Production Roles & Week By Week Meeting

Michael was director of our thriller so therefore he organised the group well and made sure that everybody was pulling their weight and making sure they come to meetings and we work hard to achieve the best possible grade.

Karina was in charge of the Hair and make-up, she done well with the single women who is made to look sophisticated but slutty. Karina made sure that the character was portrayed well because we received comments from our class mates which thought the makeup was done well.

Cansu was in charge of the location and lighting and she had to make sure the where ever we was filming we used the correct lighting or makes sure that it was the appropriate time of day to film. Furthermore she made sure that we had filming permission from certain places so we could be allowed to film there

My role was Camera and sound and to make sure that the camera shots were accurate and precise to the director’s storyboard and also to makes sure that the sound track for the thriller film was the way we wanted it to be and to make sure that the film created suspense to the audience. Furthermore as the camera and sound people, I was responsible for the camera and the tri-pod which meant I had to take it home and look after it. I was also in charge of making sure that the cinematography was accurate and that the director was happy with the shots that we had.  Also I had to make the sound track to make sure the footage we had matched the sound track I was going to create, as a group we decided that Michael, Karina and I would work on the sound track when we had some free time and would stay after school to create the sound track

Opening Credits - Group Analyse

My group and I decided that it would be in the best interest if we looked at some opening credits from existing thriller films so that we could get some ideas from our opening credits and furthermore we could look at the order of the roles of the team and from this we could get an idea of what order our group roles can be in. We looked at the film 'Panic Room' to see how it opens the film and how it indicates the genre and how they are important in the film, when watched a number of thriller films we came across the film Panic Room we liked this one because it started like a thriller and the music was appealing.

 

Most of the beginning is little clips of establishing shots to show the setting of where the film will be and it represents what kind of people the characters will be. 
The credits in this film are all moving in different angles by the camera doing pan shots. This is an interesting and different way to show the credits which makes it more fascinating compared to credits that don't move as it makes it more accessible for the audience to read as it moves along the page. This give a clear indication to the audience of what is of what actors are in the film and also what directors are in the film.

The colour of the font is simple but shows up well against the backgrounds as the 3D effect on the writing makes it easier to see. The style of writing is modern which fits with the modern buildings therefore the writing relates to the style of the film being set in a modern surrounding. Also the writing is bold and capital letters which indicates the style of the film possibly having a strong storyline with serious events as the writing theme is strong and that this may be based on true events to show the realism and have a bigger impact on the audience 

Preliminary Task

A preliminary task was what we had to do  a group so we could get use to the using the equipment such as the camera and tri-pod, we had get the following shots, a reaction shot, shot reverse shot and a tracking shot that was so that we could get use to having a steady hand when using the camera. I found this task useful because it helped me to gain confidence when using the camera because in my group I was the Camera and Sound person so this task really helped me. When filming I found out that tracking shots do not work well if you are not using the tri-pod it looks unprofessional, so when it came to filming when we used the tracking shot with a tri-pod so it looked professional and did not look  unsteady. When I looked back at my tracking shot used during the opening sequence it worked really well and looks professional and our group received compliments on some of our camera shots 

Reaction Shot– of the character  when he sees that his girlfriend is with another women, this shows the characters facial expression 

Mid Shot – this is a mid shot of the character, this shows what the character is wearing and also this helps the audience to relate to the character depending on his situation

Two shot – this shows two character’s in the frame and this shows that the characters are ready to interact with the audience and also prepares for the scene

Pre Production - Group Idea Questionnaire

As a group we decided to create a questionnaire which would help us develop our ideas and help know what the audience wanted, we ranged our questions from basic questions such as are you male or female to more narrowed questions such as what would you prefer to have in a thriller film such as a group or male and female. our resulted varied depending on how many people we asked questions to, the purpose of this questionnaire was to gain enough information and evidence to give us an idea of what the audience would want and expect to see from a thriller film. This proved useful because when filming we could look at our questionnaire and see what type of characters they wanted in the film from the results I have found out what people would like to see in Thriller films.

How are you male or female?

Male - 11

Female - 9

How old are you?

                                          12 – 15 – 3 people

                                          16 – 18 – 10 people

                                                  19 – 20 – 2 people 

How do you get interest in thrillers?

                                                Trailers – 10

                                                 Posters - 2

                                                Billboards - 3

                                                Internet – 5

What do you expect to see in a thriller film?

                                          Main character - 2

                                          Flashback - 2

                                        Goodie / baddie - 2

                                         Night scenes - 5

                                             Blood - 4

                                           Weapons - 2

                                        Car involvement – 3

Would Expect to see a sequel to a thriller film ?

Yes – 7

                                                    No – 13 

What type of sound would you like to hear ?

                                           Tension – 5

                                          Suspense – 12

                                           Various – 0

                                          Sound effects – 5

                                          Horror sounds – 7

What type of characters would you expect to see ?

                                       One main character - 3

                                        Male and female - 12

                                        2 females - 10

                                         Young group  - 12

                                              Other  - 4

The purpose of a thriller film is to ?

Entertain – 15

Inform – true story  10

Instruct – 2

Educate – 5

Other - 4

My Evaluation

Do You Think Your Thriller Film Was Successful?

·         Yes because of the generic conventions used such as:

·         Generic Conventions

·         Blood

·         The music

·         Suspense, Surprise and Shock

·         Types of lighting

·         Low Key – Makes the character look mysterious or intimidating   

·         Make-Up used to make the character look more attractive

·         Camera shots – Close Up to shoe facial expressions or a reaction 

How Does Your Footage Conform To Existing Media?

