To make a set of rules for a genre, you need to look closely at different technical aspects, plot generalisations, character types and re occuring themes and situations.
These are the rules and features that we came up with:
Some film makers claim that 'there are no rules' and some claim that 'rules are there to be broken'. However most people would agree that there are certain conventions that mainstream films observe in order for therm to be acceptable to the madd audience.
Thriller We have been looking at what constitutes a thriller.
'The thriller is a very difficult genre to pin down because it covers such a wide range of films. Thrillers are films of suspense that are supposed to instill terror into the audience.' Susan Hayward Key concepts in film studies
There are different types of thrillers such as:
Spy thrillers, for example James Bond
Political thrillers such as Ides of march
Conspiracy thrillers like state of play
Legal thrillers such as The pelican brief
Psychological thrillers, for example American psycho
An example of constitution.
Animated director, Chuck Jones, worked at Warner Brothers for decades making short movies starring Bugs Bunny and Co. He also made road runner cartoons and from the first episode, a set of rules emerged.
The rules were as follows:
The road runner cannot harm or upset the coyote except by going 'MEEP!MEEP!'
No outside force can harm the coyote, only his own ineptitude or the failure of acme products.
The coyote could stop anytime if he were not a fanatic
No dialogue ever except 'MEEP!MEEP!'
The road runner must stay on the road, otherwise logically, he would not be called the road runner
All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters; the South West American desert.
All materials, tools, weapons or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from Acme corporation
Whenever possible, make gravity the coyote's greatest enemy. The coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
Watching the episodes, the rules have been applied.
My preliminary task is a demonstration of continuity editing using match on action, shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule.
The key edits
Match on action - This is where we see a character start an action in one frame and then see them continue it in the next.
180 degree rule - This is a basic guideline that states that two characters or other elements in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line.
Shot reverse shot - This is usually used for a conversation. We first have a shot of one person talking and then reverse to see the other person talking.
eye line match - This is where we look at someone staring at something and in the next frame we see what they are looking at.
This was the guidelines for our preliminary task:
Character A walks towards a closed door
Character A enters through the door and crosses the room to where character B is seated.
Character A and B exchange a few lines of dialogue
Either A or B exits the room
This was our preperation for our task.
For our preliminary task we all took on roles but all put our input into everything. Florida and Tajinder were the main actors although Tina and I did play parts. Tina and I did most of the filming and so we had to make sure we had the camera at the right angles and include the shots such as shot reverse shot. We had to make sure we filmed 'baggy' so that we left enough footage to be edited. As well as the necessary shots we also used over the shoulder shots, medium shots, close ups and long shots.
We then had to edit our film, placing the frames together and adding in transitions. We added a fade in at the beginning and a fade out at the end. The rest were cuts as our scene was an argument and so it was very tense and fast pace.
