Analysing a Thriller Film

This is the official film '4.3.2.1' poster used to promote the movie!

This film I have chosen to analyse is the film '4.3.2.1' 


4.3.2.1 is a British crime thriller film directed by Noel Clarke and Mark Davis, released 2 June 2010. It stars, Emma Roberts, Ophelia Lovibond, Shanika-Warren Markland, Tamsin Egerton, Adam Deacon,Ashley Thomas and Noel Clarke.


The film presents four young women with attitude. They are friends who's lives are upended when they come into contact with dangerous individuals who have

stolen a bagful of "conflict diamonds". 

This is the official film trailer for '4.3.2.1'

This is the part of the film I am going to be analysing.

The beginning of the film shows you what is happening at the end of the film which is quite interesting. It then takes us back to the start of everything to show us how it all began and why these events then happened, by doing this the film has gained our attention by making us ask questions like what made this character feel this way? or what happened to make this character do this? The reason we know the film is starting at the end is through the 'Title's' that is shown indicating the date and time. 4.3.2.1 starts on Sunday at 11.30pm and the screen then flashes back to Friday at 3.30pm.

It begins with Shannon, the camera is zoomed in and there is a close-up of her face she is crying which tells the audience something terrible has happened, the camera is quite shaky and is not steady which could tell us something about her character for example that she is not stable.. Then suddenly there is a huge zoom out and you get a view of a river and a bridge. This tells us that she is standing on the bridge and could suggest she that she is irrelevant or invisible because she is so small amongst everything else we are seeing. we then see from another angle a car pulling up, and we then see Shannon standing off the edge of the bridge almost ready to jump. then three girls come out of the car, three girls who we later discover are her friends. Once of the girls holds a 'gun' up to Shannon and tells her to come down with the 'Stones'. There is then a wide shot of Shannon crying and staring into her hand, her hand is shaky and the audience are then able to see from Shannon's point of view and can see that the 'Stones' are Christals and they must play a significant role in this film if the girls are so concerned with them. There is then a sound, a sound that gets louder as the scene goes on which sounds almost mysterious like something is going to happen. That's when Shannon Drops from the Bridge and the title sequence begins introducing the film '4.3.2.1'.

This film shows the point of view of all four girls showing each of their stories leading up how they ended up entangling together on the bridge. After the Title sequence The films shows all the girls meeting in a cafe and having a girly chat, then a man goes to reach for one of the girl's handbag... he gets hold of it but the girl 'Kerrys' has fast reflexes and grabs it too. They are in each others faces and everything stops and he doesn't move as she talks to him, she then twists the bag in their hands and slams his face against the table quite fast paced, then swings and hits him with the handbag until he is flat on the floor. Everything in the bag falls out on the floor, as this happens all the girls begin to gather what has dropped, the camera zooms into the belongings on the floor and there is a close-up of an envelope addressed to 'Shannon' on it as it is thrown into a bag, this suggests that it plays a significant and important roll to 'Shannon's' storyline within the film which could possibly lead to the dramatic scene that was shown at the start of the film.

As the four girls go outside talking, a gang of boys come and barge into them, they then drop some of the diamonds into the bags of the 4 girls but before they can get them the police chase them so the girls are unaware of what has happened and do not know that they have the diamonds. This is the part that i found extremely interesting, as they all say goodbye the screen splits into 4 sections and follows all four of them at the same time on their journeys home, into their houses and sees all of their reactions when entering where they live. as this is happening the music is growing faster... which creates an weird effect. That is when the screen goes black leaving you wondering what is going on? But then it turns back to one screen just in the point of view of Shannon and re-follows her into her house so we better understand what is going on in her life. This is when you are aware of the day and time and how far away this time is from the bridge incident at the start of the film. 

