Shadow of a doubt;

"Shadow of a Doubt" is an Alfred Hitchcock film that was made in 1943. 

We watched the beginning of this film in class, when watching we found that the uncle Charlie was the antagonist and his niece Charlie was the protaganist. 

Storyline;
Charlie Newton (niece) decides that she is unhappy with the boring things in her life and wishes that something exciting would happen. She knew that she needed a visit from her sophisticated Uncle Charlie Oakley, which soon enough became true. It was all appearing fine, until Charlie started to notice some odd behaviour from her uncle as he starts to cut out a particular article from the paper. It was only when two strangers approached him and asked questions of him, poor Charlie began to imagine the worst of her uncle.


Mise en scene;
Lighting and colour: As this is a black and white film there is nothing to say about the colour. However the film looks as if it has very natural lighting, this is high key.
Settings and props; The props used are very high class such as cigars and money, whereas he seems to be living in a deprived area. 
Costumes, Hair & make up; Uncle Charlie is finely dressed in a smart suit and hat, with well groomed hair. This shows that he cares about his appearance. 
Facial Expressions and Body Language; Uncle Charlie's body language is very stiff and seems to be uptight. Both him and his niece Charlie are seen laying on a bed this may show a link between them. 

Sabotage;

In Class we watched a scene from Alfred Hitchcocks film Sabotage, this was the Lord Mayor Show scene which contains a lot of suspense and dramatic irony.

Dramatic Irony is when the audience knows something that the character doesn't and the audience really want the character to know because they are a nice character.

In this scene Verloc (a unknown terrorist) gives a package to his wife's little brother Stevie to take to the theatre as he has told Stevie that the package is a film cannister, whereas it is actually a bomb. Verloc tells Stevie to deliver it by 1:30 as he knows that the bomb is going to go off at 1:45. However unknowing Stevie is not too bothered about when it is delivered and gets distracted by many things, such as the Lord Mayor Show. Eventually the bomb explodes whilst Stevie still has it.  

<This is a picture of Stevie watching the Lord Mayor show.

Montage;

The following images are my montage for the ideas of my Thriller.

   

Researching ideas for our thriller;

When trying to decide on what our thriller was going to contain and deciding on the story line, we watched a few thriller beginnings that we had lying about at home. This helped us choose what we wanted to do and how we were going to do it. This is an image of the films that we watched the beginnings of. 

< sorry unable to rotate. 

we came to our main conclusion when watching 'Flight plan'. Viewing this gave us the decision that we wanted a kidnapping.

Preliminary Exercise;



To get used to our cameras and editing our videos for the future we carried out a Preliminary Exercise which was to create a video of someone coming through or opening a door and using a range of different types of shots, such as point of view, over the shoulder and pan shots. The Video above is our preliminary exercise, made by my partener Georgia, and me.

When making this video we filmed different scenes and editing them to make them fit together looking as if it was all filmed together. This is continuity.  

Storyboard;

The following video shows the storyboard of our preliminary exercise.

Manchurian Candidate;

The Manchurian Candidate was released on 24th october 1962 in the USA and directed by John Frankenheimer. This film contains many well known stars such as Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh.

In the film it shows a form of brainwashing. In the characters nightmares they see some of their colleages killing other colleages, this is as of a brainwash set off by a unknown person. The Brainwash is set off by the character dealing a set of cards, they are brainwashed in and out of the nightmare.

The Manchurian candidate was effected highly by the cold war, which was just threats and no action. This is as during the cold war many people suffered from paranoia, which many characters in the film have been shown to suffer from, as their reoccuring nightmares caused it. Another aspect of the film that shows it was effected by the cold war is that the characters were made to choose what political side they were supporting.

This Film was also effected by senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy. This was as Senator McCarthy made many claims about the government trying to brainwash the public. After Senator McCarthy if anyone makes claims that someone is not what they appear to be that is now called McCarthyism.