T2-60 THRILLER - FINAL

T2-60 THRILLER - FINAL from SATMEDIASTUDIES on Vimeo.

Problems with filming

We thought that our filming went well, however one problem that we encountered is that it got dark very quickly. So most of our footage is in day light and the rest is too dark to watch.

17th March

Today, we have finished all of our editing and sound!!

Today, we added the footage that we reshot on monday and added the effects to it. The clips work a lot better than the previous ones. The previous clips were too dark but now they are bright enough to see what's happening.

This is our final image of our editing on final cut.

We are pleased with how the editing turned out, we especially like the filters that we put onto the clips to create a dream like world.

Music in garage band

We decided to make a play list on iTunes of all the special effects we got from a CD. We chose sounds and music that we thought would go well with our opening. We used most of these sounds in our opening for the music and running and breathing effect.

This is a screen shot of our first trial of music. We found the music was too slow and couldn't keep up with the pace of the film. However, we liked the "Heavy Breathing" and "Running Through Leaves" sound effect and we transferred theses into our final soundtrack.

This print screen shows the beginning process of making our soundtrack. We placed the music in order of what we wanted for our opening.

This is the second stage into our soundtrack. we had chosen the correct music which we felt fitted into the pace of the film. We edited the music's volume to either louder or quieter to fit the film.

Day Two

This is the final product of our soundtrack. As shown we edited the tracks to help enhance our soundtrack to its full potential.

15th March

Today we have finished adding our titles and now we are just finishing the editing. We have changed the colour of our titles from black to black and a dark red. We have done this because we felt that the black made too old fashioned but the red it creates thriller atmosphere.

We have also changed the colour of second location (inside) from normal colour to black and white (made slightly darker). We think this is a good effect because it hides the surroundings and makes the location more mysterious.

We have also added a filter called 'Bad Tv' to the titles, this makes the titles shake slightly. This makes it more interesting to watch.

Today, after college we are going to re film the middle part of our thriller opening because at the moment it is too dark and is hard to see the action thats happening.

T2-60 THRILLER ROUGHCUT

T2-60 THRILLER ROUGHCUT from SATMEDIASTUDIES on Vimeo.

ROUGHCUT PEER FEEDBACK

Our media peer group watched our rough cut clip of our opening and afterward commented on the strengths and possible improvements of our clip. The common strength was the editing and the effects which were placed onto our clips. The weaknesses was the unsteady camerawork in parts and also the darkness due to the time we filmed at (being later than 6pm). We have considered these comments and improvements and have decided to re-film parts of our opening to enhance the quality of our clip. To do this, we will re-shoot in the daytime and extra care with the steadiness of our camerawork.

Music and Sound Effect

These are sound ideas of music and sound effects for our opening. We used a CD called Dramatic Drones and Pulses to find most of our special effects. Most of the bottom soundtracks are suspenseful, we may use a couple of these sound effects in our opening. The one sound track which stood out was 'Half Moon Bay Long' and we want to place this as the protagonist is running. It will be used as the sound of his iPod. We want to mix tracks together so the music isn't dull. We think all these tracks will help enhance our thriller opening.

Codes and Conventions of Thrillers

Here are the code and contentions of the thriller genre, which we have tried to include into our opening.

Key Concepts

• Codes and conventions of mise-en-scene (everything within the frame e.g. costume, location etc)
• Representation of particular social groups and ideology (values and messages)
• Audience - Every media targets a specific audience
• Institutions - film, place of exhibition (i.e. cinema, dvd)

Generic feature of a thriller is entrapment. Thus claustrophobic spaces are a key generic signifier in thriller.

Flightplan, Snakes on a Plane, Phonebooth, Kill Bill 2 and Panic Room all have claustrophobic spaces and a sense of entrapment

Flightplan - location - plane

Snakes on a Plane - location - plane

Phonebooth - location - phonebooth

Kill bill 2 - location - buried in a coffin

Claustrophobic spaces such as:

• planes
• coffins
• under water
• boot of a car
• elevator/lift
• walk in freezer
• tube trains
• white van
• small room
• car
• prison cell
• narrow alleyways
• multi-storey car parks
  
  

Lighting

• Very dark
• Chiaroscuro - light against dark - creates a sense of illusion, nightmare whilst also being aesthetically pleasing.

