Coursework - Alfred Hitchcock Research(WIP)

Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was the most famous thriller director of his time and was said to have helped shape the modern-day thriller genre. He was said to be considered a master of manipulating is audiences fear and desires, and taking viewers into a state of association with facing the reality of the character. He would often include a taboo or sexually-related theme into his films.

Hitchcock's films often placed an innocent victim (an average person) into a strange, life-threatening or terrorising situation, due to mistaken identity, misidentification or wrongful accusation.

The first thriller he ever made was named 'Lodger' in 1926.  This film is based upon a woman  (a landlady) who believes that her lodger is a madman murderer who is killing women who live in London.

Coursework - Thriller Codes and Conventions

Codes and Conventions

Characters: Resourceful Heroes, Convicts, Soldiers, Spies, Law enforcement, stalkers, men associated with danger, criminals, assassins, Innocents which are dragged into danger, Psychos, Prisoners

Themes: Terroism, Political conspiracy, Psychological mind games, supernatural events, crime, spies, chase, suspense

Symbolism: Cars, Weapons, Urban settings, tension building music, fast paced editing, low lighting

Effect on Audience: Excitement, suspense, anticipation, nerve wrecking tension, anxiety, uncertainty

Coursework - Thriller Genre Research

Thriller genre

Thriller uses suspense, tension and excitement as its main elements. Thrillers heavily stimulate the viewers moods, giving them a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, surprise, anxiety and/or terror. Films of this genre tend to be adrenaline-rushing, gritty, rousing and fast paced.

A thriller provides the sudden rush of emotions, excitement, and exhilaration that drive the narrative, sometimes subtly with peaks and lulls, sometimes at a constant, breakneck pace. It keeps the audience on “the edge of their seats”.

Thrillers often make use of literary devices such as red herrings, plot twists and cliffhangers. A thriller is usually a villain driven plot which presents various problems a protagonist must overcome.

Psychological thrillers are fictional thriller storys which enphasizes the psychology of its characters and their unstable emotional states, with similarities to gothic and detective fiction in sense of “dissolving sense of reality”, moral ambiguity, and complex and tortured relationships between obsessive and pathological characters.

Psychological thrillers often incorporate elements of mystery, drama and horror.

Examples: The Machinist, House of 9, Straw Dogs, Shutter Island.

Supernatural thrillers bring in otherworldly elements(such as fantasy and/or supernatural) mixed with tension, suspense and plot twists. Sometime the protagonist and/or villain have some form of psychic ability or super powers. Examples: The Dead Zone, Chronicle, Frequency.

Techno Thrillers are suspense films in which manipulation of sophisticated technology plays a prominent part. Examples: Jurassic Park

Spy Thriller: The protagonist is generally a government agent who must take violent action against agents of a rival government or (in recent years) terrorists. The sub genre usually deals with the subject of fictional espionage in a realistic way. Its is a significant aspect of British cinema.

Examples: The parallax View, The Tailor of Panama, Taken, Unknown.

Comedy Thrillers: The normal aspects of thrillers are exaggerated and used in ironic ways to create humour rather than the usual effect of scaring the audience. This sub-genre uses the similair devices, but will often reverse the negative effects and replace it with something which will again create humour.

Camera Angles Research

Camera Angles

Throughout visual media, different camera angles have been used to create various effects.

Close-Up: A shot which shows shoulders and above of a person, allows the emotions of the face to be exaggerated and made clearer

Extreme Close-Up: A shot which shows either just the head, or a part of the head. Used to dramatically increase the effect of the facial expression and the emotions within.

Mid-Shot: A shot which shows the people from the waist up. Shows the body language and reactions of the characters in the shot. Allows greater effects from a conversation.

Long-Shot: A shot which shows the entire body of the people, allows groups of people to be shown, can be used to represent isolation when person is separated from a group of people in the same shot.

Aerial Shot: A view from where the camera is set up directly overhead the focus to ensure a clear view

Canted Angle: A shot in which the camera is set up tilted to one side, this angle is often used to present disorientation.

Crab Shot: A type of shot which involves the camera being placed into a confined space, for example, if a camera is place inside a container as the person opens it.

Deep Focus: A camera technique which allows objects which are both near and far be in focus simultaneously.

Establishing Shot: The shot which is used at the beginning of a scene, this is mainly used to establish the setting of the scene.

Hand-Held Shot: A shot filmed whilst the camera is held within the camera man's hand, opposed to some form of tripod. This is often used to make the shot seem shaky, which creates useful effects for making the scene seem realistic to the audience.

Head-On Shot: This is when the action comes directly towards the camera, rather than the camera following the action. This is often made use of with action movies or war films in order to give the audience a sense of involvement.

High Angle: This is when the subject of the camera is looked down upon via the camera, by having the camera held higher and angled down towards the subject. This is often used to make the subject seem small and insignificant.

Low-Angle Shot: This is when the subject of the camera is looked up to via the camera, by having the camera held lower and angled up towards the subject. This creates the idea of superiority which the subject posses.

