Thrillers

Whilst edititng our Media film we brought some new ideas to the table, something i personally felt strongly about was making the film look more like an Arthouse film than a big Blockbuster, and a way of doing this would have been to put the film in black and white, by doing this the film would look more creative, but we collectivly saw that some of the mise en scene that we has specifically created such as the use of red nail vanish on the victim's hand, this dramatic look was lost and therefore the feeling of horror and anticipation in the whole movie was lost.
However as i am a stubborn person i did not want to give up on the idea of using black and white so we disscussed turning it into black and white with some areas where there is a a great deal of fantastic mise en scene still in colour. An example of this is the close up of the victims hand in the bath. the red nails are a huge feature and the viewers eye is quickly drawn to them. This is when we decided that it would be a good idea to have the murderer's perspective in black and white, beaucause his fixation is as clear as black and white, just to kill, and then the victims perspective can be in colour enabling us to keep some fabulous colourful shots and still keeping that edgy arthouse movie feel.

Thrillers

We found it hard deciding on a name for our film that explained the film but made sense as well.
To start with we played around with words in Latin and different languages to see if anything creative and unusual came up, we quickly realised that that was a silly idea as our film was set in England and there was no foreign connection.

AX TO GRIND was the popular choice as we had imagined the killer with an axe and it also would suggest the man has a constant and relentless vendetta.

However, once we began filming and editing our film, we grew to hate AX TO GRIND and changed it to
FIXATION


DVD SYNOPSIS of FIXATION.

London. Darkness. Women are unsafe.Because something is watching. Something is waiting. Something unknown, unhinged and unrelenting. A man with a fixation. A fixation to kill!As newspaper reported Rachel Gellor (Kate Winslet) investigates a series of brutal murders of women in London, little did she know that she was next on the murderers list.

Thrillers

My blog has been neglected recently due to a mountain of media filming work and drama performances, however, now they are safely out the way i can comment on the hard work and effort that has gone into the making of our thriller scene in the past 4 months.
It was not an easy ride, to start with we contemplated and toyed with dark creepy car parks, an anonymous victim and a cold blooded killer. But we soon realised that the location of this would make filming in our free time very difficult.

We then spent the odd few of our lessons researching and watching clips of horror movies online to give us some ideas, What Lies Beneath, The Strangers, Nightmare On Elm Street and Creep we focused on the way these films had been shot especially What Lies Beneath and Creep to see how they created atmospheric tension and suspense. Unfocused and distorted shots form Creep created a spooky uncertainty which would fit well into the horror genre that we strive to achieve. What Lies Beneath heavily relies on the music to create an atmosphere as the scene that we looked at was set in a well lit bathroom.

It was this clip that gave us the basic idea to set our Thriller scene in a bathroom, it was a different idea to many of the other media groups, it also would enable us to film whenever we please as the location was at my house. We played around with the idea of filming in dark woods as well but realised that the amount of natural light would be a problem.

We then created our Storyboard and the plot for the film. I was to be the helpless victim and Tom was to be the unseen mysterious womanising knife bearing killer. Mr Van Straten filmed us speaking to the class about the ideas behind our film and this is on youtube but currently being on a school computer i am unable to get hold of it but weill put it up later.

http://issuu.com/svanstraten/docs/danni_film_plan_final_260109

this is our film plan containing everything that there really is to know about the ideas of our film.

New films.

