Lighting Exercise

Definition of Suspense and Shock

The definition of suspense and shock in a film is quite simple.

Suspense-
Suspense is when a scene drags out and builds up tension for the viewer that will eventually lead into something large happening, such as a killing or kidnapping, which then can lead into suspense as you wait for the climax of when the hero saves the day, or so you suspect at least. The film "North By Northwest" is a good demonstration of suspense as you follow the unknowing hero as he tries to survive, ultimately building up suspense until the final scene when you find out what will happen to him.

Shock-
Shock is quite the opposite, shock is very dramatic and very fast, without any hint of the audience knowing, for example a great scene in "North By Northwest" is when Roger Thornhill is having a very hot argument with Eve Kendall and she suddenly pulls a gun out and shoots him. Without us having any indication that this is her idea, it creates a huge shock for the audience.

Alfred Hitchcock and The Birds

Alfred Hitchcock- The Birds (1963)

•      119 min  -  Horror | Thriller

•      Director:

•      Alfred Hitchcock

•      Writers:

•      Daphne Du Maurier (story), Evan Hunter (screenplay)

•      Stars:

•      Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren and Suzanne Pleshette

When a very wealthy San Francisco citizen chases a potential lover to a Northern California town that quickly takes a bad turn when all the birds in the area join together and viciously attack the citizens of the small town.

The Birds is an Archetypal thriller in the aspect that it has a constant switch of normality and an adrenaline filled action sequences. Hitchcock uses this in a remarkable way in which future thrillers are based upon.

One of the main features Hitchcock uses in his film is the aspect that the main threat is nature, by using something that we encounter on a daily basis and using them as the one thing that could destroy us, Hitchcock adds a huge sense of fear and realisation which gets the viewer’s adrenaline going.

Often throughout his films there is a constantly occurring feature of there being nowhere to hide, by making everything a dangerous place Hitchcock makes the viewer never feel safe.

The birds does not always follow traditional thriller patterns in the aspect that the hero must always falter the villains plans, as there is no real hero and no real villain, the concept of the whole ‘birds being the danger’ makes the viewer feel helpless as you cannot stop the birds.

Suspense is built in The Birds specifically in the chicken farm scene, as the mother is slowly walking through the house in complete silence, tension builds and a feeling of danger and dread builds up quickly for the viewer.

Dramatic irony plays a key part in the film as we often know something the character does not, for example the school scene, we can see the birds amassing whereas the character is completely oblivious to the threat that she faces.

By finishing the film without a “the end” Hitchcock gives the viewer a feeling of dread, as the problem is not solved as most thrillers are, the problem persists and we are left wondering what happened, this helps play onto a person’s emotions as they are constantly left wondering what happened, and can also cause the feeling of dread to lead over into the real world as the viewer does not know what actually happens to the birds.

Hitchcock said thrillers allow the audience, "to put their toe in the cold water of fear to see what it's like” he definitely succeeded in letting the viewer put their toe in cold water as many of them left the theatre extremely scared, in the premiere, once people had left, a screeching bird sound played from nearby trees, this was the icing on the cake as the viewer had all of their emotions from the film roll over into the real world, giving them an immense feeling of dread.

First camera angle evaluation.

In our practise our aim was to show off different camera angles and learn how to use them, along with trying to learn how to edit, as our aim was to not tell a story but to test different techniques and familiarise ourselves with the camera and editing software.

We did not include all camera angles and types as we were slightly pressed for time and we are not very skilled with the camera, making shots such as the rolling shot very difficult to do. The shots we did not are the Rolling shot, and over the shoulder, this is because we are not skilled enough as of the time being to do a rolling shot and we do not quite know how to do an over the shoulder shot without it becoming very blurred, this however we will soon learn and correct as we increase our skill.

Every time we did a shot we always considered how the shot would play out and if it would look good, therefore we picked our location and setting to fit the angle we were doing, however for shots such as the crane shot we had to improvise, using stairwells and over higher up locations to imitate a crane.

When we did our long shot we thought we would have one of our people leaning against a wall, this was to imitate how it would look in a real life setting and make it so that we did not have to guess later on.

In our medium shot we decided to put it in with the Tracking shot, these were both done in the way that they did so that they would blend well and create a real life situation, such as a conversation being filmed, as this would not be filmed from incredibly far away nor would it be filmed from close up, therefore by incorporating it with a medium shot, it created a better well rounded shot.

During our extreme close up, we decided the best option was to take a shot of someone’s eye, this was to add a dramatic looking effect to the shot, allowing us to see how we could blend that with music in a real situation or how we could use it to add dramatic effect in later production.

In our POV shot I thought it would be a good idea to film it as I came up some stairs, the idea behind this was to add a situational effect to the shot in order for us to see how we could use this in the future to add to our pieces.

Our low and high angle shots were done using a stairwell to add a more imposing affect for them. As we did not have a wide range of equipment we decided that using a stairwell to make each other look large and smaller than we actually are was a good choice.

In our pan and tilt shot we simply decided the best choice was to do it of someone standing, this was to get a accurate view on how it affects the human shape and the primary objective of it was to teach us how we could use that and from what distance is it best used at.

We decided to use movement for very little of our shots as they were not required due to us only demonstrating shots, however for our POV shot we did in fact use a slight bit of acting, this was to imitate how the shot would look from a first person point of view in a real life setting.

I feel our choices for how to do each shot was quite successful as we managed to get a clear demonstration of the shots we did in our final cut after editing, however I feel the tracking shot was slightly jerky which may cause a problem in later production, however this can be fixed by using different equipment.

For a large portion of our shots we held it steady as we used the equipment given to us to allow us to not have to hold the camera in our hand, for example the tripod given to us made our shots much more steady.

I believe our POV shot was our best well done one, as it contained acting and looked quite good for our skill level, however during editing I feel like our POV and ECU matched extremely well with the music, making the clip much better than it actually was.

I feel the most important bit of our film to improve upon is how shaky it is, in many parts of the film our hand shook a bit which made a big affect on the end quality of our production.

Introduction Into Thrillers

What is a thriller?

A thriller is a movie with an exciting plot, typically involving crime, especially car chases.

Examples of thriller films include; The A-Team and Taken

What is a cliff hanger?

A cliffhanger is a plot device in fiction In which features an important character or point of interest throughout the series/film that happens to have something very exciting happen just as it ends, typically half way through the scene, this is to leave the viewer confused and wanting to know what happens.

What is a red herring?

A red herring is when the audience thinks something is going to happen, where actually something completely opposite happens.

Media studies Camera and editing exercise