James Bond Thrillers

We all know who James Bond is and if not then we have at least heard of him. If you have, I'm going to go over it briefly for those who haven't. Basically James Bond is an MI6 agent with the designation code of 007. It is one of the longest running films since it was started filming in the early years of 1962 and since this time there have been 22 continued films from the company Eon Productions.

Dr.No (1962)
This was the first James Bond that was to be released and starred Sean Connery. In the storyline, Bond was sent to Jamaica to figure out why one of his British operatives had been killed. This then leads him to meet Dr. Julius No who is trying to disrupt an American space launch with a laser weapon but of course, Bond comes and saves the world (which we see several times in the movies that come to follow) Although the film was filmed in a low budget, it was a financial success and they were able to get a lot of money for what hey had payed for which is basically a $58,000,000 difference of how much they spent.


On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
This is the sixth movie of the James Bond franchise and was considered to be to poorly shot because of the actor George Lazenby. He was thought to have made the film boring. In this movie though there is a slight hint that James Bond would leave Her Majesty's Secret Service because he was falling in love with Countess Tracy di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg). As you can see from the previous and first movie there is always a villain that is better equipped and have henchmen to do the work for them while you have the agent i.e Bond that has to use their initiative to overcome all of the obstacles that they will come across while Bond will probably only have one gadget to help him throughout the entire mission.

Golden Eye (1995)
Golden Eye is the seventeenth film in the Bond series and is the first to start Pierce Brosnan and was also the first of all of the Bond films to not initially follow the book. The basic plot of the story is that Bond prevents an arms leader from using the Golden Eye satellite from firing on London and causing a massive financial breakdown. The budget for this film was quite big since they spent $58 million and got a gross profit of $356.4 million which is an exceptionally big margin between how much they spent.

Skyfall (2012)

Now to the most recent Bond film. This is said to be by critics and film reviews to have been the best Bond film to be released yet. I would give a rating about it too but i haven't watched it (Hey Hey Hey some of us can't afford to go to the cinema so often!) But from all of the ratings that the film has gotten and to be honest it hasn't really been out for that long, i would say that this is definitely a must see film. I think that what makes it as good is Daniel Craig. Ever since he starred in Casino Royale, people have been wondering about how he would top it and i would say that he really has changed the way that people now see James Bond because it really was beginning to get boring the storyline was just way too predictable.

Thriller Survey

Underneath, i have created a survey which i would like you to fill. Basically it is just 10 simple and easy questions that ask you about your favourite kind of Thriller. This survey will help me a lot in the filming of my new film that i am making in my media class so it would be especially nice if you could share it with your friends and ask them to fill it in, it would be a big help.

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Focus Group & Results

To get more of a good response from the people that were in the classroom at the moment we have created a kind of survey so that we can see the type of film that the audience would like us to make. The first idea is like the North By Northwest where there is an innocent man who is wrongly accused of taking an apparent  important object to the storyline but really has to relevance to the film at all. As you can see above, the first idea is the hero is being beaten up by the lackeys of the villain who wants the hero to give up the object only to find out that the the hero hasn't got it.

The second idea is something like the Manchurian Candidate where there is a group of military fighters who are out on a special mission somewhere in Asia and they get ambushed and one of their battalion members has been kidnapped and all of the group are trying to rescue him and then they find him but then the screen fades to black and then they all end up in a completely different area.

The last idea is the one that we have made up and is the one that we that we will start filming and produce. The storyline is where a man is running from a mental asylum since his split personality killed someone, so now he is one the run from the police and while he is running he is starting to remember some points from the previous nights. Some are from Nathaniel while others are the memories from Jonathan. These flashbacks continue until he comes to the end of a cliff where he stops for a a couples seconds, asks the question "Who am I?!" before he falls of the cliff.

Now we got with a group of people who were in the area and asked them if they could listen to all of the ideas that we had for out films and what they thought of them. Overall we got some really good feedback from all of the ideas, the two that mainly stood out were the last two ideas. The listeners said that they liked both of the films because they were both psychological movies. But also since most people like these kind of films it draws the audience to watch and see what will happen next.