In Bruges is a film that i watched a long time ago and thought nothing of it whilst i was watching it, then a week ago i watched it again and its comic value shone through, it was hilarious, Colin Farrell is beautiful and plays a hit man called Ray along side with his mentor Ken, Brendon Gleeson. Ray kills a pervy priest but accidentaly kills an innocent little boy in the process, Harry played by Ralph Fiennes is the leader of the Hit man troupes and has the rule if you kill a child you must kill yourself. So Ken and Ray get sent off to Bruges, the worst place in the world, ever,
While Ken enjoys the historic city, Ray, who is in inner conflict due to the death of the boy, feels completely bored and misses his home. Ray meets the small time drug-dealer and crook Chloë, who sells drug to the cast and crew of a movie that is filmed in Bruges, and has an incident with a Canadian tourist and later with Chloë's boyfriend. Meanwhile Harry, who has an stringent code of principles, orders Ken to kill his protégée Ray.

the film contain, cocaine, guns, sex, guns, pregnant women, guns, bald men being blinded, Bruges, fat americans and Midgets.
the film is hugely racist and uneasy to view at times due to this fact, but after a while the comedy comes through and i found it astonishingly funny.

The thing that interested me in the film was that it was only shown in 28 cinemas in england and was mainly shown in art houses. It swiflty became a bit of a cult film. In Bruges is an Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning 2008 film directed and written by Martin McDonagh.

The Preliminary Task

This is my media film which starred the beautiful Danni and Lara with help from miss Entrican
the link to my story board is here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/svanstraten/3196400791/in/set-72157612374525304/







and the link to the video is.. currently unavailable due to the fact i am unable to get on YouTube.

We are beginning our filming for our scary movie currently and it is going well, yesterday we began shooting some scenes outside but we had to wait until it got dark which was a bit frustrating.
i am a bit nervous about our bath scenes in our movie as i am the actress. 'Axe to grind' is about a lonely man who prays on women due to him being neglected as a boy. He finds his victims in normal coffee houses and is a typical stranger that you would see everyday, nothing is scary about him, until he follows you home, watches you, waits for the right moment and then brutally kills you. we have decided to film it so you never see the mans face and only his implements he will kill you with, his gloved hands and his feet.

We are hoping to film it in two days, and we may have it all in black and white but are undecided. tom is creating a soundtrack for it which is amazing and will be very odd and ery.
We took some pictures of my bathroom to see how we can film it form different angles. we will be filming it from toms perspective and there will be no sound bar the soundtrack that tom is creating.

Good Flims.

During the dramatic period that was when i was ill. i spent a lot of time. sleeping, being ill and watching films. So subsequently i have become a bit of a film junkie! always have been but i am now OBSESSED!

So i thought i would share my thoughts and views on two of my favorite most recently watched films.

FIRST: IN SEARCH OF A MIDNIGHT KISS.



This is honestly one of the most heart warming films i have watching in a long time. if your depressed or sad or just want to snuggle up with a cup of tea and some pop corn and watch a Good, Comic, Romantic and well written film watch this. Directed and written by Alex Holdridge. In Search of a Midnight Kiss is a comic ride and a beautiful journey through love in a modern and romantic Los Angeles on New Year's. it is about a Man called Wilson (Scoot McNairy) an unfortunate man with an amazing dress sense who has had the most upsetting year of his life. He spent the year desperately trying to forget events that happened but failing miserably. His best friend Jacob (Brian McGuire) forces him into posting a personal ad. He is looking for love, being pestered by his mother and his friends so he posts the ad. When Vivian (Sara Simmonds), a quirky yet angry vision of beauty who is determined to find some kind of happiness for a short space of time at the stroke of midnight responds to his add. While she and Wilson walk and talk about downtown LA, each of them fronting and flirting and joking in their self-protecting way, we hear the endless voice mails from her boyfriend who’s crying about her unexplained disappearance. We see vulnerability and bitterness from both characters and the emotional bond that is created i have personally not encountered with many other films. Shot in black-and-white throughout the heart of the film unfolds on the streets as Wilson and Vivian wander about the city. This is the central LA of abandoned theatres, tired pavements and office plazas – miles from Hollywood – and Holdridge does a great job of turning it into a theatre and sucking up all that it has to offer. He reminds us how lonely the city can be.
The film is packed with lovely little scenes, several great lines and a genuinely heartbreaking moment towards the end that comes out of nowhere.
Its just Beautiful and i love it. the music in it is brilliant the idea is brilliant the acting is brilliant the fact that it is in black and white is brilliant, the lack of budget makes it brilliant. i love it. so watch it. !
this is the trialer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUSKOkE-Bwo


Second: American History X.

