Final Edit

This is our final edit of our thriller and I am overall very happy with it because I think that we did the most that we could do and we overcame all of the problems that came our way.

Draft Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The most important thing that you can do in a thriller is to get the opening correct. This is because if you cannot keep the audience enticed then you lose them. The opening sequence should tell the audience about the film but you should not give the plot away. You should show some characters but not get to know anything about them so far other than what can be told by their costumes, attitudes or diegetic sound. You should include some titles in the opening sequence of the film which we have included four and then the actual title 'The Haunting' at the end. In our product we have decided to use many different conventions which are typical of the thriller genre. We decided to make all of our clips darker by using the fast colour corrector because we thought that this would make the clips look a lot darker and scarier. Some of the clips were done in daytime and this is not very typical of the thriller convention as quite a lot of the time thrillers are in the darker periods of the day or are filmed in bad weather. On the clip of the table tipping we decided that we would choose an effect which made the clip in the middle of the shot focused and then on the outside of the circle there it is just black. We decided to do this because we thought that this would make people focus on the shot in the middle of the clip rather than looking anywhere else. Although there is not really anything else to focus on, we wanted to make this the main feature of the clip because it is scary and also begins to hint on the storyline and what it is about. We have chosen to put dip to black on lots of our shots also because we thought that this would make the clip seem darker. If we had chosen to dip to white then that would not have really been relevant because it would not be follow the typical conventions of the thriller genre. The dip to black is more relevant because our thriller intends to be dark and moving and we don’t want to make the clips seem light and happy.

How does your media represent particular social groups?

When we began to research into thriller films we decided that a questionnaire would be a suitable way to find out the information that we needed. The majority of the people that we got answers from were young adults and we thought that an age group from about 16-25 would be a good age group to aim our thriller clip towards. These age groups are the ones who are most likely to watch thriller films because it is what they find interesting and fun to watch. This meant that we had to create a storyline which would excite them. We used actors who are 16-17 because this is relevant to the audience. We decided to wear normal clothing which is relevant to teenagers as we wanted them to feel as though they can relate to the film. I wore jeans, a jumper and UGG boots and Lizzie was wearing a blouse, leggings and military boots as these are just typical clothing of teenagers.

It also shows that they are not expecting to be going anywhere dangerous because if they were going to be in danger then they would be wearing provocative clothing instead. Also because it is not too dark it shows that the characters did not intend on staying too late Who would be the audience for your media product? If people were wanting to watch ‘The Haunting’ then I think that the most suitable audience would be younger adults who are interested in paranormal thrillers and being excited by films which are fast moving. If people enjoy watching other films such as Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch Project then they would enjoy watching ‘The Haunting’ because we tried to base our film around the opening scenes of these films. I think that the appropriate age grouping would be 16-25 year olds as these are young adults. The film could not be aimed at anybody under the age of the 15 because this could cause problems as some of the footage is not suitable for them. If people had watched movies similar to this before then they may want to watch this film because it is something that they would be able to relate to. Another reason that I feel comfortable with saying that 16-25 year olds would be a good social group to aim my film at is because they are an age group which at the moment due to 'paranormal activity' movies and 'most haunted' on television, they are most interested in ghost walks. It is something that they don't quite know what to expect from it and this makes them want to keep watching as they cannot predict what might happen.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

If I was going to distribute my media then I would most probably choose 'Warp Films' as they are an independent film distributor and they would more than likely fit in with my budget and location which are smaller and not as great as I would like. 'Warp Films' produced the film 'Hush' (2008) which is a thriller film and this is another reason that I feel that 'Warp Films' would do well to distribute my film because they have experience within the genre.

If my film had a larger budget then I would definitely want it to be distributed by a large company such as 'Universal' or 'Warner Bros' as they produce films which are high grossing. They have a lot of control when they want to distribute the films and with their marketing as they have a lot more money than small English companies such as 'Warp Films'.

'Warner Bros' would be a good distributor for my thriller film because they have distributed other thriller films such as 'Harry Potter' 'The Dark Knight' and 'Inception' before and made huge figures. These are all films that I have enjoyed and they manage to make lots of people want to watch them by the large amounts of marketing that they do.

