Product Research: The Beach

Danny Boyle has become my favourite person of 2013. After watching Trance, I came home and watched Danny Boyle's film The Beach which I had never bothered to watch when I saw it came on TV but, thanks to the heavens of technology, Netflix had the film. The film had excellent music which always seemed appropriate for the situation even though it was upbeat, Boyle challenges the stereotype of the tense situations with low-beat orchestral music. Boyle always uses upbeat music, from The Beach (2000) to Trance (2013). 
A recurring motif in Boyle's films is that he always does the unexpected when you expect the expected.
By just watching his films it has taught me to make a great opening it does not need a lot, all you can have is the character and a voice-over, and that will have the effect on the audience.

Product Research: Trance

"Imagine that you are a feather and are gently floating down from a great height. Feel yourself gently falling, re-creating a falling sensation in your body awareness every time you breathe OUT. Feel yourself holding position and floating in midair as you breathe IN. Feel the atmosphere around you; imagine strands of textured clouds moving upward as you fall gently through them. Continue this, feeling yourself floating gently downward and falling deeper and deeper into the trance state with your every falling breath. IN and OUT can be reversed to whatever feels most natural." You are now in a state of Trance.

Last night I went to watch the Danny Boyle film Trance, which was mind blowing. I was blown away by the quality, it put every film ever made to shame even Hitchcock's Psycho. 
I wish the film had came out before I started my media project because by watching that, I feel like I can produce something almost similar. 
The use of shots was amazing, it dictated the frame, and emotions of the audience. 
Another area that it did great in was mise-en-scene, Boyle's use of symbolism was very subtle, he also managed to put in humor in the serious psychological thriller. What really made the audience laugh was when the character of James McAvoy left the building after making out with Rosario Dawson, the building number was 69.

Ace Pictures, Forever Hold Your Piece, Uncut Production Video Final

MORE AFTER EFFECTS AND IMOVIE

This is our final After Effects video for Ace Pictures and Forever Hold Your Piece after long hours of understanding some of the tools on the software. (Uncut Production will be shown in the Prezi slideshow).
Underneath is the final videos which us as a team have though of and created. Thanks for our team support, we are able to pull it through.

ACE PICTURES

FOREVER HOLD YOUR PIECE

PREZI PRESENTATION OF OUR WORK

Product Research: Limbo (Game)

As technology has improved rapidly over the years, and thrillers have quickly sprinted to the top of every list in order to thrill the audience. 
My brother asked me to set up a Playstation+ account for him, and I did, and I also downloaded some games and played them but, one game that really stood out for me was Limbo because of the ambiguity it contained, all we see is a silhouette of a video game character in the middle of somewhere which is also seen in a silhouette. The video-game makes the player have a drive to continue playing the game in order to find out the truth behind the silhouette. 

'Stoker' embodies best aspects of thriller films article

I was surfing the internet, searching up thrillers, and I came across a very interesting article about the new Nicole Kidman film with director Park Chan-Wook called, Stoker. 
The article talks about the essential parts of a thriller.

Aadventurous Two Days

In the past two days we have re-shot a huge amount, we are incredibly happy with it and have learned from our past mistakes, and this time what we shot is better than last time.
On Tuesday, we went out to numerous train stations and filmed, we had an experience into guerrilla film-making, which was very fun and exciting.
On Wednesday, we re-shot our beginning in the drama studio with better lighting, and better angles. We also made new scenes which were not originally in our story-board and we are glad we did. 

Product Research: i-D Magazine

Lately, my eyes have been opened to see that the world revolves around the genre and conventions of thriller. Why thriller? Because it asks all the questions we want the answer too. Thriller is used in films, music videos and also magazines, modelling and photography.

The first picture is an unexpected type of thriller convention, we do not instantly identify it as thriller at first glance but, however, by nature nothing is perfect, and if it is then it has buried secrets. The picture is almost too clinical to believe that it is innocent. The picture tells a story. The hand on the eye is symbolic of not being able to see the blind side. The fight between good and evil.

The fight between good and evil is a motif following in the next picture of the half face which could represent split personalities, and what we let others see and how deep we allow ourselves to see things we are guilty of. The effect of the black and white also lets our imagination play and think what hides behind what we are given.

Product Research: Bat For Lashes - What's A Girl Got To Do?

Recently I have found generic thriller conventions in music videos which fascinates me, it takes me back to the beginning deciding what to do for my thriller, if I could go back in time I would do a music video film because I have never approached anything like that with educational projects for media, and this would be the next step for others to take in order to raise the levels of achievement. 
The Bat For Lashes music video provides a mix of both independent and mainstream conventions by having it in a dark mysterious setting but it also the budget is made of talent not the money. 
My favourite part in the music video is when the bikers appear from behind the girl, it creates a sense of uncertain danger for the character.

