Cinematography

Cinematography is the use of camera angles. This includes:

Close ups: This is when you get a close up of a persons face, or in extreme close up's, a specific part of their face.



Medium shots:
  These shot's mostly consist of mst of a person's body, or at least their head and shoulders.


Long shot:
   A long shot shows everything in a wider range.
   

   

Tracking shot:
   A shot that follows a characters movements.

Panning shot:
 A camera that moves on an axis from a stationary position.

Crane shot:
   A shot from very high up.
 
   Most of these are achieved via  Steadi Cam. Steady cams don't have the camera moving about in the wielders hand like an ordinary camera, and stay's steady no matter what.

Past student thriller analysis

I will analyse 3 previous thrillers, and judge them on 5 things:
Does it look like the opening of a thriller?
What thriller conventions does it use?
Use of Mise on scene?
How technically secure is it?
Is the sound appropriate?
I ill then mark it out of 5 stars, with 1 being the lowest, and 5 being the highest.




1: Backstabber: Opening: The opening, while decent, is filmed on school premises, in the middle of the day, which reduces the thrill factor. However, the music does help a bit.

Conventions: The film has a few conventions, mostly in the pacing and music, however the music's effect weakens over time.

Mise en scene: This isn't very good, as the most props they use are cars, which aren't particularly thrilling.

Technically secure: The camera work in this was decent, however, their sound editing wasn't great as it was looped.

Sound: The music starts appropriate, but is just looped and becomes annoying after a while.

Overall, I would give this a 2 out of 5, as it was let down by it's setting and music
                                                                                                                                                                 
2: Decus et tutamen (Beauty and defense)


        Opening; Parts of it are thriller like, with people being hunted. However, it seems to forget it's an opening, and too many ideas make it very confusing.      
        Conventions: The opening does contain an air of mystery, but again any real conventions were lost in the confusion.
Mise-en-scene: Being set in a forest, it gave them a good setting to create an air of mystery, which they did well, in parts. They also used their props quite well.

Technical stability/sound: Both the camerawork and the sound are put to good use, although it's difficult to know if they're good in context, because there is no real context.

I would give this about a 3, with good technical work, but too many ideas lead to a schizophrenic jumble.


It starts out by creating a very dark atmosphere, both in lighting and mood. However, it is a little too dark, making it hard to make out what's actually going on in th frame. the music is ok, bordering the line between horror and thriller.
I would rate it 2.5, as wile technically sound, is too dark, and steers a little too far from thriller to horror.

Movie: Source code

  The source code is a film wherein Airforce helicopter pilot Captain Colter finds himself in the body of School teacher Sean Fentress. As he comes to terms with this, the train he is riding on explodes. As he finds himself in a container talking with another soldier. As he is forced through the same 8 minutes of events to try and find a bomber, the film deals with topics such as alternate reality, what is real, and how far will a person's ethics go.





The above trailer would appeal to audiences of the sci-fi/action genres, since it shows action scenes, such as the exploding train scene above, while The rewind effect shows of sci-fi elements, and the wrong reflection  brings an aura of mystery to the film.

Movies: Psycho

Psycho is financially, and arguably best, Hitchcock film. The films opening 40 minuites or so are actually one huge red herring, with the audience thinking that the story about the embezzled money, and the star of the film, Janet Leigh, going to be the most important parts of the film, when in actuality, the embezzlement story just sets the scene. Hitchcock was quite bold in killing Janet Leigh, who was a big star in the 50's and the poster girl for the film.

   What is/was different about psycho was that the villlain was th main character, Norman Bate. The film has all kinds of twists, from the famous shower scene,


, The fact that the suspected killer, (Norman Bates mother) ws actually dead, and that the killer was in fact Norman with split personality disorder, and one of the first films to do this twist, with later films catching onto the trend, and including it in their films.

Suspense is excellently built up, with lots of slow downtime, and infrequent actions scene that come and go very quickly. That way they would shock the audiences with their arrival and finish before the audience can figure out entirely what's going on for maximum impact, such as the above shower scene, only lasting 2 and a half minutes.

   Finally, a dark and mildly ambiguous ending leaves on a darker note.

Movie: The manchurian candidate (2004)

    The 2004 remake of the manchurian candidate is mostly true to it's roots, however, there are several changes from the old version, espicially in the topic of themes.