Evaluation Questions

After we have finished the practical proses of filming and editing, we have to complete a PowerPoint evaluating our final product. The PowerPoint must be tougher, eye catching and creative. We have done this individual PowerPoint previously with our child film opening. These are the question we must answer in our individual PowerPoint.

The following questions must be answered in your evaluation PowerPoint:

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

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

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

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

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

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

Images from Filming

We filmed in a local Cambridge village called Coten. We filmed in the local church garden and open fields. These pictures documented the filming proses

This is the church garden we filmed parts of our opening. As the photo demonstrates, that a struggle with our filming was filming the main outside scenes before it got dark. We filmed at around 4.30pm till 7.oo pm. Our main struggle with filming our opening before it got too dark.

This is filming the match on action running scene in our opening. The protagonist then runs into the church garden.

This shot is filming in one of the open films, mainly filming the protagonist.



This is the final scene, we the protagonist wakes to find himself captured by the antagonist. We used makeup to make him looked bruised and beaten.

Dolly Zoom trials

Here are a couple of trials for a dolly zoom, which we filmed in lessons. This effect was inspired by scenes from the film Vertigo, which helps to create a feeling of dizziness, confusion, and surprise! We found found the dolly zoom really difficult to capture. We found our school dolly hard to keep still and control. To over come this we place the filmer on a chair and pushed the chair backwards to the characters we filmed, whilst the filmer zoomed in on the characters expressions.

Here are the instruction to filming a Dolly Zoom.

1. Step 1

   Establish the position of the subject and the camera.

2. Step 2

   Arrange the dolly so that it is lined up in the direction in which you want to move the camera.

3. Step 3

   Lock the camera onto a tripod and place the tripod onto the dolly.

4. Step 4

   Take the shot by dollying the camera either away from the subject or toward the subject and simultaneously zooming the lens in or out. If the camera is being dollyed in then the lens should be zoomed out and vice versa.

ipod sounds for running scene

Rock sound

We have found a rock sound that we thought could be the sound coming from the runners iPod. We think this would fit well as background noise because it sets the mood that something bad is going to happen because it has a heavy/edgy feel to it.

Calm sound


We found a really calm sound that we also thought would be good as the background sound. This is because it gives the sense that he is dreaming and that he thinks everything is OK, but its not.

However, during the editing process we decided not to include the iPod music idea.

Camera special effects experimentation

These are some filters that we may use for our opening to make it seem more dream like, or like something is wrong.
The first filter on the film above would be good to use if we could die down the light on it. It makes is look mysterious and dreamy. For example, at the beginning of 'The Island' they use a bright filter to make it seem like a dream. We wish to create something similar.
The third filter is just darkened around the edges of the screen. This hides part of the screen making it feel like it is hiding something or it could be used as a point of view shot when the protagonist wakes up and finds himself tied up.
We are not going to use the last filter on the film because it doesn't go with the film and it is not the type of effect we want.

Camera

Friday 26th of February

For our thriller we will be using our own camera for the film. Today we asked technician if our camera was suitable to be used with the college computers when editing. The technician said that our camera was fine to use and that it can easily upload onto the computer. The camera is HD so hopefully we can produce clear shots for our opening. We are also using our own tripod because the college tripods may not fit onto the camera we are using.

Dolly Zoom

We really like this technique and think that we could incorporate it into our thriller opening. We like it because it confuses the eye, it makes you think that you are getting closer to something while also getting further away. We may use this type of shot when the protagonist see's the antagonist under/by the tree. This adds emphasis onto the antagonist making him seem dangerous and disorientated.

Our actors

Thomas Rudd playing the victim

Christopher Downham playing the villain

zoom trials

This is an example from Star Wars, of a fast tracking zoom. at 1.54 minuet. We have tried to create the same effect in our film.

The first example: We walked towards the character with the camera, were focusing on. Then in Final Cut we speed up the time to 400. We thought this looked the most effective out of all the trials we shot. This type of shot will look good when the protagonist is being chased by the antagonist.

Example 2 and 3: With the camera we zoomed in on the character then in finial cut we speed theses clips to 400 again. However, we didn't find this looked as effective as the first example.
In all these clips we need to make them longer by filming at a greater distance, and also that the character the camera is focusing on is still.
We may use this style of zoom at the end of our opening as the main character wakes up tied up.

