No Country for Old Men

No Country For Old Men - 2007

Directed by - Ethan Coen and Joel Coen

Actors - Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin

Narrative:

Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong and more than two million dollars in cash near the Rio Grande. The film tells the story of a ordinary hunter to whom comes across a drug deal gone wrong and two million dollars that is not his. The ensuring cat-and-mouse drama sees three men crisscross each other's paths in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas. 

The film examines the themes of fate and circumstance whilst adhering to the genre's villain driven plot.

The Trailer

Setting:

The setting is in rural Texas. The great emptiness of the setting implies that there are no many inhabitants and the area is quite remote. This is great for a thriller as it gives off a eerie feel of solitude.

Characters:

From this trailer we learn the roles many characters have in this film. Chigurh, is the man we see tossing the coin and throughout the trailer is either chasing someone or shooting someone, from this we know he is the villain. Llewelyn Moss, who is the cowboy looking man is seen taking a stash of money from a drug deal gone wrong. Finally, we have Ed Tom Bell who is the police officer.

Collateral

The film was released in 2004.

It was directed by Michael Mann and written by Stuart Beattie.

Collateral was Mann's first feature film to be shot with mostly HD cameras. The film took 3 long years before it has started to be created.

The film cost roughly $65,000,000 to make and it was a major hit at the box office and managed a worldwide gross of $217,764,291.

Narrative: A cab driver finds himself the hostage of an engaging contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in Los Angeles. He must find a way to save both himself and one last victim.

Collateral is another iconic and suspenseful thriller that graced the screens of the cinema in 2004. Starring Tom Cruise, Jamie Fox and Jada Pinkett Smith, Collateral holds the essence of a classic thriller with an innocent cab driver Max (Jamie Fox) who becomes caught up in the Dramas of the contracted killer Vincent (Tom Cruise) and must find a way to overcome his hostile actions and protect the people on the hit list, which becomes more Relevant to Max as the story unfolds. 


Collateral managed to win a BAFTA Film Award for best cinematography. Jamie Foxx was nominated at the Oscars for best performance by an actor in a supporting role.

The video on the left is the trailer of the film Collateral 

The Briefcase Scene

In this scene we see Vincent (Tom Cruise) retrieve  his stolen briefcase from two thugs. The way this scene is shot ranging from the camera angles to the acting adds an element of Thrill but also some sort of 'cool' factor. In this scene, us as the audience see Vincent approaches them and when the thieves turn around they see him as a ordinary businessman. We however know that Vincent is a hit man who is very intelligent and is capable of being very quick on his feet. This excites the audience as we have a desperate urge to know is gonna happen even though we have an idea of what is going to happen, this creates a sense of tension and enigma.

Bullets and the Fall scene

This scene is the first glimpse of what Vincent is really like and clearly indicates that the movie is a thriller from the many notable elements from the thriller genre. This is clearly obvious because from no where a body smashes through a window and falls on the taxi, shocked by this, the driver jumps from the taxi in absolute shock. The driver in the previous scene had no clue what his passenger went in the building for or what. In this short sequence, many interesting shots are used to establish the setting and the accident. for example, when the taxi driver jumps from his car after the body falls on it adds tension especially the way it is shot. The shot is very much similar to a tracking shot as it follows the driver out overseeing his reaction.

Thriller Recipe

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Lighting

Lighting is a key feature in many films as it plays a vital role in telling the story in the film. There are many different types of lighting techniques which are used in filming. The types of lighting techniques are listed below:

• Key Lighting - the brightest and most influential
• Back lighting - this helps counteract the effect of the key light or creates an outline or silhouette
• Filler light - helps to soften the harsh shadows that the use of key and back lights create
• Under lighting - this is when the main source of light comes from below the subject. often used in thrillers and horror films
• Top lighting - this is when the main source of lighting comes from above the subject. It is often used to highlight features or to create a glamorous look
• Back lighting - this is when the source is behind the subject. If no other lighting is used, silhouettes are created

Low-Key & High-Key

Low-key lighting is created by using only the key and back lights in a scene. It creates a sharp contrast of light and dark areas on the screen in which distinct shadows are formed. This is known as chiaroscuro, which is Italian for light - chiaro and dark - oscuro).

High-key lighting uses more filler lights to make lighting appear more realistic. 

Film Noir

Film Noir is the term given by French film critics to a group of films made in Hollywood from 1941 to 1958, The films are given the term 'Film Noir' by the characteristics they show which are pessimistic, dark themes that show the darker side of human nature. All films classified as 'Film Noir' use low-key lighting to give films a hard, sharp look with strong areas of contrast between light and dark.

The video below shows different lighting techniques which are used in films.

Alfred Hitchcock

North By Northwest

North By Northwest

The poster for 'North By North West'

Introduction to North By Northwest

North By Northwest was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by Ernest Lehman. North By Northwest starred Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. The film is about a 'innocent' New York advertising executive called Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies led by Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive.

Sir Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Hitchcock was a famous English film director and producer. Hitchcock was renowned for many techniques he had pioneered in the suspense and psychological thriller genre, from this he is now known as 'The Master of Suspense'. Hitchcock was best known for films such as; 'North By Northwest', 'Psycho' and 'The Birds'.

