which i think the soundtrack of Slender Man does extremely well whilst also playing the game. 

Coming up with a production name and logo. (First draft of logo)

We began story boarding for our final piece, and we looked into production name and logos. We kept the name simple and clean having it the anagram of the first letter of each of our name.
Gracious
Anissa
Louisa
Pahi

 We chose to include a light bulb in our logo as it symbolizes generating and coming up with ideas. When included in our clip, we want to have the light bulb to flicker as Nyctophobia (being afraid of the dark) is seen to be a common fear. The idea of using a phobia in our production name foreshadows the movie genre to which we are to produce






Researching other film production logos, we are able to see that the glimpse of light or a light is a trending theme throughout.As we see with 20th Century Fox's logo the lights are being animated to move around the screen and to shine and focus on the logo.

Similarly we see this with Columbia Pictures the focus is on the woman holding the torch. The position of the torch is held to obscure the letter "U". The Ray of light branches out symbolizing hope and also the many ideas that it could branch out to.

Evaluation of Preliminary Task

Storyline: Two children are in an empty school playing, they have to take a package to a man waiting for them .. if not a series of unfortunate events will take place on the girls. They walk through the doors but before entering the door into the man's office they have a converstaion about not being able to do it... One of the girls get scared and walks away, leaving the other girl alone. What will happen to them both..?

Filming our preliminary task went well as we managed to direct the actors and also make sure the mise en scene was relevant to the task.  However the Actors got tired and eventually did not want to be in the preliminary task anymore. This was a hindering aspect to the prelim task as when revised the footage we figured out that the shot reverse shot did not work well, as we broke the 180 degree rule and both actors were on the same side whilst conversating. This created a very big problem as it meant we were not able to re-shoot the converstaion and our deadline was due. we then had to mirror the footage in order to have the girls on different sides during the conversation. In the editing process we had more footage of the setting than we needed so we had to cut it out, and we had origionally set a gloomy distorted soundtrack and lighting to create ambience  and to reflect the emotions of the actors but it was changed last minute.

Overall the task was helpful as it showed us what we will have to carefully revise when it comes to producing our opening sequence for example actors, we are going to need a commited cast of actors who fit the requirements, and also we may not want to include many actors in the opening sequence as they are very hard to manage. We also would need to carefully think of the camera angles and movements and how we can use them to convey emotions and also if they are possible to shoot in the amount of time we have.

Treatment 1st draft

This is the first draft of the treatment of our film. Before coming up with the final storyline, we researched true story events such as The Fritzl Case and syndromes such as The Stockholm syndrome, as this relates to kind of thriller opening that we want to create. 

- - - 

They say it's hard to hate someone once you understand them. What if that someone is your captor?. (name of girl) is bullied at school but little did she know...he was watching. The Janitor sees himself in (girl’s name) and is angered that she doesn’t retaliate. He captures her in rage in order to convince her ..mentor her, that revenge is the way to go. He did this for himself.. he did this  for revenge, but little did they both know that this cynical, seemingly tactical act, would result in this imminent syndrome. STOCKHOLM.

As we are still revising the plot and Characters, we have not come up with suitable names for the characters that correspond with their personalities.

Preliminary Task - Alone