"American Psycho" research blog

The movie I picked to do research on was American Psycho, a Thriller movie that was rated pretty high by critics. The movie is about this american business man that is narrating to the audience the entire time he kills people. This describes the title of the movie with an imperfect killer that is going insane.
- pretty much all the camera angles are eye level and sometimes low angle. All camera positions were used but mostly over the shoulder, long shot, medium close ups, and 2 shots were used. There are a surprisingly amount of zooms in this movie, along with hand held, tracking, pans, and tilts.
-The costumes are normal business suits and common clothes. Lights are common and natural with other lights on faces to make them pop. The acting if very good and people are very serious with it too. The makeup they use is not a lot, mostly women's normal make up and sometimes blood. props are normal business objects, sometimes weapons, food, and drinks. the setting is in the city in an office and rooms and streets.
- Sounds are diegetic and nondiegetic with voice overs and there are lots of dialogue. They use a sound track too.
-common editing would be lots of cross cutting, some cut aways, and shot reverse shots.
-The elements of the genre in the movie are lots of suspense and things that get my heart racing. The movie gets my brain thinking.There are common clothes in this movie, common lighting, and pretty much everything you would see in the Mis-En-Scene for this genre. This movie has the same camera angles and movements as well.
-I loved the suspense that they used. I loved that they really were confusing and manipulating the audience the entire time watching.
-I did not like how long it was though, it seemed like the same thing over and over but, I feel they made it work.

"Get out" thriller research

"Get Out" is a popular movie that was released in 2017. It is categorized as a thriller.

Camera angles

• POV shots.
• Close ups
• Extreme close ups
• Tracking shots
• Canted/Dutch
• Birds eye view

The camera angles are especially important in this movie. A specific example are how Close-up shots are used in this film. The shot of the main characters face as he is being hypnotized shows extreme emotion, which then makes the audience feel the same fear he is feeling. 

Mis Ec Scene

Costumes- Common modern clothes are used in this film because it is when the film is taking place. However, formal clothing is used in the film during scenes which are important to the development of the story. 

Lighting- There is many different lighting techniques used in this film. However, the two that stand out the most are high and low key lighting.
Actors- In this film, there are only a few main actors, and little extras used. This adds to the mysterious effect that this movie gives off.
Makeup- Makeup is used in film to portray the personality of the character. In thrillers, not much makeup is used since the identity of characters is supposed to be kept hidden. 

Props- The main element of thrillers is suspense. Suspense is greatly built with props. Common props that build suspense are knives, guns, blood, and curtains. Many of these are used in this film. 

Setting- Thrillers usually take place in cities and suburbs, however they can become specific and take place in foreign cities, desert themed places, and polar regions. This specific movie takes place in a isolated house.

Common Sounds

There is a large use of digetic sound in this film. There is also some non-digetic sound that is used. Score is used as well. the type of music is eery, which builds suspense.

Common Editing

Editing in thrillers is also crucial because it will develop the feeling of suspense. To create suspense, fast pace and slow paced editing is used. This helps create tension with a scene. 

Elements of genre: This movie uses suspense, tension, and excitement as its main elements. This keeps the viewer hooked on the film. Thrillers stimulate the viewers moods by giving them a high level of anticipation, expectation, surprise, and anxiety. All of these moods are built through the Mis en scene, camera angles, sound, and editing.

Which elements did I like? 

My favorite elemet in this movie was the suspense. It makes you feel scared, however you still want to see what happens. It keeps you hooked on the movie. 

Which element did I not like?

My least favorite element was tension. Tension is similar to suspense, but instead it usually ends with a scare. I am not a scary movie person, so that is why I do not like suspense. 

