My AS Preliminary Task

Sound in Horror/Thriller Sequences

The two clips that I will be analysing sound from are A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Purge (2013). 

In an England of the future, Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his "Droogs" spend their nights getting high at the Korova Milkbar before embarking on "a little of the old ultra violence "while jauntily warbling singin' in the Rain." After he's jailed for bludgeoning the Cat Lady to death, Alex submits to behavior modification technique to earn his freedom; he's conditioned to abhor violence. Returned to the world defenseless, Alex becomes the victim of his prior victims. In this sequence there are all different types of sound that has been used, for example diegetic sound, non-diegetic sound, contrapuntal sound pleonastic sound. At the start of this sequence there is pleonastic sound when the man is typing on the typewriter, when the door bell rings and when the woman goes to answer the door, the footsteps are exaggerated, this makes the audience feel as if something is going to happen. There is then diegetic sound when they all charge in, shouting and when one of the people dressed in white kicks the man that was sitting at the typewriter. There is then more diegetic and pleonastic sound when, what seems to be, the leader blows his whistle. There is more diegetic sound and contrapuntal sound as when the leader starts singing it is quite a happy song ("Singin' in the rain) which contradicts the aggression that they are about to show whilst singing. There is more pleonastic sound as they destroy their property like when they flip the table and pull down the bookcase, all of this sound is diegetic sound. At the end, there is non-diegetic sound, the sound track that is played in the background.

The Purge is about one night a year, in the USA, all crime is legal. This includes murder, theft, the use of weapons and even destruction of property. In this film there is a gang who try and kill a specific target each year, this can be a group or one person on its own. In this film the gang are hunting a man who fought back and killed one of them, he then ran off shouting "help" "let me in". The this families house they have a lot of technology which keeps them safe each year. The child of this family heard the shouting from inside the house and came down unlocked the "lockdown system" and tells him to come this way. The father realises what he has done and closes the gates straight away, but there is enough time for the homeless man to get in. The gang find out that he got in and they ask the family to return him but their morals hit them, so they keep him inside. When they didn't return him in the amount of time they were given they decided to go against this family as well as the homeless man they have sheltered. At the start of this sequence there is diegetic sound between the two parents quietly talking, this makes the audience that they are hiding from something. There is then some pleonastic and more diegetic sound of the shuffling of the gun and the shouting of the head of the gang from outside. There is then more pleonastic sound as the gang leader reloads his gun ready to shoot. There is more pleonastic sound as the hang get "the beast" to charge and break down the front of the house to get in, along with the actually crashing and banging of "the beast" actually doing the damage. This is all diegetic sound along with the shouting of the parents saying to "RUN!" away from "the beast". when the parents hide there is pleonastic sound when the father is breathing heavily from running the moment before. There is then a sudden diegetic and pleonastic "BANG!" from the gun that has been fired and the glass that has shatter due to the bullet going through it. There is more pleonastic sound when the homeless man, who is strapped in a chair, try's to get out by shaking and hitting the floor. More pleonastic sound is played when one of the gang members fire their gun multiple times and when more glass is broken, this makes the audience feel as if something bad it going to happen. In this sequence there is a lot of non-diegetic sound (soundtrack). It seems to change pace a lot of the time, for example it goes quite slow but intimidating to show that something is going to happen, something bad and also it goes very fast when something is in the action, like when the parents were running away from "the beast".
These two films use sound quite differently, as in how A Clockwork Orange the sound that is used it contradicting to what the scene is showing, this is called contrapuntal sound. This is effective because it makes the audience think about the scene as ti s quite an ambiguous situation, a situation which isn't normal, normally there would be quite parallel sounds, sound which links to the scene. That is the type of sound that is mainly used in The Purge. The parallel sound used in The Purge makes the sequence that little bit scarier as even though the audience can expect what is going to happen they don't know when and that is the scary part. 

