Time Line of Shooting

This is the Time Line for our Shoot.

Sound for our Thriller

For our thriller we had decided to not use any dialogue for in order to not over complicate things, also if we were not to add any dialogue it could be easier to create tension and suspense for the audience. When the couple are in the car we had an idea of playing music, that had been a huge problem because of copyright issues we were not able to have a song playing that had not been ours. Fortunately our media teacher had been in a band which played sort of country songs, this is very good for us because we are able to use his songs and be able to put it in our thriller.

Schedule for our Shooting Day

9.30- Arrive at location.
10.30- Ready to shot, everything set up. Actors in costume and make up.
11.00- Shot scene in car with man and woman.
11.45- Shot various shots of mysterious man entering car park and, opening briefcase to reveal gun, close up shots of mysterious man.
12.45 - 3.00 Lunch break and no shooting as we wish to film other shots in darkness.
3.00- Film woman getting into other car and driving away
4.00- Film the man getting killed and the mysterious man shooting him (we decided to do this last as the blood would go over the car and costumes)
5.00- Leave set

The Location for our Thriller

For the thriller we use one setting which is the parking lot, when we would use a gun for filming that could cause a big problem which is that people might freak out and think that it would be a real gun. This is why we need isolation from everyone so we would not get interrupted, we would be able to gain permission for using the parking lot by our teacher asking the county council. This location takes place in Guildford, in the car parking lot.

Prop List

For our thriller to become a reality we need a few props which are:


A Gun- we can get it in the drama department at school

An iPhone- We are able to get it from one member from our group

Two Cars- We will be able to get one car from the media teacher, and the other car from the person who is acting as the victim

 

A Black Briefcase- We are able to get this in the drama department as well

A Watch (for the Killer)- The last prop that we would need, we could get this from the male teacher or from the actual actor

Re-Casting

We had decided that the actors that we chose before had been to young to play the part in our thriller, we had also thought that by having actors in their late 20's/early 30's we might be able to draw more adults in watching our thriller rather than only having only teenagers watching our thriller. Through our search in finding the new actors in our thriller we still had a goal in finding the most innocent looking ones. At this point we had gone through the whole staff list and these were the best candidates for our thriller.

Research

A story had been brought out of a MI6 Spy called Gareth Williams who has gone through a suspicious unexplained death. This 31 year old man had been a MI6 employee working as a code breaker, he had been found dead in his central London flat in a large red North Face sports bag in a bathtub outside of his master bedroom. There are two stories going around on this case, one story is that he murdered by some other spies and put him in the bag or that he had crawled into the bag himself sipped it shut and padlocked it from the inside. There had been multiple videos of people simulating on how to lock themselves in. Through this they want to prove that it in fact had been a type of suicide rather than a murder. I believe that it had been a conspiracy and they had tried to cover up to a murder.

This relates back to our thriller by the plot on what would happen to her when she is on the run before. I am not personally saying that she would be locked up in a big red sports bag, but I'm saying that the people who are after her will want to get her and kill her. This has already happened when the thug pops out and kills the guy while the girl gets around the car in order to kill him. By this news story this gives the idea about what could possibly happen to the girl afterwards when she is on her own, by killing her and and making it look like suicide.

Research For our thriller

In this news article they have written about former communist spies who had taken identities of orphaned kids. There had been one spy in particular called Jerzy Kaczmarek who was recruited in 1977 who had given the identity of a german called Janusz Arnoldt in order to track out "his" (Arnoldt's) birth mother in order to grant access in West Germany. He had made an application through the red cross to find the birth mother.

This comes to our idea of an Russian spy, for our thriller this could be the background of what had happened to our Russian spy before the our opening sequence. It is a mystery on what happened to our spy before the opening sequence, this could be one of the options.

Casting for our Thriller

For our thriller we had chosen to use this girl to play the part of the woman who secretly kills the man, we had thought that this would be the best choice for us because she has an innocent look. While we were choosing the cast we had an idea to cast the most innocent looking actors for in order to surprise the audience. By choosing innocent looking people we would be able to convince the audience that they should not expect anything to happen with them.

