Preproduction: Lighting Practice

We was given the Nikon DSLR to shoot pictures and videos of different lighting in preparation for our thriller opening. We was also allowed to play around with a few different lenses, we managed to experiment and create some original, interesting shots. We was able to adjust lighting and focus to make professional looking photos with different atmospheres.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then improvised using different coloured folders; pink, blue and yellow to create different ambiences and was able to change the potential genres, for example; fantasy, horror and parody. This was extremely interesting as we acquired the ability to physically affect the mise-en-scene with props.

 

This is the equipment we used, a bright flash light and coloured folders. By getting practice with this equipment we are allowing ourselves to, in effect, throw ourselves into shooting with enough practice to create our desired effects.

 

David Lynch: Thriller Director

David Lynch

 David Lynch is the notorious American film director of films such as; Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet. Films with more sick and violent themes, definitely not family films, his films are extremely disturbing, for example his biographical film named The Elephant Man.

The best way to describe him or his works are as an absurdist, his work is very surreal.

Motifs in Lynch's films: Leading film critics Le Blanc and Odell to state that "his films are so packed with motifs, recurrent characters, images, compositions and techniques that you could view his entire output as one large jigsaw puzzle of ideas", if you've ever watched one of his films you will understand what we mean, Blue Velvet is a surreal film that you won't understand unless you think like David Lynch.

Even though he is an American film director, his films are influenced by a lot of European film directors, such as, Fellini and Tati, however he was influenced by Stanley Kubrick a lot and Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard.

As we are shooting a thriller opening, I will study a lot of Lynch's movies, especially the openings, and how they convey messages.

Planning: Storyboards

A key part of Preproduction is storyboarding our Thriller Opening.

This helped us greatly as it allows us to visualise the scenes and shots we are going to do, I am happy with the visualisation we have with these storyboards.

Filmmaking: Initial Ideas

As we are creating the opening to a Thriller, we thought it would be best to create a brainstorm of ideas, it was interesting to find out what 'Thriller' meant to each of us, when talking about Thrillers to one of us it meant Silence of the Lambs and Se7en and to another member of our group a Thriller was more like Primal Fear and Memento. We discovered sub-genres and let them influence our decisions and ideas; Psychological and Crime Thrillers primarily. When thinking about our plot a plethora of narrative devices were flying through my head, Plot Twists and Deus Ex-Machinimas but we eventually settled on making it very implicit attacking our viewers phobias and fears of darkness, heights and insects.