North By Northwest

During the film 'North By Northwest' Hitchcock used many devices to make this film a very successful thriller by using suspense, red herring and cliffhangers. There is one scene in the film where Roger Thornhill is waiting by the side of a road, waiting for a man called "George Kaplan" who he had been mistaken for and in the distance, there was a crop duster who was spraying crops to get rid of the insects, however where it was spraying, there were no crops whatsoever. As the scene progresses the crop duster flies towards Roger Thornhill, it begins shooting at him. Before the shooting begins, suspense was constantly being built as Roger Thornhill keeps looking towards the crop duster.

Devices such as suspense, red herrings and cliffhangers are used quite a lot during the film and specially during the auction scene, where we see Roger Thornhill confront Phillip Vandamm in auction where is buying a Tarascan statue which contains microfilm.

The Birds

The Birds

The trailer

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Year: 1963

Actors: Rod Tayler, Tippi Hedren, Suzzana Pleshette

Narrative:

A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people there in increasing numbers and with increasing viciousness. 

This film creates masses of thrill and tension with the use of birds which is very unusual because we are surrounded by them everyday. One scene in the film where the birds are waiting outside in the playground while the children and adults inside. This creates suspense amongst the audience because you are waiting for the birds to attack but before you know it, as they try and escape the birds attack creating tension as we don't know whether or not the birds will kill them. At the end of the film hitchcock did not do his usual style of showing 'The End' instead there was nothing. Hitchcock done this to create an eerie feel to the movie. This is very clever of Hitchcock as it implies to the audience that the movie is not over, it will continue and the birds shall keep on attacking. The movie is ended in such a way it leaves the audience on edge that at any moment the birds will attack

Psycho

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Mise-En-Scene

The term mise-en-scene is a French word which basically means everything within the scene or frame.Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production. Therefore the mise-en-scene includes:

1. Settings and props
2. Costume, hair and makeup
3. Facial expression and body language
4. Lighting and colour
5. Position/location within the frame.           

Therefore when filming a scene everything about is thought through very carefully as it can be the difference between winning an award or nothing. For example in a Thriller it is likely to see enclosed locations, weapons, suits and spy clothing, 'strong' body language, gadgets, low key lighting, dull colours and big explosions. All aspects of mise-en-scene but also all conventions of the genre, therefore they have clearly been selected carefully, the mise-en-scene has been carefully constructed to fit to the genre and narrative. 

The Accusation- Sound Exercise and Evaluation

The above clip from is the sound exercise me and my group created to show different sound techniques we have learnt in class. In this sequence the girl us being accused of breaking a fan which belonged to the boy who is seen walking in the room quite angered by the mistake made. As the argument progresses, you later see a man in hiding behind a table, who is actually the person who broke the fan. Youtube

We managed to include a good variety of techniques such as parallel and contrapuntal sound which is present throughout, we also managed on and off screen sound and diegetic and non-diegetic sound. However, we were unable to use a sound bridge as it didn't seem to work that well with what we were doing.

I think we captured the sound really well throughout all of the sequence as every recording we done came out really well and clear. The whole sequence went smoothly with the sound and we didn't have to redo scenes because we made sure everything went to plan. The sound equipment was really simple to use and the only trouble we had with it was forgetting to turn it on. When talking about diegetic and non-diegetic sound, we managed to differentiate between the two very well. The diegetic sounds were the running and the argument and the non-diegetic sounds were the crash and the music at the beginning. Me and my group successfully demonstrated the difference between on and off-screen sound in our film as we clearly demonstrated this with the off-screen crash and the on-screen argument. When it came to showing the difference between parallel and contrapuntal sound very well during our sound exercise. The parallel sound was very effective throughout the whole sequence as many sounds from the foot steps to the arguing were all very much parallel. Also the contrapuntal sounds were used quite well with the sound of the music at the beginning as it didn't really much the scene and also the sound of the crash because there was no object in the shot which could of caused a crash. In our short sequence we did not use a sound bridge, therefore it couldn't be used effectively.

Overall, I think the sound exercise we completed was fairly good as we able to show the differences between on and off-screen sound, parallel and contrapuntal sound and also diegetic and non-diegetic sound. We made sure the sound was at a good quality every time to shot as well so we could have a good piece of work to analysis. The only improvement I think we could have made was to include a sound bridge.

Sound

Within media productions there are multiple types of sound which are used in many different films throughout films. These are:

• Diegetic sound-sound that fits the world of the film. So an explosion happening in the middle of a battle scene.

• Non-diegetic sound- sound that is added into the work, the world of the film can not hear it. This is often used in horror films to hint the audience that something is about to happen as it creates an atmosphere.
• On screen sound- sound that is diegetic and fits to the action happening on screen
• Off screen sound-sound that again is diegetic but occurs out of the scene for e.g somebody coming into a room, we may not see them come in but we can hear them enter. Often seen in James Bond films, where the protagonist's body guards are heard walking into a room to surround James Bond.
• Parallel sound-This sound fits to the action e.g suspenseful music at a suspenseful time during a certain sequence in a film.
• Contrapuntal sound-This sound doesn't fit into what is happening on screen. E.g benny hill music being played over a scene of a funeral 
• Sound bridge-A sound bridge is sound that carries on from one scene to another, it allows the scenes to flow nicely.

The use of sound is very important in any media production and sometimes even the lack of sound is effective. If there was no sound whatsoever it will be hard for the audience to guess what might happen next and they may get bored eventually.