His father taught him to hate. His friends taught him rage. His enemies gave him hope.
Some Legacies Must End.
Violence as a way of life.
United by hate, divided by truth
See reality in your eyes when hate makes you blind.

A brutal Neo Nazi skinhead named Derek Vinyard is tried and sent to prison for three years for the murder of two black guys who tried to steal his truck. When he returns from prison reformed, his younger brother Daniel Vinyard who idolizes him is on the brink of becoming a Neo Nazi himself. Derek must save his younger brother from a similar fate.

In the opening scene, we see a young skinhead white supremacist by the name of Danny Vinyard (Edward Furlong) sitting in the principals office, waiting to be summoned. As we move into the office, we hear and see Danny's history teacher explaining to the principal, Dr. Sweeney (Avery Brooks), that Danny wrote a book report on Mein Kampf, a book detailing Hitler and his memoirs. The teacher tells Dr. Sweeney that he is offended by Danny's gesture and he wants to see him punished. Instead, Sweeney asks the teacher to leave and asks Danny to step in. American flag toothpick in mouth, Danny steps into the office and sits down. Dr. Sweeney begins yelling at Danny, telling him that writing what he did is offensive and he only did it because his brother influenced him in that way. Danny argues of course but in the end Sweeney wins and tells him that he is now his new history teacher. The class is called American History X and the next assignment is due tomorrow morning; a paper on his brother, Derek (Edward Norton). After this, Danny walks out. The next scene opens with three black boys beating up a white boy for telling the teacher that one of them cheated. Suddenly, Danny appears out of one of the stalls and demands that they stop. One boy argues with him but Danny simply blows the smoke from his cigarette into his face. The boys leave, Danny helps the white kid from the ground and tells him that he needs to learn to stand up for himself and they leave. Soon we see Danny walking home from school through a park where some black men are playing basketball; one is the boy from the bathroom. Danny's voice begins to narrate the scene and we learn that before Derek went to jail, the white kids didn't have to be afraid of the black kids, Derek made it safe.The next scenes are flashbacks explaining Derek's journey from a suburban white kid to a vengeance-seeking white supremacist. When Danny and Derek were younger, a black drug dealer shot their father while he was fighting a fire. Soon after that, an old white supremacist sought out Derek, hoping to begin a new movement throughout the suburban white kid culture. Cameron (Stacy Keach), the old white supremacist, told Derek that what happened to his father was an act of racism by the black man and it wasn't right and he, or any other white kid, shouldn't be scared. So Derek began rounding up scared suburban white kids for his new gang and telling them that there was nothing to be afraid of anymore. This new craze became so popular among the kids of Venice Beach that Derek soon became an icon. His legacy started then and continued even throughout the time he spent in jail. The night Derek went to jail, three black guys were trying to break into his car and Danny heard them so he told Derek. He rushed downstairs, gun in hand, and opened the door and began shooting the men. He knocked off two of the three but one man wasn't dead yet so Derek demanded the man to put his teeth on the curb and not move. Then he broke the man's neck. Almost immediately the police arrive and take Derek away.In jail, Derek tried to find a group of people to hang out with so that he didn't have to fend for himself. Not too long after arriving, he found a group of white supremacists that accepted him. As time went by, Derek noticed and started to realize the compromises men made to stay ahead in the jail - because the supremacists were a minority, they paid a non-white gang to keep them safe. When he learned that a fellow white supremacist was doing favors for a Mexican man, he became enraged and stopped interacting with the group. Later, Derek was assigned laundry duty with a black inmate. The man was friendly toward Derek, but Derek was not friendly back, at first. Soon the man and Derek began to befriend each other and became good acquaintances. The friendship angered the white supremacist group even more than they already were because Derek left , so to get revenge, they jumped Derek in the showers and one of them raped him. The day this happened, Dr. Sweeney, who was also Derek's teacher, came to visit him. As soon as he arrived, Derek cried and told Sweeney that he wanted out and that he wanted to take everything back and move as far away as possible so he wouldn't hurt his family anymore. Dr. Sweeney told