·          Saw and Dead Silence – Both successful thrillers

·         Generic Conventions used – Blood and Knives

·         Iconography – Things which make it a thriller – Blood, scary music and knife

·         Constructing dramatic narrative for the target audience

 Discuss The Representations Of Your Characters?

·         A male and female

·         Typical storyline, the man the more dominate one kills the scared women

·         Gives a twist to the storyline as he lives two lives

·         Psychological Problems

What Media Production Would Distribute Your Film?

·         Twisted Pictures because they have made successful films such as:

·         Saw

·         Dead Silence

·         Vacancy

·         They are all thrillers

·         Through generic  conventions they helped me to convey a better storyline

Who Is Your Typical For Your Thriller Film

·         15 and above

·         People who enjoy psychological films

·         Men and Women

·         People who enjoy thrillers the shock, surprise and suspense

·         People who have seen, Se7en , Vacancy, Rear Window and Silence of the Lambs

How Did You Attract Your Audience?

·         I attracted my audience through different ways such as:

·         Gore

·         Violence

·         The three S’s – Suspense, Surprise and Shock

·         Stereotypical storyline

·         Adult rated content – To a bare minimum

What Have You Learnt?

·         How to work in a team

·         Final Cut Pro

·         Logic Pro

·         Camera / Video Recorder

·         Tri-pod

Post Production

During the time of filming, my role was the camera and sound and I had to ensure that I looked after the the cameras and tri-pod's, and that when we was filming that I could make the directors imagination come to live through the film, also to effectively convey the different emotions of the characters and his intention of style through the film which was a psychological thriller. Also as the Camera and Sound I had to create the sound of our thriller, which was very complicating at first as the technology we had to use I had never used before but after some tutorial lesson on how to use it I got on to making the thriller track. When making the sound track, I had to make sure it matched every scene in the film

We used Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, and the Mac Computers this was so that we could edit our final footage and add effects and text to the film, this made the film a lot better because we were able to do things that we could not do on the camera. When I used the programmes we had wide variety of things we could use such as the black and white effect which made things look more bold and added more emotions to the characters facial expressions. Logic Pro allowed us to make the thriller sound track we was important because this would help the up beat soundtrack conventional to a thriller film because this created suspense because as the beat go faster the tension was building up this was so that the target audience would be able to tell that something was about to happen.

The negative that we came across was not everyone was able to agree on the same effects such as the black and white, some members of the group thought that we could have used something else, and some thought that we should use the black and white because it gives of different emotions. Positive from the editing is that when the group was not arguing we got on well and discussed things as we was editing this shows a good sign of team work, and hard working trying to achieve the best grade possible. Furthermore another positive is that we all agreed on the same sound track for our thriller film which did save some time in the editing process because we was able to spend more time on the actual footage.

The skills I have learnt from this post productions i have gained a lot of experience from my final project.  The second piece of technology I used was logic pro, were we had to create a sound track, this is what I found most difficult because I had to create a soundtrack from scratch I had to make the thriller soundtrack which also went with the opening. Although this was not my job role I still wanted a go at editing so I could gain some more experience on more technology, I had a go at editing the clip such as adding the effect of black and white and adding text at the beginning of the film. The reason I wanted to have a go at that was because I wanted to have more of say as well went it came to editing as to say what technique  to use such as a black and white effect.

Production

We thought of the Lea Valley Pathway, this with ideal because it is as exactly what we was looking for because it was long and looked scary, the first day we filmed we failed to film because we it got dark early and the camera wasn’t able to pick the male character walking down this alley way. We decided that as group we should come back when it is brighter and earlier so we could capture what we wanted; the group came back the next day to film. It was much a brighter and we could see much more, this is what we wanted to have when we was filming, this was easier for us because we could film a lot more and get the shots we wanted to when filming the Male Character walking down here.



It took us 4 days to film, we took longer than most groups because we had to make sure that everything was done to a high-quality standard of filming also because the Director and Producer wanted us to strive to achievement the whole group put in extra effort to get the best possible superiority of filming. In our group we did extra filming, such as we did 3 takes of the same scene and then choose the best possible film clip so it would look improved from the one before, this took a couple of hours in some footage because sometimes we all did not agree in the same footage so we just did the scene again until it look excellent.

My role was the cameraman on set, this role was important as my group was expecting high standards and I did not want to let them down so I did my best to film up to a expert standard level of filming so my director would be happy with the camera shots that I had, and we used the tri-pod so that we could make sure that our shots were not blurry. Furthermore with me being the camera man I had to make sure that I had to be in the correct angles for the camera shots so I could follow the storyboard from the director and producer, this also allowed us to create certain types of lighting such as if the camera was facing down on the character it would create low key lighting which made the character more intimidating and mysterious to the audience.

The negative that I came across while filming was the first day we filmed it was too late so we had to do it another day, because it was too dark and the camera could barely pick up anything and that meant that I had felt like I had let the group down, even though it was not my fault. Although the positives of the film is that we managed to get the shots we wanted through hard work and determination which helped us to achieve better results. Futhermore I came across a difficulty when we had to do a shot and I was unable to film it because the anlge it was in, which meant I had to go futher back and if I did I would be in the bushes. The director and I and to come up with a new plan because it was tight alley way, so we thought that we should just shoot the film from another angle.