Editing our continuity exercise

Continuity exercise filming

Close up of first shots of the opening film- first story board image

Information for making a film for a 15 audience

Our opening film storyboard plan

Psychological Thriller features

Psychological Thriller

·Psychological thriller is a fictional thriller story which emphasizes the psychology of its characters and their unstable emotional states.

·"Dissolving sense of reality", moral ambiguity, and complex and tortured relationships between obsessive and pathological characters.

·Psychological thrillers often incorporate elements of mystery, drama, action, and horror, particularly psychological horror.

·Themes:

·Reality

·Perception

·Mind

·Existence/Purpose

·Identity

 ·Death.

·In psychological thrillers, characters often battle their own minds: they attempt to determine what is real, who they are, and what life's purpose is.

 

• Character may be threatened with death, be forced to deal with the deaths of others, or fake their own deaths.   

·Common elements may include stock characters, such as a hardboiled detective and    serial killer, involved in a cat and mouse game.

·Water, especially floods, is frequently used to represent the unconscious mind.

 

 

First exercise script and plan, conversation task.

The typical elements of a Psychological Thriller opening

Requiem For A Dream

Representation of characters in the film are:

• Ordinary people with a sense of insanity.
• People who have social issues.
• People who seem to have unusual thoughts due to them being outcasts of society.

Mise En Scene has been used very effectively in this film opening. It shows all of the five elements, clothing, sound, camera work, colour and lighting and facial expressions and body language to a high extent. Dull colours have been frequently used to match the personalities of the characters in this Psychological Thriller. The main woman wears a bright red dress in this opening scene which is the main connotation for danger, seeing as she is mad and high on drugs it is the perfect fitting to the character. Low Key lighting is a main feature of Thrillers to really express the extensity of the characters feeling. In this film Low Key Lighting is used to intensify the darkness of the main characters thoughts. The setting is very unnatural and basic. It is plain and bleak to show a high level of loneliness of the main characters emotions.

In this opening of 'Requiem For A Dream' the camera has been used very efficiently. A few of the main shots were an extreme close up to emphasise the drug taking in the scene. A birds eye view to show the madness which the women is feeling whilst she is openly running from society. A wide shot to further show the setting of the area where the main characters live. A tracking shot to follow the action whilst the main characters are seen to be running from their feelings. There is a medium two shot whilst two characters are having a conversation within the frame. There are many close ups of various substances and high angles to emphasises their power over the characters. The camera has been handheld through much of the opening.

The use of sound in this opening is very effective. There is a continuous solid beat throughout the scene which makes it memorable for the viewer. Synchronous sound is used frequently and also contrapuntal sound is used to contrast the characters thoughts from what is actually happening. Non-diegetic sound describes the unnatural events which are happening throughout this scene. A continuous rhythm also carries on playing over the speech, this creates lack of realism in what the characters are saying.

Restricted narration happens throughout the opening of 'Requiem For A Dream.' There is restricted dialogue as the viewer does not hear everything the characters say.

The form of the trailer for this film is frequent cross-cutting. The scenes cut from one where the mother is crying to her son crying and then jumps back to the mother being happy. There is also a cut of scenes when the woman is taking the drugs and then it jumps back to her sitting down normally. There is a cut of foreshadowing of scenes also which is very effective. The scene jumps from a gun to someone running and then cuts from different peoples younger lives to the present.

This film is multi-generic it has features of  a Thriller as the events which happen are easy to scare the viewer. The genre of a psychological film is present also as a lot of the scene mess with the viewers head. Also the genre of a horror film is evident as unnatural things happen to various people.

The target audience of this film is an 18 as some scenes are fairly horrific, scenes which younger people would find disturbing and unnatural causes happen frequently.

There are only a few titles in the trailer for this film. The typical white bold lettered title on a black background and film makers logos at the start in the same style also.