What is a Thriller?

We have gone through the codes and conventions of a typical thriller and as a genre the audience has certain expectations. Certain themes are commonplace within thrillers, violence, action, mystery and an intricate story line which surprises the audience when the plot is unravelled. Through analysing semiotics, we

discovered that all of these were present in the film The Usual Suspects.
Mise en scene is realistic in horror/thrillers and often composed of muted colours in terms of lighting and backgrounds. This is due to the focus on the characters, plot and their development. Costume often follows this trend but will sometimes be different to accentuate a character. For example, in The Usual Suspects Keaton wears a bright cream suit to make him stick out on the poster and to give the impression he the main character.
However, more common conventions of a horror/thriller are the inclusion of weapons such as guns and knives. There is usually blood in the films also.

Moreover, the films usually include some sort of force, for example the police. There are many thrillers that are almost entirely based on this, for example the Bourne Identity, and its sequels. The Usual Suspects could be considered as this as the film is based around the interview of one small time criminal by the police in order to find out what really happened.
The differences between a horror and a thriller is that a horror is intending to scare the audience and make them feel uneasy, whereas a thriller is more like a mystery. However there are cases where these genres cross over into one film. An example of this would be I Am Legend, which follows the story of the last man in New York City after most of it's population has been 'infected' and turned into zombies.

Preliminary Filming Task Evaluation

My group were filming in the editing suite for our preliminary task. Even though this location was not our first choice we found that it worked as a setting as it reflected the gritty nature of the actors' perfomances and the idea that the focus was on the dialogue and the actors rather than the setting. In context, it became verisimiluted. I mostly took the role of director whilst filming, directing the type of shots, when we started and finished filming and whether we need to retake a shot.

In terms of lighting, we did not use any added lighting; only the lights in the editing suite however this lighting would be described as quite hard and light, as it is very bright in the studio and the light is colourless. This was not key to the scene however if the light had been dark then the expressions of the actors would have been less visible and the scene would have been less convincing. Also the harder light was more effective than if we had used soft lighting as the dialogue would have seeming a lot softer and there would be a lighter atmosphere, which was not our aim.

When setting up, we made sure that the tripod and camera were set up correctly, for example we bubbled the tripod to set the level so that the camera was level for the filiming. We also made sure each shot was framed correctly, however we did make a few mistakes with this, however they were not used for in our finished film. Also we were wary that our equipment was not seen in the background of shots however it can be seen in the reflection of a window in one of the shots. We also chose each shot carefully, for instance we used wide shots, two shots, and close ups. I was carefully to choose low angle shots to portray one character as having more power and status than the other. We also regarded the 180 degree rule and broke it specifically to make the scene less easy to watch, ie. the audience would need to concentrate.

Editing the Preliminary Task

I had never edited before editing the Preliminary task so I found this a quite a challenge however I took an acitve part in the process. The first challenge was to master the use of Final Cut Pro, the editing programme that we are using. I learnt that clips of film are put into the Runs Bin which concsists of all the takes that were filmed and then we would sort through them to the ones we want to use and then move these to the Log Bin.