Derek that it wasn't enough and that Danny was headed down the same path and he must do whatever was necessary for Danny to not end up like him. Derek agreed and told him that he was ready to do whatever once he was out.Some time later, Derek is released from prison and returns home to find that Danny has become a white supremacist as well. He also learns that what was once a small following has turned into a considerably large one. That night, Danny and Derek both go to a party that Cameron is throwing for Derek's homecoming. Once there, he finds his old girlfriend, Stacey (Fairuza Balk), and asks her to move far away with him. He tells her that he doesn't want any of this anymore, he's done with white supremacy. Following that, she asks him if he's crazy and runs off in anger. After that, Derek looks for Danny and finally finds him in Cameron's office. Derek tells Danny to leave and that there is a girl outside waiting for him. After Danny leaves, Derek confronts Cameron and tells him that he's done with the whole white supremacist thing and he knows Cameron's game. What Derek says infuriates Cameron and they start to argue. The argument ends when Derek punches Cameron in the face and then kicks him again while he's down. Derek leaves and calls for Danny to come with him. On his way out, Seth Ryan (Ethan Suplee), a friend of Derek's before he went to jail, starts yelling at him and demanding an answer as to what happened to Cameron. Derek is befuddled and keeps yelling for Danny but then Seth pulls out a gun and points it at Derek. Stacey begins to yell from the side, "Shoot him! Shoot him!" and Seth continues to get closer and closer. Just as Seth is about to do it, Derek grabs the gun and points it up then pushes him and tells him to step away. Derek calls Danny and starts to run away, gun in hand.Soon Danny catches up to him and Derek begins to explain. Even though Danny is frustrated with Derek, because he's giving up the only thing he thinks brings the white kids hope against the non-white race, he understands and forgives him and they walk home. When they arrive, Danny begins working on his paper and Derek enters the room. They both look at each other and move toward the wall that is covered in white supremacist propaganda; they take everything down. When they're done, Danny returns to the computer to write his paper and Derek gets into the shower. The following morning, at sunrise, Danny is narrator, telling us the end to his story. He says that he's never watched the sunrise before and he hopes that this paper is what he, Dr. Sweeney, is looking for. Derek gets ready for his meeting with the probation officer and soon they leave together. Derek walks Danny to school before his meeting, and on their way they stop at a café. There, they meet up with Dr. Sweeney and a cop. They tell Derek that Cameron and Seth Ryan were found last night after being jumped and they are now in the hospital. Dr. Sweeney and the cop both ask Derek if he knows anything about it and he swears he doesn't. Derek tells them that he has somewhere to go and that he's going to walk Danny to school before he goes. They set off on their way. As Derek is dropping him off, he staggers over words and finally says I'll see you at home. Danny departs for the front doors and Derek heads down the street. While he's walking, the audience can sense the fear in Derek. At the same time, Danny enters the bathroom just before class starts. What Danny doesn't know is that the black boy from the day before is in the bathroom as well. When Danny finishes and turns around, he meets face to face with the kid. He raises a gun and shoots Danny a number of times and he falls to the ground.Next we see Derek is in the bathroom with Danny. He sits with him and holds his body close to his. The only things we can hear between sobs are the remarks Derek is making to himself about what he's done. Immediately after, Danny's voice takes over as narrator and we hear the closing statement of the paper he's written about Derek: "So I guess this is where I tell you what I learned - my conclusion, right? Well, my conclusion is: Hate is baggage. Life's too short to be pissed off all the time. It's just not worth it. Derek says it's always good to end a paper with a quote. He says someone else has already said it best. So if you can't top it, steal from them and go out strong. So I picked a guy I thought you'd like. 'We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.' "

American History X is not reviewed very highly but i love it. Some scenes are the most distressing things i have ever watched and it is nail bitingly disturbing, but the story is actually quite lovely as it is a story of change and correcting your past wrong doings. It infuriated me that i ended up feeling great empathy for Edward Norton's character as he was such an idiot.