We would want the woman in our thriller to wear these type of clothing's: a light brown blouse, a grey blazer, and black jeans.

For the make-up we would like to have the woman have a similar type of make-up as shown in the picture.

For the guy in the car who gets shot we would like to have him look innocent as well and we thought that he would be a good person to use in our thriller.

We would like him to wear a light blue shirt as well as black jeans and black shoes.

For the mysterious man we want him to wear all black, we want it to signify that he has a dark past and he is hiding it.

Our Second Shot by Shot List

Due to our recent changes in our thriller, we had been expected to create a second shot by shot list for in order to explain what we want to happen in our thriller.

•       Shot by shot list.

•        Two shot of the couple in the car preparing to leave

•        Close up of woman checking her watch

•        Panning shot of woman getting out the car

•        Cut back to man sitting in the car alone

•        Close up of mystery  man holding brief case and close up on watch on his wrist.

•        Over the shoulder shot of woman checking her phone (shows she lies about not having her phone).

•        Dutch angle of man moving up stairs

•        High angle shot over man in car (venerable).

•        Wide/establishing shot of mysterious man entering top floor of car park

•        Panning shot of woman walking out of the car park.

•        Panning shot of the man entering top floor of car park.

•        Various close ups of mysterious man undoing the brief case and pulling out a gun.

•        Over the shoulder shot of gun pointing at the man in the car.

•        Close up of the man’s head falling onto the steering wheel and hitting the horn .

•        Match on action/Medium close up shot of woman getting into a car at the bottom of the car park as the sound of the horn echos.

•        Two shot showing the man in the car passing her a letter.

•        Medium wide shot of the car driving away.

Thriller Test

         In one of our classes we had chosen to film a small scene in which we would show how we would want our thriller to roughly look. During the time that we filmed we had limitations of actors as well as props, we had used our teachers car as well as a book to simulate an envelope. We had used my Nikon D3200 to film this, I had been the camera man while Lissy, Claudia, and Camilla acted throughout this scene. We had a lack of actors so we had to use Claudia as both as the killer and the person waiting in the other car.

        From all of this practice we had a clear view on what we were going to have. I used Final Cut Pro to quickly cut the small scene in half, and I also learned how to export the video correctly with the best settings on Final Cut.

Suggesting our Changed Pitch to Matt

In our pitch to Matt for the second time we had been given advice on how to change our initial idea. Some of the ideas given to use by Matt had been to change the girl from her being in the car when the guy gets shot to her leaving the car in order for her to get her phone that she had forgotten. By doing so that gives a sense of her not being a part on whats going to happen between the man and the killer. Then afterwards there is a cross cut of the girl about to leave the parking lot while sending a text on her phone that she had after all. When she leaves we are able to see the mysterious man with a brief case enter the parking lot. As the mysterious man walks up closer, he shoots the man in the car with the standard handgun. When the man gets shot his head swings into the steering wheel and the car horn starts honking, there then is match on action with the girl leaving the parking lot while the car horn is still going off. The woman walks up to a different car which had been waiting for her on the ground floor and she gets in, when she gets in she is handed a envelope. This signifies that this had not been her first mission in killing people and it presents her in being a spy of some sort.

Developed Plot of Narrative Action for Thriller

Our idea has developed a lot since we last gave our presentation.

Our idea now opens with a couple parking up in a car in a car park. We then see fast/short cuts of a person dressed in black. The cuts reveal parts of his identity but do not reveal all, i.e., half of his face in shadows or his feet walking. It shows that he is in a deserted building walking up flights of stairs. It will then cut between the two different scenes to establish the contrast between the two atmospheres surrounding them. The couple are happy with jolly music playing on the radio although the woman seems to be on edge but still enjoying each other’s company whereas the man in black will be eerie and will come across as a villain type character.

