Mondays Lesson 19th January!x

In today's lesson we carried on planning our openings. So far my group have come up with around 5/6 different scenarios all which are good but haven't got that spec of excellence.

The first sequence which we thought up was about a mother and child in a park. whilst the mother is pushing her child on a swing her phone rings so she turns around to pick it up. After her conversation on the phone she turns back around to see the child out of the swing and standing in the middle dazed. We liked this scenario as it has a air of suspense and suspicion but we were a bit stuck as we haven't got an actor who could play the child.

The second sequence was about a toilet tap that dripped out blood or sucked people up. we were not shore about this idea for various reasons but as discussing it expanded it to a toilet which once flushed has blood down it which means there is something in the system.

Another idea we had was to take short sharp clips of newspaper headlines and news reports of missing teenage girls, then cut to a woman laying down to go to sleep and as soon as her eyes close cut to a young girls face which is scared and shes crying. we all particularly liked this idea but for it to work properly it needs perfect camera work and we were all a bit hesitant in case we mess it up.

Overall i like all the ideas but am not sure they wouldn't work to create the atmostphere which we would like to achieve.

Wednesday 14th January 2009!x

Today's lesson was the last one that we had to polish our Preliminary Task. We started by watching our short film through to see if any areas could be edit for the final result. We decided that the middle part didn't seem to right so we used Soundtrack Pro to create an ideal sound for this part. Once we were happy with the way our short film was, we compressed it, ready to put on our blog. the outcome of our sequence was enjoyable and i think we mastered the 'match-cut' task which we had set out to do.

For the second half of our lesson we were given our final project brief; to make a 2minute opening to a 'Thriller Film'. As a group we brainstormed possible ideas for our opening and firstly stated that our film would be an 18+. The reason we decided this is because it gives us endless possibilities of what we can do and gives us a wider range of issues which we can touch on. All thriller movies are usually 15+ which allows some violence and moderately strong language, taking this into account helped us to make our decision. We then started to think of possible narratives as we thought this would help us develop our opening easier.

The Preliminary Film and Planning Thriller

In today's lesson we overview our film to check what else is missing. We watched the film a couple of time and noticed that in the middle it seemed to be too quiet because all the other bits had a soundtrack and just not the middle bit, therefore we added a small soundtrack in the middle and adjusted the volume so that you can hear the actors voices.

After we finished we converted the film into a reasonable size and added it to our blog. I am particularly really pleased with the outcome that me and my group had done. It was very sucessful and fun to put together.

In the second half of the lesson we started planning our real thriller practical. We had to discuss simple extensions that will be in our opening. My group decided that our age group should be for 18 and over. So far our draft story line is basically about a renevated house, which a woman just was going to move in and she finds a room but the door is kind of stuck and then it creaks open with the scary soundtrack on. After a hand touches her shoulder and it turns out to be her friend or neighbour.

Monday 5th January

In today's lesson we watched a documentary called 'watching'. it showed us different openings to some classic thrillers including The Shining, Seven, Casino and A touch of Evil. This was to help us create ideas on what we could later produce. 

There were many different ways in which we could open our thriller. We could do it like seven with short clips not showing allot of information about the film but just enough to stay interested. We could also start at the end and work the way back to the start finding out why it ends in that way like Casino. 

After we watched the documentary we watched a couple of thrillers that were produced a couple of years back. We were able to see the ones that were given A so we knew what we had to aim towards. This gave me some confidence that our group could produce some good work.

Monday 12th Jan.

On Monday's lesson our task was to edit our clip and try to make the match cuts work. As usually you use the "in and out" key to take out the sections we want to add in. We had to remember the "180 degree" rule which is about camera angels and making sure once you film the character from one angle you can't film the character from the other side because the character would then look like the person has changed side on the screen. We also added cross transition in the clip to make everything flow nicely together. We snipped some bits that we didn't need and extended some bits to make it work with all the other scenes (match cut). After editing the clip we added different types of soundtrack to test out what works best with our film.

Monday 12th January Lesson!x

In Today's lesson, we edited the clips which my group shot on Wednesday (unfortunately i was not in to participate in the shooting due to health issues.) We synced together the clips to produce another practice short 'film'; The Preliminary Film.

From what i could tell by the clips produced by the rest of my group (Lauren, Bien & Vikki) they kept to the conventions of film, which we learnt e.g. the thirds rule, not leaving to much room above a chosen subject, the 5 second rule etc. I also feel that the match cuts which they produced were excellent, the way that they shot the same piece of the film in many different angles made editing so much easier. The only problem which we had which Mickey pointed out to us was, one of the clips was a different light to the other clips which made the film as a whole not work. So instead of using this clip we used snippets of other's to even out the scene and overall produce a good concise short film.

We used transitions to help create an essence of passing time. By doing this it helped give the film a tens-ish kind of atmosphere. We also started to edit the audio by adding certain sounds which we felt helped build up an eerie kind of tension which we think reflects a thriller.

Although we didn't finish off all the tweaking with the editing and audio, we are planning to attend a workshop Wednesday lunchtime to finish this film and have it uploaded onto our blog.