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