Harry Potter has produced so far 7 films over 10 years and made $6,369,345,142 which is a humungous amount of money. All of the films have been directed by different people because different images and inspiration have come from them all. The series is the highest grossing of all time.

The Dark Knight (2008) was directed by Christopher Nolan and had a budget of about $185 million and they had a gross revenue of $1,001,921,825.

Inception (2010) was directed by Christopher Nolan, the same as The Dark Knight. They had a budget of about $160 million and they produced a gross revenue of $825,531,030.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We have aimed our media product towards the young adults audience because we feel as though this is the group which is most likely going to want to watch our piece. Even though this is who we have attracted the film towards, people older than this could also be interested in watching the film because ghosts and the paranormal are things that people are intrigued into as they do not know much about them. When I did my questionnaire, I asked around my age group because they are part of the young adult audience. I wanted to know what they were interested in seeing in a film. We decided that we would not aim the film towards a particular gender because if it is aimed at both then the audience is going to be larger which would bring in a larger gross profit. Even though parts of the audience are specific I believe that our film will attract to a large audience.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

When we were filming we have found out quite a lot about technology. This is because we had a few problems with the actual camera when we went to film for the first time at our first location. When the camera was taken to Tutbery Castle the battery ran out which meant that after the long drive to Tutbery that we could not even get the footage that we wanted and needed for the thriller clip. To try and get past this problem, some videos were shot on an iPhone, although this was a good idea, unfortunately the footage did not come out as well as we had hoped it would have done as it was shaky and also we could not put it onto Adobe Premiere anyway because it was not in the correct format. The second time that we went to film was at our new location, Attenborough Church.

We also had technology problems when we went to this location because when we began to film it was over exposed and you could not see any of the building or any of our faces. The only part of us that came up was the darker parts of our clothing as shown in the image below. We began to film anyway as we hoped that we would be able to change the lighting on Adobe Premiere.

When it started to get darker the camera began to also show us up more on the camera and the building so we decided that we would redo all of the shots that we had already done. This came up a lot better but it was still far too over exposed and this meant that when we got back to our lessons we could not use a lot of the footage that we had already shot. This was the second time that we had had problems with technology and unfortunately was not the last. The third time that we went to film we did not have any problems with the camera technology which was fortunate and we were able to film the shots that we needed. The last time that we went to film, we were out in some fields and we lost all of the battery. This wasted some of the remaining time that we have and this was not a lot of time at all. Overall the main technology problems that we had with the camera was the travelling so far to Tutbery and then the battery losing power and then the over exposure of the camera when we filmed for the second time. Both of these technology problems wasted a lot of our time and have shown when we have had to edit and put our work together. We also had technology problems when we were using Adobe Premiere because we have a lot of footage and this meant that Adobe Premiere had a few problems with managing it all and it crashed many times. Sometimes we were fortunate to have saved our work but at other times when it stopped responding we lost all of the work that we had produced in the lesson. This also caused us to lose time because we had to start producing all of the work that we had done again.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

When I look back on my preliminary task I did not really understand what I needed to do within the editing as we had a large group and they wanted to take over more. This meant that I did not get the option really to help with the editing. I also played part as one of the actors in the preliminary task which meant that I did not get to look at how to use the camera.

Fortunately I am quite good with cameras so when I needed to use the camera in the filming for our Thriller it was easy to get used to. On our first trip to our location there was only three of us and I mainly did the filming and then went on to the set as it is easy to cut out the parts which were not needed e.g. me getting into place for the scene. I found using the camera easy and not difficult at all although we did have some problems on our first filming session. When we arrived at our location the camera was far too over-exposed and we looked through all of the settings and could not change it. We tried to change the brightness and nothing happened so at the beginning we had a few problems with the camera. This meant that when it started to become darker that we had to get the most footage as possible before it went too dark that nothing could be seen. When we got back to the lessons and had to edit this was where it took quite a lot of time. This was because when we had done our preliminary task as other participants in other groups we did not get to do a lot of work in Adobe Premiere so we did not really know how to use the program. We all gradually learnt to use the program but it took longer than it probably should have done. I have definitely learnt how to use the program well and I do not have any problems with it anymore other than when the program crashes itself.

