Editing

Today in class, Me and Connor put all of our footage we have so far on to final cut express and began to edit it. Whilst we were watching the footage over, we realised we had made quite a few mistakes and wrote a list of some shots we will or may need to retake in order to improve them. It took us quite some time to get the camera to connect to final cut express, so didn't have much time to edit. We will carry on editing next lesson.  

Filming at the weekend

This weekend me and my group carried on filming our thriller opening. We believe this went well and we feel we got quite a lot of filming completed overall. However, on saturday we did not get a lot done as our main actress failed to show on time again, but we got a lot of filming completed on sunday. Looking back over the footage, we did see a few peices we need to re-film and improve and will deffinately make sure our main actress shows up on time in order to increase the ammount of filming taking place.  

filming our visual mind map

Today during lesson, myself and the rest of my group decided to carry out a visual mind map about what comes to mind when the word 'thriller' is mentioned. We has to re-shoot this quite a few times as the writing could not be seen on the camera. We will upload our edited and finished product soon.

Garageband experiment

The other day in her spare time, a member of our group created an experiment for the ident for the opening of our thriller. It took some time for her to understand and grasp the concept of how the garageband application works but once it was recorded and shown to the rest of the group, we believed it went well with our ident. We haven't yet been able to put the music over the top of our ident and test if it fits, but will be hoping to soon once itunes is installed onto the imac we are using. 

However, when seeing how long the music lasted for, it appeared to last 8 seconds whereas our ident only lasts 5. therefore, a member of our group is going to edit the ident and lenghen it in order for the ident and the music to fit togethere without any complications. 

Research into theartofthetitle.com

Today i visited the website, http://www.artofthetitle.com/. 

I done so in order to gain some ideas of how to set out the title sequence for our two minute thriller. Whilst I was on the website I watched the title sequence to a few different types of films in order to get a wider range of ideas and perceptions. These included, 'Days of Heaven', 'Scott pilgrim vs the world' and others.


One of the title sequences I found interesting was the title sequence to 'Dawn of the Dead';   

I thought the opening to this film was interesting as the use of the music in the background, the speech from the news reporter and the screeching noises (sound as though someone is screaming) fit perfectly with the images shown on the screen. Also the credits have a good effect as they flash on the screen in red and then seem to run off the screen as if they are bleeding. The images and the credits seem to take turns to flash on and off the screen, they create a sense of confusion, chaos and panic which suites the story line of the film.

More filming

Today we planned to carry on filming. We thought we would have a long time to film and therefore get a lot done because it's a sunday. However, our plan was not carried out effectively as our main actress failed to show. Therefore, we couldn't film so got nothing done. Next time, we will make sure that our actress shows and that she knows the time in which she needs to turn up.

List of characters and titles for the opening credits

As a group we discussed in what order we would place the characters in the opening credits of our thriller and what else we would like to include. The following is what we have come up with;

1: Panoptic Productions present

2: A film by Connor Murray
                 Sarah Warnock
                 And Ashleigh Hay

3: Starring Hollie Tuvey

4: Gera Zaharov

5: Also starring Georgia Wigley
                      Harley Mason

6: Music by Connor Murray

7: Edited by Ashleigh Hay
                 Connor Murray
                 Hollie Tuvey
                 Sarah Warnock

8: Directed by Connor Murray
                    Sarah Warnock
                    Ashleigh Hay

9: Assistant Director Hollie Tuvey

10: LOST SIGNAL

Participants - OneTrueMedia.com

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

There are 4 participants featuring in our thriller;

• Hollie Tuvey - the main character, the stalkee (image 1)
• Gere Zaharov - the main characters stalker (image 2)
• Georgia wigley - one of the main characters friends (image 3)
• Harley Mason - another of the main characters friends (image 4)

Also there are images of the producers;

• Ashleigh Hay(Me) - (image 5)
• Sarah Warnock - (image 6)
• Connor Murray - (image 7)

Shallow Garve 1994

Today me and my boyfriend watched Shallow Grave. Shallow Grave is a thriller but includes many sub - genres like, Crime, action and comedy. The film has very dark comical undertones to it however, is a serious film. Shallow Grave is a story of how three individuals, Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston and Ewan McGreggor, are on a quest to find a room mate for their four bedroom flat. They conduct interviews in order to choose their room mate, however the interviews are very unorthadox and funny. When the three original flat mates do find a person to occupy their spare bedroom, he locks his room and never comes. Once the three individuals find that the man in the extra room has died in his sleep the three find a breifcase full of money. The story entails and explores a moral dilemma on what to do in a situation when your room mate dies and you find a lot of money that does not belong to you. The caption for the film, 'What is a little murder among friends' is extremely good and effective as the film contains a lot of twists and dark and chilling scenes as the friends 'battle' it out for the money. You don't know which of the friends is more sinister than the next or how the end of the film will turn out. This thriller is brilliant at keeping you on the edge of your seat as you want to find out what happens in the end, Who gets the money? How will it end? Will they do the right thing and give it in? Shallow Grave is good at captivating the veiwers attention and creates a lot of suspense and tension throughout the use of music within the scenes. Theres is a lot of contrapuntal sound used as well as parallel which makes the music and the picture behind it very effective.  