Development Ideas For My Own Opening Of A Thriller Sequence

This Blog post is to include two initial ideas for my opening thriller sequence which I will commence production of later on in the year. These two main initial ideas will be looking at different types of genres for thrillers, for example a crime thriller and a psychological thriller. A crime thriller normally contains someone investigating a crime that has taken place, normally it is a murder. A psychological thriller is a suspenseful movie emphasising the psychology of its characters rather than the plot. 

Initial Idea 1:

My first initial idea is a psychological thriller where a man has just got back to where he is staying (a really nice hotel room), and looks roughed up but he is in a new suit, this is due to something  he has done, which cannot be revealed as that will be the plot therefore the reason that people will want to continue watching (making it a good opening sequence), because they are confused by the abnormality of the main character. In the main characters room he has a few black bin bags filled with clothes (which are dirty, seen by the sight of blood on white shirts having out of the bag), newspaper articles and weapons, these are revealed by the rips in the bag. The sequence will end with him going into the bathroom of the hotel room and he will come out in a brand new, unripped, black tie suit. He will then go over to his news article bag and get out one sheet of paper and put it on his bed, then he goes over to his gun bag and collects a pistol and a larger gun. After he leaves the room and goes to do something that the viewer would have to continue watching to find out but after he leaves there is a close up on the news article that he had put on his bed earlier leaving the audience to want to find out that this man does and why he does it.

Initial Idea 2:
My next idea is based about a crime thriller and it starts off with, what seems to be a house wife as the camera starts off at her feet and goes up her body going to her waist, then panning across to see that she has gloves on her hands, holding a knife, covered in blood. This shows that she is cooking/cutting some sort of bloody meat. She will hear a dog bark pause completely and stare up, looking blank at the camera (this will hopefully put the audience in an ambiguous situation, making them feel uncomfortable). There will be a cut to a shot of dogs salivating and pouncing at a glass door (from outside), looking at something and barking at it inside the house. Then the camera will pan across the room from the dogs back to the woman, who is cooking, and in the transition there will be a bloody arm hanging off the side of an old armchair (like a zombies arm), trying to show it is some sort of dead body, and the object that the dogs were making noise about. The panning of the camera will reach the woman's face, making us stare at in to her eyes, she is still paused. There will be a build up of non-diegetic sound and then it will stop, as it stops the woman will continue cutting the meat.

Studio Lesson #4, The Preliminary Task

On Thursday 8th October we went to have our fourth studio lesson. We started off by going up onto the Edit Suit. This is where we got given a debrief as a class, this was about what we had to do and and who we would do it with. In my group (Millie Pike, Harvey Wright and I) we did our preliminary task in a media class room whereas others did it in the studio and some in the Edit Suit. The preliminary task was two people having a conversation with person coming through the door (Harvey Wright) saying "Do it, come on" and the second person (Millie Pike) being very defensive saying "I can't".

The Camera We Used and How We Filmed:

In our group we used the Sony NX5 (which I used, as I was the camera man), which is a very large and heavy camera and it is also a very good quality camera too. We started off filming the whole sequence with a wide shot which typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings. Then we moved into a close up of person A, then a close up of person B, in this a certain feature or part of the subject takes up most of the frame. A close up of a person usually means a close up of their face (unless specified otherwise). Close-ups are useful for showing detail and can also be used as a cut-in. After that we  decided to mov into a mid-long shot, we used this to go from the wide shot to this, this shot shows person A and B in the frame of the image and only up to their waste. We did this to make the viewer feel more involved, we also did this to build tension between the two people. After this we had filmed everything that the story board asked us to do so we decided to take the camera outside and set it up so we can see person A come in through the door and leave. We also did an extreme close up on person A's face as he leaves the room, we did this to create tension and focus on exactly what person A was saying, which was the final thing, "I won't wait for you". After this we decided to add a bit more to this sequence, we came to the conclusion of filming person B before person A enters the room. We got her to pace before he comes in along with biting her nails. We did this to show that she was nervous to talk to him and thinking about what to say towards Person A.