The style of the title sequence is old fashioned italic writing and looks like its from the Victorian period. Furthermore it matches the genre because in Sherlock Holmes time, everything was written by hand (usually in italics) and the Brown coloured pictures also help because a lot of photos in those times were sepia toned. there are lots of close ups and medium close ups, which make it easier to find which character is which. I Like this title sequence because it portrays a lot of things that were used in those times.
is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not exclusive to fiction, though. Suspense may operate in any situation where there is a lead up to a big event or dramatic moment, with tension being a primary emotion felt as part of the situation. This is the 2009 Film The Taking of Pelham 123 which is a thriller film which uses lots of suspense (as you'd expect) this makes it a good film because it incorporates fear as well as suspense.
This is from the website http://www.artofthetitle.com/ which is a site dedicated to title sequences.
This is the title sequence of Sherlock Holmes.
the titles themselves are very old-fashioned, in a hand written style. This suggests the era of time this film is in. The titles are in and old Victorian style italic font, which is a very romantic .
The tiles states the director- Guy Ritchie and then they say the main cast.
The titles are placed over old photographs which are in a faded colour.
In Sherlock Holmes the style of the titles go from modern colour shot to an old fashioned colour. The titles are then in an old Victorian type style italic font face, which looks hand written as if it was a romantic letter. It then alternates between the two, modern then to old fashioned. The titles then states the director as Guy Richie and goes on to say the cast. The title sequence suits the particular genre, which is an action thriller.
The thriller genre has many sub-genres. These include:
•Supernatural Thrillers: This type of thriller generally has lots of supernatural and paranormal elements. Supernatural means those things that have no logical/natural explanation, these films normally contain, vampires, ghosts, shape shifters, demons, sprits and anything of paranormal phenomena. Films such as; Dracula is a gothic supernatural thriller.
•Drama Thrillers: This type of Thriller is when the story mainly consists of drama and suspense. Unlike other fast pace thrillers, drama thrillers typically have a slow pace and contain more character development but have lots of plot twists.
•Action Thrillers: These types of thrillers are usually time bombs, which contain lots of violence, with a clear antagonist. These films normally have characters using guns and also lots of explosions with a large set for this action to take place. Films such as James Bond are well known for their action.
•Conspiracy Thrillers: These types of thrillers where hero/heroine confronts a large, powerful group of enemies whose true level of evil only he/she recognizes.
•Physiological Thrillers: These types of thrillers are normally, -until a often violent resolution- the conflict between the main characters is mental and emotional, rather than physical. The Alfred Hitchcock films such as Suspicion and Shadow of a Doubt are known for this.
•Crime Thrillers: These types of thrillers have suspenseful successful or failed crime or crimes. These films often focus on the criminal rather than the good guy e.g. policeman. Crime thrillers usually emphasize action over psychological aspects. Central topics of these films include murders, robberies, chases, shootouts and double-crosses.
•Medical Thrillers: These type of thrillers are based around a protagonist who is usually a Doctor, who is working to unravel a growing medical problem.
•Disaster Thrillers: These types of thrillers are about a main event, which conflict is due to some sort of natural or artificial disaster, such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, etc., or nuclear disasters as an artificial disaster.
•Spy Thrillers: These types of thrillers usually involve the protagonist, who is normally a government agent. Who takes violent action against agents of a rival government or terrorists. Films such as The Thirty-Nine Steps are known for this.
•Political Thrillers: These types of thrillers usually involve the protagonist trying to ensure the stability of the government that employs them at all costs, by any means. Films such as The Manchurian Candidate (1959) by Richard Condon which actually established this subgenre.
Right now, I am most inspired to create a Supernatural Thriller, as I like the thought of ghosts, spirits and supernatural type things, however I am unsure of how we would create such effects, when editing and also, what type of storyline our sequence would have.
(For more sub-genres, description and examples go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrillers)
The main element of a thriller film is suspense. It is important in a thriller film to build up the atmosphere to appear tense to make the audience excited.
The definition given to suspense in wikipedia is "Suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work". You can find out more on:
Suspense creates heightened tension. It makes the audiences think about whats happening. It builds up anticipation. There are many things that help create suspense in a film and that includes: music......
Suspense can can be created in many different ways such as:
a cliffhanger moment at the end of a film creating shock amongst the audience
a 'ticking time bomb' because time itself is used to create suspense - there is a race against time
characters are often in suspenseful situations making the audience empathize with them.
also music (sound), atmosphere (mood), light, camera angles, editing and mise en scene all make a difference to how suspense is formed.
