Subject 16 - Our Thriller

What We Did Today - 3/3/11

Today in lesson, Holly and Lucy started to edit the video, first we put all of the clips in the correct order so that we now have the basic outline set up, then we added in some transitions (Fade in Fade Out), and white noise, we tried to add in our soundtrack, but unfortunately this did not go to plan, so next lesson we need to try and overcome this problem.  Overall I think that the editing of our video is going well, and we should be on schedule to finish it by next Thursdays lesson (10th March).

Rough Cut.

What we have to think about after filming

Now that we have gathered all footage, we need to know what to do with it next;

• How are we going to upload it onto the Apple Mac
• How are we going to put all the footage onto Final Cut Express
• How are we going to get the bits that we want
• How are we  going to select the correct bits to edit
• How are we going to edit in an effective way
• How are we going to add sounds
• How are we going to add transitions
• How are we going to add other effects
• How are we going to block out unwanted sounds

For most, if not all of the above we learnt how to do them in our Children's Film unit.

What we had to think about before we filmed

We had a to think about a variety of things such as;

• What day and time of day to film
• How to use the camera
• How to set up the tripod
• How we were going to create the best and most effective shots
• How we were going to make the filming look like it was a political thriller - Mise-en-scene, camerawork, cinematography, lighting, sounds etc.
• How we were going to edit out unwanted noises - such as trains and other people filming
• How to choose the correct and most suitable location for our political thriller

For many of the above points we learnt how to deal with them in our Children's Film unit.

Change to actors and roles

Unfortunately, due to absence Our Goverment Official 2 (Jordan TiGurr) could not play his part, instead we had to get someone from another group to play his part (Sam Brown).  In future, we need to make sure that when we allocate roles to people, they are certain to be present because of Jordan's absence this caused some delay for us to find somebody else suitable and someone who wanted to play the part a difficulty.

Actors and Roles

Altogether in our sequence we have 3 roles:

• Goverment Official 1: Jack McCurdy
• Goverment Official 2: Jordan TiGurr
• Subject 16: Lucy Clarke

And Cinematography;

• Camera: Holly Burkett

We allocated these roles to ourselves because we believe that they best suited us and also we thought it would be better having 2 male characters as the Goverment Officials, and we thought that Lucy best suited being Subject 16.

Risk Assessment

Storyboard/Shotlist

Storyboard

Shotlist

Initial Ideas Mindmap

Planning Our Thriller: Initial ideas..

Sub-Genre:
Political Thriller; conventions of political thriller are that stylistically it is similar to regular thriller films, however, the narrative is based around the government and corruption. The narrative is usually based around the struggle for power or the threat of loss of power or lack of trust being established.


Narrative:
Our story will be based around an illegal, controversial government experiment that has gone wrong and a subject has accidentally been released after being under quarantine due to an unstable mental condition.

The first two minutes will involve a telephone conversation between two highly appointed government officials, discussing the experiment. The conversation will be vague, only dropping small hints to what they  are talking about. The camera shots will be from the rear of he actors so faces are disguised, retaining a sense of mystery and intrigue.
During the conversation the scene will switch occasionally to show the girl wandering through a forested area, head down in a hospital-style cloak. Ideally these parts will be in black and white. This will make the storyline fragmented, another convention of thriller.



Characters:
Female hospital patient: with a mental issue that has developed from illegal testing.
Government Official 1: The higher of the two officials in the sequence, he will have a powerful strong voice
Government Official 2: This will be the official more involved with the experimental side of things. THis character will also be male.

Suggested Locations:
Office style rooms for the filming of the telephone conversation
Forested area in college for the escaped patient parts.

Thriller Soundtrack Evaluation

we created our thriller sound track on garage band, to create a sound to go with the thriller genre we decided to use a deep base sound as the background noise. We added some sound effects to add to the tension of the track. The scratchy noises are a back chillers, they bring fear to the viewers. We decided to start are sound track with a very sudden busy start, this brings the attention to the audience and puts them on the edge of their seats. Things that went well when creating our sound track were the fading of the music and knowing what part of the track needed to be dimmed down and others that needed to be heard more. Things that could have gone better, we could have made the sound track longer then it is, this would need to be extended of an opening sequence.