Sounds

Once we had spent some time on editing our clip we decided that we should add some sound to the clip. We wanted to find some music which was suitable for the theme of the clip which was paranormal and obviously a thriller. Music helps to create a feeling within an opening scene and it is important that the music is correct otherwise the feeling that you want to be created will not be created. When we went on to moodle which was advised by our teacher we found a website called www.freesounds.org where we looked through many different sounds until we found one that we thought suited our paranormal theme. The sound that we chose was called 'futuristic atmospheric ambient'. When we heard this music we believed that it was the most suitable and the best one that we were going to find with the time that we had.

Editing for final edit

As we all had different periods off throughout the day we were all in the media room throughout the day. Due to all have different timetables this was good because it meant that somebody was always in the room working on the final edit. We wanted to create a darker feeling to the majority of the clips so as none of us knew how to do this, we had to experiment with some of the effects and eventually found the correct one which would darken our clips. We also had a look on YouTube to try and understand how to use the effect that we had found because at first it did not make a lot of sense. We liked what the darker effect bought to the edit because it made it seem a lot more creepier and as it was not in daylight anymore it also made the atmosphere seem a lot less safe. Unfortunately we had some technical problems with Adobe Premiere Pro on the Friday which meant that we lost a lot of time which we had hoped we would not as we could not afford to lose any time. We had made it so if a problem like this was to occur that we did not have loads to do except add in a few pieces of footage which was fortunate as the deadline came far too close to us which we began to get quite scared about. If we had left ourselves anything else then we would not have reached the deadline in any possible way as we only just managed.

Filming for final draft

When we got our feedback we decided that we were going to need to film again. We decided to go back down to Attenborough Church and do some more filming and see what we can use. Unfortunately Louise was at work so she could not come a long but Emma did come this time. We decided to redo all of the footage as Louise was not there which meant that if we wanted to insert the shots then we would have to put all of the new shots in otherwise there would be three people on one lot of shots and then two people on the others. It was unfortunate that Louise was not able to come because some of the shots that we got were really good and we managed to put them where they were close ups but the long shots did not look right without Louise. This was because we decided we didn't want to change the shots where the three of us are walking through the gate as we thought that they were as good as we wanted them to be. The shot of me and Lizzie walking through the gate just the two of us was not as good as the original ones which meant that we could not use some of the other shots that we recorded with just the two of us. We were able to use close up shots but this was unfortunately not as much as we had hoped to be able to use. We are now very closely approaching the deadline and are going to have to go to film tomorrow night for the last time. This means that we have got to get the footage which is needed because our clip at the moment is only 45 seconds and we need at least another minutes worth of footage. When we were editing we managed to find some music to put over our clip which we are happy with and we also believe that it goes well with our paranormal theme of thriller. When we were editing we also did manage to elongate some of the clips which were still such as the gravestone and the titles which have our names on. We did this to try and elongate the time but it didn't really change much unlike we had hoped. Another thing that we did was we put the clips at the beginning of the church into a slow motion so that this clip would also last longer but once again didn't drastically change the amount of time that our clip runs for. We need to think of something that we can put into the clip quickly which could even include dialogue or we are not going to get the highest marks possible from our clip.

Feedback on First Draft

On Tuesday's lesson we all watched each others drafts and gave feedback on them. This was done so that we could improve our sequence as much as possible to get into the higher grade boundaries. As a group the feedback that we were given was;

• Add more credits to the opening of the thriller so that our clip is elongated as it is too short at the moment.


• Some of our shots are too exposed to the light so we most probably need to reshoot and create new footage but with the same shots.


• Make the sequence longer as it does not reach the two minute mark as it needs to.


• Add a soundtrack to create tension for the person watching.

I think that if we want to improve our thriller that we should also try to get inside of a church. When we shot the inside shots we were inside Emma's house and although we had the camera at a birds eye angle, the bed in the background was still in vision. This was disappointing but something we can film again in a proper location that fits the scene.