These all contribute to a creepy atmosphere which is very important for the opening of a thriller.
This Is Final Cut Pro. We Use This For Editing. Today, we learnt how to click and drag clips, cut clips with the razor tool, Mark in and Mark Out, How To Edit A Match Cut, Inserting clips on the timeline and cool different ways to edit cilps. :D
In My Group, we took pictures of 6 words and they were: Depression, Confusion, Claustrophobic,Calm, City & Mysterious. This was a good task because it helps us to make different Film shots and it also helps us to understand what shots look good and why & also which shots would look good during the two minute opening clip of our thriller.
Final Cut Pro.
In this excercise we learnt how to edit videos using razor mark tools(blade cuts), the diffrent techniques and effects of deleting little bits from scenes created (delete button has no gap between scenes and backspace button leaves gap ). selecting scenes using marks in and marks out (letter 'i' on keybord for mark in and letter 'o' for mark out). and dragging clips from the BROWSER to the VIEWER to create our scenes.
Collateral is a drama/crime thriller. It is about a cab driver who finds himself the hostage of an contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in LA, the cab driver must find a way to save both himself and one last victim. [For a full plot and cast list visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_(film)
In the opening scene of Collateral we see two smartly suited men, one wearing shades and both carrying briefcases. One as have deadly serious looking face whilst the other looks a little nervous, they both are walking through the crowds seemingly towards one another. They then stop once they reach one another and exchange words” alright” and put down the cases, then “yeah, what’cha doin’ in LA?” and they both pick up each others brief cases and walk off. This creates suspense as the audience have not been introduced to the characters nor do they know what’s inside the brief cases.
In the beginning of the movie we are introduced to three characters: Max, Annie and Vincent. There is a brief scene with Annie and Max, followed by the rest of the movie with Vincent. We see that Max and Vincent are in Max’s taxi driving along the road, this is after Vincent has killed a man and shoved him into the taxi boot. The police eventually stop them as the taxi’s windscreen is smashed and the headlights are broken. As the audience know what has previously happened they are curious to know if the Police will open the car boot. As the police are about to they get a call from informing them they must go to another location. This is suspenseful as tension was created whilst Max and the police were having a conversation about the car and as the audience did not know whether or not Vincent was going to get caught by the police.
Another suspenseful moment is when Max and Vincent are in the taxi after another killing and Vincent is telling max that life is not like “one day your dream will come true, you get old and die….” -Referring to a Disney lyrics. This is because Max’s dreams are to run a limo company, the sounds and lighting is used to create tension in the scene. Max then starts on a rant and starts to speed, whilst Vincent is telling Max to calm down or he’ll shoot, the both argue a little as Max continues to speed, this creates tension as the audience are unsure of what is happening, as Max then creates the taxi crash.
Taxi crash
Towards the end of the film, Max realizes that Annie is the last victim on Vincent’s list so he rushes to her office to warn her. We then see Annie is in the offices on the 16th floor, whilst Vincent is on another floor -where her office is searching for her- we then see Max outside who can see what is going on. He calls her and quickly explains that she is in danger. When she finally gets that Max is not joking she rushes to call the police, but the power is cut off by Vincent who breaks the power circuits. Vincent makes his way up to the same floor as Annie and starts to slowly look for her in the dark whilst Annie scrambles to the ground and starts crawling so she is not caught. Vincent finally finds Annie and is pointing a gun to her head when Max appears. The lighting, music and ticking time bomb creates suspense as the audience do not know if she is going to die and what is going to happen.
Max calling Annie
Annie talking to Max
Vincent searching for Annie in the offices in the dark
In a Thriller suspense is main component. It is important in a Thriller to build up as much tension as possible as this tense atmosphere stimulates the audience, leaving them not uninterested. Most thrillers are formed, with horror, conspiracy, and psychological tricks used most commonly to heighten tension.
Suspense is all about building up things up to create tension and a tense atmosphere. Suspense generally makes the audience feel excited or anxious, as there is an uncertainty of what may happen next in the film. This draws audiences in and engages their brains to become fixed on the story in many different ways.
