"watching" film openings and analysing past thrillers

“Watching” Film Openings documentary
In today’s lesson we watched a documentary on film openings. After watching the video we had to answer 7 questions.
1. What does Thomas Sutcliffe mean when he says:
“Films need to seduce their audience into long term commitment. While there are many types of seduction, the temptation to go for instant arousal is almost irresistible.”
When he says “long term” I think he means that the first should attract the audience straightaway so that they would continue to watch the rest of the film. “Seduce”- the film to go straight into the film so that the audience would be interested from the beginning. The meaning of “temptation” is that the film goes straight into the action.
2. According to the director Jean Jacques Beineix the risk of having an instant arousal is that what comes after sustaining the audience’s attendance.

3. “A good beginning must make the audience feel that it doesn’t know nearly enough yet, and at the same time make sure that it doesn’t know too little.” This means that if the audience know too much in the beginning of the film, there is no curiosity to watch the rest of the film. But if there’s too little the audience may get bored and not watch the rest of the film. The beginning should interest us so we are still left with some curiosity.

4. Stanley Kauffmann describes a classic opening as an establishing shot of New York, zooming into a sky scraper and then a window.

5. I think that Kyle Cooper’s title sequence to the film Seven is effective because it shows the obsessive, mad, psychotic natures of the villain’s character.

6. It is meant by “a favourite trick of Film Noir” is that showing the ending in the beginning, this makes the audience want to watch the rest of the film e.g. Why the character was killed.

7. The opening to The Shining creates suspense because the camera is like a predator hunting the car from far.
Elements which make a good thriller are good editing. Editing which is first paced and quick can make thrillers suspense. Layering and fading makes the scenes look eerie and mysterious. I also think the music, location, camera work make a good thriller.
The second task we had to do was watching past AS students thrillers and analysing them critically. We watched 6 different clips, some who had got top marks and some which didn’t do so well.
From the analysing I have found out that, the thrillers which received top marks had done post-production, and researched very good locations such as secluded churches, graveyards, Canary Warf which they would have had to get permission to do some shootings and the woods which had a creepy atmosphere and had a good use for a foggy day. The camera work had a variety of shots and angles from handheld, close ups, establishing shots and panning. The editing of the scenes was up to high standard because they used different effects such as layering two different shots (Use of dissolve); the cuts are used so there is continuity. In one of the thrillers there was a very good shot and edit of the panning of tall building and then of the man’s body the cut was very smooth here. The flashbacks used, also tells the audience the narrative of the film, which the students edited very well so it fit in with the present scene. The editing used in another thriller is when there is a close up of a detectives eyes, he closes them and goes to a blackout and then shows him constructing the case in his mind.
Most of the students made their own props for the film , which make the film look real and professional and also how they used the props they had by compromising how a remote control may be a bomb activating remote. Make and costumes in some related well with the films as when can tell what the narrative is. Some of the props were used to tell the story.
The films which didn’t do so well, we realised what was wrong with them.
The first was some were lacking enough footage, this made them have to drag their footage longer and repeat some and made the thriller repetitive which was due to poor planning. Some only had one set which didn’t build up much suspense. There weren’t very good camera shots which would wow the audience. And also the editing wasn’t too good because in one of the thrillers there was dissolves used which confuses the audience.
All of this work we did made us realise what we should and shouldn’t do to make our thriller the best we can.