Meetings

Date	Action	To be done by	By whom	Discussions
05.11.2012	Review individual storyboards	05.11.2012	Whole group	Discuss ideas and concepts that group members have, reflect on the ideas and then create a group storyboard
08.11.2012	Group Narrative	15.11.2012	Whole Group	To establish a narrative for the opening sequence of our thriller
17.11.2012	Production Roles	17.11.2012	Whole Group	To allocate a production role to each member of the group; looking at personal strengths
20.11.2012	Narrative theory	20.11.2012	Whole Group	To decide which theory would be best suited to our narrative
22.11.2012	Planning mise-en-scene	25.11.2012	Whole Group	To plan the mise-en-sene (setting, costume, iconography, lighting, positioning, facial expressions and body language) of our thriller opening
27.11.2012	Planning opening credits	29.11.2012	Whole Group	To plan the font, positioning and colour of the credits
30.11.2012	Character Representation	30.11.2012	Whole Group	To decide on the qualities of our main characters in order for the audience to build a relationship with them
1.12.2012	Group Storyboard	3.12.2012	Whole Group	To create a storyboard outlining the aspects of each scene
5.12.2012	Planning sound and editing	8.12.2012	Whole Group	To plan the sound, transitions and effects of each scene
9.12.2012	Filming schedule	9.12.2012	Amie Austin	To prepare a schedule consisting of times and dates of filming
9.12.2012	Risk Assessment	9.12.2012	Luke Thompson	To analyse potential risks that could happen during filming and how to prevent them
11.12.2012	Filming of opening	11.12.2012	Whole Group	To film a two-minute opening sequence
12.12.2012	Editing and sound	19.12.2012	Luke Thompson & Max Heath	To edit the footage on ‘Final Cut Express’ and insert sound
20.12.2012	Audience feedback	20.12.2012	Amie Austin & Max Heath	To screen our thriller and receive feedback; positive and negative

Why are meetings important to a production?

Meeting are important to a production as they enhance efficiency. All members of the group were able to communicate regarding all decision making and potential issues that could have occurred. This enabled us to make progress and constant improvements in order to meet the requirements of the thriller opening. Communication also allowed us to work better as a team.

     Overall do you think your group worked well together?

 

   

     As a result of meeting on a regular basis, decisions were made effectively as all viewpoints were taken into consideration. This allowed us to maintain a positive working relationship with one another. Tasks were distributed evenly to the suited person according to the task. For instance due to previous experence amie was very good at mangaing files this helped us to work well and meet each others skills. 

Audience Feedback

Audience feedback is important as the aim of a director/ editor/ producer is to please their target audience. By getting audience feed back it enabled my group to look at our film again and change parts where our target audience did not find them

We screened our production in a classroom with teenagers from 15 and older. we did this as our film age rating is 15. It was show on a projector and surround sound speakers gave our production the best chance for success meaning that all feedback was film related, this also gave the audience the full feel of the film. it was shown multiple times so the audience could give back plenty of positive and negative feedback. it was also played multiple times to let the audience take in the story line and also to gather advanced notes.

You tube helped us screen our production also as it is posted across the globe and let a large amount of viewer to give instant feedback. This was useful as it allowed people to give honest answer and not feel like being horrible in front of you when giving negative comments. It also benefited us the audience can watch the clip in the comfort on their own home, which makes the surroundings more normal, making reaction more reliable. in addition as people can watch from home and conformable areas they are more likely to take time out and make detailed feedback.

We received alot of feedback on our film, but we decided to take the two most helpful positive  comments and the two most negative comments.

1. "i like the sound track, i thought it worked really well with the opening it really helped create tension". ella sutherland age 17
2. "I didn't like some of the filming , i thought at times it was a little too dark and you couldn't always see the characters faces." lauren vale age 17
3. i loved the police officers i though he looked really creepy and made me feel a bit uncomfortable so it worked well for the thriller film. Liams adams age 15
4. i didn't the end was particularly brilliant, i think it could have been left on a better note it, seemed a bit predictable what might happen next ." jordan harrison aged 16

reflecting back on theses comments was really useful when editing our film production. it showed us what we was missing, how to improve our production, how to use lighting to our benefit, we knew what we had to roughly improve from these comments and the further comments we are still recieving online and from people asking how we are getting on with our production. It was really nice to have much support and positive  feedback it really gave us the boost of confidence we needed to complete our film to a high standard.

Poster Analysis

 

 

 

 

 

Contrasting dark and light

• This gives an eerie effect to the poster and suggests a matter of life or death within the narrative, as black is a connotation of death and white is representative for innocence and life. The man is white which suggests he is innocent and the back ground is black suggesting death.

The use of the colour Red (cut)

• Connotation of blood, violence, death, danger
• Suggesting potential narrative including violence
• The red tag line suggest blood danger and violence in the tag line

Use of the word die in the tag line

• Suggests that the character is put in a dangerous situation in which death is possible
• “live or die on this day” suggest a eerie narrative and that the film could include death

Capital Letters

• Highlighting importance/making it clear to the audience the bold font on the dark background cement this.
• The bold font highlighting the A grade actor illustrate his importance

Open mouth/ frozen lips

• Suggests the actors pain for help/emotions of feeling of fear making the audience aware of narrative/anxious. This is cemented by the snow falling which suggest the narrative.

Low key lighting

• Creates contrasting shadows to hide identity of character (which adds mystery) as does the prop/ tiara

Male Victim

• The victim shown on the poster is a male, which subverts convention of the thriller genre as men are not normally seen as the vulnerable which highlights the  feel  to danger. This adds a new twist on the thriller genre.

