Kyle Cooper

Kyle Cooper is a designer of title sequences for movies, he studied graphic design at Yale University. Cooper worked as a creative director at advertising agencies in New York and LA, where he created the title sequence for the 1995 crime thriller film, ‘Se7en’, which was extremely successful. Copper said that when he created the title sequence for  Se7en, he was aiming to create something different than what was being shown in music videos and commercials at the time, he wanted to raise the bar and make something more creative.  Cooper co-founded Imaginary Forces in 1996, a creative agency, however he left Imaginary Forces as he wanted to focus less on the business side and more on the creative work.  In 2003 he then founded the creative agency Prologue,  and worked on the field of film title design.


This is the opening sequence of se7en, a crime thriller where Kyle Cooper designed the opening sequence. This sequence is purposely designed to be quite mysterious however it doesn't want to give away to much, so each mini clip is designed to hint something about the film, such as the cutting out of words and scribbling on the paper. The writing font that is chosen very carefully in order to introduce the fact that the man writes information down and the non-digetic sound of the crackling and scratching is introduced to make the clip seem mysterious and show us that he is not doing something he should be. The editing in the sequence has also been done so that everything is very quick and fast paced, which gives the thriller a sense of suspense as nothing is shown fully so nothing can be deciphered from it. The non-digetic background music is eerie and also contains exaggerated scratching noises. The music foreshadows the fact that this film is going to be quite strange and mysterious.

Target audience interviews for thrillers

We interviewed a boy and a girl asking them a a series of questions;
1.What thrillers fo you like?
2.Why do you watch those thrillers?
3.What is your favourite thriller film?
4.What are you looking for when you watch a film?

We got different responses from the boy and the girl when we asked them these questions. The girl awnsered that she dosen't like thrillers, and would prefer to watch a romantic film because she likes seeing the good looking boys and girls as the main roles. This was interesting as it showed that girls have different views on thriller films and it is a stereotypical ideology that girls like watching romantic films. When we questioned the boy, he awnsered that he likes thrillers because he likes the fights and the action, this is also a typical view which we could expect from a boy. These reponses provided us with some feedback of what boys and girls like seeing in the films and therefore gave us some ideas on how we could make our thriller appeal to both genders.

How our Thriller idea is moving forward

After the feedback which we got from Matt and Simon, we decided to alter our thriller concept. We were still really keen on keeping the two seperate cars with the couple and the mysterious man in each, however we decided to change the time period and setting of the piece. We decided to change the setting to the top floor of a carpark, as this would be empty and would be mysterious, and we decided to change the time period of the thriller to modern day as this would be easier to create. However we decided to put a bit of a twist into the plot, and make the woman an evil character who is secretly on a side with the evil man, however this wouldnt be shown until the very end of the clip. It would be symbolyised that the woman is evil through the fact she is wearing a red dress and red lipstick, but she would have been seen as being a couple with the man she is in the car with, and we would see her giggiling and flirting with the man. We then see a sniper target on the woman, and it looks like the woman is going to be killed, and as she is going in to kiss the man, she gives a slight look towards the gunman (who is the mysterious man in the other car) and then he will pull the trigger, however; it is not the woman who gets shot, it is the man.

Account of Thriller Pitch

We pitched the presentation which we made to our teachers Matt and Simon, explaining to them clearly how we wanted the opening sequence to look. Some of the feedback that we got from them was that the story needed a punch line at the end, as the idea at the moment was that no one would get killed but we would just build suspense throughout. They also said that the concept of a large projection screen and old fashioned cars would be very difficult, and it would be easier to filmed if we could change the setting somehow. Overall they said they liked the idea but it is a hard concept to film, so  we should play to our strengths and take the things that we like out of it, such as the concept of the two different cars and the evil and innocent characters, and move the idea forward somehow. This was quite a positive process as it encouraged us to move forward with the idea and expand on it, changing some things around to make it a more realistic idea for filming and a more attractive film for an audience.

Thriller Idea

Deciding on our thriller idea

We all discussed our individual ideas together and decided which to use. We all agreed on a thriller idea of a thriller set in the 1950's. We decided to use this one as it was someting different and was quite an original concept,  we felt it would be a good experience to film. We all thought that this idea was a strong idea and we could work well together as a group on creating it. We worked on a powepoint which we were going to pitch to our teachers, Matt and Simon. This consisted of the different ideas which we had created for what the actors should wear, the camera, lighting, sound effects and what we should include in the mise en scene.

