Subgenre - Thriller

Psychological Thriller

• Is a specific sub-genre of the broad ranged thriller and Horror genres.
• However, it often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genres, in addition to the typical traits of the thriller genre.  

Themes

• Reality - the quality of being real. Characters often try to determine what is true and what is not within the narrative.
• Perception -  A person’s own interpretation of the world around him through his senses. Often characters misperceive the world around them, or their perceptions are altered by outside factors within the narrative.
• Mind - The human consciousness; the location for personality, thought, reason, memory intelligence and emotion. The mind is often used as a location for narrative conflict, where characters battle their own minds to reach a new level of understanding or perception.
• Existence/purpose - The object for which something exists; an aim or goal humans strive towards to understand their reason for existence. Characters often try to discover this purpose is in their lives and the narrative’s conflict often is a way for the characters to discover this purpose.
• Identity - The definition of one’s self. Characters often are confused about or doubt who they are and try to discover their true identity.
• Death - The cessation of life. Characters either fear or have a fascination with death.

Espionage

the practice of spying or of using spies, typically by governments to obtain political and military information.

- Example Of Espionage Movies

Supernatural (The Conjuring 2)

Jump scare

Creepy mood

Supernatural appearance that you can't explain

Love and friendship wins the day // The evil continues to harm humanity

Technical codes:

All scenes are dark by editing, showing something bad could happen.

Symbolic codes:

Holy crosses turning upside down with “forces”, symbol of unholy existen,

Cracking sound of the swing, showing something bad will happen.

Things moving by itself, while speeding up, followed by fast swap of shots of chaos, create tension.

Crime Thriller (Chay C12)

A thriller in which the central characters are involved in crime, either in its investigation, as the perpetrator or, less commonly, a victim (generally, this is just a thriller).

• Films dealing with crime and its detection are often based on plays rather than novels
• Common methods and themes in crime thrillers are mainly ransoms, captivities, heists, revenge, kidnappings.
• An atmosphere of menace and sudden violence, such as crime and murder, characterize thrillers.
• The tension usually arises when the character(s) is placed in a dangerous situation, or a trap from which escaping seems impossible. Life is threatened, usually because the principal character is unsuspectingly or unknowingly involved in a dangerous or potentially deadly situation
• The objective is to deliver a story with sustained tension, surprise, and a constant sense of impending doom.

1 Minute Film Evaluation - The Ring (2004)

The Ring - One Minute Film Challenge

Evaluation

Introduction: This film is a recreation of the famous motion picture, "The Ring (2004)". This recreational short consists of major concepts from the movie where "People who watches the tape will be strangled in 7 days" while retaining the modernized uses of technology such as YouTube videos and laptops.

Plot: The short starts off with two protagonists, "Allen" and "Chay" in a setting of a sixth form classroom. Chay starts the conversation by asking Allen to lend him his laptop while he goes to toilet.  Suddenly, Chay discovered a hidden link in Allen's recently visited websites and with no hesitation, Chay clicked on the mysterious link. The video then starts and Chay has watched it almost half way through when in a sudden, Allen walks in. Allen then had a flashback of what he did last week and rushes in to close the laptop. The lights then goes out and the phone rings. Allen then picks up the phone and suddenly, a demon then grabs his back, realizing it's Allen's turn today.

Process of the making:

  Planning: In this stage, the group have had a conversation about how will it be filmed but before this, many ideas were presented such as, Ju-on, Cabin in the woods and Annabelle. The group then decides to retire the ideas due to limited resources and time. New idea was then presented, The Ring, with an easy concept and simple plot.

 Filming: In this process, group had some difficulties deciding between making a serious one with a darker theme or making a humorous parody one with lighter theme. We then chose to go with the darker one due to majority vote. The filming was admittedly plain and simple due to reliance on post-production. The scenes were shot on a tripod with no movement but the shakiness and handheld were to be added during editing. The theme was not as dark as it would be due to the stage was too exposed to light sources outside. The acting were fairly good considering their first time acting. Lastly, props and equipments are mostly personal belongings.

 Editing: After the filming process, the raw footage are then imported into an editing software, in this case, Final Cut Pro X were chosen due to its simplicity yet powerfulness. Firstly, aspect ratio of the shots were changed into cinema standard (21:9) using letterbox effect. Color corrections are then added to most scenes to add intense horror themes. In the flashback scene, earthquake and highlights bloom effect to add the "past-present" effect into the flashback. Lastly, clip durations and motions are slightly altered to create an effect.

 Sound Mixing: After post-editing, sound mixing was required to bring life to the film, without sound effects, any scene would make much sense, and that is how powerful a sound mixing is. In the flashback scene, the action rising sound was used to create tension from the audience mixing with a modified, distorted soundtrack from "If I Stay (2014)" movie due to its well-blending mix of action rising and a piano sound. In the last scene, the most challenging thing is to create a "jumpscare" sound effect which were quite difficult due to limited resources.


What We Did Well:

• This is one of the best film we've ever produced yet.
• Post-production results were a lot higher than we've expected
• Sound mixing was quite blending to the movie
• Outstanding communications within the group

What Went Wrong/What We Could Do Better:

• There was cameraman visible in some scene
• Rendering problem which caused blue bars and grains noticeably across the film
• Video exceeds 1 minute by 4 seconds
• Less reliance on post-production