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".