Thriller

No, not Michael Jackson. The thriller genre is something that can be any genre of movie along with thriller technique throughout it. The most common is action thriller, with the likes of No Country For Old Men, The Hurt Locker and Pitch Black. These films are all thrillers, but all classed as different hybrid genres all together.

No Country For Old Men is a crime/thriller, The Hurt Locker is mainly a war/drama/thriller and Pitch Black is a sci-fi/thriller. All these films display techniques of thriller, but the settings of all of them create a hybrid genre.

No Country For Old Men is a story about discovery, a man the remnants of a drug dealer shoot out in the southern states of america, he finds that one goon has managed to escape with a briefcase of money, but died shortly after he has escaped. The man takes the briefcase and hides it under his house, then starts being chased by a hitman, who is willing to kill anyone who needs to be killed to get to the money.

The film has a plot that drives a lot of the suspense, with there being little to know about the story other than what is given in the first twenty minutes. The hitman, played by Javier Badrem, holds most of the tension in the story, with there not being much known about him, this holds a lot of curiosity in the audience and therefore not knowing what he is capable of. The introduction of his character shows him killing an innocent man for his car, this will make the audience feel very frightened of him. Where as the man who has the briefcase, played by Josh Brolin, has more information given about him, making him have a greater emotional connection with the audience, the difference in the feelings of the audience to the two main characters creates the suspense. No Country For Old Men really sets a standard for thrillers, as there is very little dialogue, lots of silence and a lot of tense moments that kept my heart racing.

The Hurt Locker still shows a lot of scenes with suspense, the main reason why it is such a successful thriller is that it is set as a film that happens. About bomb technicians in Iraq, it is a very relative film, that creates its tension through scenes that the audience can believe could or maybe have happened.

There isn't that great of a connection between the audience and the characters but, because they are soldiers, the audience immediately feels respect towards them, as they have been fighting to protect their country and other countries. Later on in the film, there becomes a very big emotional connection to the characters, with the introduction of the main character's family and a very meaningful scene between the main character, James, and his fellow troop, Sanborn. This final conversation between them summons all the emotion that the introduction of the film is missing. There is a gradual increasing feeling towards the characters as they go through their daily lives in Iraq, with them losing people and encountering different obstacles that they have to overcome together, but sometimes not at all, with there being a lot of friction between James and Sanborn.

Pitch Black is a sci-fi thriller that gets it's thrills from an alien being that lives on a planet, where a ship has just crash landed. From the outset, the crew come across things that evoke curiousity in the audience, from when they first view the planet surface, it has two suns. Creating a constant light on the surface.

The crew find a human outpost a few miles away from their wrecked ship, but the outpost is wrecked and looks like it hasn't been used for a number of decades. They venture into one of the homes, which is completely deserted, but what is immediately focused on is a planetarium that shows that both suns will be setting for a month within the next day. They quickly find that some there is are aliens living in tunnels underneath the planet, and when both suns go down, the aliens will come out of the tunnels and devour any living thing on the surface. What is added to the start the tension is that there were convicts on board the ship. All of them died, but one, who has escaped onto the planet and starts to spy on the other survivors. The tension of Pitch Black is held in the curiousity and fear around the convict, and more so about the alien race as the film goes on.

The films show different ways of creating tension, but it mostly done by convening curiosity about something on screen, this can be done visually; by not showing the audience something, or in not stating what something is capable of, or by putting the characters in a situation that could be real, but still has many other possible outcomes.

The Fargo DVD Cover

The cover of a DVD seemed to be something normal to me, but then Media Studies happened. We recently looked at the cover of The Coen Brothers' film; Fargo.

So yeah, we looked at in depth, and in my view; it's better to judge a DVD by it's cover than a book. The way everything is laid out for a start can tell you roughly what genre it is; the way that the focus of the shot is on is on the two characters on the right of the shot, and appear quite small compared to the rest of the surroundings shows that it may be mystery/crime related. The colour of the title, near to blood red, shows that death or murder might be involved, or the word Fargo is something important to the story.

The font on the cover shows that it is a thriller. Just to make sure the reader of the cover knows what genre it is. The two characters in shot will most likely be important characters to the story, if the reader doesn't recognise that the woman is Frances McDormand. The tag line beside the characters states; 

A lot can happen in the middle of nowhere

This shows that it is likely to be set somewhere where not much happens, which is a classic feature of a horror or thriller film. Both of the characters are police officers, which might mean that it will be a big film in the setting, in that it will be the main focus of the story or have something building up to it.

So far we've watched half of Fargo, and so far I have quite enjoyed it. It hasn't really been classifiable under one genre yet, but it has mainly been a drama with a bit of comedy thrown in. It is definitely building up to some major plot change, and so far we haven't seen anything to do with the cover, but it is possible that it will lead up to something to the jist of that.

Really looking forward to finding out what happens in the end.