     Themes
   In the original manchurian candidate, the opposition were communists posing as anti-communists in order to infiltrate american politics. In the remake, the communists have been replaced by right wingers posing as left wingers. This is because the dispute between democrats and republicans is one of the maor issues of America today, with each believing the other to be harmul to America.

    Also, the subtle card base hypnotism, which may have come off threatning in the era of pavlovian psychology, just come off as ridiculous in an era powered by science. Therefore, they updated the means of control to small microchips, updating to the fear of the goverment always spying.

Trailer: Trailer

Movie:Collateral

Collateral is a movie directed by Michael Mann, featuring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.


The story details sociopathic killer Vincent, (tom cruise) and Cab driver Max, (Jamie Foxx) as they drive around, with Max being forced to escort Vincent to multiple locations to kill people. The main focus of the film seems split, between the killings of Vincent, and the character development between Max and Vincent, as they try to understand each others pasts and goals.

    An interesting style of story telling, instead of just have the killings, each killing gives small parts of character to the victims, instead of just gunning down faceless minion. For example the bar owner who Vincent kills. In the build up to his death, we find out the greatest moment of his life,  performing with Miles Davis, and his lament that he did not pursue his dreams, a thought that resonates with Max. This allows each part of the film to be a window to more little stories, allowing for a deeper and more organic world rather than a what you see is what you get attitude.

 

Movie:Manchurian candidate. (1962)

The Manchurian candidate is a 1962 political thriller, detailing the attempts of a medal of honor awardee as he tries to discover what happened in Kuwait, uncovering a political conspiracy along the way.. The plot contains many themes reflective of the times.
     The film, had suspenseful presentation of itself, with it's tagline being, ''miss the first 5 minutes and you won't know whats going on'', (paraphrased), as shown by the way the soldiers are captured within the first 5 minutes, and the famous, ''ladies tea party scene'', in the first ten. If someone were to miss these scenes, they would miss crucial parts of the film.

    The themes of the film are simple, showing the evil of communism, and how they wish to overthrow the american way. This is shown throughout the film, with many of the villains being Korean, soviet Russian, or just people from the East. This was partially due to the film being produced in the middle of the cold war, causing nation-wide fear of communism.


Also, the theme of the character Iselin, a politician ordered by his wife to accuse politicians of communism being in the department of defence, seems to be based of the U.S senator Joseph McCarthy, a 1950's politician who would frequently accuse political enemies of being communists.

    The brainwashing, a major plot point of the film, stems from the fact that during the 1950's, Freud's and Pavlov's works were fairly well known, and the CIA even tried it's own form of mind control experimentation, using techniques such as electrotherapy and LSD. After the Korean war ended, a number of soldiers chose to remain, causing unrest about possible brainwashing, since it was inconceivable that anyone would choose not to come  back to America. This was exaggerated in the film, with  Shaw being forced to kill his Wife and father in law, who he treasured dearly, under the influence of Communism.

 CAMERA WORK
  The camera is used to great effect in this movie. To start with, the ''Garden party''. It starts out with camera on the old ladies, before performing a 360 degree shot, ending up back at the real image of the communist gathering. A particularly famous scene, the interrogation between Marco and Shaw, had Marco out of focus, showing audiences the blur between reality and hypnotism for Shaw. In actuality, this is because Sinatra's first performance was out of focus, and the re-shoot wasn't as good.  They then left the first one in.

 Trailer Video below.
   The trailer would attract audiences, by showing seeming unrelated images, including action, and tension, all while warped music plays in the background, with the phrase, ''if you come in 5 minutes late, you won't know what's happening'', coming up twice, building a suspense for the film, with no dialogue being played.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4LDfx_bsVJU?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

   End.
   

Film genre: Film Noir

Film noir is the term given to a genre of film by french critics to a large group of films released into France by Hollywood between 1941 and 1958.  These normally include features such as-

-Lower grade black and white visuals.
-attitudes reminisct of the old crime films of earlier 30's film.
-fast speaking dialouge.
-Normally an anti-hero invlolved.


  The film genre took off after world war 2, after the nazi control on France, films were imported from America, whcih sparked France's film development.


As well as this there are other more famous conventions:

    Femme fatale:  Mysterious and dangerous women. In Noir, Femme Fatales often use lying and/or coercion to acheive their often hidden goals/


Shadows: Lots of shadowing a darkness was used, to create both suspense,and due to low budgets and special effects and they want to hide it, via shadows.

Examples: The big sleep.





                  The big heat.