Final decision for final project

After all our research on genres, we have finally decided what our genre for our film is going to be. The first 2 minutes will be a thriller. Thrillers are very cool and a perfect genre for our film. We have many ideas on how we will film it and what camera angles we will use and a thriller has exactly what we are looking for. The lighting is low key and natural which is good for us because we don’t have other types of lighting that would be good for our idea. Costumes are common clothing which is good for us because we already have that. Finally, a thriller is good because it will be good at giving the feeling of suspense and then the audience would want more.

more final project genre research

Our films genre is thriller. A thriller is a film that gives viewers feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation, and anxiety. Thrillers are a very common genre because they are very broad. Common examples of thrillers are "A Quiet Place" and "Get Out."

Common Camera angles-

• High angle/Birds eye view
• Close ups
• Panning 
• Canted/Dutch
• Extreme long shot

Mis En Scene-

Costumes- Common clothes are used. Usually there are some characters that dress in dark clothes to conceal their identity.

Lighting- The most common lighting in thrillers is low-key lighting. This is used to make the audience feel suspense and tension.   

Actors- Many actors are used in thrillers. There needs to be many main characters, and extras.

Make Up- Makeup is used in film to portray the personality of the character. In thrillers, not much makeup is used since the identity of characters is supposed to be kept hidden. 

Props- The main element of thrillers is suspense. Suspense is greatly built with props. Common props that build suspense are knives, guns, blood, and curtains.

Setting- Thrillers usually take place in cities and suburbs, however they can become specific and take place in foreign cities, desert themed places, and polar regions. 

Editing in thrillers is also crucial because it will develop the feeling of suspense. To create suspense, fast pace and slow paced editing is used. This helps create tension with a scene.

Thrillers use suspense, tension, and excitement as its main elements. This keeps the viewer hooked on the film. Thrillers stimulate the viewers moods by giving them a high level of anticipation, expectation, surprise, and anxiety. 

Sound is also one of the most important elements that make a thriller what it is. Digetic sound is the most common type of sound in thrillers. Sounds help build tension in scenes. Another technique directors use in thrillers is the use of no sound. This technique was used in the popular film "A Quiet Place."

    In addition to the Western genre, the other two genres my group has decided to research are horror and thriller. Although these two genres are often thought of as pretty similar, there are some big differences.
    Common shots used in horror films are the close up, establishing shot, and point of view shot. Close ups are typically used in horror to either show how afraid a character is or how scary a monster or evil character is. Establishing shots are used to show a spooky location, such as a haunted house or graveyard. Horror films also use POV shots to make you even more spooked because they want you to feel like you're the actual character in the film. Some camera movements that are common are zooms and the hand-held. Zooms are used to make the subject even scarier by slowly moving towards it. Hand-held scenes give the movie an even greater sense of reality, causing more scares.
   Costumes in horror movies are often designed to be spooky, for example a scary clown costume or vampire costume. Lighting in these films are often dark, in order to give more scares and mystery. The actors in these movies are supposed to be either really scary (if they're playing the villain/monster) or super dramatic (if they're playing the victim). Makeup in horror films can often be gory and bloody at times to give a big scare and make the viewer scared or uncomfortable. Props in these movies vary based on what type of horror film it is. In slasher type movies, large knives are very common (hence the name slasher), but in a movie centering a monster, a creepy talisman would be a good prop to use. For setting, the movies are often set in creepy places such as haunted houses, cemeteries, and rundown buildings.
    The editing in these films include jump cuts as well as special effects added in post production in order to make certain events scarier or more realistic.
    Common elements in horror movies include the use of jump scares, gory violence, suspense, dark places, and many creepy creatures to gross out or frighten the audience.
    Common sounds in the genre usually include high-pitched noises that continue for a long duration of time to build up suspense. Characters also scream a lot to show fear.
    Some horror film examples are It, Halloween, The Nightmare on Elm Street, and Chucky.
   In horror films, I do not like jump scares. I feel as if they are cheap ways to try and scare the audience. I find them very annoying and if jump scares are the only scary thing your horror movie has to offer, then it's not a good horror movie. The things I do like in horror movies are the over dramatic characters and when scares actually feel well earned and aren't cheap. 

