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. 

Working with Soundtrack Pro

We both found working with this program quite hard. But after a lot of practice, we managed to create a successful soundtrack suitable for our Thriller opening.

Soundtrack Pro is a full-featured professional audio application that has been designed specifically for audio post-production work on video and film projects. As we started to use this program more frequently, we started to find more sounds that would fit into our Thriller appropriately.

We found a short piano piece,which is really appropriate but does come in with a beat which distracts the audience. We struggled to find the effects to make the sound get louder or softer but after asking loads of people and searching about, we found the fade in and found out controls. For a while, we also looked at trying to cut the drum beat out of the track but were unsuccessful.

In the final edit, we used a drone to give the piece atmosphere and then added in the piano piece to give it an inoccent feel, making the audience feel sorry for ther girl. In the second section, of the film, we left it silent with just the diajetic, cafeteria sounds.

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.