Kyle Cooper Research

KYLE COOPER

Cooper was born in 1962 and is a designer of motion picture. He studied graphic design at Yale. In the early stage of his career he worked as a creative director at an advertising agency in NY and with another office in LA. While working at the agency he created a title sequence for a 1995 crime scene which was very successful. When doing this he inspired a lot of young directors and designers. Cooper also made a title sequence for seven  and the main title sequences that were used in the film. Normally he is brought in just to do the titles and is not the actual director of the film he is only brought in to do the titles of the film.

Cooper was born in 1962 and is a designer of motion picture. He studied graphic design at Yale. In the early stage of his career he worked as a creative director at an advertising agency in NY and with another office in LA. While working at the agency he created a title sequence for a 1995 crime scene which was very successful. When doing this he inspired a lot of young directors and designers. Cooper also made a title sequence for seven  and the main title sequences that were used in the film. Normally he is brought in just to do the titles and is not the actual director of the film he is only brought in to do the titles of the film.

Cooper has done the opening sequences of many prestigous and popular films such as brave heart, seven, the mummy and tropic thunder. Cooper is famous fro the interesting typogrophy that he uses in his titles. His most famous piece is probably seven. most of the mise en scene in the opeing titles are shows a lot of body parts in a very dark light which could be used to say that this film is a horror. The sound in the opeing titles use a lot of techno music showing that this film might be extremely fast pased. The music speeds up when something is about to happen which is stereo-typical. There is also a lot fo synchronous sound when he is sewing. the camera angles are mainly close ups.

However, Personally i believe that the editing in the title sequence that Cooper made is the most prelific thing about his work. there are a lot of cross cuts and jump cuts in the opening titles of seven outlining that it is a very fast pased film. Moreover it re enphasizes the fact that this film is a horror. This is a stereo typical aproach to show that it is a horror.

There are certain props in the opening credits show items that would typically be used for violence or other things that would hurt people. The font that pops up is white and comes at a fast pace into the screen. Moreover there are pictures of broken body parts symbolising that it might be a horror. Furthermore i believe that the film is seen through two different view points as there is a point where a man is writing and we see two pens illustrating that someone is looking at him.

in seven he uses interesting typogrophy and it is probably his most famous piece of work out of more that 150 title sequences. although he normally only does the titles he has directed a film called saul bass.


 

historical and cultural background on thriller

Historical and Cultural information

1962

The airstrike that the president tries to call of will be a nuclear attack on Cuba. In 1962 there was a nuclear crisis in Cuba. The Cuban missile crisis brought the super powers to the brink of nuclear war. In 1959 Fidel Castro had come to power in Cuba and ever since there had been tension between the two nations as Castro had communist views. America refused to buy sugar from Cuba. The Soviet Union saw this as an opportunity to gain influence in the Caribbean and began to buy Cuba’s sugar. Moreover at this time Khrushchev (the soviet leader) wanted to challenge the US. There was extreme tension built when a U2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba and the pilot was only released from jail a few years ago. There was also an incident in the Bay of Pigs when America trained Cuban immigrants and sent them to attack Cuba. This operation failed and most of the soldiers were killed. JFK had to deny involvement otherwise it would have been seen as an act of war.

When filming our thriller we will need to make it appear as if it is in the 1960s. In this time women were subservient to men. They had lower ranked jobs and were very badly treated in a working environment. A very good example of this is a programme called mad men. In mad men we are shown that the women are there to please the men and to indirectly find a husband and be in kitchen. This was the typical view of women. Society believed that a women’s place is at home with the children and cooking. They should not be in an office.  Moreover in mad men the men use derogative terms towards women in their presence and the men are portrayed to have a higher rank by how big their offices were. Women were seen as incapable to work machinery and incapable of handling complex work.

This video out lines the historical background of the thirller dfuring the 60s and shows the audince the tyime frame and what they are about to see inlive and put into action.


the mad men video shows the stereo typical approach to women in the 60s.

Interviews - On target audience

How our idea is moving forward

Our new idea is moving forward a lot better than our previous ones. We have taken out the hospital aspect and simply made it in the Whitehouse or in a board room with President Kennedy this time. Kennedy will then get shot midway through calling of a nuclear attack on Cuba, while dictating this code to a general. The two people beside him, which presumably will be the attorney general and his chief of staff will then try to enter the rest of the code, which only the president knows about. At the same time security guards will try and resuscitate the president which will be ineffective. 

The thriller will end on a cliff hanger and we won’t know whether or not they have given the right code.Moreover since our last meeting we have also made it a lot easier to film. From the feedback we got from Matt and Simon we are not going to include a hospital set as it would be very complicated. 