First Draft

Editing

As we re-shot everything on the Thursday and the deadline for the first draft was Friday we did not have a lot of time to do our editing. Although this was the case we did actually manage to get some good footage and also managed to get some good editing done. All four of us had some periods off throughout the day so there was always someone in the media room editing. Me and Louise put the footage into Adobe Premiere and had to decide which scenes were best for the sequence and choose between many different shots. We then put the footage in order with what the storyboard says and then also had to cut the different scenes so that we had the footage we wanted. When Lizzie and Emma joined us we all spoke to see if we were happy with what had been done so far and we decided that we would move some of the different scenes around to make it more synchronous. After lunch, Lizzie and Louise were left to do the transitions and make the scenes fit together, this involved making different scenes flash in to give the effect that we wanted which was quick and scary. When we were all happy with what we had in the sequence we uploaded it to YouTube and put it onto our blogs.

Props

We used a candle to create an eery effect because they are typical of the thriller genre e.g. in the film Stigmata, when there is a spirit there in the room the candle light will flicker and be blown out.









These are the matches which we used to light the candle with.












This is the ouija board that we used. We used the ouija board because it fits in with our paranormal genre which involves spirits and ghosts. We are going to use the glass also with the ouija board within a flash shot to make it seem as though there is a spirit there when we will be moving it.






We used the glass to create the ouija board shots and also to push it across the table to make it seem as though there is a spirit there.







We used the table to create the table tipping shots and also to push the glass across.

17th March

As a group we do not have much footage at the moment but we are going tonight straight after college to do lots of filming at different locations. We plan on going to Emma's house to use the ouija board and table tipping then we plan on going to the church in Attenborough to film the gravestones and the church as the actual setting. We then intend to all come into the media rooms throughout tomorrow day and do our editing.

Change in Location

As we have decided to change the location to Attenborough Church as it is more convenient for us as a group and it is similar to the setting that we were aiming for. Tutbery castle is too far away for us to keep going back to when there are many other options available to us closer to home. We feel that Attenborough Church is a good location because of the eeriness that it has. The pointiness of the tip of the church looks good because it makes the church significant from others. I have also been to Attenborough Church before and it is surrounded by trees and also has lots of gravestones which is good of the paranormal genre.

This is now our new location;

Planning - Filming

When Lizzie and Emma went to Turbury Castle to do the filming, unfortunately Me and Louise could not go with them because there was not enough room in the car. After thinking about the setting we chose, we think that we chose somewhere which was too far away and hard to get to. Lizzie and Emma managed to get some footage whilst they were there but there were some technical issues. When they got there, the camera was fine but the camera did die on them which meant that they had to use an iPhone to record some footage. The footage that was recorded unfortunately was no good because they did not use the tripod for a lot of it, this meant that it was handheld and very shaky which is a shame. This means that when the footage was bought back to the next lesson that we couldn't really use the footage as it wasn't to the standard that we wished it would be. After having second thoughts we have decided to find a new setting which is now Attenborough Church because it is a lot closer and easier to get to once our first draft has been handed in and if there are any problems we will be able to reach the location a lot faster. Another advantage is that we are able to all take part in the filming rather than just two people be limited to filming. Although we have had to create a second plan and this means that we will have limited time this is definitely a better option for the group because we are all taking part as a group within the filming.

Risk Assessment

Breaking the camera When we borrow the camera from the school we have a responsibility to look after it. The possible damages that we could cause are by dropping it, losing it and also if any water damage was to happen. This means that we need to be careful when we are using schools equipment because it is not our property and if we damage it then we will have to pay for the costs or replace it. Health and safety When we film we will be using ourselves as the actors but we need to ensure that we keep ourselves safe. We will be filming some of our shots from a road so we will need to be careful with the equipment at this point and also our own physical health. We should not put ourselves in danger in front of any cars. We are also filming in a graveyard and we should make sure that we are not disrespectful to any of the other people in the graveyard as that would be childish and very irresponsible. As one of our props we are also using some matches and a candle. As this is a fire hazard we should be careful as we do not want to set anything on fire or burn ourselves.

Location, Props and Actors

We have decided as a group to film a paranormal thriller and we thought that a castle would be appropriate as the setting. Emma's mum owns a company called Haunted Happenings which does ghost walks and we have chosen our setting to be one of the venues which they use for the walks called Tutbery Castle. We have designed the storyboard together around the castle and what we think that the setting is going to be like because we have not visited the castle before.