Falling Snow Effect

• This effect over the character's face suggests that the events in the film have metaphorically 'frozen' him. It also could suggest he is trying to escape but is being stopped by something/someone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Preliminary task

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDxBGwLVhcU

For my groups preliminary task we created a short edited sequence using various different conventions. It had to be between 30 seconds to a minute. The reason for doing this task was to see what strengths and weakness' we had as a group and to generally become more familiar with using a camera. This task helped us notify what type of elements are essential when planning a film. This is so we would be prepared when it came down to making the real thing. There was a balance of different inputs and we managed to create a 45 second clip with both flaws and good qualities.

A flaw of our task was that we used a hand-held camera this meant that our camera movement was not stable and our shots where off balance and not exactly what we wanted. The camera was therefore not only effected by the movement of the shot within filming but also the sound from having to move the camera so often, this could be avoided if a tripod was used. Another fault we found was that there was background noises within our filming which we had to cut out because you couldn't hear the actors or the movements they was making and the footage looked very unprofessional and it lowered the realness of our task it looked like it had been filmed by students instead of having the right sounds in the right places. This weakness can be avoided by making sure there is no people around when filming and try to get the weather just right so that wind also does not effect the sound on the microphones and the camera microphone itself.

A positive about our preliminary task is the different types of camera shots we used, we managed to use most shots apart from birds eye view and underneath profile shots. These are useful within thriller films as it allows the audience to know when someone is going to be in danger at that moment or very soon. If a person is filmed from above it usually means they are vulnerable and if it is from below it usually means they are powerful. To add more of a narrative to my task we should have filmed Luke from below and Britney from above it would have added well to the story line and would have helped my group understand how camera shots guide the audience through a film.

By doing this task it has helped my group come to grasps with how to simply use a camera correctly, adjust and use a tripod productively and over all prepare us for making our own thriller. We have started to think a lot more about shots and placement and sound within our thriller now and this task has shown us that each piece needs to be filmed accurately and individually in order to make a good thriller opening. We hope by doing this task it has allowed us to make mistakes and learn from them so that in the real thriller filming we will have as little faults as possible and be able to use all of our footage as this time some of our footage was such bad quality you could not here the actors or it was too bad of quality. We know to plan before starting our thriller now and to leave ourselves time to edit and re-shoot footage if anything goes wrong. We made a good first task, and i think we was able to discover our problems and solve them with ease. We need to be prepared for all of the faults we found within this task and make sure they do not reflect in our next.

Group narrative

Group Narrative 

Amys Ideas 
- Innocent girl
- Male old killer
- White significance for female 
-Black significance for male 
- Mask 

Lukes Ideas 
- Posion injection 
-Target marker teenagers 
-White significance for female
-Blue police officer suit 
this is to mislead the audience 
it creates a better enigma of the story 

Maxs Ideas 
-Alley way 
- Train station 
- Fast editing 
- Isolated young girl 
- Boot of the car 
-Stalker /

Adams Idea 
- Low key lighting 
-Old man 
-Young teenager 
-Abandoned location 
-Ghosts 
-Shaddowing 

GROUP IDEA INCLUDES 
Our groups idea includes the use of low-key lighting, it will be filmed using the alley way next to loughton station, at loughton station and in the boot of a car. The characters will include a young innocent girl wearing white and a old man wearing a blue overcoat this is using everyones ideas and still confusing the audience into who is innocent as the man will be wearing blue which is the colour of trust contradicting the audience and who to connect with as a viewer. The old man is a stalker and injects a posion into the young girls neck in the alley way the girl will be thrown into the boot of a car fast editing will be used when moving the body the alley way will be adondoned using a sense of  an abandoned location. Shaddowing will be used when filming this scene and walking through the alley way.

Group Storyboard

Our group story board is made up of all of our individual ideas, we sat down and came up with ideas of where it will be set and what sort of illustrations would be an accurate display of our chosen locations. We combined our ideas and came up with a story board which consists of seven pages and has 25 frames. We have included the characters that are included in each frame, the type of editing included, the sound, actors, lighting, iconography, location and type of camera shot.

Synopsis

Synopsis of the Thriller – Injection

Our thriller Injection involves an elderly man who is mentally disturbed, he feels obliged to inject only women with a powerful poison that makes them delirious and unaware of their surroundings, this injection enables him to kidnap the women and take them to a small cabin- like building located in the forest. He deceives his victims by wearing outfits that do not seem a threat to the general public, in this case he disguises himself as a police officer, his face remains anonymous until the victim is injected, the victims only catch a slight glimpse of his features and identity which is an old wrinkly, disorientated face.

His victim is a young woman who is making her way back from the late shift at work, she is on the phone in an under path of a station when the disguised man passes her, thinking she is not prone to attack she does not look back to be aware of her surroundings which allows the man to inject her into the neck with the strong poison, as the woman stumbles to the floor the man begins to drag her along, as they get to the end of the under path a young man (the protagonist) sees her being dragged by the villain, the young man shouts and this startles the killer. He proceeds to chase after him making the killer drag the woman faster, as they turn the alley way the protagonist sees him dragging her into a car. As they drive away the villain drops the syringe, the man looks at the syringe and sees the name of the company where the syringe is made, from this point on he pursues the villain by investigating into the company where the syringes are bought from to try and find details of the villain. Meanwhile the villain is putting the woman through a series of torturous actions in his place in the woods.

What happens at the end- The protagonist dies, the woman lives by losing various body parts. The climax will be a cliff hanger which will be helpful to support sequels of the film.

We came up with this idea via our individual narrative and put all the ideas together where we bounced ideas off of each other and came up with the group narrative.

Enigma- What the injection consists of. The audience being unaware of why he is injecting her. What possesses him to do such things. How did the woman escape.