Product Research

I chose to study Stanley Kubrick's film 'The Shining', for my product research. I thought it was a great example to use, made in the 1980's the film's opening was gripping for the audience of even the 21st century, therefore I thought that this was a great example to use. From watching the opening scene of The Shining I realised that for our thriller we need a gripping scene that can be enigmatic, so that not only the audience right now but even the audience who watch it after ten years would understand it hence it needs to capture a relative topic that is universal. The title sequence was shown throughout the opening scene which gave it a ore of a thriller look, as the audience would want to see the whole image rather than writing covering some of the image, therefore this was enigmatic for us. Another good technique was portrayed through the opening shot which was taken from an aerial view this made the audience feel more powerful, as they were in control of the situation. Similarly the next shot was a trailer shot where the camera was following the car, this was enigmatic for the audience as we wanted to know what was in the car? who was driving it? and more importantly why are we following it? Another technique that was interesting was the camera was tilted at an angle which made the audience again curious of the situation. The opening scene ends when they finally reach a destination point, this is typical of thriller genre as the film began on a normal day, and now we can see the narrative will develop. Kubrick used the sound as the main technique to help us interact with the film, it began with a non diegtic dis chord and lead on to it getting louder as the scene progresses. I feel this technique had a big impact on me as it suited the mise en scene and as a result it was enigmatic. Therefore I feel that the sound at the beginning of our thriller should be well chose, as sometimes the dialogue can ruin the beginning because it isn't as enigmatic as having or having a cacophony. However I can see that if filming outside then lighting may be a problem because we will either have to fill everything in one day or have very similar lighting various days we film. However I feel that the bird eye view shot was a well developed shot as it allowed the shot to be established, I think this will be a helpful technique in the opening o the thriller to use.