Thriller sub-genres

There are 5 different sub-genres of thrillers; the conspiracy thrillers, the political thriller, the spy film, the psychological thriller, the techno-thrillers and the supernatural thriller.
A genuine thriller is a film that follows a single-minded goal. It normally includes excitement, suspense, anticipation, expectation, tension, and people being placed in life threatening situations, all building towards a final climax.




The conspiracy thriller (or paranoid thriller)
This type of thriller normally involves journalists or other types of investigators finding out a small piece of information which leads to them uncovering a conspiracy and leads them to find out a lot more then origionaly intended. These are often played out as ''man/woman-in peril'' stories, or narratives which are similar to detective stories. The key themes of conspiracy thrillers are; rumours, deception, lies, and old history being brought back up. Examples of conspiracy thrillers are; The divinci code, the girl with the dragon tattoo, salt and angels and demons.





The political thriller
A political thriller is a thriller which involves a political power struggle, invloving extra-legal plots, where someone if trying to gain power and other people are trying to stop them. The normal themes of political thrillers are; political corruption, terroism and warfare. Political thrillers can be based on true events, and also overlap with the sub-genre of consiracy thriller. Examples of conspiracy thrillers are; The Ghost Writer, State of play, JFK and The edge of darkness.





The spy film
The spy film is a subgenre of both thriller and action. Spy films show the espionage activities of governemt agents and show how high the risk is of them being discovered. The spy film is one of the most popular types of thriller worldwide. The main themes of spy films are; technological thrills, exotic locales, and they combine the action and science fiction genres. Examples of spy films are; The Bourne films, James Bond, and Hanna.





Psychological thriller
A thriller with a big focous on the unstable emotional characters combined with mystery, and sometimes with the drama genre and the horrow genre. The main themes of psychological thrillers are; reality, perception, mind, existence, identiy and death. Examples of psychological thrillers are; Silence of the lambs, seven, black swan, vertigo and psycho.





Techno-thrillers
This is a genre which drwas ideas from both science fiction and thrillers. They include more technical details than most other genres, such as military technology. Techno-thrillers often overlap with the genre of near-future science fiction. The main themes of techno-thrillers are; technology, mechanics, espionage, martial arts and politics. Examples of techno-thrilers are; jurassic park, westworld, the net, die hard 4.0 and I robot.






Supernatural thriller
In supernatural thrillers, out of this world elements such a fantasy are brought in, with added tension, suspense and polt twists. These films build there suspense through the plot twists rather than action. Examples of supernatural thrillers are; The others, The sixth sense, Fallen and What lies beneath.

Editing our Prelims

When editing the prelims I learnt how to edit and match shots, and i learnt how to check the clips in and out so they appeared on the desktop when checked out and could be used in final cut pro so we could edit them. One of the things which i really liked about the editing was being able to chose from a whole different range of shots and also being able to change from shot to shot and the film still making sense. This, however, was one of the things i found most difficult as it was very hard to find the correct place in another clip to place in where you left off, in order for the dialogue and positions of the actors to still make sense. Another thing which i found quite difficult was trying to match up the sound and the video at the same time, and also to make sure that when the sound was switching from one clip to another it flowed on and did not have a gap in it. Another thing which i enjoyed about the editing was how you could cut the clips and only use parts of them, and insert them in anywhere to your film. I found the fact that when filming the prelim we filmed quite a few extra shots very useful as it gave us the diversity to chose from whichever shot we wanted, and enabled us to make the script look more realistic and have more of a story line for example by showing a close up of the girls shocked face at the end and by showing a shot which was filmed from the outside of the set, to give the effect that someone was looking in. If i could do one thing again i would have made the actors say the script with slightly longer gaps in between the sentences in order for us to show the shocked looks on their faces with extreme close ups which would therefore create a tenser atmosphere. I would also have another light in the room to make the whole thing a bit brighter so we could see what was going on more clearly, however i did feel that the darkness had an effect on the film, making it more tense and mysterious. I felt that as a group we worked very well together, as we each gave our input into which clips should be placed where and managed to agree and therefore put all our ideas together in order to edit the prelim to the best of our ability's.