EDITING: Soundtrack Pro

Soundtrack Pro

I was never the sound guy (although i do enjoy music (but who doesn't)) so I didn't understand this program as well as LiveType and Final Cut Pro but  sound is one of the most important aspects of a successful movie. It creates the mood, action and gives reality to scenes so being able to capture the best out of it is really important. 

Soundtrack Pro gives us advantage of having an enormous library of sounds which will be necessary for our movie. Finding or recording sounds would take a lot of our time (which we don't have) and ST Pro cuts that process to simply finding the desired sound by choosing a keyword -> category -> choosing the sound that suits us. It's that simple. It is also possible to edit the sound, change the volume etc.

After all this the sound can be put all together in layers (many sounds playing at once) and exported to the movie this helps to avoid the individual sounds from moving around.

The Stepfather's suspense...

The film we watched in class is called 'The Stepfather.' Released in 2009 this low budget movie is a remake of the original which was released in 1987.

The movie was jam packed with suspense! The audience knew straight away that the stepfather was indeed a murderer, as a result, the atmosphere whenever a character was alone with him was tense to say the least.

One of the most suspenseful scenes is when the stepfather is alone with the old lady that lives across the street. He went to 'visit' her as his wife had informed him that the lady had been suspicious of the man as he looked like one of the men from 'Americas Most Wanted.' As we wait for the murder to happen, the music becomes more eerie and the camera makes sudden jaunty movements. But what makes the scene really suspenseful is the fact that the audience knows that there is a sense of impending doom.

Another tense scene is when we get the sense that the stepfather is going to murder the actual father of the wife's children. in this scene there is a long silence before an sudden pounce from the stepfather as he hits the father around the head with a heavy glass vase. the shattering of the glass adds to the suspense as the noise both shocks the audience and alerts the other characters in the film. This adds excitement as the audience get a thrill by the fact that the stepfather can now get caught in the act.

The third suspenseful moment is when Michael is stuck in the basement. In this scene there is a huge sense of panic and nervousness as the music feel edgy and there is a huge amount of tension and fear of the fact that Michael and his family could get hurt. The fact that his Girlfriend (also the only one who knows his whereabouts) has a phone that is running out of battery also doesn't help the audience feel at ease as the danger increases as the stepfather becomes growingly suspicious of the young man.

As a result, the film is full of dark, jumpy, suspenseful moments but sadly, it has nothing unique about it. However the overused, stereotypical moves and scenes still result in giving the audience a much enjoyed thrill! 

A Thrilling Opening...BOO!

The opening I Chose to watch is 'Taking of Pelham 123' made in 2009, this Action Thriller seems to have quite a long opening. However, despite its length, the opening doesn't reveal much about the films storyline.

The first thing you hear in the film is a sound of a train, which appears to be a huge part of the storyline (as far as I can tell), this immediately creates an image of a city in the viewers mind. The audience feels like they know that the film will be fast paced and action packed -these are stereotypically what thriller films in a city would be. Then , as the picture increases in size, it gives the sense that the audience is getting pulled into the movie making them feel involved - like a fly on the wall of the towering skyscrapers.
Suddenly the bass drone slow music is replaced by louder, faster hip-hop music and the picture shows a fast forwarded clip of a main road in now York, then slowly focusing on three suspiciously daunting looking men.
It then focuses on a more light-hearted scene at the train control centre which seems to contrast the other men.
The opening clearly has a way of keeping an audience on edge, it gives them enough information to hook them  to the film but not enough information to know what's going on and what might happen.

It seems that this is clearly what our group must do to have a successful, enticing opening scene.

Thriller Sub-Genres

Saying a film is a 'Thriller' is quite possibly the most Broad description you can give. This is due to the fact that thriller films hav so many Sub-Genres!

"But what in the world is a sub genre?!" I hear you scream enthusiastically at the computer screen.
Well...let me enlighten you :)

A sub-genre is a kind of second Genre that a film is in, for example; the film

The 51st State is a 'Crime thriller' so its a 'thriller' with aspects of a 'Crime' film.

Simple!