The car park resembles where we saw the man in black walking around. We see the man send a text saying 'all set?’ It then cuts to the lady in the car who checks her phone but we do not see what it says. The man in black opens a case he was carrying and pulls out a gun. It then cuts to the couple getting a lot closer. We see an over the shoulder shot of the man's gun pointing at the couple in the car. As the couple are about to kiss, we see the woman send a text saying 'set'. As she looks into his eyes we see her shed a tear and then the man she is with gets shot in the back of the head by the man in black.

 Shot by shot list.

•        Two shot of the couple in the car preparing to leave

•        Close up of woman checking her watch

•        Panning shot of woman getting out the car

•        Cut back to man sitting in the car alone

•        Close up of mystery  man holding brief case and close up on watch on his wrist.

•        Over the shoulder shot of woman checking her phone (shows she lies about not having her phone).

•        Dutch angle of man moving up stairs

•        High angle shot over man in car (venerable).

•        Wide/establishing shot of mysterious man entering top floor of car park

•        Panning shot of woman walking out of the car park.

•        Panning shot of the man entering top floor of car park.

•        Various close ups of mysterious man undoing the brief case and pulling out a gun.

•        Over the shoulder shot of gun pointing at the man in the car.

•        Close up of the man’s head falling onto the steering wheel and hitting the horn .

•        Match on action/Medium close up shot of woman getting into a car at the bottom of the car park as the sound of the horn echos.

•        Two shot showing the man in the car passing her a letter.

•        Medium wide shot of the car driving away.

Target Audience for Thriller

In my new group they had earlier conducted a survey in which they interview up to 25 random individuals. This had been done to find out which people like and hate thriller films, the people that were chosen had been half boys and half girls. The Survey had consisted of 4 questions which had been:

1. What thrillers do you like?

2. Why do you watch those thrillers?

3. What is your favourite thriller film?

4. What are you looking for when you watch a film?


After they had received the answers for the survey, they had found out stereotypical answers for survey. It had been that the males have said that they had been more of the action and excitement type which is stereotypical for them, while the females have said that they had been in more romantic movies and they had not been the biggest fans of action and excitement.

The Change of the Thriller (From 1950 to Modern day)

We had to present Simon our Media Teacher with our idea so then we would be able to see if we would or would not be able to shoot our film. As Simon heard us out about our thriller idea he had criticised us by saying it would be a very difficult thing to do for our budget, because we would need to find a old 1950's car, and a old drive in cinema. To be honest at that time we haven't given much time thinking about props and location.
      We had to rethink on what are we going to do, so we decided to to make it modern day, in order for us to avoid the complicity of making everything look the 1950's. We had chosen to do a regular parking lot instead of a old drive in cinema. By changing only a couple of aspects of our thriller we would be able to make our thriller more of a possibility.

The New Thriller Idea

 In my new thriller group I had been supposed to adapt to their idea and become able to visualise the whole idea. During the analysis of the thriller film I had started to enjoy the idea of a relationship ending in death.

The Move

Due to a sudden change of classes, I had been moved to another Media Class. When I had seen my new class I had been put into another thriller group. Upon my first lesson in my new thriller group I have heard their thriller idea and I have suggested a couple of improvements that were taken to option.
It turned out that our plan so far would not be able to be put in a 2 min to 3 min Opening Sequence. Afterwards we had been in need of more improvements in the opening sequence, this had been a new start for me in this new thriller group.

Presenting the Pitch to Matt and Simon

When we had presented the our pitch to Matt and Simon, we had split up into different sides. One side is the presenters which was Sam and Christy, and the other side which had written the feedback was me and Annabel. We had received positive feedback from Simon and Matt, we had gotten a couple really good improvements. One of the improvements had been in putting in the cast names into the the title sequence to simulate blood spills, an example of this has been used in the 2004 thriller film "The Punisher".

Thriller Documentary

       During the production of this Thriller Documentary I had found out that a lot of  the males have chosen thrillers as their favourite film genre along side with comedy. This conforms the idea for me that males are more into some kind of action that will keep them off their seats.

