What is a MacGuffin?

The definition of a MacGuffin is something that the villain in a film cares tremendously about, and is willing to give up anything as long as he can get it. This can include money, power, or an item of significance to them. The audience usually doesn't care about these things.

MacGuffins are common in thrillers because the plot is villain driven a lot of the time. MacGuffins help develop a story and deliver it more effectively. There is no need to explain the decisions made by each character as it becomes more obvious, the villain is usually chasing the MacGuffin and the hero is usually trying to stop them from obtaining it.

The MacGuffin is often disregarded by the end of the film. This is because the audience switch their focus to whether or not the good guy can foil the bad guys plan, not whether or not the bad guy is successful in obtaining some money or successfully completing a drug deal, as two examples that can be used.

Welcome to my media blog.

Hi, my name is Matas Vireikis and on this blog you will find what I have learnt about thrillers, how they are made and the techniques used to make them successful.

Thrillers we have studied so far include:

The Birds
North by Northwest
Psycho

Rules and conventions of a thriller

Thrillers as a genre of film follow many set rules when they are being created. Firstly, they usually involve a powerful villain who is chasing a McGuffin (something that the villain cares tremendously about, something that is their goal within the world of that film, but something that may not necessarily interest the audience.)

This villain must be stopped by a resourceful 'hero' character, who may often times be someone who is dragged into the plot of the film against their own will. An example of this can be found in the film North by Northwest.

Most thriller films will include non diegetic sound and sound bridges to create a certain an atmosphere

The aim of a thriller is to grab the audiences attention. This could be done in various ways, for example, starting with an action scene without explaining what is happening to the audience will leave them wondering what the rest of the story will be about and they will be more likely to pay attention to the details of the film.

It is also important to not make the story overly obvious, techniques such as foreshadowing can be used to suggest what will happen, but it is important to build up the story to keep the audience interested instead of dropping all the information on them at one time.

Analysis of Hitchcock's ''The Birds''

<Remember to watch and analyse the trailer>

The basic plot of the film is as follows : A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people there in increasing numbers and with increasing viciousness.

In what ways is ''The Birds'' an archetypal thriller?

The birds is an archetypal thriller because it uses suspense and slow build up to tell the shocking story of how birds turn on mankind and attack them. The plot is delivered relatively slowly but when the birds start attacking the audience has no way of knowing how the story will actually end. There is usually an external threat to the protagonist(s), in ''The Birds'' it is nature, which is actually not typical within a thriller. 

Hitchcock has given the characters nowhere to hide, meaning they are at the complete mercy of the birds. 

however, there is a part of the birds that does not fit the idea of an archetypal thriller. The external threat in this film is nature, not a powerful villain with many minions and henchmen at his disposal. this is an interesting twist in the thriller genre.

There is also a well used example of dramatic irony found within The Birds, the lady who claims to be an expert when it comes to birds, does not believe that birds have been gathering and attacking people, she claims the idea to be outrageous, however the audience knows that it is true because of the schoolyard scene that was shown just beforehand. 

When the birds begin to attack, the high angle shot is almost like showing the point of view of a pitiless God who does not want to intervene because he feels as though the characters involved do not deserve any sympathy for taking nature for granted. 

It is often said that the thriller is a villain driven plot, however this is not true for the birds as there are no real villains, the threat comes from nature. 

The ending of the film is also presented in an interesting and unusual way. It feels as though the film does not actually end. The ending scene is just the family surrounded by birds driving away from their home, we do not know what happens to them and we do not know whether the birds stop attacking or not, Hitchcock used this particular technique to give the impression of unending terror to the audience, with great success. 

The birds are portrayed as characters who are flocking together to seek revenge upon mankind, because they had been abused for years. The lady who claims to love birds is interrupted by an order of three southern fried chickens, which is ironic because that is an example of birds being abused and mistreated despite the fact that someone who claims to like them is the focus of the scene.

Genre Post

Films come in many different genres, the viewer experience greatly changes depending on what genre you are watching.

The first genre I will talk about is Action. 

In action films, the protagonist usually takes a risky turn which leads to situations a normal person would not find themselves in a situation that a normal person would not typically find themselves in.

Some examples of action films include: Iron man, fast and furious and kick-ass 2.

The second genre I will talk about is comedy 

The goal of a comedy is to tell a story in a light hearted and funny way. It is a very open genre and often crosses into other genres, bringing a more light hearted approach into stories that would otherwise be told seriously.  Examples of recent comedy films are: Scary Movie 5, Ted and The Dictator

The third genre is horror.

A horror story is deliberately crafted in a way which will scare and frighten the audience through various techniques such as shock, suspense and slow build up. The genre sometimes uses fictional events to help build up, meaning it often crosses into the realm of fantasy as well. 