Another interesting bit in this part of the film is the scene where Shannon is in a bar and she is drinking, as she drinks the screen begins to go blurry and dizzy which indicates to us that she is getting drunk and warns us about her emotional state. When a man approaches her and tries to touch her inappropriately her friend 'Kerrys' appears out of the blue and attacks him, the girls begin to run and the camera follows them running rather 'wobbly' to create an impact of the audience, getting their adrenaline pumping and getting them worried about what is going to happen next. The music is very up-tempo to create a sound that matches what is happening, very fast paced like the girls.

As you can see just by watching the first part of the film, mise en screne eg 'guns' and 'stones', sound, 'fast paced' and camera techniques all played a massive role in the film when making it successful! without these aspects the audience would not have been hooked in watching what is about to happen next.. Therefore in our thriller i hope to use similar effects in order to make it just as great :D 

Thriller opening inspiration

Our thriller opening inspiration is Marathon man opening:

Trainspotting video 

Close up on the feet

Low angle shot

We also liked the opening of Trainspotting and so we are going to incorporate both Trainspotting and Marathon man in the opening of our trailer to create suspense and to make the audience think because they want to know why she is running.


In addition we are going to use intertexuality of psycho and stepfarther. This is because the sgementation of the body in Psycho it makes it dramatic.

Pitch for The Run

On Monday 6th February we delivered are pitch to are teacher and the class to get feedback where we can improve are work and to get the go ahead with the teacher. Here is are Pitch:

At Camden road

Are main dates is on the Thursday 9th February and Friday 10th February

After delivering are pitch, we establish that we have to change are costume because in the opening it needs to set the mood and the characters need to be acknowledge not straight away into the action of it all.

Here is are storyboard for The Run

Production of fake blood

Me and a couple of friends made some fake blood for our thrillers, with some food colouring and milk and flour, and here are the end results.

Analysing a Student Thriller

I Just watched a student thriller called 'The Rushes', which had many features which made it quite effective and powerful to watch. 

This is the Student Thriller Film 'The Rushes'

Okay, so firstly the opening starts off with a dark forest-like location, and there is a sound of rustling of leaves and crackling, but this is short-lived as the camera then really fast paced zooms into a a video camera that has been 'left' or 'dropped' in this forest, this camera is recording what is happening. You can also see a car with a light on, this is has been done on purpose, as you can see in the camera that someone is getting in/out of this car.This is an effective start because of the noises, fast pace and the uniqueness of the idea to film another video camera, filming the scene. This gets the audience's pulse running because they are unsure of what is going to happen, was this camera left there on purpose? Was it an accident that it was left there 'recording'? What is happening? What is going on?


you then see the moon from different angels as though it is significant to what is going on... The someone murmurs 'But i don't understand' this is repeated to create a chilling kind of effect because you are unsure what is going on. The camera then zooms in on someones trainers, someones material on their jeans, then you notice that there is a Torch shining and in the light you notice someones hand there is a person lying on the floor. The camera then zooms into someones eye as they open and he looks like he is panicking which gets the audience's heart racing as well. The beat of the sounds starts to get faster as he gets up and goes to reach the camera, the sound then changes and turns into a sound that is incredibly similar to the theme tune of 'Jaws' which immediately makes things creepy and scary like. He gets in the car and drives away and you are able to hear the screeching sound of the car driving away, this create and effect that he is trying to escape, get away. 


You see him then going into what looks like a house kind of, you can hear the sound of what to me sounded like metal rubbing against another piece of metal, its something that makes you think something terrible is going to happen. He then watches the film from the camera, and then the camera sort of skims along the desk indicating scripts from like a film or play that has been types up. Music in the background sounds again very 'Jaws-like' and you can hear someone speaking saying things like 'i don't understand, its your time' 


i think these students came up with a very good idea, it is very Thriller-like and intriguing, however it can come across confusing. I had to re-watch it in order to fully understand what was going on. It is quite a demanding opening sequence and there is alot going on. However they used sounds, props, camera angles and techniques very well. Although it is supposed to be dark in order to make the film effective it is almost too dark in order to see what is going on, therefore it could have been made lighter, to get a better view on the scenes. 

Thriller Opening Wordle

Here is a wordle of some of the elements our thriller opening contains in order to make it a succsesful action-thriller.

