What I've Learned from Research So Far

How the research has helped me prepare for my final two minutes

Watching the first two minutes of many films, helped me gain the knowledge to various techniques that I could possible use for my final piece. I looked and researched into camera angles, sound, lighting, setting and mise en- scene. 

My research has helped me realise what genre I wanted to look at for my final piece, which is a psychological thriller film. Although I researched a lot of rom-coms also, as originally we had decided that we might want to work in this genre, the two openings I most enjoyed writing about were Twilight and The Others, which share an element of suspense and a paranprmal feel. I found that I was more interested in the way these openings created an atmosphere without anything reallly strange happening, and as a group we decided to work in a thriller genre so that we could look at crating a strange sense of something being slightly wrong in our opening.

 I also looked very closely into sound; I want to add non-diegetic sinister music into my film as it is maybe the most effective way of conveying to the audience what the film is based around. However, it can't be too overtly sinister as we want the audience to guess what the element is that is not quite right. It just needs to create an uneasy atmosphere. We also need dialogue in our opening, because I noticed that all the openings had dialogue. As we don't have external microphones or other equipment, we will need to think about how we will make sure we pick up any dialogue we have clearly.

My research also made me take into account

·         Screen time (mother) – to show main character

·         Costume – to also fit our setting ( shows the character and status) colours(stereotypes)

·         Setting ( preferable in a house)

·         Lighting ) important to set the mood

·         Dynamic cutting – this is used in a lot of sinister films as it builds up tension and mystery

·         A use of non-diegetic music ( often played in thriller films amongst the titles)

·         Researching films also made me aware of titles and credits and that this is a very important factor within the first two minutes of the film and how to make it effective whilst also showing the action. I noticed how overt the titles are in rom-com, but much more subtle in thrillers.