Audience Feedback

(1) - After watching the opening of 'The Assistant', I found that it was really exiting. I feel as though it met the aims of appealing to the target audience as I am 17 and I really enjoyed it. It had main characters signified right from the start which set the scene and made me feel as though I knew which characters. This then continued into the mise en scene of the opening, as it showed the front of the house and I did not expect to see in the house, but there was filming in the house with other characters which was good.
(2) - This opening thriller is good. The enigma which is set at the start of the opening sequence is good as it shows the mystery that starts right at the beginning. This is then concluded after we see the front of the house, and the man carrying the bag and then we see what is inside the house and who is in the room that the character is searching for. It meets the needs of the target audience as it is appealing to the age, this is because the characters used are of a similar age and there is also a sense of danger, and daring appealing to the audience, as a the younger end of the audience would enjoy watching a film with a sense of danger and thrill to it.
(3) - This opening sequence is good as it has a lot of thriller conventions. One of the good thriller conventions consists of the openign creditsd a

Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My opening sequence is seen as a very significant part of a thriller, or for any film that is. My opening sequence consists of the following codes and conventions of a thriller; it has a large enigma throughout the whole of the opening sequence. The black plastic back creates a very large mystery, from the moment we see the character walking across the field with the bag until we see him entering the door with it over his shoulder. It makes the audience want to know what is in the bag. There is also the enigma of the fact that we don’t know where the character is walking to and what is behind the door. However, this enigma is resolved quite early on as we have shown, as we see where the character is going and where he ends up in the end.
I introduced an antagonist right at the start of the opening sequence. It shows a male character walking, for quite a while, dressed in dark clothing and a scarf around his mouth, looking as though he is attempting to hide his face from people seeing him. The fact that he is