       The favourite film genre for woman are mostly comedy and as well thriller. I also found out from the people I interviewed that the woman liked horror and science-fiction, this subverts the idea of the stereotypical idea of woman who only like comedies and romantic films.

     While the interview was going on I figured out that both the men and women like thrillers that have a decent amount of action going on that will keep them on the edge of their seats. They both also are looking for a good plot and storyline which have a lot of shocking twists and turns in it to keep them entertained. For some people they want for the film to catch their attention in the first 10 minutes of the film, otherwise they might even stop watching the film e.g. Texas Chainsaw Massacre. All of these aspects conforms the idea of a perfect thriller.

My First Group's Thriller Idea

Incorporating Se7en into our Opening Thriller Sequence

From the opening sequence in Se7en I have I have a couple of ideas on continuing to creating our thriller idea even better. While I had been analysing the title sequence of Se7en I realised to create an intenseful opening sequence we are supposed to include more fast cuts to give more of a feeling of danger and where it would keep the audience on the edge of their seats. I also noticed that they include the names of the creators of the film when ever they have the chance in very fitting places. I had an idea of adding all the names in the movie into the actual scene where it would have motion with it, meaning that if there would be a car filmed using a hand held shot we would be able to go into After Effects and use motion track to track the text layer to the motion of the scene.

Kyle Cooper

Kyle Cooper was born in 1962 and he is a inspirational icon to anyone who would want to pursue to be a graphic designer. He had been taught in Yale school of art where he had been taught by Paul Rand, from his teachings he was able to receive a M. F. A. in graphic designing.


For his opening title sequences he had used fast cuts to express the movies path, if the movie were to have slow cuts it would show that the movie will be more of a slow not as suspenseful, if the movie would use fast cuts then the viewer could tell that it would be more suspenseful and more exciting. One of his main editing techniques are using many over-layered shots to show how many twists and turns the movie will encounter.

Throughout his lifetime he had created approximately 150 opening title sequences, he had done a lot of work for a lot of well known movies for example he had done the opening sequences for Dawn of the Dead, Superman, Spiderman, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc... He has been most memorable when he had created the opening sequence in the movie Se7en. By having shots over-layered it helps to give a creative effect to highlight the mysterious psychopath.

In the opening title sequence of the movie "Se7en" created by Kyle Cooper you are able to tell that there is an phsycotic killer at work and he it trying to find and kill someone. By using all these type of close-ups of cutting pieces of paper, writing, highlighting, etc… it is possible to tell that that one person is planing to do something, and judging by the dark intense music it would be a plan involving a murder. The main actor had also dirty hands which looked like he had worked for hours help sell the look of a psychopathic killer.

From Coopers work on this opening title sequence you are able to tell that he is a genius and that he has a very special talent for this.

The Decision of a Thriller

In our group we had decided on a opening thriller sequence which would be not to complicated to do and we had chosen a story which had the best storyline. There had been my storyline where the main plot was all about shooting and all this action type of thriller, and the other story had been a artistic thriller type. My group had turned out to like more of the artistic-thriller than a action-triller and they had chosen the other idea. When we had about to reach the final decision we had thought on which thriller sequence would be done easier, my thriller sequence involved gun shots and muzzle flares which they had thought it would be too hard, and the other idea didn't involve any special effects which would be much more easier. To be telling the truth I didn't enjoy the idea of the artistic-thriller because I enjoy doing all the special effects and I want to be at my full potential in editing, I had explained that to them but they thought it would take too long.

The Dark Night Poster Analysis

By having the dark night as one of my favourite movies you can see completely what it is about just by looking and observing the whole poster.

When looking at the poster you are able to tell that it is about this one iconic figure trying to make a difference in the world, by having a low angle shot of him standing in the centre of the poster we are able to portray that. He is also wearing all black which signifies that he is trying to hide something from the world. Another attribute that helps this rumour that he is trying to hide something is the actual bat logo on the bottom where it presents the bat having a backlight which allows the logo to have a outline from the light where the centre is completely dark, which signifies that he is trying to hide something.

