update

Unfortunately our animatic is taking longer than our group originally expected. Within the space of two weeks I had to travel to Liverpool and back to help my sick Nan and I came down with food poisoning myself, which really dehydrated me. However I don’t like using this as an excuse. Once I’d recovered and got myself back into school I found I was extremely behind in all my subjects as all the final pieces where due in. The other two members, Sehb and Amber did a great job though making sure we didn’t fall too behind whilst I was gone. Now that we are all back together we are all working hard and communicating together to try get our animatic finished.

thriller development

After a lot of debating my group and I came to a rough idea for our thriller.

We had to take into consideration we have no budget, everything we use as props or locations will be from our own pockets. To make things easier for ourselves we’ve decided to use local locations and use actors who we are familiar with and who are able to take direction well. In addition to this we will have to film some shots in school locations so we are able to use our time wisely, even if it is typical.

To make our shots dramatic and effective without the cost, we came up with the idea of our protagonist being obsessed with water. Reasons for this may be because someone close to him drowned or he had a near death experience with water but that doesn’t really matter for our opening. We thought this idea could really be suitable for a thriller, also that it would be easily done in our homes as we could simply use a bath, which could also fit into the narrative quiet well as the protagonist will be a teenage boy living at home. To be drowned is also one of the most horrific deaths possible, including this should make our opening attention grabbing and most importantly, thrilling.

To make the narrative flow and make sense, the protagonist will have his own personal scrapbook of which he collects Polaroid’s of people he envies. Whether it’s about popularity or girls, the book will be full of people from around the school. However the photos will be taken secretively without the victim knowing, along with anyone else. He records their day to day life and try’s to figure out what their like so he is able to be like them and replace them once he kills them, obviously wouldn’t happen though as he’s psycho.

From ambers storyboard I was able to take photography for the animatic to give a good representation of what our thriller will hopefully look like. I believe they came out pretty good as I tried to get the correct lighting suitable for each shot. I also tried to use as many colour connotations such as the alcoholic drink, which I chose a bright red Lambrini. I also shone the light onto the bottle to give a red rippled water like reflection.

From the storyboard and photographs we have been able to make decisions on the detail of our props and locations.

Props:

- Scrapbook

- Polaroid’s of victims

- Shot glass

- Red alcohol

- Pens pencils

- Stationary, (anything for scrap book)

- Draws and desk

- Bookcase and books

- Anything that is generally in a bedroom

Costume: (male protagonist)

- Black skinny jeans

- Plain white top

- Black leather jacket

- Black beanie hat

- Bear feet

All of which are typical teenage fashion whilst including necessary connotations.

Victims:

- Fully clothed

General teenage fashion/ smart school wear.

Film certificates

Certificates are given to movies to control the appropriate footage that is used in the film for the certain target audience. From this research I’ll be able to decide on the most appropriate certificate suited to the thriller opening, although I will have to remember there is no budget in the making of it. The props and overall organization of the opening will be paid with our own money; this means we will have to use our imagination to create suspense with minimum resources.
For a thriller movie, nothing lower than a 15 would be suitable.

Certificate of 15:

• Language:

- May be frequent use of strong language and extremely strong language will only being excepted if justified. Use of extremely aggressive strong language won’t be accepted.

• Nudity:

-Nudity may be allowed but not in strong detail.

• Sex:

-Sexual activity can be portrayed but again not in strong detail.However there can be strong verbal references to sex.

• Violence:

-Violence is allowed but the effects shouldn’t be focused on and scenes of sexual violence should be discreet and brief.

• Imitable techniques:

- Dangerous techniques such as self-harming, suicide etc should not be shown in detail. This is the same for the accessibility and use of weapons.

• Drugs:

-Drugs are allowed to be shown but not to be shown promoting drug misuse

Certificate of 18:

A film with an 18 certificate will indicate that anything could be shown throughout the duration of the film, as 18 is considered as adult.

18’s could include extremes such as:

-Extreme supernatural gory horror scenes

-Sadistic violence

-Sexual violence

-Hard drug use

-Detailed attention to sex verbally and visually

I believe our thriller should be targeted towards a 15 certificate. I feel it would meet are target audience more specifically as the characters will be of a similar age but no younger than 15. To produce an 18 wouldn’t be appropriate as no one in our group/ year is over 18, it would also cost a lot more money that we don’t have to produce it.

