Inspiration for our Thriller Opening Sequence

We liked the way this clip from Out of the Past has been filmed, this is the genre of film we are interested and it definitely has the style we want to use in our thriller. Black and white 50's film. The man sat writing at his desk, the 'femme fatale' enters the room, he gets up and approaches her (cigarette in mouth). Lots of shot reverse shot between the two characters. We would however film this using a much darker light and some eerie non-diegetic music would also be played - (Or even non-diegetic moves to diegetic as we see vinyl turned off and music stops). A weapon would be involved and also another character- the secretary on typewriter. We've used this as an early influence on the aesthetic of our film.

Thriller Plot

In a Lonely place

The thriller opens with a tracking shot of a 1950s looking women typing outside the front of the office from this we can clearly see she is a secretary. The camera tracks into the office to show a desk lamp, typewriter, shutters of a window and the shadow of a man with plumes of smoke billowing out into the air. The man is writing a message on a piece of paper saying, “I know where the abductor is” at this point a women storms in says to the secretary I have a message for john carter. She bursts through the door swinging dramatically as she go’s through quick shot reverse shot and eyeline match as a conversation proceeds. The women elegantly turned out with a European accent says “I know what you did to Freddie you will pay for this” and before john carter has a chance to defend him self she whips out a gun and shoots him. As she does this the secretary rushes in and says “Oh my god what have you done you killed Johnny”, as the non diegetic voiceover kicks in “I was in a lonely place when I met Diana I never knew the trouble she would cause I never knew she would lead me to my impending doom and gloom”. 

Camera Angles

Low Angle Shot

 Wide Angle Shot

Long Shot

High Angle Shot 

 Mid Shot

 Over The Shoulder Shot

Close Up

 Point Of View Shot

Kyle Cooper Intro



Kyle Cooper

Kyle Cooper is a modern graphic designer of motion picture title sequences. He has directed over 150 title sequences. Studying Graphic Design under the renowned Paul Rand at Yale university enabled him to "almost single-handily revitalise the main-title sequence as an art form". Born in 1962 he has won a primetime Emmy and has had another 5 nominations.

Thriller Idea 2nd Take

Story Boards

Account of Preliminary Task

During the filming of the preliminary task I very much-enjoyed working as a group because I felt we all worked well together and created a good piece of work. Throughout this process I learnt many things one of the things I learnt was how important continuity was and also I enjoyed trying to spot the differences between the shots and correct them. On the other hand what I liked least about the filming was that the actors found it hard to precisely take the direction given to them meaning the continuity was not as good as it could be, I didn’t particularly find this enjoyable because I felt under a lot of stress trying to create the perfect image. Overall as group we worked very well together each contributing ideas and working equally well. In my opinion my contribution was equal to everyone else we all came up with an idea and we all took turns filming. If I had the chance to do it again I would do a costume drama instead of a thief scene, using costumes and an older setting. The choice of location made it very hard to shoot because we were caught in between two cars making it very hard to move the camera. This also affected us when we were trying to keep to the 180 degree rule. The use of props was very limited only using a key to break into the car it didn’t affect our piece because it was very small and was provided by Simon making it easily accessible this also influenced where our close up was going to be because we used a close-up to focus on the key. At the very end when we had filmed all the compulsory shots we got the chance to film any additional shot that we wanted. So we decided to film a shot of one of the actors smiling in achievement when he had broken into the car to increase the sense of comedy. On the day of the shoot we chose two actors, which were to follow the script that was pre prepared by our teacher. We told them that they were trying to steal a car and one of them achieves the task and the other leaves before the task was completed. We filmed many shots using close ups, over the shoulder shots, POV shots, mid shots and wide shots. To do this we had to move the camera around to the ideal space and since we were filming on gravel we had to bubble it every time. We all contributed to the direction of the piece just saying what the actors should do. I found it very difficult to manage continuity because we only had a short time and we had to memorize what happened. In conclusion I really enjoyed this task and it gave me a vague idea of what we would have to do in our thriller.