Defenition of a Thriller

In Media we have been set the task of creating a short thriller movie. For prep we all were told to think of an idea for a thriller and then prepare a presentation and pitch our ideas to the class. Three of the ideas were chosen, Ben's, Hermoine's and Laura's. Mine, disapointingly, wasn't.

A thriller is a type of movie genre which is designed to 'thrill' the viewer, i.e. to get their heart beating and adrenaline rushing. There are many different types of thrillers, such as, Action Thrillers, Conspiracy Thrillers, Psychological Thrillers and many more. Thriller movies include films such as, The Bourne Idendity (Action Thriller), The Sixth Sense (Psychological Thriller) and Jurrasic Park (A combination of Sci-Fi and Action Thriller).

The thriller genre doesn't just apply to films. It also applies to Television shows and shows such as Prison Break (Conspiracy Thriller) and 24 (Conspiracy-Action Thriller) fall under this thriller catagory.

Summary of Practicals (Working with Cameras, Video cameras and Photoshop)

Our year of practicals started off with a practical on simulating an interview for E4. Various people were chosen for parts backstage such as lighting technition, camara man and sound manager. Also an interviewer was chosen. The rest of the class were interviewees (me) and we went up one after another to be interviewed. They asked us questions such as what type of music we listened to and why we chose media studies. They also asked us to tell a joke, and I decided to tell a slightly crude and inapropriate joke which will not be repeated during this essay. The next practical we did was working on Photoshop. This was good fun, although I didn't have my account information sorted out so I worked with someone else on their computer. We did another session on photoshop which was even more fun as I had my account information sorted out by then so I could actually use photoshop myself. The class went out and we took pictures of each other before coming back and uploading them onto the computer. The next lesson we edited them with photoshop, with a helpful Matt giving us guidence throughout the lesson. The next lesson was Matt showing us how to use the video camaras. He told us how to unpack it and set it up right before giving us some instructions on what to do when filming and how to edit the brightness and various other different settings on the display of the camara. The next practical was extremely fun, as it was the first time where we have actually used a camara. We were given instructions to build a short shot of someone doing something simple, such as picking up a pen, or eating an apple. We were supposed to practice using different shots and experiment around. However, my group failed to stick to the instructions and instead we made a 20 second action sequence of me running down a hill, bursting through a door and writing something down, dying, before the camera tracks towards the piece of paper revealing the word 'VIRUS'. Simon and Matt were not amused and strongly criticised what we did, using it as an example of bad work. Despite having a morales seriously dampened, our group stayed strong and looked optimistically on the experience, hoping to know better next time. The practicals so far this year have been enjoyable, and I look forward to learning more about Media throughout our practical experiences.

Introduction to final cut pro

Final cut pro is the program which is used to construct a timeline of shots and sound in order to build a narrative or montage. We used the program to edit our prelimanary task which we filmed the thursday before. We took the lesson with Matt and went up to the editing suite, which was cool as I hadn't been up there before.

This is an image displaying what final cut pro looks like when it is on the screen, also of what it can do.

Analising the first 5 minutes of Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko opens with a fade in to a mid shot of a silhouetted group of trees in front of an open mountainside. The time of day is early morning as you can see the early morning sky in the background. The shot then pans to the left, before turning into facing the road and changing the shot type to a wide shot revealing a person in the distance lying still on the road. The camera then slowly tracks towards the person while diegetic crickets are heard in the background. The camera slowly tracks forward towards the person and while doing so non-diegetic music starts playing. The music is slightly eerie and mysterious, adding a certain tension to the whole piece and amplifying the strangeness of having a person lying in the middle of the road. The person moves around as the camera approaches’, revealing that they are alive, while a bicycle is revealed to the right of the screen. The person looks up, with a dazed look about their body language and the person is revealed to be a teenage boy. The non-diegetic music changes as a relaxing piano chord is introduced, giving the feeling of early morning and just waking up. As the shot tracks forward it is now a long shot revealing the boy Cleary sitting up looking down at the ground. The shot then pans around to the back of the boy who is now looking out over the mountainside before tracking around to reveal his face against the forest behind him. The boy's expression is one of a dazed, 'Where am I?' type of expression. The shot then cuts to a surveying pan of an extra long shot of the mountainside. The boy stands up and interrupts the shot changing the shot to a MCU as he gets in the frame. The surveying pan stops on the boy who is staring out over the mountainside. The boy turns around and looks down past the camera and the piano chords start again. The boy slowly starts smiling and you can hear him snigger. He walks away from the camera and as he walks away the title 'Donnie Darko' comes across the screen with an ELS of the mountainside in the background. You can see the character was confused about being up there, but then obviously isn't too worried as you see him laughing about it, you can tell he’s' different. The shot then fades to white and changes to a mid shot of Donnie (the boy) riding his bike and pans back while Donnie rides his bike. Non-divergent music then starts while the camera tracks Donnie on his bike. When the music starts the scene turns into a montage of various things Donnie passes on his way home, such as a sign for a Halloween carnival and some speed walkers. The soundtrack adds a good touch to this as it is a weird song in the fact that it is both happy and depressing, it could be perceived differently by optimists and pessimists. As Donnie turns into his driveway, the camera tracks off to the right to reveal a man blowing leaves off of his garden. As his character is introduced the non-diegetic music turns more rocky and manly as drums and an electric guitar solo are introduced, maybe implying that he is different from Donnie and he is less up to interpretation. The man is approached by a young looking girl coming up in the background of a MS of him blowing the grass away. She goes up to him holding some keys and he replies by blowing her in the face with his machine. She looks annoyed and the camera pans around revealing her going away. He blows her again with his machine and she runs away. The camera then cuts to a low angle mid shot of Donnie getting off his bike and wandering through a door frame. The shot then cuts to a mid shot of a small girl jumping on a trampoline and pans down before tracking off to reveal a MCU of a middle aged women reading a Stephen King novel. Stephen King is a great author of horror and slightly creepy novels, Donnie Darko falls under this genre and the placement of this book is there as an inside note. The women looks up and a cut is followed to where she is looking and a pan of a mid shot of Donnie entering the house is follows that. The scene ends with a MCU of Donnie opening the fridge with a sign saying 'Where’s Donnie?' written on the fridge. This shows that the family are unaware of Donnie’s whereabouts and no one is really sure how Donnie got up to the top of that hill.

By Leo Faulks

The Musician Poster

This is the poster I did for homework, it is of the original film 'The Musician'.

Making the poster was pretty hard, I had to get someone to lean across and place their arn under the lid and lift their hand up and make it look creepy. I then had to photoshop them out as well as blacken the background and burn around the piano.

True form

This is an unedited picture of me, I usually have to use photoshop to make myself look normal but I decided to show everyone my true form...