dressed in dark clothing and his head is looking downwards shows that he may be suspicious of people seeing him, making the audience feel as though he is the bad character in the thriller. There is also the fact that he is carrying a bag as well, it makes the audience wonder what he is carrying in the bag and if it is something bad, as it is a large bag and is slung over his shoulder, making the audience feel as though anything could be in there.
I established the narrative by filming the main, male character walking for quite some time. I filmed him walking across a large field towards a town; I then filmed him walking up a village street towards a house, and up the drive. I then filmed the character walking into the house through a large oak door, making the scene look as though it was meant to be slightly spooky and dangerous. We then see the dark nature of the inside of the house. This gives the audience a slightly nervy feeling as it is dark and there are a lot of creaking floorboards and doors. I also established the narrative in the way that we find out what is inside the house that we view at the beginning. This helps the audience to establish the scene and to have a slight understanding of where the thriller is being shot and what is in the main house in the opening.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My media opening represents the social group of working class viewers of the mainstream audience. This is because I used a certain selection of characters with the age group that was of a teen age and the setting that I used appeals to the audience. I chose Shaun as I felt the way he dressed was suitable to the character, as the character is supposed to be mysterious and quite daunting, I feel as though he brings this across within the way he dresses as he is wearing dark colours that cover most of his face, resulting in a character that looks quite intimidating. I also feel as though he brings this across with the look of his face, as the little we see if it is where he is looking down and is concentrating, as though he is planning something. The experience he has with drama and acting was suitable for the area he was working in within our thriller task, as he is a confident actor and is patient when working. I feel as though his experience was shown in this he worked well when we had to re-shoot certain parts he was fine with it, and when we had to shoot certain shots over and over again he was okay with it. I also feel as though our thriller attracts to the audience I have mentioned as it is has the typical thriller genre of the film starting slowly and then eventually getting into the proper story. It shows the character at the beginning of the shot looking the same age as the target audience; this would then entice the audience to watch more, as they feel a connection with the characters.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
After researching the types of Distribution Company and looking at the different funding each one has, i ended up exploring into EM media; I then found that a small distribution company within them called optimum would be the best one for me. http://www.optimumreleasing.com/about.php. Within this website, i explored their history and found that the films they have distributed have won an Oscar, such as the film spirited away and nowhere in Africa. I also found that they are a company who, much like EM Media, like to work with undescoverd talents to make them into well known actors, boosting their career. I then found that they are low budget. This helps with the situation that i am in as a low budget is what i am working with, therfore showing that they would understand. I found that they are used to working with new directors and film producers and that they would display the film in a way that would still look professional. I am a new film director and producer, who would need this kind of producer. I would choose Optimum as my distribution company as it is a low budget company and this would help with my budget of the overall film. It is also a company of EM media. This would be relevant to my film as I am from the East Midlands and EM media is a Midlands based company. There is also the fact that this distribution company likes to help with not so well known films and directors and this would give the film a boost as they deal with smaller films a lot and would have a lot of experience. I feel as though the distribution company I have chosen will help my film to reach an audience over time. I feel as though this is because it is a small distribution company and will release my film in small cinemas, once my film is seen time and time again it may then go on to be released into larger, multiplexes. This will give a lot of attention towards my film and will make the distributer, actors and me, the director, well known.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience that my thriller is aimed at is middle class people. This is because I feel as though I chose the characters to suit this kind of audience. I chose characters that look as though they are of an age above 25, from either the way they are dressed or they way they act. For example, I chose Shaun as he can dress to look older, and as we do not see his face that much, it looks as though he is older than he is. The reason I chose Tasha for the part of the older woman, as she is good at acting slow and frail and has the right body shape for the angle we are looking at her from. They both cooperate well with the situations that I put them in and this saved a lot of time. My film addresses the audience in the way that it is bringing up the opening credits as we see the first character walking, letting the audience see the name of the characters. The mode of address towards the audience is also given in the use of equilibrium. We see a character, who is looking mysterious, we then see a house, a sense of worry is given within the use of a hand held camera, and we then see the character find the room he is looking for and the disequilibrium is restored back to equilibrium, when we see the woman in the room, and the bag is given to her.
How did you attract/address your audience?
I attracted my audience in many different ways. As the audience wants to watch a thriller in the first place, I have included a lot of typical thriller conventions. For example, at the beginning of the opening sequence, the audience immediately sees the character walking across the field. He is holding a large black bag. This immediately makes the audience wonder what is inside the bag as they can see that there is something in it; however, they do not know where this man is going or why he is carrying the bag, this makes the audience want to watch on to see what happens. This is one main enigma in my opening that immediately attracts the audience. I was inspired by the thriller, ‘The Blair Witch Project’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfnXbXKi2-s
I found this very unusual and decided to use ideas from it, these mostly included the part in our film where we shoot in a hand held style. In the Blair witch project the style is like this a lot, creating a confused atmosphere and is also a bit unsteady, giving the impression of a unsteady atmosphere and a feeling of uncertainty. I decided to use this motif, as I felt as though it went with the mystery of the character with the black bag and also the mystery of where he is going. I also addressed the audience, by including the credits in the film. This connects with the audience, as they feel a sense of ownership, as though they know the names of the actresses and actors and the directors as well, instead of watching a film not knowing the names of the characters.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout this whole process, I have learnt many new things. Firstly, I have learnt how to capture a piece of film, from the tape onto adobe reader. I found this confusing at first, but I eventually was able to do this on my own. I feel as though this is really useful thing to know as it will help me a lot in the future with my media studies. I have also learnt a lot about the way that cameras work. For example, they are very simple to use, and I have learnt a lot about the way I have to work with them to get the right shots and to create unusual shots. I have also learnt about having to set the white balance on the camera, this made a large difference with the way that the lighting was and the way that it affects the color of people’s skin and the surroundings around it. I have also learnt that you by using other equipment, such as large lighting it can make the scene look completely different. There is also the fact that I can use the tripod to put the camera on and this helps a lot with the filming of shots when characters are walking so that you can film the slowly and smoothly, instead if have a juddering camera, that looks hand held when it’s supposed to be still. I also learnt a lot about the lighting that should be used in media filming. I found that the lighting was helped a lot when you alter the light balance, and also when you use the larger lights that create a better effect that just a usual spot light.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Overall, looking back at the whole process, from the start of practicing with mobile phone cameras to give us the feel of filming, to the finished product and re-editing on adobe reader, I feel as though it has gone really well. At the start if the unit, my group and I worked really well together, we brainstormed a lot of good ideas that helped a lot to speed up the process of bringing together an idea on paper. We then drew out the storyboard, that planned out our main ideas that we all had, which helped to give us more of an idea of what it would look like on film, as we could see pictures if it instead of just writing. This made me learn, that working in a group can sometimes be a good thing, as I like working independently most of the time, however, I went in a group with two other people, And found that I worked I really well, I feel as though the work was split up more and I was able to do a lesser amount of work to a higher standard, as I had more time to do it. I then learnt that whilst doing the filming, that we worked well again, we managed to split up the filming part of it equally and everyone ended up getting an equal part of the filming and acting which made everyone happy and satisfied with the contribution that they had made. I have also learnt a lot about the sound in this task. At first we began talking about a script and other relevant things to do with the verbal side of the filming, however once we had filmed we found that the sound may not be needed and we looked at different pieces of music that created the atmosphere we wanted. We found a piece of music that was quite fast, we then decided to play around with it and slow it down, this gave a really great sound that was slow and quite mysterious, again giving the feeling that we wanted. I also feel as though each person in my group had a significant role. I was more involved in the way the different storyboards looked, for example the drawing and sketching side of it. I also was involved with the choosing of the costumes as this is something I enjoy. Shaun and Charlotte both had their own separate roles, such as Charlotte was involved in the risk assessment and the part that was more written, and me and Shaun were more involved with the analysis of some of the work that Charlotte had done. Overall, I found that we all worked well together in our group and that we chose our ideas well and were not offended when someone said that maybe one person’s idea did not work too well.