Action location

We have 5 points where there is some main action. At the point numbered:

1. This is where our actor is going to bend down and take a breath because he has been running. We are going to use a mid shot of him bending and then use a point if view as he stands up straight.

2. At this point, the actor will see another person standing holding a weapon in their hand. He will see them as he stands up with the point of view from point 1.

3. at this point our actor will just be running while we use different shots.

4. After our actor has run through the woodland area at this point he will see the person again.

5. This point will be when our actor starts to speed up and turn his jogging into fast pace running. Also at this point he will drop his ipod on the ground and we will zoom into the ipod.

6. This is the last point where our actor trips and falls over an object on the ground. We then zoom into his face to show he is unconscious with a cut in his face.

Location route

This is the route that we are going to use in our thriller opening. It starts of by the actor running through a grave yard, then entering a large field, then they run through a woodland area and entre another field. After they go though another woodland area and enter another smaller field.

Deadlines for our Film

11th Jan to 15th Jan: Thriller introduction.

18th Jan to 22nd Jan: Analysis of real and student examples/ Production logos.

25th Jan to 29th Jan: Planning and delivery of pitches.

1st Feb to 5th Feb: Storyboarding, shot lists and other planning.

Cameras are available from Friday 5th Feb at 4.10pm until shooting deadline of 9am Monday 8th March. Students can have 2 overnights or one weekend to film. There are three weekend slots available ( 6th & 7th Feb, 27th & 28th Feb and 6th & 7th March).

8th Feb to 12th Feb: Filming.

15th Feb to 19th Feb: HALF TERM. NO CAMERAS OUT.

22nd Feb to 26th Feb: Filming and editing.

1st March to 5th March: Filming and editing.

8th March to 12th March: 8th March Shooting deadline. 2nd lesson of this week is Rough Cut Deadline. Third lesson of week, rough cut feedback.

15th March to 19th March: End of second lesson of the week is Final Cut Deadline. Last lesson of the week, feedback on final cuts and re-introduction to Evaluation questions.

22nd March to 26th March: 9am 22nd March is Interim writing deadline. Lessons this week are for feedback on interim drafts and revisions/writing.

9am 29th March: Final writing deadline.

Makeup

For our thriller, we are planning on having a protagonist will wake up, tired up to a chair, in a abandoned room. This means that the protagonist will be beaten. This video we found on Youtube will help with the hair and makeup of our main character. The makeup around the bruises will be natural, this video will help create these pale, bruise effect.

Titles

Today we put together our opening titles in photoshop. We decided to use two different fonts for the text (Infiltrace and Perpetua). We saved each line individually as a jpeg and ensured that the background was transparent ready to edit onto our opening sequence.

Certificate

Our Group thinks that our Thriller will be certificate 15 because of the plot of our film. The ending in our opening my be distributing for children under the age of 15 due to the victim being beaten and trapped up in the end scene. According to the BBFC our thriller film wouldn't be suitable to younger audience do to the violence, murder, crime etc.

Certificate...

• 15’ works are stronger than '12' or ‘12A’ rated works and could include any of the following:
• strong violence.
• frequent strong language (eg 'f**k').
• portrayals of sexual activity.
• strong verbal references to sex.
• Sexual nudity.
• brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence.
• discriminatory language or behavior.
• drug taking.

We have chosen this certificate rating because we are more likely to make more money.

Equipment

The equipment/programs we have decided to use are the following:

A camera
(To film the shots)


A Tripod
(To ensure steady shots).


Photoshop
(To manipulate images and create our titles).


Final cut
(To edit clips together and put together our opening)


Garageband
(To create our soundtrack)

Influences

One of our influences would have to be Alma - a short film by Rodrigo Blaas. We liked how the film built tension throughout and would like to create the same atmosphere for our thriller opening. We particularly liked how 'twin' doll brings alma into this deserted building and then she turns into the doll herself. We have come up with something like this, in the way of, as soon as our protagonist falls over, he wakes up to find himself tied up, similar to way Alma is trapped inside the doll.