Analysis of Student Thrillers

In this post I'm going to be commenting on 3 videos that are on our Robert Clack Media Studies you tube channel. All of the short films are 2 minutes long but all have different techniques, camera angles and techniques that they have used which makes all of them unique in their own way. The three that i am going to comment on are:-

-Finder's Keepers
-The Nightwalker
-You're Mine

First of all i think that i am going to comment on the film Finder's Keepers. Personally, i really like this film because it really follows the storyline of North By Northwest (which you can see in one of my other posts) because there is basically an innocent guy that gets falsely accused and ends up running for his life. One of the really good techniques that they used in the film with none of the other films i have watched used was a Red Herring. This technique is basically when hey make the audience think that something bad is going to happen and it turns out to be completely nothing. This was one of Albert Hitchcock's signature moves whenever he was making films. They also use very good camera angles in the film as if someone was watching the chase scene happen while the guy was running which gives it the real chase scene kind of feel. Also one of the last elements tat they used in the film that was good was when the guy decided to run underneath into the tunnel and then all you can see from the bad guys is their silhouette and then the ending of the film comes with the title. Out of the, i think i would give this a 9.5 because it has been filmed excellently, the angles are used correctly and one of Albert Hitchcock's signature techniques is in the film. I think that the only bad thing that let this down was the text and the end of the film. It was very plain, boring and didn't really look that appealing. I think that it was the plain Ariel font which isn't the most exciting font that they could have used.

Link to the Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGX_pag43XU&feature=plcp

Next is The Nightwalker. This isn't one of the best films that i have ever seen but it is one that uses some techniques really well. One of them is where the girl is running and the camera is bobbing up and down as if we were looking through her eyes and we can see what she sees. This is commonly used in thriller and horror films so that we get to feel and see what they see, or as Hitchcock said that we dip out toe into the cold water of fear to see what it feels like. Which is exactly how this thriller makes us feel. Another good technique that they used was when the girl was in the car and the bad guy was in the back of the car. It is the classic "He's behind you!!" part of the film which basically means when the audience knows more than the character in the film and which kind of gives all of the power to the audience. But on the other hand, some parts of this film is really confusing. Also after the guy got the girl, i like the way how they got the car to slowly back away from the car as a sign of basically saying that she is dead. Firstly, the part where the girl runs out of the house, i had so many questions. Why was she in the house? What has she got to do with the beginning credits? Why is the Nightwalker coming after her? So many questions... Finally the last thing that i have to say about this film is at the final scene where the guy gets the girl in the car, he magically happens to appear outside of the car and starts walking at the camera. Also another bad thing that i don't really think that they planned in the video was that it was really dark so you couldn't really see what was happening, of course you could see that she was running but everything was blurry in the background and honestly it didn't look that good. Really strange. Anyway, out of ten i think that i would give this film 7.1 because it has some of the typical features of becoming a good thriller but some parts of the film got lost along the way i think.

Link to the Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ43CqyqC24&feature=plcp

Lastly there is You're Mine. This thriller penning scene is the second most realistic out of all of the ones that i have talked about so far (Of course Finder's Keepers has to be first if you have watched the video) because instead of doing the film in total darkness like The Nightwalker, they done it in broad daylight and there was traffic going by which made it look a lot more realistic than the other films as there was ant other movement but the main characters. Also there is a mix of diegetic and non diegetic sound in this film because at the beginning the girl is probably shouting to her parents of siblings to say that she is leaving. Another good thing that they used in the film was the final shot when she was tied up in the chair, all that the audience and that she can see and hear is the basement door slowly opening with the obvious creaky sound. It id very effective because we know from watching precious horrors and thrillers that this sound is never good. Finally the only thing that i think lets this movie down is the background music. It doesn't fit in at all with the pace of the film and overall ruins the film i think.

Link to the Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEiEE6qC7YA&feature=plcp

Now to be honest i think that Finder's Keepers is the best out of all of the films that we have talked about above by far. But all of the other films do have good things in their own special way but Finder's Keepers crushes them all!! Just kidding...