Friday 16th April - Re-editing

In today’s lesson, Shaun, Charlotte and I captured the re-filming we had done, onto the computer. We imported the certain parts that we wanted and used the scene selection to cut them. We then looked back at the original opening that we had done and deleted the previous filming that we wanted to replace with the new parts. We did this and found that they fit in perfect and did not have to do much cutting. We then looked back at the effects we had previously inserted and decided that we wanted to use these again as they went well with the effect that we wanted to create. We then extended the music that we had already used so that it lasted all the way throughout the thriller. I feel as though our thriller is the best that we can get it and have worked hard on it to get to where we are.

Wednesday 14th April - Re-Shooting

Today, Shaun, Charlotte and I, re-shot the ending to our thriller opening. We re-shot the part where Shaun was walking up the drive, this is because we found that the camera work was not steady enough, and also we felt that we had shot him walking for too long, and it did not look right, so we cut down the walking part, to make it shorter. We then inserted a new part into our thriller; we were inspired by the Blair Witch project, as the shad a lot of hand held camera parts in it. This then gave us the idea that would relate to the ending, that we would film hand held, very violently and search around the house. This would then link to the mystery of ending up in a room after looking at all the others in the house. We wanted the feel of mystery and wonder so that the audience did not know where the character was going, but eventually we find the old woman in the room. We all feel very pleased with the outcome of the re-shooting, and feel that it made the thriller a lot better, even though we did like some of the parts before we re-shot them, we feel that from the feedback we got we had to change them to appeal to the audience that we wanted.

Monday 12th April - Evaluation

In this lesson, i started to do my evaluation. Shaun, Charlotte and I looked back after the half term break and found that we do need to re-shoot parts of our opening thriller. After some feedback from our teacher and analysing the end part ourselves, we found that it did not quite go with the rest of the opening and have decided to re-shoot on Wednesday. I started to write out my evaluation, analysing key points of the thriller that we are keeping but I shall analyse the finished product after we have re-shot.