It is visible to see that there is one major building being half destroyed along with other building which are not so visible surrounding it, that is presented in a way of showing that this is not a big epidemic which concerns all the world but only one city, in this case Gotham City.

The huge bat symbol in the background which is in flames signifies the pain and anger within this iconic superhero, and by presenting it in flames which is red it shows that there is danger.

This movie is targeted for people who like a thrill and who enjoy the old superheroes. Batman has started a very long time ago but a major movie came out in 1989 where people started to really love this superhero, so I would say this movie is more for male teens and adults.

Independence Day Poster Analysis

In the movie poster of independence day we are able to see that it is going to be a sci-fi thriller where there will be a battle of the worlds. In the poster there have been selected a small variety of colour where it starts in a black colour which fades to red and ends in a light orange colour.

In the picture we see a huge alien space ship which is targeting New York, but as for the wide shot of the city being destroyed it has a sort of a curve to the horizon which signifies that not only New York is being destroyed but the whole world. By presenting the alien space ship to be covering 3/4 of the poster and the city to be covering only 1/4 of the poster represents how the other human like life-forms are more superior than the whole world. The colours of the poster tells how the movies mood is going to be, for example the high contrast red signifies the danger which is going to take place in the movie where two different races will collide in a battle till the end. The black which surrounds the the poster signifies that there is no one to help the people who are in trouble and also presents their isolation. Although it seems that the people have no chance of surviving there might be some hope left for them, we are able to tell that by the light colours which are somewhat in the centre of the poster.

Editing the Preliminary Task

      During the editing process I have learned different techniques/styles of editing in Final Cut Pro 7. I was taught how to use Final Cut Pro some time ago in the past couple of years, but I haven't used it and I became a bit rusty, but the tutorial that we had with Matt had helped me to get back into editing with Final Cut Pro. When we had opened Final Cut the first thing that we had to do was to import the footage into the Browser. As we had been looking in the browser the next assignment that we had to do was to organise the footage and either but it in two different folders, one which was the bin where to put the footage that did not work out and then there was the Log folder where we would put the successful footage that had worked out and that we would use.

     The next thing that we had to do was to roughly set out the footage throughout the timeline in order to have some idea on how are we going to have the video in the end. From the point that we set out every footage we cut out the put everything together

     From this experience I have learned how to add footage by dragging it into the preview screen. On the timeline I used the cut tool and the dragging tool to edit my footage, and in order to preview the sequence I used the J key to rewind backwards, the L key to fast forward, the K key to pause and the space bar to play and pause.

Revenge (Opening Thriller Sequence)

            In my opening thriller sequence I had chosen a scene where the protagonist has been holding a grudge to the antagonist for many years and had decided to complete his intentions by killing the antagonist. The idea behind the killing had been that the antagonist had wanted to take revenge for the antagonist murder of the protagonist family, we show that by having newspaper articles about the killing and right next to it would be a picture of the antagonists file photo. In order for the protagonist to succeed in his goal he has to get though some security, which lets the main character to get into a serious killing rampage. When the main character reaches the door where he will find the antagonist he has to finish the last of the guards before he enters. As he finishes killing the guards he gets a moment to gather up his thoughts and that is the moment were things start to slow down. When he enters the room he sees that the antagonist is sitting at the table writing something, as the main character he puts his gun right next to his head which ends the thriller.

There have been many videos that has influenced me to want to create such a opening sequence, I could say that it was a combination of thrillers that have influenced me because they always had some interesting thrills within the whole movie that makes the audience on the edge of the seat.

