Thursday 25 February 2010

Photos of Location

These are the photo's of the location for our final product. These areas of the house are the main places that we filmed to fit our story line and where we spent most time filming.


We wanted to use this spy hole so we could have the effect of the character inside looking out to the character who was outside. We were hoping to use a fish eye effect in this part of our filming, however we could not find the exact effect we wanted we did find a circular editing effect that worked fairly well.

This was the end of the alley in the back garden which we used, this was so the character could hide/look out over the drive to see if the other character was still outside. There is also a window just further back and i had the idea of using the reflection of the character in the window to make a more creative shot.

This was the alley around the side of the house that we filmed the character running down in fear of being seen by the character outside. We used this alley as we feel it adds tension to the film, also curiosity as its dark and you don't know what the character is going to do at the other end.

This is the entrance of the alley which you see in the flash back as well as normal time, this is just showing the character disapearing from the back garden to somewhere more enclosed.

This is the front door of the house, this is where the spy hole shot comes in, where the character walks upto the door when the door bell rings.

This is the kitchin area which you see the character running through to go out the back away from the front door. Just behind this shot is another table and chairs which is shown in the picture below.

This is the table where the inside character is sitting at on the typewriter in the first scenes.

When using these locations we found that all the natural lighting was how we wanted it so we did not have to change it or adjust it in anyway.

Tuesday 23 February 2010

Planning of Characters and Actors

The characters we chose were two girls, this is because its not the same stereotypical vulnerable woman being intimidated by a man, we also wanted the actors to be of a similar age as our target audience. Seeing as we chose two girls we thought being the same age and being practical that me and Claudia would be the actors, this way we knew the actors would always be there when we needed to film, because it was us. This worked well as it did not affect the amount Claudia or i could film as we were never in the same scene at the same time, so we could all still film equally and contribute fairly in our group. The costumes were also our decisions, we made the outside character look uneasy and that there was something strange about her and then the inside character looking as she would on a regular day in the house.

Final product location planning

When we were thinking about what we wanted, we as a group thought about what we would feel on edge about. After thinking about this we decided, being the age of our target audience we would like to film a strange happening in an empty house. This is where our idea started to expand and take form of what we wanted the storyline to be. So then we decided to film at Claudia's house, we decided this because it was practical being in Hitchin near school and its located in the same place where we would be when all together, it had a side alley which is what we needed and also it would be free whenever we needed it seeing as it was Claudia's house and she was a group member. So this is why we decided to film in the location that we did.

Producers

Films have to be produced by a production company. A production company that i researched about are the Warner Brothers Studios. The Warner brothers produce many genre of films including thriller. Warner Bros. are the third oldest American production company. This would be the type of institution that we would hope to produce our film.

Music for thriller film

We used http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ to find music to go into our final production. Freeplay music was really easy to use and had a very wide range of music to choose from. When searching for the music there was a lot of genres to choose from and we looked through a lot of the tracks. When we found one, it loaded straight onto iTunes and then we could upload onto our film, so it was a very straight forward process and could be done quickly. This also meant we could try a few tracks with our work as we found more than one, because it was so easy to apply and also remove the music. In the end i think we found our music under the 'eery' genre and i feel it works really well in our production.

The other good thing about this website also was that all songs were copyright free as we were not allowed to use copyright music.

We wanted music in our film as we felt it would make the tension and curiosity of our film towards the audience more effective. Once we had tried a few tracks against no track we knew we wanted music and then researched on the Freeplay website to find what we wanted.

Storyboard for final production









This was my original storyboard, this helped us a lot when filming so that we could refer to what scenes we needed to film together and at what time. Our main product differs from this slightly but not much at all, so it was a really good guide for us. There are only a few scenes that needed adjusting, for example the first scene is wrong in this as we decided to add a shot before the original planned first scene, however everything else is along the same lines and the storyboard does explain the storyline of our film well and we did not need to make any major changes as we stuck to our original storyline.
I have not however put some of the flash back scenes in the storyboard as they were a later added idea, however the flashback is what is happening at the present time in our film so, the content of the film was the same, just edited differently.

Thursday 4 February 2010

Film Opening Analysis

Se7en:

We watched the opening sequence to the film Seven, the genre of this film was a psychological thriller. There were lots of camera cuts. The sequence was fast, flashy and had dark lighting. This effect created curiosity and a nervous feeling. I thought that it this film opening was good because it was not clear to the audience what was going on so it made them want to watch more, this is the effect you want to create with the audience in the opening sequence of a film. The credits were merged into the genre which worked really well, this is something we need to bare in mind when we come to editing as if the credits don't match the genre it can take concentration off of whats going on.

In our production we are planning on having camera cuts like in the opening sequence of Seven.