Friday 19th March - Rough Draft Hand In

In this lesson, Shaun, Charlotte and I uploaded the video. This took us most of the lesson but it eventually uploaded. I feel as though we have worked well as a team to get the outcome we have got. I feel as though the ideas contributed were helpful from everyone and were all used in some way towards the final thriller. We helped each other out with props and location and each contributed to the research such as risk assessment and drawing up the storyboard.

There were some downsides to the task. For example when we could not get the film to capture properly in the first few lessons and we had to keep making a new project. However, we overcame this even though it made us a few hours behind; we all caught up outside of the lesson.

Overall, i am pleased with the outcome, and the ideas we all contributed to it.

Monday 15th March

In today’s lesson, Charlotte, Shaun and I again carried on with our editing. We decided on the final name of the thriller, which was 'The Associate'. We chose this name through the questionnaire that we carried out, which resulted in the decision for that name. We then looked back through the scenes we has edited together, to see where we wanted to put it. We made a practice edit so we could mess around with the editing and transitions. We placed the credits in front of Shaun, when he was walking up to the house. We chose the transition, 'crawl'. This made the title lead in front of Shaun and not overlap him. It looked as good as we wanted it too and so we placed this onto the final edit. We then showed Mr Mitchell our work; he gave us some feedback to act on. He gave us the feedback to make the font larger on the credits otherwise it is quite hard to read them when you are watching it on a large screen. We made these changes and also made the name of the thriller a lot larger so that it is easier to read.

We then had a lot of extra time in the lesson, so we decided to go through our blogs and update what we had done. We looked back through our photos and cropped some of them down. We made colour changes to some of the posts and made writing larger. This made our blogs look neater.

Friday 12th March

In todays lesson, Charlotte, Shaun and I, again carried on editing.We looked back over out work to see what we had done in the previous lesson. We look at the credits we had already done and decided they were suitable for the effect we wanted to create. We then decided to look at music. We looked on various different websites to see what music was available to us. We found many different ones but decided on five to choose from. We then put each piece of music into the thriller, and listened to each one after another. We narrowed it down to two and it took us all quite a while to figure out which one worked best. We finally decided on the piece of music called, ‘shunned’. This piece of music was really good for the effect we wanted. It is not too horror like, but builds up suspense as Shaun is walking making the audience wonder where he is going and why he is going there. Next lesson we are planning to put the main title into the thriller. We will use the same font as we have used for the rest of the credits so that it does not look disjointed and all looks similar.

Monday 8th March - capturing and editing

In this lesson we began by looking back over our work that we captured in the last lesson. We still thought that it looked good and felt that we did not have to change anything. We then started to insert effects and transitions. We saved a separate file so that we could play around with them without having the risk of messing it all up. We tried a lot of different transitions, as we wanted to create quite a disturbed, glitch effect. We could not find one that we wanted but found one similar. We inserted this in one part of it and showed sir to see what he thought of it. His feedback helped and we began to insert this into the proper one. We then had a look at the effects. We were looking at these for a long while but finally decided we did not need any. We saved this again and looked at it from start to finish. We then realised we needed to insert the name of the thriller. We remembered the font that we had previously used for our opening credits and used it again for this one. We inserted it and it looked good. We then decided that the font was too small on all of the writing, so we made all of them bigger.

Friday 5th March - capturing and editing

Today, Shaun, Charlotte and I captured the rest of the thriller that we shot on Wednesday, onto the Premier programme. We looked at all the scenes we had done and re-named them according to which ones were good and which ones were useless. We then imported them into the sequence that we had already put together on premier so that we could cut and edit them into it. We did this really quickly and had finished before everyone else. This gave us time to figure out how we were going to put the name of the film into it and also did we have time to re-shoot if we needed to. We then analysed what we had done so that we knew what to improve on or if we needed to change anything. We found that we did not need to change anything.