We are going to use some different props within our clip which include; ouija board, a glass, a table (which will be used for the tipping). We will need to find a ouija board to use but the glass and table are props which can be easily found.

Within the clip we do not necessarily need any actors because our clip is a paranormal thriller which is more to do with the actions of what is happening rather than the acting within the clip. If we need an actor we could easily find one on the spot but the clips we have chosen to use within the storyboard do not actually have any people in them.

Thriller - Planning

As a group we came up with some ideas which we thought would be suitable for a Thriller genre clip. Emma's mum has produced her own business called 'Haunted Happenings' which is to do with ghosts and as paranormal thriller is a type of thriller we thought that we could take advantage of her company and use one of her venues 'Tutbery Castle' for our setting.

The mind map includes ideas on editing, actors, shots, mise en scene and sound.

Storyboard

The first shot will be of the gates of Tutbery Castle and we are going to make the camera jolt

a little to create tension. The next shot is going to cut to very fast from above (birds eye shot) of some peoples hands on a table which is supposed to interpret a table topping activity which is something which is done on the company's walks. As the room will be dark due to the way the walks are done this will manage to help our filming to look thrilling. The next shot will be again of the gates which will now be opening to give a sense of the audience entering the film. The shot will carry on with us walking through the gates and footsteps will be heard in the background. The next shot will be a mid/long shot of some gravestones which shows the audience where the potentially are. There will then be a zoom up towards the gravestones which could be significant of the film with the names of the people on the gravestones. Afterwards there will be a shot of the mansion which shows the audience where the film is going to be set and they might be able to start thinking about what the film is about.

The next shot will be a long shot which will show the mansion door and this will stay still, after this the shot should stay the same but show people walking through the doors which creates tension for the audience as they are walking into an unknown building and mansions are normally known to be full of unknown things in thriller movies. Next will be a quick shot of a Ouija board which will flash off almost instantly. Because of the fast shot this should scare the audience as they are not expecting it. The flashing images which are shown are done to show what happens later on in the film. The shot will then go back to the door and pan the first room. When the pan is about halfway through there should then be an image of a glass with two hands above it moving quickly which should be a flash shot again. Lastly, there should be an establishing shot of the castle to remind the audience of where they are again which will jolt once edited.

Thriller research - The Dark Knight

Editing

The first shot of the company logo is very dark and they use a shadow effect which is a typical convention of a superhero as they are normally portrayed at the beginning of the film with a shadow of them in a wall or house. There is also something which seems to look like an explosion but they have used a dark blue and black instead of orange which creates a sense of darkness which relates to the film title. Throughout the opening sequence there are many different cuts which feels as though there is lots of things happening at once, the cuts are very quick just like the storyline is.

Camera shots

Camera shots are a very important part of building tension for a film and within The Dark Knight there are lots of different shots which are used to create tension. The first shot is an establishing shot of a large building which we believe to think is going to be significant to the film. This lets us as an audience know the setting is going to be set in the city/built up area. A zoom shot is then used on a large building which makes the audience wonder what is happening inside the building. Suddenly a window breaks on the building which makes the audience think that something that something unexpected is happening inside the building. Next is a pan shot which pans across towards the left and shows two men who are wearing masks and this shows the audience that there is a crime going on. Due to the masks there is a sense of mystery and we wonder how many other people are involved in the crime. The equipment which is being used is very technical and because the men are using them it seems as though they are experienced with the equipment which means its not the first time that they have committed a crime. Next there is a cut shot to a man stood in the street who is holding a mask and holdall bag. This creates more mystery for the audience because we do not know what he is doing in the street or what is happening. We also do not know what is in the bag which is another reason to be curious. The mask shows that he is part of the crime as it links him with the other people who were in the building. There is also an example of a mid shot when the two men are breaking into the electrical system. We do not know what the building has inside of it and what they want to change or break the electric system for but we know that they must want to steal something otherwise they would not have to go into the wiring systems.