Watch it and make up your own mind. But i Truly loved it, Cried at the end and felt that the switch to past and present using black and white and colour was very ingenious.

More Celebrities

So the past few weeks have been all a bit crazy in the celebrity world. Jordan and Peter are rowing, did he cheat? why does she not wear her wedding ring..etc. Things have heated up for Gordon Ramsey not in the Kitchen but in the bedroom as he has become a lusting love cheat and has an older Mistress who lives in Wales. Cheryl (the most beautiful woman on the planet) and Ashley Cole Have been having tiffs yet again and Cheryl is apparently devastated as she desperately wants a baby but is not able to conceive currently, If you ask me having a child is not the way to make you and your cheating husband happy, she probably is unable to conceive due to her hectic job of being a British treasure (Being the Prettiest Girls Aloud member and the best Judge on the X Factor can not be an easy job) and the stress that her husband puts her under probably doesn't help either.
I am a self confessed celebrity junkie and am addicted to I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here and as i have said before love Nicola McLean just because she is so foolish, loud and ignorantly opinionated. But i did feel sorry for her this week as Esther Ranzen voiced her opinion on Nicolas Breasts. She said "We were all awestruck with Nicola's boobs...Silence fell in the camp and we admired them...When you are that slender nature decrees that you have small boobs. In getting breast enlargements what we are doing is creating a totally impossible female shape... It's not good for kids to think that unless they look like that they are not going to be attractive humans beings.”
I personally feel Nicola has made her own choice and for her Career as a Glamour Model she needs big bountiful boobs. Its her way of making a living and i don't feel Esther has the right to belittle "Kids" by saying we don't have our own minds.

Another thing that has frustrated me this week to the point that i have lost all respect for her is blooming Britney Spears. She is such a fool. time and time and time and time again fans of hers have bravely stuck by her convinced themselves that she will eventually, one day return to her former glory. COME ON. It has been about 6 years now. she has totally lost the plot. she shaves her head. BAD. her kids get taken off her. BAD. she is out party with Paris Hilton all the time. BAD. she totally ruined her so called come back at the MTV awards a year ago and so we gave her another chance. The X Factor decided lets have Brit do her thing in Britain. I was lulled into a false sense of security by Dermot when he was blabbing on about how brilliant she was to become again and was actually quite excited to see her performance. And then it started. Beginning was good (the bit before she was on stage) then she came out the double doors with lots of smoke and curtains ooooo its Britney wow! we all stared at our televisions in awe. She did a few half hearted body shaking movements that was meant to be dancing and then proceeded to Lip Sing. BRITNEY!
WHAT ARE YOU DOING. ah it annoyed me so much. She was a genius well, not her but the people pulling her strings were doing a fantastic job of making Britney (little Britney) a massive marketable superstar when she wowed everyone and stormed the charts with Hit me baby one more time. but unfortunately i think it is time to let go to that Britney. she is gone and never coming back.
James Corden spoke the truth to a shocked and bewildered Holly Willoughby on the Xtra Factor and said what everyone was really thinking about Brits performance. He said that the memaining X Factor contestants were better than her and he does have a point. at least they are actually singing. Then, when asked about Britneys big comeback James replied, "I've already got the CD, so I don't really need to see someone come out and mime it." James went on to slam Britney's "half-arsed performance" and questioned why she had vanished off the show so quickly. James wasn't afraid to say what a lot of people were clearly thinking.