Wednesday 3rd March - filming

Today we booked out the cameras so we could take them out of school. We travelled to my house, where we had planned to film this part of the thriller. We took the storyboard with us so that we knew which scenes we needed to shoot and how we were going to shoot them. Charlotte then started to film. We began filming on the street that lead up to the house, this went well and I as we had the right lighting and Shaun worked well with us as sometimes cars went by and it was hard for me and Charlotte to film it. We then moved up the drive to film Shaun coming up the other way. This was really good as the setting was perfect and we used the camera well to get the right parts of the trees in like it is shown on our storyboard. I then filmed Shaun going into the house; this was quite simple as the lighting was good as it had changed as we moved up the drive, making it look darker as we went inside. We then filmed inside. Charlotte then positioned the camera inside the house, on the stairs; this was a bit tricky as the tripod did not fit on the stairs. However, she managed to film Shaun walking in the door well by holding the camera still.

We then travelled to another house, where we had planned to film Natasha, as the old woman. This went well. We set up the large light in the correct place and began to film. I shot Tasha in a long shot from the end of the room, rocking in a rocking chair. The camera panned upwards slowly viewing the character from the feet upwards. This gave the audience the feel of the character. Shaun then filmed Tasha close up. We tried to create the effect of a hand held, unsteady atmosphere. This would make the audience feel as though there was a sense of worry and tension.

Monday 1st March - Filming and capturing

In this lesson I feel as though we made alot of progress. We had already captured our beginning to our thriller lat the end of last lesson so we could view it straight away next lesson. We then looked at what we had shot and deleted the scenes that were not useful to us. We then had a look at the shots that were left and found that many of them were useful. The named some of them as useful so that we could go back and use them with ease instead of having to search through them all again. We looked at our story board and Charlotte placed the certain shots into the movie maker programme after we all decided where about each section needed to be cut. I then had a go at putting in the credits. We all decided on a font and placed it on the screen where we wanted it to go. We wrote everyone’s names and the production company but then realised we did not have a name for our thriller. We then had a look at the few names we had put together and did a survey to ask people which one they preferred. We ended up choosing the associate. We felt this was relevant to what we the storyline we created.

Friday 26th February - Filming and capturing

Today we began filming. We looked at our storyboard and And figured out what was the scene that we could film first in terms of closeness of the location and if the actors were available. We found that the location for the forest shot was closet and so went on to film there. We also took note of the weather. It was a dull, rainy day which was perfect for the atmosphere we were trying to create. We took our storyboard with us so that we could look back at the original ideas we had got planned and stick to them. As me and Shaun had already gone to take the location shots we knew where it was and where we needed to place the camera. We then began to film. We set the white balance and placed Shaun in position. It took us a while to get the right shot of him walking but we eventually got there. We then shot inside the forest and this went well. Charlotte filmed this part well. I filmed the part outside the forest and this went well as well. We chose Shaun well for this part as he is patient and knew how to walk in time with the camera. We then filmed some extra sound shots of the twigs in the forest crunching so that we could at that in later, as all we could hear was the bluuring of the wind which did not sound good. We then came back to the classroom and captured what we had shot onto premier. We selected the scenes and next lesson we shall start to edit them.

Monday 22nd February - Blog update

Today we had no teacher so we decided to get up to date with our blog and improve on some of our planning and research. I looked at our questionnaire and uploaded the contents of our planning and research onto the blog so that it would be ready for the deadline at the end of the lesson. I then sent some of the research and planning that i had done to Shaun and Charlotte and they sent me there’s. However, I had some difficulty uploading the graphs onto my blog so I had to wait until I could use another computer to upload this. We then went on to analyse what props we will need for the filming that we will start on Friday. We decided to choose a black bag for when we film to actor walking into the forest and a rocking chair for when we see the other actress in the room. We have chosen minimal props to create a more mysterious effect without having a lot going on in the shot.

The Location

These are the pictures of the location outside. We took pictures from all around the location to show the different angles that you may not see when we film.

