Alfred Hitchcock is a legendary director who had a career spanning over 50 years. He was known as the master of suspense whose films came to be the benchmark of 'psychological thrillers'.
Some quotes from the man himself:
- 'The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them'.
- 'There is no terror in the bang, only the anticipation of it'.
- 'If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on'.
- 'Always make the audience suffer as much as possible'.
- 'I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach'.
And some quotes from admirers of his work:
- 'Under the influence of Hitchcock, thrillers often being with a crime and the accusation of an innocent bystander. Were the accused to contact the authorities, no doubt the case could have been promptly solved. But instead the poor bystander runs from the law thus further jeopardizing life and limb'. - Rick Altman - Film/Genre
Examples of this occur in 39 Steps (1935) and North by Northwest (1959).
One of Hitchcock's films, Saboteur, follows this exact set up. A man is wrongly accused of murdering his best friend and so runs from the law only to be confronted with the real killer. Classic Hitchcock.
Some film makers wuld say that films do not have to follow rules, or that rules are made to be broken. However, many would have to agree that there are certain conventions that mainstream films observe in order to be acceptable to the mass market.
In class, we discussed what elemnts we thought successful thrillers should include. Here is what we came up with:
- A young, naive yet resourceful protagonist.
- A villain/antagonist with a shady past who is initially more powerful than the hero.
- Lots of suspense.
- An element of mystery (enigma).
- Mysterious phone calls/letters.
- High tech gadgets.
- Fast-paced action scenes.
- Flashbacks.
- The hero will usually defeat the more powerful villain in the end.
- The hero falls in love.
- A curious character who usually finds themselves in trouble.
- A double agent (false hero).
- Conspiracy.
- Reason for conflict.
- A maguffin.
- Weapons.
Charles Martin 'Chuck' Jones was a legendary animator, cartoon artist, director, screenwriter and producer. He is noteably known for working at Warner Bros. Cartoons and producing Looney Tunes. Out of this came Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. This was a show about a road runner who was always escaping the evil plans to thwart him of Wile E. Coyote.
Chuck decided that the show needed to follow some simple rules which all further episodes would be based on. These rules were to act as a recipe to make a good show, much like thrillers have a recipe to follow to make sure it is a successful one. These are the rules that he came up with:
1. The Road Runner cannot harm or upset the coyote except going 'MEEP! MEEP'.
2. No outside force can harm the coyote, only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme Products.
3. The coyote could stop anytime - if he were not a fanatic.
4. No dialogue ever except 'MEEP! MEEP!'.
5. The road runner must stay on the road - otherwise, logically, he would not be called the road runner.
6. All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters - the Southwest American Desert.
7. All materials, tools, weapons or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from Acme corperation.
8. Whenever possible, make gravity the coyote's greatest enemy.
9. The coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
In year 12, one of the criteria that has to be met is to create an opening for a film in the thriller genre. This has to include the titles and the opening of the film which is to last roughly 2 minutes. This particular piece of coursework is worth 50% of the overall mark.
Marks will be awarded for demonstrating excellence in the following:
- Holding the shot steady
- Framing a shot
- Using a variety of shot distances
- Shooting material appropriate to the task set
- Editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer
- Using varied shot transitions, captions and other effects selectively and where appropriate for the task set
- Sound with images
This is the finished film that me, Charlie and Daniel made for our Preliminary Task. We edited our film on Final Cut Express and filmed all our matrial in one day. Enjoy!
Today me and my group finished editing our preliminary task. We added sound effects in some places, added fade to black effects at the beginning and the end of the clip and added a title and credits.
We've already uploaded our video to YouTube and we're now counting the hits it receives!
Me and my group finished filming our preliminary task. It only took us one day to shoot and so far we're all really happy with the outcome!
We've uploaded it to the iMac ready for editing. We had plenty of out-takes while filming, so we're going to take all of these out to make our final film look professional.
We're editing our preliminary task on 'Final Cut Express'. This will allow us to cut parts of our filming, put it all in the right order, add sound, change the look of it and basically make it look like a real movie! Now we can't wait to film our thriller!