Another one of our influences is 'Silence of the Lambs.'
We liked the how they create suspense by following the main character whilst she is running as it create tensions and fear. It makes you assume that something bad is going to happen as she runs into the fog. We also would like to create this type of tension as we follow our character whilst he is running. This would set up the tension and make the audience want to carry on watching.

The crafts man

The name we have chosen for our thriller opening is 'The crafts man'. We have chosen this name because of it's relation to the villain in our opening.

As you can see to the left, we have made two samples of the possible fonts the title will be seen in.
- We have decided that we all prefer the bottom font because of the appeal of the traditional style.

Font experimentation

These images are similar to the plot of our opening. We have done font experiments to see what colours are sizes look good on images. This picture is similar to our ending where the protagonist wakes up tried to a chair. This part should be dark to hide the identity of the hiding antagonist so the font colour would have to be light to show up against the background.

This forest image is similar to the location where we have chosen to film. We expect the forest to also be dark as we are film in the afternoon/evening time. We found red stands out against the dark background and also it makes it eerie and the red connotes blood and danger. Also it is easy to read.

The main duration of our opening is someone running. So the background would be of the floor so either tarmac (grey) or grass (green). We have chosen a deep red as we thought it looked bold. The Infiltrace font is easy to read and the deep red makes it look more classic but threatening because of the shade of colour and size.
We thought we would try a picture with pulse font to see if it would appear effectively against the background in comparison to Infiltrace. The font works better against a contrasting background instead of just a black background. We also had to spread the text out as this is a larger font and wouldn't fit properly along the bottom of the screen. We think Pulse would be a better option as we can pay around with it making it look like a pulse.

Font-Infiltrace

We tried the different font Infiltrace to see if it looked more effective. We found this font worked and looked better because the font was easier to read compared to Pulse. We think this font look's good but isn't as eye catching and original as Pulse. Therefore, we may use this font for the credits and have Pulse for the title to make our film title bold and eye catching. The font look's good in smaller font size, as well as when its bigger, unlike Pulse. This therefore, shouldn't be a problem when we come to add it into our title sequence.

Sound samples

In our thriller there is a part when the main character sees another person standing in front of them holding a weapon. When the person sees them, its like a flashback/hallucination.

For this part we want to have quite a sharp/eerie sound. On garage band in special effects we found:

alien impact



booming rumble



door vault closing

Target Audience

The target audience for our thriller opening are for older teenagers and adults around 16-26. The certificate would have to be a 15 or 12 at the lowest, depending on other scenes which might happen later on in the film.

Our opening scene would be unsuitable for children under 12, as our ideas can be quite scary and could be quite disturbing for children. For example, when the protaganist is running away from the antagonist and then waking up to find himself tied up.

The Villain

The villain in our thriller opening is obvious to the audience from the beginning, this helps the audience get right into the story straight quickly. However, it isn't obvious if the villain is real to the main character or not, as it appears to be a flashback or some sort of dream at the beginning.
We will have our villain holding some sort of weapon (yet to be decided) and "following" our main character around, which is why it is obvious to the viewers that it is the "bad guy". An example of how we want our villain to be presented is shown below.

Why we love thrillers.

Each genre of film has a specific aspect of its style of entertainment that makes us, the audience keep going back for more. Comedies make us laugh and put a smile on our face, animated/family films enable us to enjoy watching something that would normally never happen and open up our own imaginations along with the rest of our family.

But what do thrillers do?

Thrillers let us go on an adventure along with the rest of the characters as the story unravels, but in a safe environment. One of the fun aspects of a thriller is that you are kept guessing as the storyline often leaves you in suspence. This means that you can try and work out what is happening along with the characters, by putting clues and evidence together to come to your own conclusion, which often will be wrong, as twists are often introduced, but we don't mind, as this keeps thrillers exciting and unpredictable.
I think thrillers are more appealing than horrors, mainly because horrors are often too graphic for a wide range of people, whilst thrillers are more subtle, they still give the shocks audiences want, but in a way that doesn't use images that could be disturbing.

I don't think younger audiences will appriciate thrillers as an older one will. Thrillers are often clever in putting together stories and requires the audience to really think about what is happening. Basically, younger audences may get lost or not understand.

I do think that you have to be in a thinking mood to watch a thriller, because usually you can't afford not to concentrate or you won't be able to get back into the film as you lose concentration or part of the story.