The Cast

Natasha Hoskins
Natasha will be playing the role of the mysterious woman found at the end of the clip rocking back and forth in a rocking chair. She is shrouded in a shawl and only her hands and eye are visible to the audience. We chose Natasha because she was an available actress who also lives close to our chosen filming locations.


Shaun Cutts
Shaun will be playing the role of the hooded character in our footage. He will be wearing a black jumper and his hood will always remain up throughout all the scenes he appears in so that his face is not visible at any point during the clip. We chose to use Shaun for this role because he has some acting experience and is also available for recording when we need to film because he is a member of our group.

Props

These are the props we are going to use. The black bag is for when shaun is walking towards the house. This creates a mysterious effect as the audeince does not know what is in the bag. The character at the top of the page is Shaun, the main character, he is dressed in dark clothing to create a look that makes him seem shifty and like a daunting character.

Thriller Research

Genre

Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film and television that includes numerous and often overlapping sub-genres.[citation needed] Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more powerful and better equipped villains.

Characteristics

Thrillers often take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts, polar regions, or high seas. The heroes in most thrillers are frequently "hard men" accustomed to danger: law enforcement officers, spies, soldiers, seamen or aviators. However, they may also be ordinary citizens drawn into danger by accident. While such heroes have traditionally been men, women lead characters have become increasingly common; for an early example see Sigourney Weaver's character Ripley, in the movie Alien, 1979.

Risk assesment and Questionnaire

We have done a questionnaire for our target audience to see what kind of settings, actors, lighting and other things they want to see when they watch a thriller. The results of the first question show that the majority of the people prefer the opening of a thriller to be fast paced, and to know what is going on at the beginning. The results of the next question show that the majority of the people we asked prefer minimal dialogue to a lot of dialogue; however they want a fast paced beginning so we will have to balance between the two. The results for this questions show than many people enjoy suspense at the beginning of a film. This means that we will have to create a balance between setting the scene and showing who the characters are without using a lot of dialogue. The next question got one large answer. Everyone prefers the film to have key characters rather than one large cast. So that is what we will do. The next question was split directly in half. It shows how half of the people we asked like light environments and half the people we asked liked darker environments. This means we will have to create a balance between the two by either having some parts dark and some parts light, or having a dull setting where there is not a lot of light or dark.

Key -Low Risk

-Medium Risk

-High Risk

Risk assesment



Injuries
To reduce the risk of injury, all people involved should be careful when walking, especially when walking with heavy equipment and around areas with uneven ground and fallen debris.

Drowning
Cast members and crew should take extra precaution when filming next to the river to avoid situations such as falling in.

Damage to equipment
All participants must take extra care when handling filming equipment so that no damage takes place.

Illness
If a member of the cast or crew falls ill and is unable to attend an arranged date, a replacement should be considered or a new date should be proposed.

Weather conditions
If the weather is unsuitable at the proposed date of filming, indoor scenes should be filmed instead and conditions should be coped with as best as possible. Crew should make sure no filming equipment is damaged due to weather.

Assault
If any scenes should be filmed at night, crew and cast must take safety measures in order to stay as safe as possible when filming outside to reduce the risk of an unwanted event taking place.

Friday 19th February - planning

In this lesson Charlotte, Shaun and I, looked at our questionnaire results to see what people were looking for in a thriller and what they didn't want. We then went over out storyboard again to see what we needed to change, as we may have included things that people did not like. I then drew up a new, neat copy of the storyboard, so that we could understand it a lot easier and for it to give us a clearer picture of what we were doing. This is now our final storyboard. I added colour and annotation whilst Charlotte and Shaun wrote up all of the results for the questionnaire. We gathered our results from the questionnaire and analyzed them before putting them into graphs on excel. I then analysed these and sent the analysis to Shaun and charlotte. We then looked at the risk assessment; this shows us many risks that we have to take when filming in and around college and when we take the cameras out or college. We put this into a table and colour coded it making it easier for us to figure it out.