Final project genre research

We need to research genres for our final project and since we already did a PowerPoint on this genre, we will use it. The genre was western and we did this genre because we randomly drew it out of a hat. We had done this presentation at the beginning of the year before we had done any filming. We will not be using this genre in our final project because it doesn't seem to fit our pitch. The presentation was to give examples of lighting,camera angles, movements, Mis-en-scene, and the elements of the genre. Westerns use lots of natural sunlight, lots of camera movements, and almost all camera angles. Westerns also have a dessert setting, wild west props, and violence.

Final pitches

The next step in our final project was to brainstorm and to deduce a pitch that we will use for our actual project itself. It took our group quite a while, an hour to be exact, but in the end, we came to two final decisions: the first decision being a love story about a man who falls in love, but the story is only shot through his feet and in the end it would be revealed that the man was in love with a body pillow. the other pitch being about an uber driver kidnapper who takes a man called Daniel hostage and commits a murder.

The first pitch had many benefits. It would be shot from an interesting angle, witch would be a new journey for our group as we, for our last 2 projects solely used medium shots and long shots. another benefit to this idea was that it only consisted of three actors, the man himself, and the two parents. the main focus of the movie would be the man and him coming to terms with being in love with a body pillow and perhaps his parents help him with the journey. however, the only time you would see the parents would be at the wedding, where the only lines they deliver are, "what are we going to do about this girl of his?". this would be very efficient, as less actors means less time getting a certain scene right and just focusing on the camera angles and props. However, we did not choose this pitch because the ending made it feel too much like a short story and less like a beginning of a movie, which is the whole point of the project.

The second pitch is the one we decided to go with. it will be the beginning of a story about a man named Daniel, who takes an uber ride and the driver takes him hostage. after realizing that his kidnapper may be up to more nefarious actions that just simply kidnapping, he must find out how to save not only himself, but the whole world. there are many benefits to this pitch as well. for one, not like the last pitch, this story remains open ended and very easy to write a whole movie about, and the intro is extremely attention grabbing. even with all of the actors needed, Daniel, Daniels unnamed friend, and uber driver and a murderer, this is much more coherent and direct. in the end, this is the pitch that our group decided to go with. for the multitude of reasons stated beforehand.

in the end, pitch two is the pitch that our group decided to go with for the multitude of reasons stated beforehand it is easier to write for, it ends on a cliffhanger, and it uses lots of mystery elements from classic noir films that hopefully will make the viewer go "Ahh!" or at least end the pitch wanting more. The reason we did not go with the first pitch is that it was not very relatable OR fun to watch, nevertheless being fun to film. our group decided that the extra work would not have the desired effect of shock or awe from the feet filming in the first pitch. for those reasons, the second pitch won the vote that we took.

Final introduction

My name is James McCrady, and I am starting my final project. I have loved movies ever since I was little and am very excited to make 2 minutes of my own original. I am very creative and artistic which helps me with these types of projects. My team has 4 members. The members are Dylan, Trent, Owen, and I. We chose each other because we know how well we work together. We worked on all of our previous media studies projects. Trent is a great actor and is very creative. Owen is a great camera person and actor. Dylan is a great editor and actor and with all this combined, we thought we would make a good team.

Over the time I have been in this class I have learned many things and intend to use all of it to my advantage. I learned how to classify my camera angles and movements. I learned how to edit and call the edit I made correctly. In my commercial I realized time management. In my music video I srealized how long a certain amount of time was and how hard it was to fill it. I learned how to dump my camera into my computer. I learned that props are expensive. Props are also not a last minute thing to buy. With all of this information I have learned over the past two projects and home projects, I am confident we can get a good final film. I believe my team and I will be making an amazing opening two minutes to a movie.

Our newest and final project requires multiple pitches. A pitch is a an idea where a film is encapsulated in 25 words or less. We have multiple pitches from different group members, but we have to choose only one that we will focus on. Our pitches before were:

A car ride that takes a turn.
An unexpected lover breaks someones heart.
3 rascals that find trouble with the government.