The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate (2004) is a film where there is an army group of soldiers that get ambushed while on a recon in Kuwait. The actors that starred in the film were Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber and Jon Voight. They all remember the incident but then start to get these weird dreams about the event and it all starts coming back to them. He begins to remember that they all gave the same exact description of the incident which gave Raymond Shaw (Liev) the prestigious Medal of Honour. But it turns out the Raymond got infected as well and now he becomes and unwilling assassin for the Communist party since he is part of a powerful political family. Will they be able to uncover the truth behind what really happened in Kuwait or is it all just a dream?
Now to be honest, when i first saw the beginning 5 minutes of the film i thought that this would be a boring political film about the army and blah blah blah. But it was actually quite good. The storyline was well presented, the was always the feeling that what they were doing to the soldiers was just a dream so it always kept the audience guessing at the same time and that during the storyline everyone assumed that Ben Marco was crazy.  As well as the disgusting bit where Eleanor Shaw has sex with her own son (Ewwwww!). Even though i haven't seen the older version of the film, i do like this version because it has futuristic features in it but yet it is set in the past. This more recent film didn't get the best of ratings out of ten, only getting 7.1 which isn't that bad but i would expect that it would have at least gotten an eight.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) is an American Cold War suspense film which stars Frank Sinatra, Janet Leigh and Laurence Harvey. The storyline of the film is set around the time of Korean war. The storyline is of course the same as the recent film that i have explained before except that in the recent film, Meryl Streep has a much bigger role in the film than Janet Leigh because in the older films women weren't given big roles and men were the main people in the story. I don't really have much to say about the older version since i haven't actually seen all of the film so all i can say and hope for is that the original version is as good as the more recent version.

Opening Analysis

In today's lesson we were deciding to look at the different types of openings that films have. The beginnings of films that we decided to watch were:

-A History of Violence
-Brick
-No Country For Old Men
-Zodiac

I have decided only to discuss A History of Violence, No Country For Old Men and Zodiac. Firstly, i will talk about Zodiac. At the beginning of Zodiac, it is very slow and we get a nice feel to the beginning of the film. First, there is some radio that is played at the beginning before the title is shown. I think that first many people believe that it is non diegetic sound (Sound the characters cant hear) because it plays before we are given the scenario but on the other hand, it could have been the car radio which we see at the beginning. There were also loads of fireworks in the background which also adds to the whole nice, quiet and friendly scene. Next, we see two teenagers in a car driving to a diner but they change their mind and decide to go to a deserted area to chill and talk. But then a car decides to pull up behind them and then suddenly drive off. This makes us think that the car has gone away but then we hear the the car screech and then it begins to come back. This ends up with both of the teenagers being killed. Apparently this movie has been created after real events which started to happen on the 4th of July which they still haven't found out the killer.

In No Country For Old Men we have a weird beginning to the movie because we are first greeted with a voice over then all we see is a sheriff putting someone into their car and driving them to the station but what is most strange about the villain is that we don't actually see his face until later, all that we see it his silhouette and hair. Which we can see he wont be a good character because since the beginning he has always been in darkness. In the first fight, the evil character strangles the sheriff to death which is seen as a very rough fight but later on when the character kills his next victim, it is very calm  and easy which is the opposite of the first fight that we encountered so the pace basically calms down. I think that after watching the opening for this film i would definitely want to watch it.

A History of Violence is an especially weird film because at the beginning it just looks like two guys that are checking out of a hotel. But then they go into the head office and then we find out that there are two dead people in the office. After this, the guy goes back to the car and then they find out that they don't have anymore water left so one of them decides to go into the office and fill up their water then return to the car. but then a little comes out of the back of the office door which the guy shoots. We then come to a clip of a little girl screaming as if she was having a dream. This is weird because at the beginning at the first shot we see, it is one continuous shot and an annoying humming in the background (which i believe is the sound of the flies from the dead bodies in the office). It is a very strange and boring opening. i think which is why i don't really want to continue watching the film because it hasn't really drawn me in to want to watch more of the movie.

Overall, i think that the best opening of all of the beginnings that are shown above has to be Zodiac because it was the one that stood out to me and honestly i would want to watch the rest of the movie.

Aaron and Connor's Even Better Media Film

This work is even better than our previous video because of the silly music and camera shots in our old piece of work. We have added more different camera angles so that it will look a lot more naturalistic and fit together. This includes match on and eye line match, although we were not able to put in a graphic match since we were not able to figure out a good time for it to be placed while we were filming. As well as shot reverse shot we forgot to include. We believed that it would be best if we set down the camera in one area and then film what we needed from that angle and then when we were finished with that area, we would move to the next area to film.
After we were finished filming we began to edit our footage in Final Cut Express. this took an hour and a half for us to finish editing which is actually really quick since we were able to film the whole movie in one lesson as well! Then we had to cipher through all of the footage that we had collected and put all of the pieces back together to make sure that it looked at its best. After we had completed all of that, we began to choose which music we were going to put into the movie. In the end we had decided to put in the music called Slitheen, which was also involved in the Doctor Who Soundtrack. We believed that this was the best music to be used for the background of out film because it was fast paced and it fitted exactly into the time line of our film.
Overall, i think that this video was a lot better than our previous one because this work has a lot less errors, it is a lot easier to watch with appropriate music and everything fits in together perfectly.