Master Shot: A camera shot used at the beginning of a sequence to establish key component elements and relationships found within, and allow them to be able to make sense of them.

Pan: The camera is carefully and gently moving across a 180° Angle across the subject on a horizontal axis.

Point of View Shot(POV): A camera shot taken from the position of the subject in an attempt to create a sense of involvement and realism with the audience.

Pull Focus: This refers to a shot where one object was on focus, which is followed by another object becoming in focus. This is often used to present a shift in importance.

Rule of Thirds: This a common technique used in both photography and filming. They include the use of a 3x3 grid in hopes of dividing up the frames and finding which area of the frame will objects look best in.

Shallow Focus: This refers to a shot where an object in the foreground has been focused on, whilst the rest of the frame in the background has been blurred. This is often used to show the importance of an object/ character.

Soft Focus: This refers to a special blur in which a special lens or filter is used to create a hazy light around the subject(s). This is often used in romantic scenes within films.

Tight Frame: This refers to a shot in which the person or object within the frame, is given little to no free space within the frame.

Loose Frame: This refers to a shot in which the person or object within the frame, has lots of empty space around it, presenting the idea of solitude and isolation.

Tilt: A camera movement in which the camera is set in a fixed position, with the ability to move the angle vertically up and down.

Tracking Shot: A camera shot in which the camera moves along axis to follow the subject. This is normally done using a set of rails surrounding the subject in which a portable camera tripod is used.

Whip Pan: This refers to a very fast pan between two or more characters or points of interest.

Wide Shot: This can be used as an establishing shot or a shot to show the location. A good use of this is showing the size of a crowd or setting.

Zoom/ Reverse Zoom: By using the zoom function on a camera, the lens can be used to adjust how close or far the subject appears to the camera.

180° Rule: This is the rule of which during a scene, the camera must stay within the one side of the 180° Line, this line is an imaginary line which is used to add a sense of realism to the camera work, allowing it to let people get comfortable with the positioning.

Breaking the 180° Rule: This is when the decision is made to break the previously mention 180° Rule in an attempt to confuse and disorientate the audience.

Narrative Theory

Narrative Theory

Throughout the time of media, theories have been made about narrative, explaining what they thought was the cause of how the narrative was made. The theories we have learnt about are:

-  Roland Barthes: Barthes theory is based around five codes which he decided, these codes are:

   -Action

   -Enigma

   -Semic

   -Symbolic

   -Cultural

These codes have different meanings to each audience, and it means the way things are represented depends on the audiences views and their interpretations.

- Vladamir Prop: Prop's theory said that characters each had their own narrative function, which then created the structure for the narrative. He based his theory on folk tales and fairy tales and how they where the ones who 'created' the story. He thought that it was the variation in characters which made the narrative structure what it was.

- Tzvetan Todarov: His theory suggests that narrative starts with an equilibrium, followed by a disaster, followed by a conflict, which then results in a new equilibrium, where its either back to how it was, or resolved for a better world.

- Claude Levi-Strauss: Claude's theory was that its the constant creation of conflict/opposition which carried along the the narrative. He thought that narrative could only end once the story's conflict as has been resolved. Claude believed that there was always an opposition found within films, for example, when theres love that has to be hate, wheres theres good, there must be evil and so on. These are all examples of binary opposites.

Audience Theory + The effects model

Audience Theory

All media is created to a set of conventions, which are specified for the intended audience. The differences which can make the different audience groups are:
- Age
- Gender
- Class
- Disabilities
- Race/Cultural Origins/ Ethnicity
- Interests

From audience theory, three main theories have been made around the principles of this, they are:
- The Effects Model/ Hypodermic Syringe
- The uses and Gratifications model
- The Reception Model

There is three ways which are theorised ways that the audiences consume media, these are:
- Primary/ Active Audiences: The audience is paying full attention to the media, and consuming all that it offers
- Secondary: The audience isn't focused solely on the media and will often be performing another activity whilst paying some attention to the media.
- Tertiary: The Audience is consuming the media sub-consciously, without paying any real attention to the media source.


The Effects Model

The effects model is a media theory developed in the idea of how media is consumed. There are three concepts related to this model.

Imitation: The idea that the consumers of the media are passively taking in ideals and copying them within real life.

Desensitisation: The audience is become more used to things they may have previously been seen as completely inappropriate and becoming a more normal scenario.

Catharsis: The audience is using the media as a way of escaping their own lives, to make themselves feel better about life by seeing something which they consider worse than their current scenario.

Research: HollyWood Classicism

Hollywood films have a theme of classicism throughout several Hollywood movies. These movies contain each contain their own codes and conventions, which are not set to a single genre.

- Five Determinates of Narrative Structure
1) One or two Protagonists
2) Desire catalyses story
3) Antagonist
4) Cause and chain effect:
     - A causes B
     - B causes C
     - C causes D
     - Closure
     - Narrative is a result of code and formalisation of Hollywood film