Sir Alfred Hitchcock - 1899 - 1980

                                                       Sir Alfred Hitchcock - 1899 - 1980

 Sir Alfred Hitchcock was born in 1899 in Leytonstone, which is in east London, he was often referred to as the "master of suspense" and from young had a keen growing interest in directing films, which led him to become one of England's most known film director and producer and crafted many different techniques to make the audience feel suspense, as well as creating a variety of thrillers

Thriller conventions and recipe

                                                      Thriller conventions and recipe


Thriller is a very broad genre, which mainly consist's of different elements which are known as thriller devices an example of these are false lead characters, unexpected twists in the story line and a protagonist all these as well as various other methods are used to make the audience feel a sense of suspense, anticipation and terror.
Whilst adding conspiracy and psychological tricks to the storyline further adding to the audiences experience.

Sub-Genres
As the thriller genre is so flexible ; this allows it to have a huge variety of sub genres and incorporate elements from other genres for example:

Action thriller - Action thrillers are often high paced involving a lot of violence, death, weapons and intense scenes such as explosions, well known examples of these are the Die hard series of films, as well as mission impossible and The Bourne series of films.

Psychological thriller - The main character's conflicts are mostly within such as mental and emotional rather than physical conflicts like many other genres, psychological thrillers normally have a lot to think about and many twists within the story line and narrative, well known examples are Se7en, The Machinist and The silence of the lambs.

Legal thriller - Normally consisting of a lawyer or other forms of people working within the law department, having legal disputes where not only the verdict of the case as at stake but also lives a well known example of this is. The Innocent man by John Grisham.

Thriller devices 

Redherring: Is a misleading situation within a scene usually used to create a sense of tension for example a situation will happen and you would be expecting a different result such as the Joker in Batman when joker shoots the gun only a joke sign comes out rather than bullets.

Mcguffin: Is something that adds conflict to the storyline but may not be entirely significant to the storyline, this could be a character or an object for example money or a false lead.

Cliffhangers: This is where a scene stops before the climax, leaving the audience's to think about what happens next and allows room for a sequel.

Sound - Description, exercise and evaluation

Sound

In this section of my blog I have recorded a piece demonstrating a variety of different sound types such as diegetic,non diegetic, on and off screen sound, to show I have developed an level of understanding about each sound types and how to convey them in media, I then explained the different types of sound and why they are used within media.

Different types of sound

Diegetic sound
Sound that fits into the film which adds to the story line a example of this would be dialogue and sounds within the environment of the film that the characters can hear, we used a type of this sound called dialogue in our exercise, it was used to give the audience an idea of the story line.

Non-Diegetic sound
This is sound the characters in the film cannot hear, this type of sound is usually added to create  a atmosphere and to create a sense of tension to give the audience an idea on what is about to happen,
In our exercise we used this type of sound to create tension during the scene that the body guard stole the money, which was the main twist in our exercise.

Contrapuntal sound 
Is sound that does not fit into the situation for example sad types of music played at happy situations or vice versa an example of this would be playing sad music at a marriage, we did not include this in our exercise as we thought it would be confusing and take away from the experience.

Sound Bridge 
This type of sound is when the sound is carried from one scene to another, this helps continuity and overall the flow of the scenes.

Parallel sound 
This type of sound is opposite to contrapuntal sound, parallel sound fits in directly with the situation an example of this would be music that adds suspense in times that an event is about to happen, this is used a lot in horror films where the music changes before something happens which intended to scare you, we used this in our exercise when the body guard was stealing the money to add to the tension in the scene.

Sound is incredible significant in media productions as well as the type of sound used and the situation it was used in, as watching a film muted is nothing like watching it with the sound on full, the entire experience is different and the whole film is much more effective adding to the audience's empathy and enticing different emotions.

Evaluation
As this was our first time using the microphones I think we did fairly well as we managed to include most of the types of sound, although we could have improved by thinking more and having ideas on ways we could've added the parallel sound as well as the contrapuntal sound, therefore their is room for improvement and thats how we would improve.

Cinematography and Camera exercise

Different camera shots and angles are used to concentrate the audiences focus on certain elements and to establish a setting, a variety of camera angles and shots are used to make the audience feel a certain emotion/empathy towards a character.
Their are a variety of shot types and camera movements used in the film and TV industry a few examples of these are below with a demonstration of the shot which I have produced.

Camera Shots

Long shots
allows you to get a distant few of the scene or object the directer wants to show you, often used to establish a setting, but not to be confused with a establishing shot.

Medium shots
Is a fairly close shot, on a person this shot will normally only have the person's face and lower torso showing, this shot is also used on large objects.

Close up
A camera shot with very little distance between the camera and object/person in the camera's sight for example on a person this will normally only be showing their face or on a object the shot would be used to concentrate on a certain detail or aspect of the object.

Camera Angles

High angle
Views the object/person from high up a sort of birds eye sky view, normally used to show the charcter is weak at this point, making you feel different emotions for the character.

Low angle
Camera is view the person from underneath, either a shot on the floor or underneath the charcter this ephsises the characters size and makes he/she appear more powerful, again used to make the audience feel a certain way towards the charcter.

Camera Movement

Pan
Viewing the object or charcter whilist moving across a fixed axis.

Tilt
The camera moves at a angle (tilts) to reveal a charcter/object or a scene.

Tracking shot  
The camera follows the charcter, the action , a example of this is in "The shining" which I have also blogged about, in "The shining" the camera follows the boy running away from his farther who had went insane this type of shot if also often used in football to follow the ball and players.

Camera Exercise task 

Here I have demonstrated most of the camera techniques I described earlier in my blog and showed I am competent with camera language, we created a school scenario incorporating different shot types through out.


Evaluation

Me and my group tried to show as many different camera shot types as we could, possibly if we created a different scenario we could have Incorporated more camera language.

Macro Features/Narrative

Genre 

The word genre is used to define the category of literature and various other forms of entertainment e.g music,films and television series, there are many types of genre's such as horror, sci-fi ,action, thriller and many more, for forms of entertainment to be labeled a certain genre they often contain certain elements related to that genre ; for example a horror film often contains certain elements such as a antagonist, a killer or monster a horror film normally aims to create a sense of suspense , fear and alarm for the audience and scare them.

Sub Genre 

Sub genere is used to identify the the genre of a piece of literature or other forms of entertainment more directly , placing the piece into a more specific category, for example if something is classed as a horror there is a variety of sub-genres that horror can be put into such as Slasher,monster and sci-fi.

Can you guess the genre of film from these picture?

Narrative
Story a episiode of events also known as the plot.
The narrative is the method that the story line is revaled to the audience this can be sub divided into two categorys for example;
Linear - The story line is shown in the correct chronological order and flows well not jumping from the end to the start or the middle to the start and then the end and back again, the story line follows a beginning, middle and end structure, this is currently the most popular form of narrative structure.
Non-Linear- The story line is not revaled in order the story line jumps from end to begining and so on and so fourth a example of a film using this type of narrative stucure would be Pulp Fiction.

Welcome post/ coursework brief

                                                                 Welcome Post 

Welcome to my blog for my a/s media studies where i will be analysing various different films  such as North by northwest and Psycho and other various films from Alfred Hitchcock and a variety of other directors, I will also be taking inspiration from these films and creating my own thriller opening ; along the journey towards doing this i will also be performing various camera and sound exercise's showing that I can do a variety of different camera shots and movments and also various sound exercises displaying a variety of different sound techniques such as off screen sound and non-diegetic sound, whilst being taught a variety of different techniques and convections displayed within films and media.