Children of men - Opening scene

Today i watched the opening of three modern thriller films. I did this to see what type of film is successful and what is needed to create suspense and make the audience want to watch on.
Children of men sets the scene in a busy cafe with lots of people crowding round a TV listening to the news. The headline is that the youngest child in the world has been murdered at age 18. This gives the audience the idea that the world has stopped reproducing. We are shown the story through a mans point of view which gives us the impression that he will be the main character/hero. He then ventures outside the cafe and we are shown that he is in london in 2027, this film is set in the future. A bomb then explodes beside him many people are injured. The bomb exploding shocks the audience but also leads us to ask questions such as; who set the bomb?Why did they do it?

Analysis of Thriller Openings

Today i watched the opening of three modern thriller films. I did this to see what type of film is successful and what is needed to create suspense and make the audience want to watch on.
Children of men sets the scene in a busy cafe with lots of people crowding round a TV listening to the news. The headline is that the youngest child in the world has been murdered at age 18. This gives the audience the idea that the world has stopped reproducing. We are shown the story through a mans point of view which gives us the impression that he will be the main character/hero. He then ventures outside the cafe and we are shown that he is in london in 2027, this film is set in the future. A bomb then explodes beside him many people are injured. The bomb exploding shocks the audience but also leads us to ask questions such as; who set the bomb?Why did they do it?

Memento sets the scene in a different way, this time the film is shown backwards. At first there is strong music playing, it is quite sad and slow. We are also shown a picture of a murder scene which is undeveloping as the film continues. We are then shown Lennie the main character killing Teddy who at first seems his friend, the whole situation is very confusing. But i think the film is meant to be confusing as Lennie is confused as he cannot seem to remember everything that is why he writes everything down. There is an enigma which clearly makes the film a thriller, the enigma is that Lennie does not know what he is going to do but also the audience is not sure what his actions are going to be. It is a puzzle which we will eventually solve. I wanted to keep watching the film as i wanted to know what is going to happen, i also wanted to know why Lennie killed Teddy.

Children of Men - Opening scene

Alfred Hitchcock film techniques

In order to gain ideas for my thriller filmclip i had to research thriller directors and their techniques. I chose to focus on Alfred Hitchcock as he is the mast of success and created many great thrillers.Hitchcocks films set the benchmark for all thriller films which have and are to be created. Hitchcock used many different techniques to make the audience suffer throughout the whole film as they never knew what was going to happen next. Hitchcocks film usually revolve around a mystery and someones problems they come accross whilst trying to solve it.
Hitchcock uses film techniques such as:

• Maguffin
• Red Herring
• Enigma

A "maguffin" (Sometimes McGuffin or Maguffin) is a plot device that motivates the characters and advances the story but has little other relevence to the story.

An "enigma" refers to a puzzle,something mysterious, riddle or problem. The characters need to find out and solve this before it can be resolved and then the film finishes.

"Red Herring" refers to the device which diverts the attention from the audience, it seems important but is not really relevant.

My new blog..

Hi my names Sam Conway and i have created this blog for my media coursework. I will be adding all of my ideas and research to it to help me in creating my thriller film clip.