Planning & Research - Shadow of a Doubt

In order to research and suspense, we watched the opening extract of Shadow of a Doubt by the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock. Below, I shall write what we learnt from this and what techniques we learnt in order to include in our own thriller.

In the opening extract to the film, we are introduced to a character called Uncle Charlie who is a very suspicious man. The opening extract also introduces us to a distinct setting and shows an excellent use of Mis en Scene to create a great atmosphere of suspense. Hitchcock shows Uncle Charlie in a hotel room laying on the bed in a suit which immediately shows suspicious behaviour as it is not common to lay on a bed to relax in a suit which represents uptight. The opening extract also shows us a casual approach from Uncle Charlie who has a large sum of money laying around showing how he is laid back with his money. Hitchcock also uses lighting to show different signs to Uncle Charlie as it shows a dark and a light side which shows a hidden meaning later to be revealed in the film. Another sign that Hitchcock shows to hint something bad is going to happen is the n.o 13 door that Uncle Charlie comes out of with 13 represented as an unlucky number.

Hitchcock also uses sound to show suspense as he plays the music of The Merry Widow by Franz Lehr to show a happy enviroment at the start as it is representing the nice area that Hitchcock is showing. he also shows this by showing kids playing outside with flowers and brighter weather to represent a friendly area with a very positive enviroment to live in. Hitchcock then contrasts this enviroment by showing Uncle Charlie walking to a rural area which we know is a far more run down area due to the props such as abandoned cars, docks and shows poor and homeless people. This is great sense of mis en scene as it we managed to make our own assumptions of two areas from no dialogue but just mis en scene of props.

                                                                

Preliminary Exercise

To prepare ourselves for the filming of of our actual thriller, we were required to film a short extract as our preliminary exercise in order to practice with using the film camera. We shot a short extract including some sub-standard acting and dialogue from myself and Myles Wilson. Below is our work;

Evaluation
To evaluate our video, I watched it over a few times and decided my own opinions on it. I believe that the editing is at a satisfactory standard for the first attempt at editing and we have managed to link together shots at a reasonable standard without any glaring mistakes or errors which is good signs for the filming. Although having an amazing voice, I believe a suggestion would be to complete as much of our filming for our actual thriller with limited dialogue as the acting through dialogue is not to a satisfactory standard to build up tension.

Also, a glaring error I have noticed for the film is the reflection of the camera woman Jess in the reflection, this obviously will make the scene lose all confusion and we will need to look at improving the camera angle when we film our actual film so we don't lose all suspense and confusing atmosphere that we are aiming to create.

A final tip for suggestion, I have for this extract of footage is the zoom in close up we tried to counter is rather blurry and we will have to find a way of making close ups to create a more scary illusion in the film whether this means bringing the camera closer or another suggestion which will improve the film and give the atmosphere of a real thriller. Although, my heavy criticism on this extract of footage, I am satisfied at this for the first attempt and feel the highlight is the editing, we will use this extract to learn from our mistakes as we start to start filming during the next few weeks and will keep you posted with ideas and research we do for this.

Ideas

For our thriller we considered many ideas and in this post, I'm going to discuss many different ideas that we had in order to show our research;

Idea 1

For our first idea, we had the idea of there being a suspicious man who randomly comes into an empty house and takes a prized object. We then show the man misplacing the object being found by someone else. This leaves the suspense and confusion into what the object was and who's found the misplaced object. We think this would be a good idea and would leave the film on a cliffhanger and make the audience want to watch more of the film.

Idea 2

For our second idea we had the idea of a young attractive girl walking home from school and she is being followed by a suspicious man, we will show her going into her house and leave it on a cliffhanger and when he enters her bedroom, he is standing there which leaves it on the confusion of how he got there and whether he kills again which again creates the illusion of suspense which is what we found out that the audience enjoy about six form.

Idea 3

Our third idea was where we filmed a loving couple who spend all their time together. We then want to film a scene where they are instant messaging and the boyfriend sees the girl on webcam with a killer with a knife behind her and he jumps up to save her and the same killer is behind him confusing much confusion and will encourage the audience to watch on to find out why the killer has done this and whether this is actually the same killer. 

Storyboard

This week we planned to do our storyboard and came out with a first rough idea of what we wanted to do for an extract in our thriller. Below is our work and then I shall explain the shots we attempted to show in some amateur artistic drawings;

Below is shots of close ups on the man in question as it may not be clear by the storyboard but we are showing a robbery of an object and we're showing a range of shots. Our first shot shows a long shot of the whole building where the robbery is taking place. Then we slowly zoom in on the man who is taking the object. This was our original idea but on my next post I will discuss many different ideas that we have considered.