Defining Genre

Genre is the style/type of movie, examples of this are, comedy and action. Below are all the different types of dramas.

How Do Certain Shots Position the Audience and Affect Our View of How Someone is Represented?

How Do Certain Shots Position the Audience and Affect Our View of How Someone is Represented?

What is a Thriller?

Description of thriller

A thriller is a novel, play, or film with an exciting plot, typically involving crime or espionage. A thriller provides the sudden rush of emotions, excitement, and exhilaration that drive the narrative, sometimes subtly with peaks and lulls, sometimes at a constant, breakneck pace. It keeps the audience on the "edge of their seats", akin to a sensation of hanging from a cliff, as the plot builds towards a climax. Literary devices such as red herrings, plot twists, and cliff hangers are used extensively.

The link above is really useful because it gives an in depth description of what a thriller movie is. Within the link it gives good examples of why an audience may want to watch a thriller and why they are intriguing. A good example of this is 'Audiences went to the cinema not simply to see but also to feel something which they would not ordinarily experience in real life.'


 
A good example of a modern thriller is The Purge Anarchy. The Purge is when one night a year, all crime including murder is legal for 12 hours. A man heads out into the chaos, intent on killing thugs as revenge for his son's death, but ends up rescuing a stranded couple being followed by a group of people hunting them down.



Representation Terminoligy

Representation Terminoligy

Representation of Men and Woman in Thrillers

A thriller is a novel, play, or film with an exciting plot, typically involving crime or espionage.

Men in Thrillers (The Purge Anarchy)

The Purge Anarchy

The men in thrillers, particularly The Purge, are portrayed as mentally and physically strong characters. They are shown as leaders/protectors of the group in The Purge, by doing this the men put themselves in danger to try and protect the women in the group.

 

Each man in the group stereotypically tries to be the alpha male of the group, which therefore creates competition between each of the males as to who can be the alpha male. The males are often shown to be as they are in control of the situation. Men tend to be less emotional than women.

Male characters are often seen as the “lone hero”, and have a lot of independence. This is also true of male antagonists, who are often portrayed as isolated but have power.

 

The setting of the scene is late at night in an urban city with no police around, so the males have to protect everyone they are with.

 

All members of the group are able and the same age, however as the group advances throughout the film some members become less abled when they are injured.

 

One of males in the group is in a relationship with one of the women in the group and he has to protect her from everybody else.

The males are of white race, which in America can be portrayed as the 'superior' or wealthier race.

 

Women in Thrillers (The Purge Anarchy)

Women in thriller and horror films often portray a variety of roles, younger females tend to have a sense of purity and innocence, and however older women can be portrayed as having great sexual appeal to the male members of the group.

 

Women in thriller and horror films are usually portrayed as being passive and dependent upon men. Women usually are not the protagonist, or feature any characteristics that would help to solve the issue, such as intelligence. The women members of the group in The Purge are often following the men and at the back of the group.

 

One of women in the group is in a relationship with one of the men in the group and she follows him to stop herself from being hurt and so she feels safer. Another pair in the group are mother and daughter and the mother is portrayed as the stronger character who has to protect the daughter.

 

The setting of the scene is late at night in an urban city with no police around, so the women have to follow the men in order for themselves to feel protected and safe.

 

All members of the group are able and the same age, however as the group advances throughout the film some members become less abled when they are injured.

The mother and daughter in The Purge are of black race, which is considered as the less superior race, and they are portrayed as less wealthy/lower class compared to the white members of the group.

 

Evaluation

Evaluation

We met the brief as we included all of the required shot techniques and we filmed everything that was required in the brief, which included a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character with whom he or she exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue.

 

In the preliminary task we demonstrated match on action well, with the clip of Henry opening the door and the close up shot of the door handle moving. We also demonstrated shot reverse shot well by going from the shot behind Josh's shoulder, to behind Henry's shoulder as they took it in turns to speak. We also demonstrated the 180 degree rule when Henry walks towards the table after coming through the door he still appears on the right side of the frame and we did not cross the 180 degree line.

 

At first I found this task difficult as it was hard to get the camera in the right place to get a good shot without filming to high/low or without filming too close up to each character. It was also difficult trying not to get too much background into the shot compared to the amount/size of the person in the shot. Finally it was difficult to get the characters head in the correct position inside the rule of thirds.

We had an issue with filming as we had to re-film parts of the task due to losing some footage, we could not re-film the same footage straight away because the characters had different clothing on, so continuity editing would not have been achieved. However, we overcame this by restarting our filming. We managed to replicate the footage we had before as well as add some new parts, which improved our clip from the previous footage we had. 

By creating this task I have learnt how to use the editing software Premier Pro. I now know how to, edit clips to make sure that the footage runs smoothly with no jumping from scene to scene, import video clips, import sound, add titles and how to export and upload videos to YouTube directly from Premier Pro. I will look more closely at where everything in the shot is positioned when it comes to filming again so the rule of thirds is applied in each scene and so that the correct amount of character is in the shot. 

What is Representation?