Thriller Opening Soundtrack Ideas

 Here are some soundtracks from the popular anime series, Naruto Shippuden which i think would suit our openings idea. The anime itself has lots of thrilling moments such as battles and chase sequences and there are lots of unexpected twists.

sound track

then we where doing the sound track for our opening thriller

LOCATIONS

randomly looked outside my window, and it looks like a thriller type location because of the church and the gates around it.

its an easy place to go to and it looks even better in the dark

sorry guys  idont know how to rotate it on the blog

Foley Sounds

Foley sounds are named after a guy called Jack Foley
Foley sounds are sound effects which are edited into a film after all the filming has been done. Foley sounds include footsteps, doors opening and closing, in other words, its most diagetic sounds rerecorded and added to the film. The boom operators job is to record only the dialogue as during filming other sounds may be recorded too which can be annoying so its best to record afterwards, Foley sounds allow total control over all sounds such as breathing or clothes rustling, you don't want to hear them type of sounds all the time because you'll only end up getting distracted, Foley allows the volume of the sounds to be controlled so the intensity of the sounds can be increased and decreased depending on the intensity of the situation.

How is it done?
Foley sounds are recorded by a Foley artist in a studio specialised for recording these types of sound, also some Foley sounds are stored electronic, for example on  the program we used to add music to our Arlington Road title sequence and our prelim, Soundtrack, there was an instrumental option called Foley and it included a whole variety of Foley effects from breathing to glass breaking.

Couple of Foley artists recording Foley Sounds.

Why is it done?
Its done because if there is no Foley sounds the film becomes a great big mess because the audience is spending so much time figuring out what the actors are saying because their speech is being drowned out by other surrounding sound, the audience wont be able to fully concentrate on the plot of the movie.

Asking people about our thriller idea

On Facebook I gave some people a brief synopsis of our thriller idea and asked them for their opinion, and the feedback I received was very positive and it helped highlight some issues that we need to figure out before we actually film the opening.
(One person asked to remain anonymous, also i asked more than 2 people)

Audience for Thrillers

who is the target audience for thrillers?

The target audience for a thriller is usually a male audience as it is men who are more likely to like the thrill of a thriller film whereas women are more likely to like cross genre thrillers for example a 'Romantic Thriller'. This is because of the 'romance' part of the film, however men can also enjoy this type of film because of the 'thriller' part.

This is an example of a 'Romance Thriller'

Furthermore it is the older generation who are more likely to watch thriller films as they can be intellectually demanding. An example of this is a 'Psychological Thriller', this is a type of thriller where you must work out what is actually going on. Although it can be mistaken that it is the younger generation who is the target audience for thrillers as it is them who are more likely to want their adrenaline pumping whilst watching a film. 

Although many thrillers do have younger children actors in them, thrillers are mainly directed at people 12 years of age or older, this is because of the 'intellectually' demanding point but also because thrillers can be seen as too scary for a child to watch an example of this is ... the film 'ORPHAN' the star of this thriller is a child but this film is aimed at an older audience as it features a lot of killings and murder. 

extra work: thriller poster analysis

There are many elements in this poster which suggests that the film is a thriller. For example the tag line "Someone is missing" is placed next to an image of Leo DiCaprio who has a face which suggests that he has a split personality due to the colour contrast, one side is dark and one side is light. This suggests that the film is a Psychological thriller because those 2 factors indicate that he is on a search to find the vigilante type person inside his mind in order to solve a crime.

The island in the poster has a glowing effect on it. This suggest that the island is the main setting for the film and the glowing light emphasizes on the feeling of isolation someone feels when on an island, and this is supported by the picture of the sea which looks rough suggesting there is no escape. This makes the audience think.

Another thing is that the flame from the match is brighter than the lighthouse on the island, this suggests that most of the film would be in the dark and also suggests that the film has a dark theme. And it will give the audience a thrilling experience because theyre most likely to jump if something scary happens in the dark.