The fourth and arguably most important genre I will be talking about is the thriller. Thrillers are often delivered in a mix of fear and excitement, most of the time, it is a male protagonist leading the way in the story, using their resources and quick wits to defeat a more powerful villain in some way. Examples of thrillers are: North by northwest, Taken 2 and Savage

Video clip with sound

Evaluating Sound Exercise

The sequence we filmed for our sound exercise included myself as a mysterious character who was clearly in control, and James as a character who has failed to complete a task set by me. The dialogue consists of an interrogation followed by several threats to express the fact that I am disappointed by his failure.

The diegetic sound in our video clip was the dialogue.

The non diegetic sound in our video clip was the background music which was the instrumental version of ''Immortal Technique - Dance With The Devil''

Our example of a sound bridge was the music in the background playing through a scene change.

The beginning of the scene is a panning shot where the two characters are sat in complete silence, this is followed by an over the shoulder shot of me, who is playing the character who is in power and in control, this shot helps emphasize this idea of power. There is also a shot where the camera is looking down directly at James when I am speaking to show that he is weak and has no way to retaliate.

There is another shot where the camera is looking up at me, to emphasize my power.

The choices we made for shots were all very effective, as watching the scene effectively shows me as a character who is in charge, the character who is fully in control and in power, whereas for James, it effectively shows him as the helpless character who failed to carry out a task and will soon be facing the consequences. This accurately reflects the ideas we had down on our storyboard and as such we believe that we did a good job with the scene as a whole.

We captured the sound effectively because the speech during the dialogue is always clear. Given the fact that it is clear I believe that we utilized the sound equipment reasonably effectively. We successfully differentiated between diegetic and non diegetic sound because we show clear examples of both in our scene.

There is a part in our scene where I am speaking as James is leaving the room, the camera is not focused on me at this point, this shows us demonstrating off screen sound. The on screen sound being the dialogue between us when the camera is focused on us.

We had parallel sound in our video as the music playing matches the actions of our characters. We did not, however, show an example of contrapuntal sound because we believed that it could not be effectively utilized in our scene.

Seeing as the same song is playing throughout the entire clip, and the scene changes, we did show an example of a sound bridge.

Overall I believe our clip was very good, even though it was short, we showed all the key ideas that we had to show to meet the criteria while generally creating an interesting clip. The only obvious improvement to our clip is the inclusion of contrapuntal sound.

Criticising my first film.

In our first video as a group, we were not trying to tell a story, instead, we were just trying to practise our camera work and execute the shots we were told about in class.

The shots which are not shown in our video include; over the shoulder, this is because the footage we had for an over the shoulder shot was lost. Having said that, we did film an over the shoulder shot and now have the skills required to integrate it into our next project. The other shot we did not show is the rolling shot and that was because we couldn’t really do it as the rolling shot involves filming something that is moving quickly and keeping it in focus.

Even though this time around we did not tell a story, we did put a reasonable amount of thought into how we would portray each shot.

Firstly, for our long shot, we had James standing at a distance with his hoodie up portraying a mysterious and dangerous character, seeing as he was far away from the camera there was no information given to the viewer about who he is or why he’s there, which is an effective use of the long shot.

Next, we displayed medium shot and tracking shot in the same film sequence, which included myself and James walking down a corridor with Danny a short distance in front of us, this effectively showed a medium distance shot as well as tracking.

For our extreme close up, we had a shot of James’ eye, although there’s no story being told here this effectively shows that we understand what an extreme close up shot is, which is what we were trying to achieve.

Our point of view shot included two people standing still while another person held the camera close to his own face to show what a person would be able to see if he was in that scenario, this was an effective way to display POV.

Our low angle shot included our camera man standing at the top of a staircase while another person walked down the set of stairs, this is as close as we could get to representing a crane shot as well as a low angle shot, but we did so with relative effectiveness given our circumstances.

Our high angle shot included the camera man standing at the bottom of the staircase while another person was half way up, the camera man positioned the camera on the floor and filmed the person walking down the stairs, a simple and clear example of the shot.

Our pan shot started with the camera faced at the wall, it then pans to the left and focuses on two people having a conversation, then pans out again, we chose to do this because we thought it was effective at showing how films sometimes show obvious and important details when they use the pan technique.

Our tilt shot was a very basic one, simply focusing on a person at the very start and then tilting.

The choices for our shots were effective as it showed our understanding of each shot very clearly.

When I was asked to handle the camera, I did it with reasonable effectiveness but I was not the best in the group, I was filming the high angle shot and as I was moving the camera down there was some jitteriness, the motion was not fluid. This is a mistake that I made that I will fix next time I will be handling the camera.

As far as framing each shot, we did it well, because the ideas we came up with before filming are reflected well in the footage we created.

Considering we were only trying to display our understanding of each shot in this film, I personally think it is good as we did so effectively, however, in some shots, the camera movement is as fluid as it would have been in a professional film, and this is what we need to fix for our thriller project.

Media camera practice

Matas Danny and James camera angle practice as well as editing practice