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Alfred Hitchcock Thrillers

Alfred Hitchcock's Thrillers

Hitchcock's Films have inspired generation after generation with different techniques and ideas that he had used over the years. Even though I have only watched two of his movies, Psycho and a part of The Birds, I'm liking what I see. I will probably make another post of The Birds movie after I have finished this blog, which i am really hoping to see the end of the movie at some point. i believe that what makes Alfred Hitchcock's films so different from other films is all of the different techniques that he uses and of all of them, i believe that the most successful one has to be the MacGuffin. He uses this technique very well through all of the films that he makes. i think that the best example of this would be in North By Northwest. The MacGuffin originally in the film was the Microfilm which would stop the bad guys from taking over the world but as the film goes on, we forget about the Microfilm and begin to focus on how Cary grant is going to survive through all of the baddies throughout the film. This is again used cleverly in The Birds. In the beginning of the film, the aim was for Tippi Hedren to deliver the Lovebirds to Rod Taylor as revenge for tricking her when they first met in the pet store, as the movie goes on and gets to the end we start to think that the Lovebirds have something to do with the attacks by the birds but then the movie ends and we will never figure out what actually caused the Birds to attack. One thing that Alfred Hitchcock especially had a thing for was blonde's in his movies. He seemed especially fond of Tippi Hedren which is bad for her since she then got real birds thrown at her which she was not expecting. Also you can see that there are also blonde's in Psycho and North By Northwest.

The Birds

The Birds is a horror/suspense film which has been filmed by the great mind of Alfred Hitchcock. The cast includes Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Plashette and Veronica Cartwright. The basic story outline is that Mitch (Rod) arrives to a pet sore to get some Lovebirds for his sister's eleventh birthday where he meets socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi). After knowing about her infamous reputation around town, he tricks her into trying to convince her to buy Lovebirds. He then tells her that he knows she doesn't work her and he leaves without the Lovebirds, she then decides to get the Lovebirds and personally deliver them to him as a way to get back at him. After she arrives into Bodega Bay where Mitch lives, she shortly gets attacked by a seagull. The beginning of the end maybe? This then leads to a series of mass bird attack which leave Bodega Bay in mayhem. Will Melanie Daniels and Mitch be able to come out of this trouble? Well you're gonna have to watch it for yourself.

Alfred Hitchcock has many ingenious devices that he uses in his film, one that he especially uses is the MacGuffin. This MacGuffin is cleverly used throughout the film and is use effectively at the end, in this sense the MacGuffin is the Lovebirds. The birds have been in the film throughout and at the end we begin to realise that they have absolutely nothing to do with the storyline. This technique is nicely used by Alfred Hitchcock which he has used in a number of him countless movies such as North by Northwest, Brighton Rock, Marnie etc. I think that Alfred Hitchcock end the film a very different and unexpected way than you would see in most films today. He ended the film with just the car driving away in the distance with all of the birds still left in the frame. I believe that this was cleverly used because it means that the threat that the birds might still attack is left open. But I think that everyone who has watched the film really thinks that there should have been a complete ending because you will never see Melanie get healed or taken care of and you wonder if they will ever escape the threat of the birds.

Also, it was said in Tippi Hedren's autobiography that during the filming of the birds, at the scene where she went up the stairs to the attic, Alfred Hitchcock didn't tell her that she was going to get actual birds thrown at her. Apparently, one of the scratches of blood that was seen on her was actually real! This lead her to have years of psychological therapy just to get over her fear of birds. Another thing that is specifically weird about Alfred Hitchcock is that he likes to make people have phobias after they watch the films. I can explain this further because in Psycho, we gain a slight phobia in showers because it shows just how vulnerable we are in those kind of situations while in The Birds, it is an attack against nature which was very unexpected back in the olden days and this changed the way that films were produced, which lead to films such as Snakes on a Plane.

Overall, this is a very good film if you like a quick ending. But be wary, this film isn't for the faint hearted!