Making a 15 still means we can have references to most aspects as long as its not in detail.

Thriller brainstorm

Thriller Brainstorm

Mystery – thriller

• School location

- bulling
- social status’
- stereotypes (chavs, emos etc)
- unknown unrealistic events happening
- least expected person

• Complex plots/character twists.

- Notes explaining ‘rules’ in which they have to follow.
- If rules aren’t followed, characters will have to suffer the consequences.

• Create tension by the unknown.

- Silhouettes
- Shadows
- Sound effects
- Darkness
- Missing people



Physiological thriller

• Physical, blackmail, touchier

- pedophilia
- racism
- wearhouses
- emotional blackmail
- threats


Teen horror-thriller

• location

- cinemas
- parties
- clubs
- school
- friends house
- boyfriends/girlfriends

• steryotypes

- makeup lovers
- nerds
- sluts
- try hards
- bullies
- drink/drugs

• romance

- killing of partner
- jealousy

Real continuity task

We were set this task to create a fluent piece of filming before making our actual thriller to ensure our capability and for general practise.
Whilst filming we came across a few problems, these being that we still were not confident using the camera and editing equipment, but whilst filming we began to improve using better angles helping to represent the narrative. Although, some of the shots could still be improved as some where unsteady and jumpy. The worst part of the film i would say is the editing, especially at the end where the sound is out of sync. Again this is something we will be able to majorly assess and improve but whilst editing the piece we were able to become more familiar with the software. Another problem was unwanted sounds due to our location. Unfortunately there weren’t any other practical locations to shoot in the time period we had.
Our male actor Lewis delivered the lines perfectly, however I wasn’t the best actress to use. Half way through the film i start smiling, completely ruining the narrative. We should have cut this out. Other than this i am pleased with film. My group and i both agree the best part of the piece is the shot reverse shot as it helped with the flow of continuity most considerably.



All of our pieces got peer assessed during class time, the majority of pieces were graded as a level two, including our piece. From seeing the higher grade films we are now aware of what we need to do and include to have a successful final piece.

The critiques we received from our teacher and peers were:
-Make sure are camera is steady at all times, although unfortunately our tripod was to blame as it wasn’t secure.
- To constantly assure the characters with the main importance or dominance are visually shown by the positioning of the characters and the camera. We didn’t really do this in our piece as our characters where often both marginalised.
- to include reaction shots not just shot reverse shot, this would help with the audiences understanding of the narrative.

This critique will defiantly be able to help us with our next filming.

We where given a task to create our first continuity task to try out using the filming equipment and using the 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot.

For this piece, I took the role of acting aswell as amber. Although this isn’t all I did. Both Amber and me also helped with the direction and the decisions made whilst Sehb filmed. We did find the task challenging, as all of us are more creative with the ideas and planning so we found it slightly difficult to get used to the technology side of the filming. Especially when it came to panning and moving the camera about as we where in such a small confined space. We also had to make sure we didn’t break the 180 degrees rule and I don’t believe we did break it. Although we weren’t able to finish the task, we included the key elements that we had to include.

We did find the editing difficult, especially getting the sound in sync with the shots. We did try really hard though and I do believe it was a good first attempt of using the camera and getting used to the rules.

I also think we work as a good team and once we get used to using the equipment/used to the rules and elements of filming, we will produce quality work.

animatic

This animatic was our first chance to experiment and learn how to use the programs Adobe Premier Pro and Adobe Sound Booth. At first I found it difficult to understand the technical side to the production of the piece, but with the help of my group we where able to produce the final outcome, even if it took a few attempts. We where able to use a motion tool to create a panning effect, allowing the audience to familiarize with the characters, we also used directional arrows for the drawings to be more clear of how the shot would be filmed.We were also able to edit the shots to create tension. We did this by lengthening and shortening the shots allowing the tension on the audience to build to the climax of the introduction to the vampire. We also created our sound through Adobe sound booth. We used a pre recorded backing track, which fitted in perfectly for the setting as the music is fast passed and builds up in texture, helping build up the tension. We also used pre-recorded footsteps that worked effectively.However we recorded the rest of the sounds by ourselves, for example the screaming and heavy breathing. I think overall the piece is good as it was our first attempt of using the programs and understanding how you produce film work. However next time we should be more organized and try and produce the work faster, but I feel this will happen as we’ll naturally become used to using the programs.