Here is a Lovely list of Thriller Sub-Genres for you...

*Political/conspiracy Thriller
*Psychological Thriller
*Paranormal/Supernatural Thriller
*Romance/murderous Thriller
*Action Thriller
*Crime Thriller
*Disaster Thriller
*Legal/courtroom Thriller
*Spy Thriller
*Horror Thriller
*Mystery Thriller

WOOW... well that was a pretty long list...
Don't know about you but...I need a cuppa'

To be honest, I am quite an indecisive person, but I know that this project is a group effort and I will definitely need to make up my mind about aspects of this film.
Therefore, after careful consideration and many sleepless nights, I have come to a conclusion that, in my opinion, group 16 should make a Mystery or a romance/murderous Thriller film!
This is due to the fact that I believe if we try to make something else, it would just look silly and amateur due to our limited resources.

RESEARCH: Intertextuality

Intertextuality

Intertextuality is simply put a segment, shot or sequence of a movie used in other movies to create a similar effect on the audience.

We can compare this to a cliche in an advertising industry for example to advertise a  juice with fresh forest berries we will use a poster with the bottle in the forest. This is called a cliche because it's often used, many people don't like that kind of repetition but cliche's are called cliche's for a reason.

So what does it have to do with intertextuality?
Intertextuality in theory seems pointless and you might think that it will ruin the movie but using this can create a sense of familiarity. In the result the movie is more enjoyable to watch.

An example of this can be a scene from 'Psycho'. There are many movies using a similar scene e.g. The Stepfather.

There are more scenes in 'The Stepfather' that will seem familiar for example the family running upstairs to hide from the killer or killing the stepfather doesn't actually kill him. We can see those kind of scenes in other horror/thriller movies and it's still entertaining to watch.

Introduction to cameras

Today we learned the basics about our video cameras.

This included:

• inserting the SD memory cards
• turning the camera on/off
• zooming in and out
• changing the amount of light that the camera registers
• changing from auto to manual and vice versa
• manually focus to avoid blurry videos or automatic change of focus

and many more...

We also learned about the do's and don'ts such as

Do:

• use many angles
• use many shot types

Don't:

• film in dangerous locations
• expose the camera to water or anything that could damage it
• do anything that may be illegal i.e trespassing

During this lesson we were given a task to create a movie sequence where a simple task is made much more interesting using different techniques which we have previously learned about. We started by thinking what could we do to make reading a newspaper (this was the activity that our group was meant to record) mor exciting. Then we drew a storyboard and started to shoot moments after that. We only had time to import the footage into our hard drive before the lesson finished so the editing will have to be done next week.

The Stepfather

The Stepfather (2009) is a remake of a movie from 1987 which tells a story of a psycho killer who tries to kill the whole family. What makes the movie more tense and suspenseful is the fact that the audience knows that he is a killer from the very beginning. 

'The poster for "The Stepfather" 2009 and 1987'

The movie used intertextuality and the sense of suspense to create tense scenes. We can see that in a scene where an old lady is killed. The audience knows that something will happen to her because she recognised him as a killer. In a later scene she answers the door and everyone thinks thats the stepfather trying to kill her but there was no one by the door. The background music is still tense making the audience even more tense because now everyone expects him to jump out of nowhere and kill her but that doesn't happen either. To distract the audience, false plateau is created by a louder music and a cat jumping in front of the lady. This makes the audience jump and calms them down a little so that they don't expect anything bad to happen and that's when we can see the killer.

Another intense scene is when a father of the family comes in tells the stepfather that he knows that he was lying about his past. The lack of music/quiet music makes it a tense scene. Also the fact that the killer went to another room and he wasn't seen by the camera makes the scene suspenseful because people fear most of the things that they don't know/see. The camera follows the real father creating an illusion that the whole cinema is also looking for the stepfather. The scene finishes with the father dead.

Lastly a scene with a cliche thunder storm and pouring rain. A character suspecting that there is something wrong with the stepfather is alone in a big house. This already suggest that the killer is going to strike but the use of handheld camera outside, looking inside the house is assuring us that something bad is about to happen.