MARTIN SCORSESE
Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942, in New York City, to an Italian-American family. He was raised in the neighbourhood of Little Italy, which later provided the inspiration for several of his films, such as Goodfellas (about Italian-American gangsters and the mob. He was also inspired by Alfred Hitchcock and Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (1955) and so directed Cape Fear which was a stylized thriller taking its cues heavily from The Night of the Hunter. Scorsese also directed many thrillers such as The Departed, Shutter Island, The Family, After Hours and Bringing Out The Dead. Scorsese is well known for often using long tracking shots (His most famous is from Goodfellas (1990)). A notoriously difficult shot to perfect, he has been dubbed by some as the "King of the Tracking Shot". By using a tracking shot it allows the spectators a comprehensive tour of a situation. It follows the character and gives the viewers a full image. It builds atmosphere to the scene shown and sets a mood and makes the audience anxious/fearful for the person being followed.
Laura Rojas
RESEARCH INTO ICONIC THRILLER DIRECTORS-CASE STUDY
STEVEN SPILBERG
Steven Spilberg is an influential film director who is Hollywood’s best known director who is a film director, screenwriter, producer and studio entrepreneur. He’s had a career of more than four decades and his films have covered many themes and genres. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1946 and went to California State University Long Beach. He made many short films which included ‘Escape to Nowhere (191)’ and ‘The Last Gun (1959)’.
Spielberg produced a series of films, which included Evolution (2001), The Haunting (1999) and Shrek (2001). He also produced two sequels to Jurassic Park (1993), which were financially but not particularly critical successes. In 1993, Spielberg returned to the adventure genre with the film version of Michael Crichton's novel Jurassic Park, about a theme park with genetically engineered dinosaurs. With revolutionary special effects provided by friend George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic Company, the film would eventually become the highest grossing film of all time (at the worldwide box office) with $914.7 million. This would be the third time that one of Spielberg's films became the highest grossing film ever. He also won an Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998).
Sian Elias
QUENTIN TARANTINO
Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born on the 27th of March 1963 in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA but moved to California at the age of four with his mother. His mother, Connie McHugh is a nurse and his father, Tony Tarantion is an Italian-American actor and musician from New York, but he left the family before Quentin was born.
Quentin dropped out of high school and worked as an usher at an adult film theater. In his early 20’s, Quentin got a job in Manhattan beach, California at Video Archives. Whilst working there, he wrote the scripts for ‘True Romance’ and ‘Natural Born Killers’. He left Video Archives to go and work for a production company called ‘Cinetel’ in 1990. During his time there he was able to get his script for ‘True Romance’ to a Director called Tony Scott.
In January 1992, ‘Reservoir Dogs’ appeared at the Sundance Film Festival, this helped him to become one of the most talked-about figure in Hollywood, however, it wasn’t a big hit in the United States only overseas. In 1994, Quentin’s ‘Pulp Fiction’ premiered at Cannes Film Festival and it won the Palme D’OR award. It also was nominated for the best picture, best director and best original screenplay at the Academy Awards in 1995, and got best original screenplay. In the United States ‘Pulp Fiction’ became the first independent film to earn over $108 million at the box office.
Quentin wrote and directed one of the four stories featured in ’Four Rooms’ in 1995. Then not long after, in 1996 he collaborated with Robert Rodriguez, to do ‘From Dusk Till Dawn (Quentin wrote the screenplay). Then in 1997 Quentin done ‘Jackie Brown’. In 1998, Quentin starred on Broadway taking a break from filmmaking. In 2005, Quentin wrote and directed an episode of ‘CSI’ and received an Emmy Award nomination for it. In 2007 Quentin and Robert Rodriguez made ‘Grindhouse’ together but this didn’t do well at all because the audience didn’t really know what to think of them both collaborating. However in 2009, Quentin released ‘Inglorious Basterds’ which was a better success because it was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, two of which we’re for Quentin himself, for best director and best original screenplay. Finally in 2012 ‘Django Unchained’ was released, and the film won a Academy Award for best original screenplay at the 85th Academy Awards (2013), it also won Oscar nominations such as best picture, cinematography and sound editing.
Marija Gustainyte
ALFRED HITCHCOCK
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) was a film director and producer from Waltham Forest in London. He later moved to Hollywood after his success and continued to make more famous pictures.
In 1926, Hitchcock directed his first thriller, it was a silent film called The Lodger, which was about Jack The Ripper. This was his first successful film after directing his debut movie in 1922. Then, in 1929, Hitchcock released Blackmail, which was the first thriller made with sound, as well as the first film made with sound in Britain.
Hitchcock’s name is synonymous with thrillers, with some of his most well known thrillers being Strangers on a Train (1951), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963).
When watching Hitchcock’s films, you can often find him making a cameo appearance, with him starring in 39 out of 52 of his own surviving major films. These appearances would be only for short periods of time, with many of them with him starring as an extra. This is believed to be for publicity, with Alfred’s face also being shown on many of his film posters.
Hitchcock’s films influenced the desire to produce more thriller films, for example, J. Lee Thompson’s Cape Fear (1962) and a fairly recent film called The Tourist, directed by Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck in 2010.
Amy Miller
We researched Thriller directors so that we could learn from the films that they have directed and also learn from the shots that they use, to make their movies into the Thriller genre.
Laura Rojas