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.