Face-Off:

During our lessons we also watched the opening of Face-Off, this was a really interesting film opening to watch as it used very clever shots, i.e. as if when watching your looking through a target aim on a gun. The use of edited colour in this opening i thought was really effective and made the audience feel slight tension before even knowing what was going on, location and who was involved, etc. When watching the opening it flicks between one man with a gun or some kind of weapon, you are aware if this because of the shots used like explained above. Then the other flick is onto a man and his young son on a carousel. Then the characters came into sight of each other but at a distance where the weapon holding character could see the man and his son but the man and the son could not see the character with the weapon. This is a good use of curiosity, suspension and tension. During the opening sequence there is a shooting, the character with the weapon shots the young son of the other man. This creates suspicion and draws the audience in to watch the rest of the film. I thought that this film opening was particularly good, so in our film we used the idea of the colour and how it was edited so in our flash backs we tried to create the same effect with the colour in our production.

Tuesday 19 January 2010

Ideas for film name

Our storyline is based around a girl who is experiencing something she has already once experienced. The first time was scary, traumatising and not nice so you see in our film her trying to get herself out of the situation and you see flash backs of her previous experience, she ends up running out of time to get herself out of the situation as her 'follower' out smarts her again.

The names that we thought of for the film were:
  • Never ending Tracker
  • Tracker
  • Time and Time Again
  • Eternal Tracker

We decided to use Time and Time Again as it fitted with our theme of re-occurances of previous situations. However for a while we really wanted to fit the word 'Tracker' into our title as the outside character is like a tracker, she tracks people down very easily and always finds them (that would have been later on discovered in the film, if we had carried the film on from the opening)

Monday 11 January 2010

Target Audience for final production

The audience we aim to target is both genders aged 15-25.

The reason i feel that our audience will appeal to both genders is that our main character is female meaning that female audiences can relate to the thriller. Our main task is designed to thrill the audience emotionally as well as physically as the theme of our production is mind games. This will create curiosity while watching. As this theme can be scary if not understood, we targeted it at older teenagers as we felt younger viewers would not understand the film opening and therefore not enjoy or get the fulfillment of our production.

The interests of our target audience should be to enjoy the thrill of our genre, like solving mind puzzles and to have the enjoyment of working out the storyline whilst watching.

Tuesday 5 January 2010

Shooting Schedule

Date and Time - Wednesday 13th January 1:00pm - 3:30pm
Frame/Section - Frames 1, 4 and 7 - Indoor scenes
People Involved - Charlotte Middleton(me), Joanna Osburn and Claudia Bartlett
Equipment Needed - Recording camera, still camera, tripod, props - typewriter and candles
Location of shot - Inside Claudia's house
On this day it was snowing, due these bad weather conditions we could not film as it did not fit our mise-en-scene and also some of us could not get to the filming location.

Date and Time - Thursday 14th January 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Frame/Section - Frames 5,6 and 8 - Outdoor scenes
People Involved - Charlotte Middleton, Joanna Osburn and Claudia Bartlett
Equipment needed - Recording camera, still camera, tripod, props (and costume) umbrella
Location of shot - In and around Claudia's house
When we filmed on this day we made up for almost everything that would have been done on Wednesday 13th as we had longer to do it, we changed the time we were filming for from starting at 4 to starting at 1:00 pm.

Date and Time -Friday 15th January 9:00am - 11:00am
Frame/Section - 2 and 3 Outdoor scenes
People Involved - Charlotte Middleton, Joanna Osburn, Claudia Bartlett
Equipment Needed - Recording camera, still camera, tripod and Car for filming
Location of shot - In and around Claudia's house
We filmed a few more of the inside shots.

Date and Time - Wednesday 20th January
Frame/Section - 9,10,11 and 12 Outdoor scenes
People Involved - Charlotte Middleton, Joanna Osburn and Claudia Bartlett
Equipment Needed - Recording camera, still camera, tripod and props - umbrella
Location of shot - Outside Claudia's house
One of the group members was ill so we could not continue filming as we needed all three of us there to make sure we all had equal parts in the filming and production of our project.

Date and Time - Thursday 21st January 1:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Frame/Section - 13 and 14
People Involved - Charlotte Middleton, Claudia Bartlett and Joanna Osburn
Equipment Needed -Camera, tripods and props - umbrella and noted piece of paper
Location of shot - Outside the front and back of Claudia's House

Date and Time - Monday 1st February 9:00 am - 11:00 am
Frame/Section - Re-filming shots due to prop and lighting problems
People Involved - Charlotte Middleton, Claudia Bartlett and Joanna Osburn
Equipment Needed - Tripod, camera
Location of shot - Out the back of Claudia's house