Past Examples

One of the tasks you need to do in the Pre-production stage is watch examples of other students work.  You need to look at their strengths and weakness.  This will help you to work out what works well and what to avoid.  Each member of your group should watch at least one of the following examples, mark it according to the mark schedule given out in class, compose a post for the group blog and share their findings with teh rest of the group.

Example One 

Example Two

Example Three

Example Four

Example Five

TCC also has a Youtube page so you can check out other examples as well.  You will to scroll down a bit to see the films.  The first one is called Lost Lines I think.  They are after the animation stuff.

TCC on YouTube

Shutter Island

As a class we looked at the film Shutter Island.  It is psychological Thriller film by Martin Scorsese, considered to be one of the great Hollywood film Directors.

The opening moments of a film, as you know are extremely important.  You need to capture the attention of your audience start away.  For a Thriller film you need to immediately get the audience interested and intrigued by your storyline.  The opening scene (known as the set up) in Thriller tend to be mysterious, complex and raise ideas that will become very important later in the story.  It also needs to provide the audience with the key information about characters, set the tone of the film (through the use of camera, lighting, editing, music and mise en scene) and make it what genre it is (through the use of codes and conventions). 
Many people have found the opening of Shutter Island to be very effective.
Here are some articles that talk about the opening
The New Yorker
Shutter Island Analysis and Questions
The Opening Act Part 1
Tne Opening Act Part 2

And don't forget to check out imdb.com, probably the best site on the web for information on films
imdb

Introduction to the Thriller

In the first lesson you were introduced to the idea of genre and that different genres have very different codes and conventions.  In groups you wrote a 'genre recipe' and the most popular genres seemed to be Romance and Horrors.
Once it was clear that you had a good understanding of the concept we began to look in more detail at the Thriller Genre.
If you can't remember what we talked about, here is the powerpoint

Introduction to the Thriller Genre