Storyboard

James Bond Quantum of Solace

Having seen this film at the cinema, this film is certainly in the 'Action thriller genre'. Practically non-stop from from beginning to end with car chases, aeroplane chases, fights, murders, burning building and more. It is exciting to say the very least. A classic bond with women, action, tension and style.

Clip of trailer:

As you can see from the above clip it is very fast paced whereas our thriller opening is slower, quieter and more thought less action. A different style of thriller.

The Times gave it 4 stars and said "Bond is no longer a work in progress, he is now the cruel, finished article".

The Telegrapher said "Quantum of Solace offers next to no solace, if we mean respite, but in plunging its hero into a revenge-displacement grudge mission, t has the compensation of a rock solid dramatic idea, and the intelligence to run and run with it."

Thriller Sub genres

Here is a list of the sub genres with an example of each:

1. Action Thriller- James Bond
2. Conspiracy Thriller- The chancellor's manuscript
3. Crime Thriller- Seven, The Godfather
4. Disaster Thriller- Stormy Weather
5. Drama Thriller- The illusionist, the prestige*
6. Erotic Thriller- Basic instinct, Fatal Attraction
7. Horror Thriller- Psycho
8. Legal Thriller- The innocent man
9. Medical Thriller- Awake
10. Political Thriller- The day of the Jackal
11. Psychological Thriller- The Talented Mr Ripely
12. Spy Thriller- The Bourne Identity, Mission Impossible
13. Supernatural- Unbreakable
14. Techno-Thriller- The Hunt for Red October

*The illusionist and The Prestige are drama thrillers. Traditionally a slower paced thriller with elements recognizable to a drama film eg. character development. Some of my two favorite thrillers they keep you thinking from the start to the end. I hope we can give our thriller the same thinking, working it out feeling. We hope to achieve setting the scene to this with the origami swans subtly placed in both situations. Making the audience work to make connections.

Description of our thriller opening

Our thriller piece is entitled 'Origami'. It opens with various shots of an office, things have been disturbed e.g. the phone is off the hook, papers are scattered, a smashed picture frame is on the floor. Just amongst the paper weights, post-its and various other usual desk items is a origami swan. It doesn't look out of place and you barely notice it. During the whole scene, a voice mail is playing in the background from a girl who was yesterday left waiting at a cafe for her dad who didnt show. It seems unlike him to miss it so she is just ringing to check on him. It all suddenly seems more sinister as you see a foot on the floor the shot then pans up the dead man's body, but does not reach the face.

The screen then abruptly turns to black, as you her a police interview, the man being interviewed mentions a young girl, Emily.

Then it flashes back to watch his daughter Emily waiting at the cafe, she gets the bill and on top of it is a tiny origami swan. A connection has been established whether the audience have noted it or not at this early stage of the film.

Titles

When deciding on the opening titles, it was very tempting to choose some fancy font, or flashy effect, with the credits bouncing or swooping across the screen. However, we soon learnt the rule "less is more". 

The effects and fonts we initially loved seemed extremely tacky and detracted from the power of our piece.

Making you take more notice of the credits than the opening. Which therefore made our piece look very amateur. So we then decided to make the credits as discreet, pure, simple, clean, neat and unnoticeable as possible. No bright colours. No fancy fonts. No wishes washy effects. 

Planning for our thriller

Location 1:Brighton, small cosy cafe, just off the high street, window seat.

Props: bag, newspaper, slice of cake, hot chocolate, mobile phone, receipt, red origami swan.

Actors: Lizzy as Emily

Alex as the Waiter

Location 2: Brighton, private office, within large office building.

Props: Desk, computer, fax, phone, mobile phone, papers, filing system, notelets (reminder to meet Emily), Smashed photo frame (picture of Emily inside), white origami swan.

Actors: Jordan as Dad's dead body.

We are aware that there are factors we cannot control. Unfortunately as it is a long way for us to all travel, so we only really had one chance to film, so time was not on our side.

We had to make sure we got all the shots before it got too dark, which was sort of a race against time because by the time we got there it was about four and being the middle of winter it was getting darker and darker, which made it a struggle to keep continuity.

That was not our only continuity problem, we realised half way through that half the time the door in the background was open and half the door was shut. We quickly learnt our lesson as was keeping an extra watchful eye out for possible continuity indiscretions.