Planning and groups

In this lesson we were required to form our groups with the people that we knew we could work well with. I chose to go in a group with Charlotte Wesson and Shaun Cutts for the main thriller task. After this, we started to talk about some ides that we had either just in our heads or from the opening of the thrillers that we had watched. We then started to write down our ideas by brainstorming them and putting them into different sections, they were camera, locations, props, soundtrack and actors/actresses. We listened to each other’s ideas and eventually came to a main decision of a basic thriller after narrowing down the different ideas that we had. We then did a draft storyboard to give us an idea of what it would look like. By doing this we figured out the locations and the effects going from one part of the thriller to the next, this made the idea very clear for us to work with. We then managed to do a questionnaire and figure out what people liked and disliked. Next lesson we shall study the results and work on our idea according to the feedback that we get.

analysis of thriller openings

Unbreakable
The opening scene is slow paced. It shows the characters in the past, however at first the audience do not quite know this. There is a constant beat going on in the background which creates suspense for the audience as it feels like a heartbeat. This suspense creation is not from what is going on in the actual film but from the sound in the background. The crying of the baby goes on for a while creating a constant drone in the background. This also makes the audience feel as though there is something wrong. There are little words used but the facial expressions show how the characters are feeling. The faces show looks of worry and also the woman on the bed looks as though she is scared. The camera movement is unsteady and makes the audience feel unsteady and worried as there is not a full on straight view of the camera.





The Bourne Identity

At the beginning of the film the credits come up. They appear slowly and fade in and out on a black background. It looks professional and simple. There is an unsteady camera movement as we see the ship moving around in a choppy sea. There is a handheld camera movement which gives the effect that we are seeing it from the view of the person who is in the water

Thriller research

In this lesson we carried on watching, The Usual Suspects, from where we left of. It took up the whole lesson to watch this and helped a lot with building my knowledge of thrillers and how they are filmed. The film began very slow and made out as though it was a normal genre film rather than a fast paced, exiting thriller. It was incredibly slow, fro most of the first half of the film. However, as the storyline became clearer and the characters became known I figured out that the thriller switched from one point in the film to another helping the audience to understand that something had happened in the past and that there was a significant character that was hidden within the main characters. The ending was brilliant and made the whole film come together in more or less the last ten minutes. I liked this thriller and it has given me a lot of different ideas that I may be able to share within my group.

Thriller research

In this lesson we began work on our main thriller task. We looked at clips of the beginning of some well known thrillers. This helped me to understand a lot more about how a thriller can be presented, such as ways it can start of fast paced and let the audience be thrown straight into the story, or how a thriller can begin really slow and progress in a completely different way and then at the end turn out to be a completely different ending to what the audience would have suspected. We took notes whilst watching these and it helped a lot as I am able to look back on them when making my thriller and have a choice of different beginning and types of storylines that I can use. We have not chosen our groups yet but I am hoping to work well with the people I am with to produce good work. Towards the end of the lesson we started to watch the thriller, The Usual Suspects. This was a completely different type of thriller to what I have seen before and to what I had thought to be a typical thriller. It showed me a lot of different camera angles that I could use in the thriller I am going to make and showed me that even at the beginning a thriller can be made to seem as though it is a normal film through the use of a slow start up.

Editing

In today’s lesson we had another look at our first video that we had shot. We tried to capture it again to see if it had changed since the last time we tried and it had. We had then caught up with everyone as we did not have to film again and we were on schedule. We captured the video and edited it. We all contributed to the editing and all found that we agreed on each shot to include and which parts to cut it at so that we got the correct continuity. We then added the beginning and end credits to the video and add effects. We then uploaded it onto YouTube. Next lesson we will upload this video onto our blog.

