Rick Altman on Hitchcock's Thriller aspects

"Under the strong influence of Alfred Hitchcock, Thriller often begins with a crime and the accusation of an innocent bystander were the accused to contact authorities no doubt the case could be promptly solved, but instead the poor bystander runs from the law thus jeopardising life and limbs" - Rick Alhman 

"The 39steps... suspense films abandons both thrills and suspense when the falsely accused character finally reaches safety" - Rick Altman  

Aspects of the Thriller: Hitchcock

Thriller Films

We discussed the different types of thrillers. We distinguished between thrillers and what makes thrillers. For example Paranormal Activity is more horrific than phone booth. The reason for this is because phone booth builds up that suspense of what is going to happen next like leaving a cliff hanger towards the end of the film. It also follow the thriller conventions that i made in my last post (There is an innocent victim [the main character] minding his or her business, then something out of the ordinary happens to them).

Some of the films we placed into the thriller genre:

• Disturbia
• Buried
• Phone-booth
• Panic Room 
• Hostage
• When a stranger calls
• Taken
• Bad boys
• Kill Bill
• Fatal Attraction
• Vantage point
• 12 round
• Public enemy 
• The Strangers
• Law abiding citizen
• The resident
• Enemy of the state

Thriller Conventions

Below is spider diagram of different thriller conventions that we discussed in class.

Who is Alfred Hitchcock?

Born: 13 August 1899
Died: 29April 1980 (aged 80)
Alfred Hitchcock was known as the master of suspense. With over 50 films he was engraved with this name. 'Alfred Hitchcock was the master of suspense whose films came to be the bench mark for 'psychological' thrillers'. Although he was director he knew how to promote himself. Appearing in most of his films (Usually in the beginning before the main character is introduced) this was a way to get noticed and a way for the audience to spot him(Spot Hitchcock). One Film we watched and spotted him in was 'North by North-West'.
1:49

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIlqatMQSgI

Preliminary Task: Analysis

Overall the filming was a success we got various clips to choose from and we were able to get all of them uploaded onto the iMac. We used some key edits like the match on action when we see Rasheed walking through the door. There are some things that we needed to improve like sticking to the story board, using more key edits and not just a few, steadying the camera etc. Although the editing was not completed we managed to get a flavour of how to use the software which was a good experience.

Preliminary Task: The Video

The video capturing was successful as we were able to get more than 1 footage of a particular part of the clip. We did this so that we could decide on the best clip to use. We were able to film in the places we wanted to however we had to get permission in doing it in one of the teachers classroom. We made changes to the video that was not in the story board to give it more flavour. 

The first place we filmed was in the sixth form corridor, where we had The teacher - staring Rasheed, The bad kid - staring Michael, The Dad staring myself with guest appearance of Miss. We had to take it a few times as people were making noise in the background and people were walking up and down blocking the camera. We used a clip where there were various pupils walking up and down to make it realistic in our video.

The second place was the sixth form room where we filmed the talking between the teacher and the pupil. It was very hard to film this one when there were people laughing/ talking in the background. 

Edits

Once we had completed our recordings we uploaded them onto the iMac to start our editing. Again we all took it in turns to edit so we all get a feel and its not just one person doing everything. There was a lot of difficulties like trying to cut the bits that we don't need out and keeping the bits that we do need it was time consuming as well. We managed to get most of our into our final clip.


The Finished

Preliminary Task: What we did

In class before we started going out and filming we had to produce a story board of what our clip was going to look like. We included the types of shots (crain shots, wide shot, close ups) and who would be doing/saying what in the story board. The story board was useful in helping us to have a guideline to follow.

We went out and filmed in various of places e.g. a classroom, outside, sixth-form common room study etc. 

We all took turns so that we can get a feel of the camera. Everyone in my group had a chance to film a segment of the clip.

Preliminary Task

The preliminary task we had to do was to make a film using all the shots we learned in the lesson. This is to help us edit some mistakes we have. The preliminary task includes the key edits:

• Match on action - This edit means that we see a character starting something then we see them finishing the thing that they started in the next shot. e.g opening the door then we see them entering the room

• The 180 degree rule - This edit is a basic guideline that two characters in the same scene should have the same left and the same right relationship to each other

• Shot reverse shot is a technique where one chatacter is shown looking at another character (often off- screen), and the other character is shown looking back at the first character. The characters are shown facing in opposite directions, which makes us think that they are looking at each other.

Films Studied In Class (Summery) @ Warren

Thriller films that were studied in class were; Enemy of the State and the Resident .

Enemy of the State - is categorized into being a Conspiracy (A group of people planing to do something unlawful or harmful) Thriller. This is because of the group of people the NSA did something (Them Being the group of people) against the law and was harmful. 

The resident is categorized into being a mystery and drama thriller. It is categorized in these sub genres because solving of a "mystery" the character wants to find out about. 

Thriller Definition

The thriller genre has various attributes to it. These attributes consists of suspense, tension and excitement. This genre is used to make the audience wonder what was going to happen next to the victim who, most of the time is an average person and venerable. They achieve this by crating intense emotions mixed with excitement leaving the audience on the edge of their seats. The thriller genre has various sub genres like action, Sci-Fi even erotic. All of which gives us the same sense of thrill but in a different way.

Welcome

Hey world!! Welcome to my blog where I would be talking about the thriller genre as a whole and I would be looking in depth at other films that interlink with this genre. This would give me some background idea and understanding for when me and my group make our thriller opening.

Some information about myself, My name is Simon Akinwunmi Junior, I am currently 17 years of age and I study maths, Btec science and Media studies. My hobbies include; basketball and American football.