We were very pleased that it rained on the day as it created the atmosphere we were going for, as we were very much inspired by seven and thought the constant rain was very effective and appropriate.

Refraction review

I like the opening titles sequence with the collage of black and white photos and the crossing out of credits, I thought that was a nice idea well put together with a very effective result. There were lots of low camera angles used which is very typical of thrillers, seeing feet but not faces gives a very mysterious, eery an uncomfortable atmosphere. The red light in the "the red room" where photos are developed, is immediately associated with blood. I also find the attention to detail with the washing blood off hands particularly impressive however the amount of tools dropped into the basin was slightly excessive yet they did make an effective noise in contrast to the sinister silence beforehand. The final image that flashes onto the screen is really quite surreal especially with the accompaniment of the drum and bass style music, To be honest it didnt personally work for me, in the classroom the general reaction was to laugh rather than feeling tense of afraid. I understand what they were trying to do and I think it was good that they tried something different and original but it didn't seem typical of a thriller opening. On the whole I think this is a great piece of work, i particularly liked the setting and titles. i I could change anything it would be the music accompanying the final shot. 

Evaluation of preliminary

This is the final project of our preliminary exercise.


We really enjoyed the work we did in the edit suite and particularly like the cut where it switches between Jordan reaching for the door and the door handle, into the room. It is good because the cut looks smooth and when th e door opens you can see Lizzy in the room. However, it does look slightly out of focus.

Something that didn't, orignally work, is that there was drilling going on outside the classroom, where we were filming. We didn't notice this until we came to the editing suite, made the cut and noticed the inconsistency in the sound. We corrected this by fading the sound out on one of the clips. If we were to film again, we would have liked to put in the actual music for the intro of 'Man I Feel Like A Woman', instead of just Alex's voice, to make it sound more complete and professional.

We did have some difficulties during the filming process for example, we went through and filmed the whole prelim excersise got to the editing suite and realised we had no sound, this was fustrating as it was all because we didnt flick the correct switch. however we learnt a valuable lesson and in future we will always remember to check the sound.

It has given us a taster for filming and editing and it will be exciting to do it for real when creating our thriller openings, now we have had a chance to practice techniques such at the 180 degrees technique, the over the shoulder technique, also keeping continuity throughout. Next time around we will have already made the initial technical errors and will be ready to get more creative. Think about costumes, settings, lights, music and make it as exciting, tense and atmospheric as possible.

Music in Thrillers

I was going through clips of thrillers on YouTube and saw one of the very well known psycho (Alfred Hitchcock). I noticed the music to be the real builder of tension and when in gets towards the action it becomes more and more terrifying. This showed me how important it is to get the music or sounds used just right as it can make a scene effective, tense, possibly uncomfortable and like in psycho when the music was just spot on extremely memorable. People who have never watched a thriller know that shower section of music in psycho. So the search for a great piece of music or sound begins...

Memento's opening music: lots of strings, low, slowing building, more thoughtful than scary, not as aggressive or violent music, but makes you wonder whats going on. It is because of the style of music that when you see the Polaroid photograph of a man who had clearly been murdered, there is loads of blood and yet you don't flinch at this incredibly violent image in fact as it starts to fade you look at it harder, even when you see the man who has just photographed this victim you feel calm and puzzled as to why the man is doing this awful thing. This is a key example of how the music can completely control the mood.

Bourne Identity, in this particular piece of music there is a great sense of urgency, things happening fast, it has a clear pulse to the music and feels like you a running, there is a great deal of tension and you feel insecure and unsettled, you feel like whoever is running could be dead any minute and you worry for that person's safety. Another great piece of music and yet completely contrasting to the other piece of music above.

So we need to decide whether we are doing a violent opening, thoughtful opening, a intense opening. We need to decide the pace and the content and choose music to reflect the mood.