We have found that the preps that we need for our renewed thriller.We have also thought that we don’t need a sniper to show that he has been shot, we merely need to have a broken window or see or even hear a broken window so that it has the effect that he has been shot. We can also use fake blood to create effect and show the audience that he actually is dead.

The costumes that we need are also not hard to get as most suits will fit into the 1960s genre. The props that we use such as ash trays, cigarettes, and the paper Is easy enough to prepare and would be a lot easier than creating a hospital set in compared to an office or a boardroom set.

Acount of pitch

I think that we presented our ideas very well and through our power point asnd we also spoke a lot about what the thriller would entail. We spoke about how we would have blended our scene into a 1960s genre. We received good feedback however we found out that some of the ideas that we pitched were that easy to actually film.

We have still in kept with the 1960s genre and we are still using the president of the United States and the assassination by the Russians. The feedback that we got helped us to form our next idea which helped a lot. The feedback was positive and we had made ideas that were quite easy to go along with.

We now have a new idea that is a lot more easy thanks to the feedback that we got from Matt and Simon.

Pitch decision

We decided on our original idea to have a doctors scene and embed 60s politics in it through a lot of the subjects that we do at school. We based our idea on a president having an assassination attempt made on his life and then him being transported to hospital. He will then be killed in hospital by a Russian that would be impersonating a nurse or a doctor and would have killed him

We chose this idea because we are all very interested in 1960s politics and furthermore we are also studying this time period in history. We drew the assassination attempt from when Kennedy was actually killed. It was always going to be a very exciting and thrilling idea as the president gets transported to hospital and then killed by a Russian spy. This also linked into history as they were then in a cold war with the Russians.  I thought that the idea was very good and it also linked with a lot of the subjects that we do at school. I also thought that idea was easy to perform and viable. It didn’t included very hard locations and most of the filming would have been done on a set.

We decided in our group that it would be quite an exciting idea to do. Moreover it would be very fun to film and the props that we would use would be very fun. We thought that the concept would go down well in the pitch. The medical side of the pitch we got from TV shows such as grey’s anatomy. We pitched it in a good way showing our power point which is also in our blog and we spoke about how our ideas would actually happen in the thriller.

Our idea would have also been very entertaining as it would have been set in the 1960s and I think that it would have lured an audience into watching it. Furthermore, the fact that it would have been left on a cliff hanger would have brought a dramatic effect to the thriller.

Renewed idea for thriller

Pitch presentation

Types of Thrillers

SUB-GENRES

CONSPIRACY THRILLERS

In a conspiracy thriller you would often find a journalist or reporter un-covering extremely important evidence that leads to the outcome of the film. The journalists will often uncover historical evidence. This evidence or information will normally be the main topic of the film. The actors also adopt stereo typical roles, so the positive characters will perform good actions and the negative characters will do the opposite.

Examples of this genre will often be films such as the girl with the dragon tattoo. This film follows the typical genre to the letter. This film includes a journalist that uncovers a piece of evidence and then aides this operation. Another example of a conspiracy thriller is the Da Vinci Code. Both of these films are quite controversial.

Normally the key themes in these films are conspiracy and this can then lead on to ‘secret history’. Other aspects that you would expect in these films are lies deception, lies and propaganda. There are often conspiracies that are kept secret by the use of propaganda.

THE POLOTICAL THRILLER

These types of thrillers are clearly about politics however they are normally about political struggle. They can often involve incidents from one day and how a political party dealt with this. They can include foreign or national concerns. Some thrillers can also recall non-fictional past times such as the assignation of JFK or the emergence of the constitution. The Watergate scandal is another example of the story line of a political thriller.

Generally the main plots in these films should be political or governmental. It will often involve a man with no political status stirring something up and then it leading into a corruption. This links to the standard main plots of conspiracy thrillers.

Examples of political thrillers are the ghost writer JFK and the edge of darkness and state of play. All of these films contain some aspects of politics.

SPY FILMS

 

Spy films often contain action, romance and violence. They can be fantasy or fictional espionage. Just like political thriller, spy films can portray something that has already happened such as spying on the Germans in the Second World War.

Spy films will often be defined with a hero and a villain. The hero is stereo-typically the spy as we see in films such as James bond and the Bourne films. There will often also be romances. This also occurs in every single James bond film. Spy films also combine two sub-genres which are action and science fiction genres.

Spy films have been used for years. Examples of spy films are: James bond, the Bourne films, MI3, inspector gadget etc.

PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS

These films will often include one character that will often be the main theme. There will also be some sort of delusion. This can often be represented in a dream or delusion through the eyes of someone else.

There will also often be enemies that the good characters have to defeat. This example applies top films such as inception. However in other films such as black swan it can take over the personality and take control of the actions of a character into making them do extremely severe actions which include killing themselves in some scenarios.

Suspense often comes from tension from two characters that have been taken over because a physiological effect.

Examples of physiological thrillers are: inception, black swan, seven pounds and audition.

my thriller opening seqence

analysis of opening sequence

Editing Prelim Task

During the editing task we used software called final cut server. We learnt how to use this software. All of our work was put on this programme and it was up to us to put the pieces together. All of the clips that we filmed were put on the programme for us to edit. We checked in and out and put our files on the desktop.

I enjoyed putting the best of our clips together and finding different angles that match the mood and to show something else that it is going on at the same time, for example an outside showing that someone is looking at them. I enjoyed working in our group to make the editing process smooth and us all putting in our own ideas.

There were a few things hat I found challenging about the editing process. I found synchronizing the sound with movement. This was the hardest part of the process. Especially as there was speech involved in the scene, this made it hard to put the movement of someone’s mouth with the speech.

When matching the shots in our editing process we found putting the shots together from different angles was quite easy. The trick was to change the camera angle when there was a movement, furthermore trying to make it so that they stop talking when we change the angle.

The extra shots that we filmed made it a lot easier to edit. This was because we had a wider variation of shots which gave us more choice when editing. It also meant that we had shots to mirror something like looking through a window or high and extreme low angle shot.

When filming I would have definitely changed the light to make it brighter at times as the light in our scene wasn’t very good and it made us lack in a contrast of light. Throughout our scene the light was quite dark. I would also make sure that we have focused properly on all of our shots and try maybe to complete a tracking shot.

We worked very well as a team during both filming and editing. We all worked within our roles especially during filming. We all thought that we had tried everything and everything ran very smoothly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id3V-mB5-Ek&list=UUwxVEfHzBUtutL-OGAFRwGg&index=6&feature=plpp_video

Taken

Taken

In this photo we see a man running. He is running towards the camera which implies that he is chasing someone. However the light is behind him which shows that he is also being chased by the police. However he is chasing the greater good. The scenery around him I entirely grey and dark. He is running along the streets of Paris which is shown by the architecture.

The darkness shows that it is a violent film and that there might be torture of killings in the film. The red also reinforces the violence and death. The shadow shows that he has almost caught up to what he is searching for. The shadow and the pure black show the evil that he is chasing and that he has almost caught up.

The clothes that he is wearing also represent darkness as he is wearing black. However his face is white which might show that he free and chasing freedom to save someone.

The target audience of this movie you would normally be to teenagers and twenty year olds. This movie would certainly not target parents as it would scare them so much about what their children were actually doing. Moreover the possibilies of what could actually happen to their children when they go on holiday.

Hotel Rwanda

Hotel Rwanda

As soon as you see the poster of Hotel Rwanda you immediately think that it is a tragic and sad film. Firstly the colour on the page, the background is black which stero-typically a negative colour is. This represents that this is a violent and cruel film. This is reinforced by the red at the top which could illustrate that blood is involved in the film. The only positive colour on the poster is the Gold which is used to say Hotel Rwanda. This shows that the one place that is safe or good in the film is The Hotel.

The actors that are pictured in the poster are looking directly into the cmarea in fear of someone of something. The poster shows that here is definitely violence as the actors are embedded in a machete. There are two machetes and are not facing each other. This might show that there are two tribes or groups fighting against each other and as they are the same weapon this could show that they are in the same country and are in a civil war of some sort.

 

Violence is also reinforced by the fact that there is a man dressed in army uniform in the machete. There is also a slogan that is in white writing which represents freedom. The slogan reeds ‘the true story of a man who fought impossible odds to save everyone he could’. The man who is doing this is the clearly the biggest person pictured on the poster.

The people in the poster look extremely scared and fearful. They also look dirty and ragged.

Inside the machete there is a lot of light which shows that the people inside the machete are good characters and that there is hope in Rwanda.

Hotel Rwanda dosent have a specific target audience although it takes quite a big knowledge of the subject to understand the film. The movie may relate to people who are interested in that certain era of history or african. Furthur more the target audience may be someone that is interested in the subject. The fim is extremely interesting however you need to know some back ground knowledge of the subject. To conclud ei believe that the target of this film is adults or people who have knowledge of the film as it is quite a severe and mature subject.