Music inspiration

Below are some clips of music videos that we thought were appropriate inspiration to our soundtrack or the look of our video later on.

I liked the eerieness of the video, which includes the darker lighting and the blood running down from her chest rewinded added to the edginess of the video. The fact she's in an enclosed room a lot of the time reminded me of our last shot of our opening too.



What I thought was most interesting about this video was the drama and intensity in the song (which builds tension) and the inverted colours, to make it look like a negative image, which makes it appear scarier to the audience.

Preparing to shoot.

Today we prepared to shoot the shots of our thriller by confirming the location (as you can see a couple of posts below) and suggesting possible dates to film.
We all exchanged mobile numbers to ensure that, if on a day of filming, someone doesn't turn up for a scene, we can call them to make sure they can make it.
Lydia asked her brother and his friend to take part in our thriller, because we thought it would be more appropriate for males to act in our thriller rather than us, so we can make decisions easier within our team and inform the actors exactly what to do later.

Possible sound choices

As we drew up our storyboard, possible soundtracks were thought of to go along with each clip in the scene. Each shot gave us an idea of how the sound track should go.

We came to the conclusion that it would be suitable for a lot of diegetic sound. This means the audience will feel more involved in the action that is taking place.
First of all, our main character is running leisurely - this gave us the option for the sound of feet hitting the ground as he goes along. We will have to take into account the different types of terrain the character is runinng on, for different sounds, which will make the scene more realistic. Running also gives us the option for some sort of breathing in the background, to show his energy.
Other diegetic sounds in the background could be played too, for example, the wind and its effects (eg, trees swaying), cars and animals (birds chirping).
Another main diegetic sound could be the sound of the music playing on his ipod, it will have to be slightly muffeled though, as he is listening to it also. When the time comes where his headphones fall out, the music could either stop, or get slightly clearer, depending on how eerie we would like the scene to seem.

The non diegetic soundtrack could be played all throughout the opening. This could include eerie sounds, drumbeats and possibly even the sound of the characters heartbeat to show the tension in the scene.

We will conclude to what our final soundtrack should be like when the time comes to use our resource garageband to see what soundclip options we have.

Titles

We tried using the font "Pulse", although this was one of our favorite fonts, we found it difficult to read. This may just be because it is in white and not black as it was originally on the website.
We tried the font in different sizes, a small font was hard to read and the letters looked to close together.
A big font was easier to read, but would look too big on the screen of our thriller.
We also tried to spread the letters apart using spaces between each letter, but that didn't look right.

So, we thought it might look good as just the title name of our film opening as we could make it big so it should look right.

Costumes

Our main character is going to be wearing a hoodie, tracksuit bottoms and trainers. These all give the impression that the character is out running for exercise, rather than running away from something or someone at the beginning. The hoodie is necessary because the character needs to have his hood up for almost the whole course of the scene - this gives the impression of insecurity and that he wants to keep himself, to himself which is an impression also given off by the fact he's got his ipod on with headphones in, which is a prop we will have to use.



Our second character will be wearing dark, possibly draping clothing, to create a sense of mystery. Their face will not be completely shown, so dark make up or a hood which keeps their face in the dark should be worn. Their identity can't be shown at the beginning, or else the mystery may be given away.

Costumes are an important part in any genre of film. They are the easiest way to reflect a characters personality, in an obvious or a subtle way, depending on what messages the film wants to show. I remember watching a "behind the scenes" to a film called 13 going on 30. The costume designer talked through the messages for the outfits of the characters. She said the main character wore softer fabrics in neutral or pastel shades to reflect the characters mood and gentle personality, in this case, sweet and kind (example below). However, the villan of the film was seen to be wearing a lot of darker, harsher colours, like red, to give the hint of her "evil" personality. We have to think about these sort of aspects for our own thriller and develop our ideas for the costumes further, to give subtle messages to the audence.

The location

Here are some photos of our chosen location:

We have chosen a lot of open spaces (fields) which gives a feeling of uncertainty and lack of security, which adds to the tension of the film. However, the end shot, where our character is tied up, is going to be in a smaller enclosed room, which will give the opposite effect, in creating a "claustrophobic"/"can't escape" atmosphere.