The Coen Brothers

These two have worked together on pretty much all of their films. Winning 4 Oscars together, 3 for No Country For Old Men (2007) and another for the script of Fargo (1996). Besides these two films they have made some very iconic or just great films.

• Blood Simple. (1984) was their first film which they both directed and wrote, about a jealous man who hires a private investigator to kill his wife and her second man. Budget  $1,500,000 Gross $2,150,000

• Miller's Crossing (1990) was their next team effort of both screenplay and direction. A story about an advisor for a mob leader, trying to stop the wars between two gangs, who becomes stuck in the loyalty between both gangs. $14,000,000 Gross $ 5,080,000

• Barton Fink (1991) next. Their first film to be nominated for an oscar. Three in fact. This brought the Coen Brothers to the attention of the world, even though they weren't nominated for the direction or screenplay, it meant they would have the attention of bigger production companies and a larger distrubution. Budget $9,000,000 Gross $6,150,000

• The Hudsucker Proxy (1994). First comedy/fantasy, but was a box office failure. Budget $30,000,000 Gross $2,820,000

• Fargo (1996). One of their more well known films, gaining a lot of attention and some great crits (Five stars on Empire, 8.3/10 on IMDb). Not to mention winning an oscar for the screenplay and another for best actress, also nominated for Best Supporting actor, Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Editing and Best Picture. The amount of noms for this film show that by this point the Coens were getting somewhere in Hollywood. Budget $7,000,000 Gross $60,000,000

• The Big Lebowski (1998). One of the best character films in my opinion, 'Dude' Lebowski's 117 minute fiasco has given Jeff Bridges a name for all time, with him being known to many people as 'The Dude'. Although it wasn't an oscar winner or a box office blowout, it still captured the attention of many people, and created a new genre of film, followed by the likes of Dude, Where's My Car and The Hangover. Budget $15,000,000 Gross $17,450,000

• O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Originally based on a poem by a greek author, Homer, it bagged them yet another nomination screenplay oscar and another cinematography nomination for Roger Deakins. Also their fourth film with actor John Turturro (Little fact for ya). Budget $26,000,000 Gross $45,500,000

The next few films were just the usual Coen Brothers. Nothing special, but just the usual. So onto more important matters...

• No Country For Old Men (2007). One of my favourite films of all time, scoring 4 more oscars (Directing, Motion Picture, Best Supporting Role and Screenplay) and 4 more nominations (Sound, Sound Editing, Editing and Cinematography). Their biggest grossing film yet, compared to it's budget. A great original idea of one word, discovery. The entire film evolves from that one word. Budget $25,000,000 Gross $74,270,000

• True Grit (2010). The latest Coen Brothers production, which may possibly have been the most pointless remake ever, being exactly the same as the original. Just thought I'd give my opinion of it. But still a great achievement for the duo, coming joint place for the most oscar nominations without wins with Gangs Of New York. Whether or not this is punishment for not being able to understand Jeff Bridges without subtitles, I don't know.

First Post!

Hey, hows it going? Good. I'm good thank you. Well basically this my blog for my Media Studies AS course, which I'm using as a way to display things I've done, different things I've tried, evaluations and things we've done in classes. Seeing as this my first post I better include something useful, so I'm gonna talk about the stuff that I've learnt about in the first couple weeks of Media Studies;

- What Mise en Scene is, and how it is used in film. Mise en Scene is, in a nut shell, what is displayed on screen. It can cover anything from; the lighting to make up. This can be used to display what the character is feeling and what status the character has in the story, say if the lighting was quite dark and didn't show much of the subject, the audience would know that they were meant to be interested in this character. It also covers the most basic of things, like the costume, if the character was wearing a police uniform, it would most likely mean that he was a police officer.

- How different shots can be used to get different advantages out of the scenery and landscape, and other shots can be used to get a better emotional effect on the audience by the subject. An extreme close up shot can be used to get a greater connection from the character to the audience. A long shot can be used to set the scene and let the audience know where the scene is taking place.

- Who Lester Burnham is. He is a character in American Beauty, played by Kevin Spacey. We studied how the opening two minutes can be used to introduce what the story will be about, for Lester Burnham, throughout the first four minutes of American Beauty, he is visually trapped to the audience. The first time the audience see him he is in darkness lying on his bed, the next shot he is having some 'alone time' in his shower, but he is still boxed in. This shows that he is 'trapped' in his own life.

- How to deconstruct a shot. We were set the task of taking eight frames that would tell the introduction of a story. We then wrote down what each frame was showing and what it was implying.

- How dividing the shot into thirds helps to draw attention to certain areas or how it can be used to make the shot look tidier. We watched a short video about how this technique is used in many films, dividing the shot vertically and horizontally into thirds. This creates a box in the centre of the frame, it is commonly used to put the subject's eye or the centre of their face on one of the top two corners of the box.