Out of boredom in the holidays I watched the film Derailed, an american thriller. When the film first started I wondered why it was a thriller, as the first half hour of the film seemed like a Rom-Com with two charcters, Charlie and Lucinda falling for eachother after meeting on a train and planning to have an affair. I was truly shocked when the two characters went to a hotel to have their long awaited affair but were interrupted by a gun man who raped Lucinda. Charlie was beaten up and made to feel guilty, he since was blackmailed by the gun man LaRoche who called Charlie and appeared at his house blackmailing him to be given $20,000 and later in the film $100,000. Charlie is forced to give over the money as Lucinda is repeatedly threatened and Charlies good friend is shot by LaRoche, the result of this was Charlie having to clear his life savings that were meant to be saved in order to cure his sick daughter suffering from diabetes. After the money is handed over Charlie is finally able to get on with his life, he soon goes to Lucindas work to find her but to his suprise Lucinda is not who she claimed she was with her real name being Jane. Charlie follows her and learns she is with LaRoche and scams men just like Charlie every day.This was a massive twist in the film that really shocked me. The film grew into an action film as well as a thriller when Charlie follows Jane and an unsuspecting man like he once was to the same hotel. He knocks LaRoche out and confronts Jane but LaRoche wakes and there is a shooting match in the hotel room. Everybody ends up dead in the hotel room and Charlie makes a quick escape. The film ends on Charlie teaching a prison English class and to his horror finds a book written by LaRoche about the story of Charlie. Charlie finds LaRoche alive and finally kills him, the burden finally being dealt with.
I thorougly enjoyed this film as it had a massive twist that shocked the audience. The film was effective as the beginning of the film did not leave me thinking something bad was going to happen. I genuinally thought Lucinda was a genuine character and the fact she was in the scam with LaRoche was a big suprise. Charlie who was played by Clive Owen was a likeable character and the audience were rooting for him although he did alot of wrong doing in the film. Overall, I would definitely reccomend this film to anyone who likes thrillers.
We've decided to change our film idea to a different genre, from a comedy to a old/war/romantic/classic film.
The basic film idea is based around an elderly woman reminiscing about a traumatic time. Flashbacks are key to our film with the elderly woman thinking back to scenes of her perhaps running through the woods. We chose to do this genre as from looking at previous examples of AS film openings nobody has chosen a film similar to this.
Our possible location is forty hall, this is perfect as we can do our flashback scene in the woods and the house gives the impression of the character being in an old peoples home or her own house which is what we wanted to give the impression of.
On Thursday we travelled to the National Film Theatre in Southbank to go to a cemenar discussing film openings. In our first session we focused on genre, narrative, character, atmosphere, themes, setting and sound. We watched three film openings to Catch Me If You Can, Dawn Of The Dead and Napoleon Dynamite and discussed how the topics fit in with these opening sequences. The openings made us think about our own film openings and how they compared to eachother. I came to the conclusion that the openings we saw focused on graphics, especially Catch Me If You Can which is very different to our openings due to our lack of software in comparison to the hugh budget films.
I really liked the opening sequence to Napoleon Dynamite, as I found it very entertaining and creative, it also allowed the audience to see what genre the film would be. I really liked the quirky and indie style of it and also found the titles really different to others I had seen in other films.This inspired me to be more creative when making my opening titles.
In the next session Daniel Kleinman came and discussed his work with us. He explained how he created the majority of the James Bond title sequences, we saw an example of his work from Casino Royale and I was very impressed feeling fascinated about how he created such amazing graphics. He expressed how important the titles are and how the music should fit in with them, this made me rethink our title credits that we are using in our film and how they should be analysed properly in order to look effective with our film. Apart from creating title sequences Kleinman also directs adverts and to our surprise he had done very well known advertisements such as the Specsavers and Coca-Cola adverts.
Next Simon Frame spoke to us, a director whose recent film is Monsters. We watched clips of the film and I was amazed when he told me they only had a cast of four people. I was also shocked when he told us that several parts of the film were not filmed together, with one scene being shot in several places. He expressed how important sound was and how it is key to many films. He said the best noises come from everyday things and by layering these noises up, great noises come as a result.
Later in the afternoon we watched examples of different film openings. We watched three films all at different levels, this helped me see what was needed to achieve certain levels. Some films we watched were really impressive and made me want to make us as high quality as others. Although some films we watched were laughed at, as they were Level 1. This made us all determined not to make our video as bad as others!
I particularl enjoyed Angeldust, I really liked the way such a simple concpt had such a brilliant effect. The film also left the audience wondering what would happen next, making it a good opening sequence as it did not seem like a trailer.
Overall, the day at the NFT was a great success and I came away with a lot more knowledge of film openings that I had before. It made me feel really inspired for my own film and I hope that it can reach a high level or otherwise it might be laughed at!
Out of boredom in the holidays I watched the film Derailed, an american thriller. When the film first started I wondered why it was a thriller, as the first half hour of the film seemed like a Rom-Com with two charcters, Charlie and Lucinda falling for eachother after meeting on a train and planning to have an affair. I was truly shocked when the two characters went to a hotel to have their long awaited affair but were interrupted by a gun man who raped Lucinda. Charlie was beaten up and made to feel guilty, he since was blackmailed by the gun man LaRoche who called Charlie and appeared at his house blackmailing him to be given $20,000 and later in the film $100,000. Charlie is forced to give over the money as Lucinda is repeatedly threatened and Charlies good friend is shot by LaRoche, the result of this was Charlie having to clear his life savings that were meant to be saved in order to cure his sick daughter suffering from diabetes. After the money is handed over Charlie is finally able to get on with his life, he soon goes to Lucindas work to find her but to his suprise Lucinda is not who she claimed she was with her real name being Jane. Charlie follows her and learns she is with LaRoche and scams men just like Charlie every day.This was a massive twist in the film that really shocked me. The film grew into an action film as well as a thriller when Charlie follows Jane and an unsuspecting man like he once was to the same hotel. He knocks LaRoche out and confronts Jane but LaRoche wakes and there is a shooting match in the hotel room. Everybody ends up dead in the hotel room and Charlie makes a quick escape. The film ends on Charlie teaching a prison English class and to his horror finds a book written by LaRoche about the story of Charlie. Charlie finds LaRoche alive and finally kills him, the burden finally being dealt with.