25/03 Tick Tock

Today was a hectic day, it took four people to figure out something on After Effects but it was all worth it at the end. We managed to have our shot as the background of our After Effects effect.
Later today, we went to Earlslfield Station and filmed our train scene, and the camera suddenly had no charge left, it was tragic but what we took in the moment was quite brilliant, and I personally felt an adrenaline rush.

Product Research: Kanye West - Runaway (Full-length Film)

I have recently developed a third eye, which is to see everything from a thriller point of view and to identify it. West's Runaway music video in my opinion is a re-generation to film, art and music. Runaway contains the ambiguity of the creature with feathers, this jumps into art and that we can produce anything, and then there's the lyrics which is the narrator of the music video film.

The music video film takes inspiration from a wide range of forms, from artists like Picasso and Matisse to inspiration from books such as The Black Swan and the most popular music video film of all time Thriller by Michael Jackson.

Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker called it, "a carefully modulated art-film made by a man on a mission."
West carefully takes us through a mission, ironically he is on a mission himself.
The greatest films are ones that involve the audience with the character, a connection, a bond, a lock.

Clothing Research Effect

 What we all notice in thrillers but never generally talk about is the costumes shown in thrillers, most importantly in thrillers, and in other types of films, gangster films are known for their particular rich style.
In our thriller we decided to go with the stereotype of the male character (Nasir as Charles) wearing a suit because it has a strong effect of power instantly, and we also did not challenge this because we are aiming at a very mainstream target audience, and we want them to recognize the type of film it is and to like it.
The suit Nasir is wearing in our thriller is grey, with a black shirt, this is very effective because the grey is strongly symbolic of ambiguity, and the black shirt is symbolic of dark, and the underworld of society. However, we put these contrast with the weather of day, and a new beginning. This shows new hope, and also explores the idea of temptation, whether to quit or not.

Product Research: The Devil's Double

Double trouble, is another name for the film. I recently watched The Devil's Double on Netflix because it interested me and as I was born in Baghdad, I was very curious. I personally think that Uday Hussein's life was basically a gangster action thriller, which the film proved. 
The set design and costume is what really made the film a thriller I think because it thrilled me how amazing everything was. It added that little sparkle to the film. 
The idea of having a double physically rather than mentally is very uncommon of a thrillers because we mostly see a psychological double to a person but, then this film was based on a true story which is very interesting. 

Re-shoot

Today, 18/03/13, me, Vivien and Nasir went to re-shoot scenes, whilst Georgia worked on the audience feedback, it went smoothly, even though I was a demanding director, whereas Vivien was the opposite, a bit like good cop and bad cop.
I am very happy with the re-shoot, and what I learnt today was that when you re-shoot you know what you are doing even more than what you knew at first place, everything goes much quicker, and smoothly.

Audience Feedback on Forever Hold Your Piece (Rough Cut)

Rough Cut: Forever Hold Your Piece

We are sorry for the delay as our Macs were not able to upload it onto our USB.

Product Research: Mad Men

I have recently been looking into a variety forms of image, and I approached the hit US TV show 'Mad Men', I decided to watch the opening credits, and even though the genre of the show is not action thriller, I thought it had very similar things to an action thriller. 
Firstly, the orchestral sound is very controlling, it almost makes you feel as if you are on a mission, I think this type of music is similar to what we have made for our project.
Secondly, the silhouette of a character we cannot see is very ambiguous  and I as a media student and as a viewer want to know who that is, or what he represents by being in a silhouette. 

Shooting Schedule: Forever Hold Your Piece Final Cut

As we have produced our rough cut project, we realized that we had to re shoot some scenes. Here is our final shooting schedule.
Tune in for updates made to the schedule.

List Of Action Thrillers

As Uncut Productions are producing an action thriller, I thought it would be helpful to gather names of popular action thrillers that have been made.
  
1. The Bourne Identity

2. Salt
3. The Transporter
4. The Dark Knight
5. Inception
6. Casino Royale 
7. Enough
8. Parker 
9.  Taken
10. Public Enemy 
11. Fast Five
12. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
13. Wanted
14. Abduction
15. Hitman

Product Research: True Blood Opening Credits

Recently, a friend of mine asked me to find them a link to watch the US TV show True Blood, I decided to watch this as I gave them the link to see what the fuss was about. What really shocked me was the opening sequence, it was very moving and symbolic.
 My favourite part in the opening is the little children eating strawberries which is obviously symbolic of blood, and vampires. Even though the credits gives away a huge amount of the plot and what we are expected to see, we still ask the question "Why? How? When?", which are the vital ingredients to any moving image.

Using After Effects

Me and Vivien tried to work on After Effects to place Uncut Productions in our final project. We used scenes from our audience research to make this. Vivien has got a hang on how to use it, and has even done our opening title for the final project

Shooting: Forever Hold Your Piece

Storyboard: Forever Hold Your Piece