Mise en Scene

The main mise en scene which is used within the opening sequence is the masks that the men are wearing. We know that they must be doing something wrong because they do not want their faces to be seen. This automatically makes the audience believe that they are committing a crime. The fact that they are also wearing gloves makes the audience feel as though they are part of a crime because it stops your fingerprints from being put onto the objects you are touching which would be found through DNA tests. The people that we believed are involved in a crime are all wearing black which is also common of a crime.

Thriller research - Se7en

Editing
The editing within the clip is very fast which makes it seem as though the film is not going to drag on and be a slow moving film, the film will be fast and full of suspense. It also makes sure that you do not see too much so that you don't try and read into things, it mainly just wants to show you quick shots so that your mind cannot keep up with the thrill.
Black cuts are also used as transitions to show the actors names, the production companies and directors. This can sometimes attract the audience as the names are big and good actors and produced by well known companies, this can also make the audience think of what they are to expect.


Camera shots
There are many close up shots used, mainly consisting of showing you somebody's hands. This creates suspense for the consumer because they want to know who the person is and what they are doing. The person is seen writing in a book, and we cannot see what they are writing, once again this can create suspense and also tension. It makes the consumer inpatient and they want to carry on watching because they want to know what the book is saying and who the person is. This is a classic thriller convention, as they do not want to give too much away at the beginning of the film so they decide to keep you enticed by not giving out too much information. We also see a lot of close ups of the book which if you were to read into the lines before you carried on watching the film, you would realize that the book is a very big part of the film. Pictures of many different people are shown and also different words are given close up shots. This is once again done to create suspense.


Sound
The music used in the clip sounds very electric but also 'eery'. There are many different screeching sounds used which can make some people 'cringe' as these are not sounds which are nice to your ears. The screeching sound is used to make people feel edgy and aware. The music that is used is typical of a thriller as the music is not nice to your ears and it is not something that you would listen to if you wanted to be happy. At the end of the clip the sound drags out and ends on a bang, this ends the suspense and shows the beginning of the film.

Panic Room - Internet Audience Research

Sound When the scene begins, there is a sound of thunder which is done because a lot of people feel out of their comfort zone when thunder and lightening are about as they are a danger to them. After the sound of thunder, a soundtrack comes onto the opening sequence and it sounds like a lot of brass instruments as the music is very heavy which is typical of the thriller genre. Halfway through the sequence when the title appears, the music becomes heavier and louder which puts an impact on the name of the thriller. Another sound that I heard when listening to the soundtrack was some sounds of traffic which could possibly set the scene for the audience and let them realise that they are in the center of a city. Editing There is not a lot of editing within this clip because it is a lot of title sequences in a very futuristic, modern way which does the job rather than have a typical white font on black background which many thrillers do e.g. Seven. The editing is mainly just straight cuts but I think that this is done deliberately so that it can get the information that it needs across as fast as possible, whilst making an impact. It impacts on the names of the actors and also the directors etc. Camerawork The majority of the camerawork focuses on building so that they can edit the titles into the sequence. They are mostly long shots and this is done to establish the different buildings so that the audience can start to figure out where the film is set.

Introduction to Thriller

Thriller is a genre in the film industry and it aims to keep you enticed and to generally thrill you. It uses suspense and tension to keep you watching as these are key conventions which keep you enticed. Thriller films are very popular and their trailers are normally also very interesting to watch as they tend to not give away the story line, they don't want you to go into the film knowing the base of the storyline.

IMDb shows on its 'movie database' website that 'Pulp Fiction', 'Inception', 'The Dark Knight' and 'Fight Club' are some of the most popular thrillers to people in the world.

Before we decide to shoot our clip we will watch thriller films like these examples to give us some ideas and inspiration. Watching the first two minutes of these films can be a good way to choose what we should do with our clip. We can decide what we think works and what we think doesn't look right. This will help us to get the conventions that we need in to our clip and then we can use them in our filming.

Editing lesson 3

Unfortunately for this lesson I was away on holiday. This meant that I did not manage to contribute when it came to the decision of whether or not to put music over the top of the clip. Although I was not here I think that the group did a really good job of finishing the clip as it has all come together very well. Jay found a audio clip and the group decided to use this and put it over the clip.