Filming

Today our group went to one of the members houses where quite a bit of filming is going to take place, in order to begin the filming. It took us a long time to set up as we had to put props such as makeup and hairspray on the computer desk,this was in order to give the perception that the computer desk was in our main actors 'bedroom'. We didn't have a lot of time to film, therefore we didn't manage to film a lot overall. However I believe we did film some good footage of the beginning scene where the main character writes a status at the computer. In order to film more next time we will put the props in place before the session in which we can film, so we will then have more filming time. 

Setting up for our thriller

Today me and the other members of my group signed the camera out for the first time in order to do some filming of our thriller. However, before we could start to film we realised we needed to set up the stalkers room in which we would be filming in first, this took up most of the time we had. This is because the room in which we needed to start the filming in was the stalkers and situated on the wall is loads of pictures of the stalkee. Most of our time was spent printing these pictures off, cutting them up and arranging them on the wall ready for the next time we could film. We took some pictures of the room and the pictures on the wall that we set up, these pictures are shown below;  

Scenery/location for thriller

Last night me and Sarah went out and took some pictures of the scenery in which will be using for the opening sequence of our thriller. We also took pictures of each other taking the pictures to prove we had taken them. In order to show different ways in which show the scenery from different veiws we tried to get different angles of each shot. Today in class we uploaded them to final cut express and put the best shots together.
This is shown below;

We believe this area will be good for our thriller as it is mostly desserted, very rarely people go there. This means we won't have many disturbances whilst filming is taking place. Also, it fits in with the idea for our thriller and makes the scen look ominous creating suspense.

Storyboard animatic

Here is mine, sarahs, hollies and connors final storyboard for the opening of our thriller which we finished today in class. We edited in it final cut express and added a sound track to it, however when uploading to youtube the sound no longer played in the background. For the time being I have uploaded the unfinishe dproduct but will be aiming to fix it shortly and upload the version with the sountrack.

Treatment for our thriller

Outline of ideas;

• Stalker
• Room for of pictures, obsession
• AN abandoned park - Eastbrook end
• Foggy

What resources we will need;

• A room
• Pictures
• Tent
• Lake?
• Fog?

Justification of ideas in realtion to genre;

• Suspense
• Shadows
• Mysterious characters
• Point of veiw shots
• Danger
• Tension
• Death? (mystery)

Conventions of the genre;

• Lighting-Low level lighting, shadows
• Isolated/deserted/confined spaces
• Quick editing-fast paced
• Point of veiw shots and frantic camera movements
• eerie sounds, silence
• Ominous character

Research into real films of the genre;
No country for old men 2007;

• Antagonist is the main character

Manchurian candidate 2004;

• Political and psychological - room with lights, constant scenes, camera movements

North by North West 1959;

• Crop scene - Red herring

Research into potential target audience;
Young women as our film wuold be psychological rather than filled with action scenes and weapons.

Proposal as to how your project would appeal to the target audience and beyond;
Young women are more inclined to watch thrillers that also fall into the catagory of a horror. Ours would do this, therefore females would enjoy it more. Moreover, we intend on casting a female as the victim: women would be able to relate.

attempted storyboard

Today our group finished drawing up our storyboard for the opening of our thriller. We have a really good idea of what it will consist of, and are working on gaining more licences for different music.
We began the anamatic for our storyboard in this lesson however, didn;t get to finish it so will are planning to finish it next lesson and post it.

Analysing my survey results

My survey was completed by 8 males and 14 females. Most participants were as expected within the 16 and under age group and the 17-25 group. 68.4%, the majority of the participants watch thrillers atleast once a month, 15.8% watch thrillers once every six months, another 15.8% watch thrillers atleast once a week and a following 5.3% of the participants claimed they watch thrillers once a year. when asked on a scal of 1 to 5 how much would you say you like thrillers (5 being at the higher end of the scale) the majority of the participants answered 4. There was a range of thriller genres that were preffered, including psychological, paranoid, mystery, horror, crime. The majority of the participants answered horror, pschological, mystery and action. When asked what would would you say are the most important components of a thriller there many answers. The most common were suspense, tension, cliff hangers, and a good story line/plot. We will take these into consideration and try to use these conponents whilst making the opening to our thriller.

thriller genres displayed using wordle.com

important thriller components, wordle.com

Mobygratis, Approval

The member of our group who asked for the licensing of the two tracks recieved confirmation of the licensing of the tracks shortly after.

Mobygratis

As a group we discussed what type of music we would like to play in our thriller and agreed on two main tracks which we believe will go well with the opening scene to our thriller. One member of the group has requested the use of both the tracks and we are now awaiting the reply. In order to gain a wider range of music we will also visit sights such as unsigned.com. As a group we have decided that we would like to secure the licencing of around ten tracks, meaning that we have a wide variety of music to chose from.