Preliminary Task

     In the preliminary task there were a numerous of different things that made me enjoy it. The biggest thing that I enjoyed during the filming was the sense of accomplishment when finishing a good take, but even a better feeling is when you finish the whole shoot. 
      During the preliminary task I have learnt more of being in charge of the shoot, and by that being a better director. The worst part of filmmaking for me is the moment when you realize that the take that you just finished filming had errors in continuity, which leads you to re-filming the shot. In our group of 3 plus the actors we had been working well together, each person had been doing their job while interacting with one another. Gorges job was to be the cameraman, as for his job he had set up the camera and had thought of the exact camera placement for the next shot. Shane’s job was to write and record the shot to make sure that the continuity of the shots would have a steady flow, he had done a good job but there had been one problem though that pace of the two different scenes were a bit different that had been a problem for editing. As for me I had been the director and I my job had been to organize all the shots and to tell which one we would be shooting next, another job that I had was to adjust the small things to make the scene good e.g. the volume of the actors speaking, their positions, and their movements. In the end everyone had done a good job to keep the scene rolling in a good direction. If I were to redo this preliminary task and had to make a couple of adjustments to it I would have added more interaction shots of the actors e.g. open door handle.

     We had started out in the idea that it would be a crime scene but it turned out that we were not able to have that idea since we were not able to get a gun prop and there was no location, so it turned out that the studio was free and I decided that we should film something random there. In the studio we had found a spray can of some sort and thought that we could use that in the film. We had some extra time to shoot a couple of additional shots for the preliminary task so we added a shot of the door opening and a shot of the spray can falling to the ground, by adding those shots we were able to further explain what is happening in the scene. We had shot in a total of 7-8 different shots, which helped us and the viewers to understand more of the character actions. We had filmed an wide shot, clean over the shoulder shot from character A to character B, another clean over the shoulder shot from character B to character A, a dirty over the shoulder shot from bother character perspectives, then we moved on to the additional shots which were the close up of Character A coming in through the door and leaving the door, and the last shot that we did was a close up shot of the spray can being thrown to the floor. In the preliminary task we had filmed the whole scene following the 180 degree rule, it is the rule that there is a imaginary line in between two people in a conversation and the camera is not able to cross it during filming in order to create confusion for the audience.

Code Break Analysis

  Code break is an excellent short thriller, though analysing I have notices a couple of things if changed would give out more of a thriller feeling.

            When you start looking at the shots you can notice that some of the shots were not included. As you watch the beginning of the movie you can notice that it came on too strong. What would’ve been the better thing to do was to have a POV or even an establishing shot to give sometime for the audience to analyze that it was an interrogation. When the shot of the spitting came up I didn’t understand that he spat on him, what they could have done was a reaction shot of him being spat on.

            The sounds for this thriller was used quite well, but there were some parts of the movie were the goon had punched him and it sounded like he was being slapped. Although I liked most of the background sound effects there was one part of the scene where the background sound did not fit. It was the moment where they had brought in the daughter of the main character. There had been too much suspense in music that it sounded less than a thriller and more like a horror. What would’ve been the better would be to have some music building up to give a better effect of a thriller.

            To make a movie great you need a series of different items when put together can make a movie look amazing, that is called mise-en-scene. To find out more about the character you have to just look at what they are wearing. The main character is dressed casually in the scene, which makes him look like he was kidnapped of the street. The goons are wearing dark leather jackets which make them look like they have done a lot of bad things to a lot of people and they want to hide it from everyone else. To tell that a person is in charge he must stand out from everyone, and that is what they did when the leader was wearing a army uniform. What I really enjoyed in the scene was the lighting because the setting was filled with a orange light coming from the lights of the room and a hint of blue shining on the actors face.

            These certain actors were amazing for this movie because they looked right for the part. The actors did an amazing job in selling the idea that they were real Russian mafia. There were a couple of problems with the make-up, one of the problems were when he was being drowned in the water, the fake blood was being washed off and it is possible to see that it is just make-up. The second problem was that when he was put out of the water he had suddenly turned completely dry. In the movie they had only used one major prop and that was a bowl filled with water, it just looked ridiculous that he was being drowned in a 10cm bowl of water, the overall result of the prop just made the movie look worse. As for the setting, that was my favorite part of the mise-en-scene, a major part of a movie is the setting and in this film it was the best type of location that they could have filmed on.

            This movie is a definite thriller, since it has all the suspense, fear, and torcher. This could work as a beginning to a movie where they show a flashback afterwards to explain how he got there.