Editing lesson 2

In last lesson we cut out the scenes which we thought we did not need to be in our clip. This meant that in this lesson that we could spend time on some harder editing which would focus more on the appearance of the clip rather than the sequencing. We wanted to change the colour of the clip to something different as the colours that were used did not give the clip the correct conventions of a thriller. We tried 'sepia' and enhancing the colours that we already had but we finally decided on using a black and white theme, we chose this design because of the effect that it gave. It made the film seem a lot more tense and people would not know what to expect from the film when watching it for the first time. The black and white theme makes the film look a lot more defined as you can see the shadows better within the film which creates more tension.

Next we wanted to edit the way that all the clips were put together e.g. the way they transition. We wanted to make sure that the consumers felt tense so we decided that we would mainly just used black straight cuts as this is a fast shot and simple but effective. We also wanted the clip to seem mysterious so some slower transitions were put in such as 'fade'

Throughout the clip when there is dialogue there is some buzzing noises which is from natural sources. Unfortunately for the preliminary task we did not have enough time to get rid of the noise and record over the clip. This would have been very complicated also and we managed to slightly reduce the buzzing noise in some clips as we muted the clips with no dialogue in. Our film is nearly finished as we have done the audio and appearance today but we will decide next lesson as to whether or not we want to put a track over the top of the clip for more tension.

Editing lesson 1

One of the options that we thought about adding to our film was to voice record over the filming. This was an option because we were told that the original sound which is recorded on the video camera normally tends to have a buzzing sound when the clip is being played. This is because of the natural sounds of reality have come into the filming from objects such as computers and people in different classrooms faint voices. We were planning on finding a quiet room and recording the dialogue but the technician told us that this would make editing rather difficult so we decided that we shouldn't bother as we did not have loads of time. Nobody in our group had edited anything on Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 before so we didn't want to make things more difficult than they had to be.

The technician kindly came and showed us how to use some of the editing tools on Adobe Premiere Pro Cs4 program as none of us had used the program before and didn't have a clue what to do. He taught us how to cut out some scenes which we didn't want using the 'razor tool' and we could see from the basics and common knowledge how to change the colour of different scenes etc. The 'razor tool' allows you to cut shots out of a scene which you do not

Filming

As the props that we needed were already completed (photos) this meant that we could start filming on Thursday afternoons double media lesson. When we go into the lesson we straight away got into shooting as we wanted to get the best out of the time we had. When we were filming we decided that we would take time in deciding where our lighting should go and the different shots that we should use.

When we were taking time in deciding what shots to use we ended up changing a few shots throughout our time together. This was because we wanted to create more suspense and make the clip as thrilling as possible.

We went into a classroom to do our filming and moved things around to try and make it look like an office. We created a desk for Sam to sit at with me at the other end as she was supposed to represent a 'gangster' and I was supposed to talk to her throughout the clip.

We definitely achieved what we wanted to as all of the work that we wanted to be done was finished. This meant that we could edit the filming next lesson.

Planning for the Preliminary Task

Before we had a double media lesson on the Thursday a

fternoon, Rachel, Sam and Jay decided that they would take advantage of their free periods on Wednesday to go and take some photos which would save time for us on the Thursday. I had a full day in college so could not go with them unfortunately but they created some great results. The photos were of Rachel and Jay and they showed them taken hostage which was part of our storyline. They used props to help the photos look more realistic and Rachel used a program called 'Picnik' over the internet on the Wednesday night to also help make them look realistic. This was the final image that was decided on.

Tuesday 18th January

I unfortunately was not here for this lesson as a I had my sociology exam. Although I was not here, my group managed to get some ideas together and they chose to do a thriller clip. They chose a thriller clip because they believed that there were many different options within editing and camera shots to change the way that the shots looked when filmed.

Once they had decided on the thriller genre, they began to create some storyboards.

In the storyboards that they completed they wrote down the different camera shots that they would be using in each clip, edits between the shots and different sounds. This made it a lot easier for filming because we would know what to do straight away. The clip that we are shooting should last no longer than 30 seconds. This means that there will be lots of quick shots which will make the thriller genre take place due to the conventions that we can use.