Thriller Soundtrack

Analysis of Past Students Blog and Marking Criteria

We have analysed the work of the group S1-23. We have concluded that this work is of a very high standard. This work, we believe, is a Level 4, which conforms to the following standards:

Level 4 - 48-60 (Video)

• Holding a shot steady shot, where appropriate;
• Framing a shot, including and excluding elements where appropriate
• Using a variety of shot distances as appropriate
• shooting material appropriate to the task set
• selecting mise-en-scene including colour, figure, lighting, objects and setting
• editing so that meaning is appropriate to the viewer
• using varied shot transitions and other effects selectively and appropriately for the task set
• using sound with images and editing appropriately for task set
• using titles appropriately

Level 4 - 16-20 marks (Research and Planning)

• There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience.
• There is excellent organisation of actors; locations, costumes or props.
• There is excellent work on shotlists, layouts, costumes or props.
• There is excellent level of care in the presentation of the research and planning.
• Time management is excellent.  

In regards to the video aspect of the project the clarity and precision of camerawork is fantastic. The shots are held steady where required which applies to the first bullet point. The framing is also very good, selection of character positing and in relation to the natural environment has clearly been carefully selected, which applies to multiple points in the marking criteria. However, a lack of transitions was evident and just a basic cut was used. Although the lack of transitions was made up for by the effective use of colour correction and sound/image editing and the highly effective use of titles. The video can be found here:

The groups organisation skills are relatively good as well. There is an excellent amount of research into similar products and the target audience that they will target. The research is extensive, covering a vast amount of hybrid thrillers and conventions. However, there is a slight lack of planning in the way there is a lack of shot list. However, this i rectified through a rough draft cut that they have constructed and amended for their final piece.

Psychological Thriller Conventions

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Textual Analysis (Film - Memento - 2000)

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Comparing Two Thriller Opening Sequences - Se7en & Panic Room

In Se7en and Panic Room, they both have spooky/creepy music at the beginning, however in Panic Room there is a change in music, which gives a dramatic effect on the viewer.  In Panic Room, the opening scene mainly focuses on buildings and skyscrapers (in America) whereas in Se7en the opening sequence is actually of a person doing something.  In Se7en there is lots of shadowing, and the lighting is very dark which makes us think that someone is planning a crime like a murder or something else.  In Panic Room because the opening scene is just different shot angles of buildings and skyscrapers it makes us think that there is going to be an extraordinary event in an ordinary place.  Both of the opening sequences are very different, but overall I prefer Se7en because there is more going on and this is what keeps me focused on the film, whereas in Panic Room the opening sequence looks boring and it doesn't intrigue me very much so I prefer Se7en.

Preliminary Evaluation

    We learnt how to position the camera in a particular ways from this we learnt what shots were most effective. when editing we found that there was another way of cuttimg in and out so that we ould get the clips we wanted. This turned out to be easier and we could get the cuts more accurate.

   We found that finding the correct location to film our preliminary task was a little difficult, this was because we needed a corridor with doors but a corridor that was long enough to get our long shot that was wanted. Whilst trying to upload our film to youtube we had some difficulties the whole film uploading as the first couple of tries only a half the film went on, we resolved this by rendering the whole video again to ensure it was all smooth. After doing this we managed to upload the video first time with no problem.

Having given some of the conventions of thriller a thought, we decided to use an effective mise-en-scene that made our first character seem mysterious and dark with his hood up while his body was positioned in a way that the camera did not expose his face until the climax of the scene. Our camera angles were basic. Most angles used were long shots and close-ups, including over-shoulder shots for the conversation. these added mystery to our storyline. although we wanted to, we didn't use any non-digetic sound due to timr ristrictions. we included a conversation as this was part of what we were tasked to do. In the editing phase we only used one simple fade in/out transition to add a smooth transition into our main sequence. In the editing process we made sure we stuck to the 180 degree rule to add continuity.

Preliminary Task

This is our Preliminary Task, in which we just got used to using the camera and using different shots.

Preliminary Task Storyboard

These are our storyboards we followed when filming our preliminary work, though brief these were essential in remembering what we had to capture.