Preliminary video

Capturing

In todays lesson we did not make a lot of pregress. We captured our film onto premier so that we could view it. We watched it over on the computer and it kept freezing. The whole of our filming was pixelated and you could not see any of it. Every so often a part of the shot would come up but it kept stopping and starting. We tried to fix it and figure our what was wrong with it, either the tape or the computer but we could not figure it out. When we viewed it on the actual camera itself it was perfect but as soon as we put it onto the computer it became pixelated. We then only had fourty munites left of the lesson to shoot the whole thing again. The room we used before was taken and so we had to find another one. We got most of the shots done but we ran out of time. We have organised to film the rest of it in our free periods as the final preliminary task has to be handed in at the begining if the lesson. In that time we also have to edit it as well.

First filming lesson

In todays lesson we made a lot of progress. We looked at our storyboards to refresh what we were doing last lesson. We then began talking about which location to shoot the section we were fliming in. We looked around college and found a good place with enough lighting and space. We then began to run through what we had on our storyboard without filming it, so we did not waste the space on the tape. This took us a while whilst we were trying to figure out what we were definitly going to say as it had slightly changed now we had come to act it out properly. We sorted all of it out eventually and decided where the camera was going to be placed and what types of camera angles we were going to use. We then filmed the first shot, with me and Danny acting and Tom fliming with the tripod and camera. We filmed the first shot of me walking into the door twice to make sure that we had enough footage to delete and edit. We then filmed the second shot on the reverse side of the door. This took us a long time as we could not get the timing right so that we could cut it to make it look like one continuous flow, however we did it eventually. We then started to film the shot that danny was in. However, the two boys then decided to swap roles as it was not working well. So we then had to film a small part again as there was a shot with me and danny in that we had to re-do with me and Tom in. That all went well and we again did two shots of each. The male teacher then came to check on us. He gave us some good feedback and told us what we could do to make the shot reverse shot quicker to shoot. We took this onboard and it helped a lot. We then looked back over what we had filmed on the small screen on the camera. It all looked really good and the five seconds before and after recording each shot were there so that we could edit it accordingly. Next lesson we will edit what we have filmed on premier.

Research and film practice

At the beginning of todays lesson, we watched a shot reverse shot clip. It broke down each step into a simpler version. This really helped us as it told us everything we needed to know about how to shoot a good shot reverse shot sequence. We took notes whilst watching this so we could work on similar ideas when it was finished. After looking at our notes and seeing what advice was important and what wasn't, we looked at our story board again. We began to discuss ideas on what we had already got down and if it needed changing or not and how we should finish the end of it off as we did not finish it last lesson. However, we did not know how it was properly going to look on the camera. We all thought we should act out the shots that we didnt know would look right. This helped a lot. Tom then had the idea of filming it on his camera on his phone. It was not the same as shooting it on a proper camera but it helped give us an idea of what we shoudl change and what we shoudl keep. We found that it was a struggle to get the continuity of the two shots right, but we masterd it eventually and this has given us massive help on what we want to do for the proper preliminary task. As we acted each shot and filmed it, using the pause button as though it were an cut tool, we began to draw each shot on the storyboard. We finished our storyboard after many retakes and changes of what we had originally planned to do. We figured out who was acting in the sezuence and who was filming. We made loads of progress today which has helped on speeing up the process. Next lesson we plan on starting to film the actual preliminary task on the cameras.

First lesson - preliminary task

In todays lesson we found out about the preliminary task. We discussed it as a class so we knew what we had to do to achieve a high grade. We were then given our working groups for this task. My group works well as we all had our own ideas that worked well together and we managed to discuss them well. We then started to brainstorm different ideas for the preliminary task on a peice of paper by mindmapping different camera angles and who would be in the film and who would be shooting it. We talked about different camera shots and the way we could film it that would realate and help to the proper final thriller. I started to sketch out idea don the storyboard from what we were discussing. We changed a few bits around as we went along and this made some parts better. We discussed the different options of words that we could say whilst we were acting to make it more realistic. We did not manage to fully finish the storyboard but we knew what we were doing. Next lesson we will finish the stroyboard off and start to act out what we are definitly going to do.