Suspense can be created in different ways such as:
A "Cliff Hanger" which is a tense moment at the end of a film, leaving the audience wanting more
Sound, such as "mood music" can create suspense
Characters even can create up tension as events that have happened may cause the audience to feel sympathetic towards the character
Lighting, different types of lighting -coloured, dark etc- can create suspense
A "Ticking Time bomb" which creates suspense as it as race against time
Lighting, camera angles, Mise on scene and sound used correctly help to create suspense and tension within a film. Therefore creating a tense and even eerie atmosphere.
We were given a list of word to choose from and had to take pictures of each selected word. most showing emotions. This was a helpful activity as it helped us explore the diffrent ways to show emotions and think about how and what images, shots ect we may want to use during our opening thriller scene.
We've just done a really cool kinda photo activity, where basically we had to take pictures by using 6 words from a list that was given to us. The 6 words that we chose from the list where:
Collateral is a 2004 crime thriller film starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. It was directed by Michael Mann and written by Stuart Beattie.
Collateral falls in the thriller genre for several reasons. The main element of a thriller film is suspense, which this film has a lot of. Collateral was the first thriller film we watched as a class. It created suspense in many ways including: camera work, music, mise en scene, editing and the characters. We all had different opinions on the film however one thing we all agreed on was that there were many 'suspenseful' moments.
One particular moment that felt like a ticking time bomb to me was when Maxx and Vincent were stopped by the police who wanted to check their boot. This is very suspenseful because as the audience we know that there is a dead body inside the boot. I was very concern about what was going to happen which made me anxious and made the moment very suspenseful.
Another moment that made me think about whats going to happen is when Maxx is calling Annie to tell her about Vincent. Port of why this is stressful is because of the characters. Annie is in danger even though she hasn't done anything wrong-making the audience empathise with her however it was Maxx and Vincent that really made me excited about what was going to happen. I was getting more and more tense as Maxx tried to help Annie and Vincent tried his best to kill her. The lighting also goes out - making it harder to see with this and all the sudden bangs and crashes made these scene very suspenseful.
Collateral is a Thriller. It creates suspense with the great use of sound effects, e.g. Dramatic non diegetic music at the opening scene suggesting heightened tension, which builds up anticipation . Ticking sense of realism is created with the use of footsteps & passings of car. there is a establishing shot, establishing the shot location. ( New York). anticipation is built up in various ways, for example when Vincent and Max are pulled over by the police. the viewers are aware of the dead body in the taxi boot. but are put on edge when the police ask taxi driver Max to open up the car boot. Also yhe use of the brief cases and the two men in the opening scene suggest masculinity. The guns and blood used later shows this.
The opening sequence to Panic Room creates suspense due to the establishing panoramic city shots which shows the Mise on scene to be New York. The mise on scene shows a city scape, (New York and Central Park) this makes the audience interested as it is set in the city where many things can and will happen.
The use of non diegetic clock ticking sounds and the heavy dramatic orcheatral beat, helps create suspense and tension as it makes the audience curious. This is because the sounds indicate that the film will not be smooth running.
The titles are in a modern metal type font face, which sets the tone of the film. The titles are in the sky and upon the buildings in the city scape, seeminly moving a medium pace, not too fast but not too slow.
The first shot looks like a clip from a documentary showing a person running (in black and white). In this sequence we're introduced to the protagonist instantly, but we don't see him straight away. There is a build up of suspense because we hear deep breathing but don't actually see anyone. We're shown his shadow next with his footsteps. This is all shown with eerie alarming sounds making me feel as if somethings either wrong or something wrong is going to happen.
The camera work makes the clip look very belivable and real. This is because a lot of handheld and tracking shots are used.This clip has great use of sound effects.
Panic room creates suspense by the use of sound,paste, camera shots and angles.City shots, from all angles, establishing shots are used to establish the location.(New York)
The use of non diegetic clock ticking sounds, helps create suspense as it makes the audience curious as the sounds indicate that the film will not be smooth running. The mise on scene shows a city scape, which is New York, this makes the audience interested as it is set in the city where many things will happen.
In Panic Room, lots of the sound is deemed very weird, like a ticking Sound. It's quite dramatic, and has an orchestral. Also, a lot of the shots are establishing city scape shots (they are used to help created suspense because they establish location. Furthermore, the ticking sounds creates suspense because, it could make the audience curious as to what happens in the film. It Has Kristen Stewart in the film and it seems really cool. Also, The metal Font Seems really modern and its amazing, because it fits in with the modern New York City style.