One Hour Photo

Comments on the film as a whole:


We watched the opening of One Hour Photo in class. I was so excited and intrigued by it, I got it out of blockbuster and watched it that weekend. A thriller that keeps you feeling tense and on the edge of your seat through the whole thing. You really care about the family and the little boy. I think the involvement of a child makes it that much more worrying and you have such a strong will for the child to be safe, you cant stop watching. The lead character is disturbing and yet part of me still worried and cared for him as he seemed vulnerable. He was also so terrifying as he was clearly not mentally in his right mind, he was like a ticking bomb, so calm and contained and disciplined you spend the whole film waiting for him to crack. Throughout the film he is constantly wearing the same colour as his back drop, very beige. In the opening there is a white room he blends with and just an empty red chair. There are flashes of red through the rest of the film that always catch the audiences eye. It is a very intense film, as there is not alot happening for most of it, you are just left waiting for this unstable middle-aged man to breakdown.



Comments on the trailer:


In the trailer it opens with a young boy's voice speaking with compassion and care about someone lonely. There is sounds like wind blowing etc. there is an establishing shot on the house. It almost feels like someone is there watching from outside.
Tensions build as sounds simmer along building up and getting louder, nothing of any notability seems to be happening, just looks like a lonely man. You feel sympathy and yet something is unsettling about him. Shots change in and out like photos. There is then a black screen and the word "he knows your name" came up it white, its chilling. There is a continuous sound of the tapping of a drum symbol, the same rhythm repeated again and again. Then you see the family and hear the sound of a picture being taken, then see the man looking at the picture. You see him at the house of the establishing shot where you are aware the family lives. Then there is a shot of him with a camera. The shot is then close up of the camera looking into the lense, through it you then see the credits. Music builds getting louder, shots of him in a red room breaking down, shots that look right into his eyes. In contrast to the little boys voice at the beginning you hear his voice " snap shot was originally a hunting term". Flashes of quick changing photos or snap shots of the family, ands with a jault. The music sound loud aggressive like something is hunting its prey.
In my open in this trailer it is choice of music and quickly changing fast paced camera movement, each image having practically its own frame, more like a flick book than film, made it so nerve wracking and effective.

The Thrill of it all

We were given a hand out at the start of our research on thrillers called "the thrill of it all" which was a starter in our continuous research on thrillers. After reading the sheet I highlighted some key points which I thought I would add to our blog:

1. The first important point was a quote from Alfred Hitchcock. He once said "There's no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it".

This relates directly to our thriller openings, there is nothing scary about just blood and screaming. What we really need to do is to work out a way of indicating what is going to happen so you leave the audience on the edge of they're seat waiting for it to happen like a "ticking bomb".

2. Another point is that in every thriller film there is only certain amount of time you can sustain being stressed for so in every thriller film there is always some light relief, a comic one liner or something to lighten the mood.

I'm not sure if this is particularly relevant as we are only doing a short opening which will be hopefully full of tension and this is talking about a whole movie. Yet its good to know that thrillers so have brief moments of comic relief that gives the audience a brief chance to relax.

3. Characters you like and want the best for are put in difficult, uncomfortable and potentially life threatening situations. For example in The eye, it is set on a plane, no one as at there most relaxed when the are on a flight and most people do feel slightly anxious "does anyone like sitting next to a stranger on the plane?" points out Wes Craven.

So placing the hero or heroine (person you are rooting for to survive) in an uncomfortable place where it is common to feel anxiety. Some ideas could be; a lift, empty street, empty house, alternatively a crowed place filled with people but no one recognizable.

4. Thrillers is closely related to the horror genre although thrillers are more to create tension and horrors are just purely to gross out. Although horrors do make you jumpy and keep you on the edge of your seat. As that is what we are trying to achieve, so we could put in a few horror camera techniques e.g. shooting from behind, bring the camera from far to close really quick, making the camera which makes you jump.

5. Why would someone want to work in the thriller genre? "because beyond an emotional response, I want to get a physical one. Tension while watching and then utter exhaustion afterwards. It is as simple as that." This was a statement by Park-Chan-wook (highly acclaimed Korean director).

This is our objective, to make people nervous, tense, on the edge of their seat and be affected physically by what they see on screen.

This sheet was provided in class it was photocopied from a statement written by Alan Jones.

The Classic Thriller Protagonist

I found this information in a book called "Writing a Thriller film (The Terror from within)".

In this book the classic thriller protagonist (leading character) is described: 

"A relatively innocent character who normally avoids commitment and dissociates from conflict is abruptly caught in a snare of a menacing conspiracy."

This will help us when deciding on the main character of our thriller. As the main character should probably be someone we want to survive as it makes them more appealing to us. It should also make us want to know what happens more.