Research

I have been carrying out some research on thrillers today to widen my horizon on these types of films to enable myself to produce the best thriller possible when we start to plan our coursework. When carrying out this research i found out that there were a lot more thriller films than i thought there was, i found that there are many sub-genres within the category of thriller and this was very interesting. These sub-genres are:
Action thriller, Conspiracy thriller, Crime thriller, Disaster thriller, Drama thriller,Eco-thriller,
Horror thriller, Erotic thriller, Legal thriller, Medical thriller, Political thriller,Psychological thriller, Spy thriller, Supernatural thriller & Techno-thriller.
I also researched horror as my group was thinking about doing a horror thriller as we were coming up with some very interesting ideas and we thought it would be perfect to put them into the opening sequence of our thriller. When in my lesson we was told about a man named Alfred Hitchcock so I also done some research on him as well as he is a very famous man known for producing thriller films such as Psyhco which is a very popular film. He became famous for his expert and largely unrivaled control of pace and suspense, and his films were both full of fear and fantasy.

Editing

Today we were given our film footage so we could edit it to produce our final production. When we received this footage i was not sure if we was going to be able to hear the sound as we had some difficulties with the equipment but luckily enough everything was fine. During this session we began to choose certain clips from our footage that we wanted to include in our production and started to put them in the order that we wanted them. When editing i found that it was quite hard to cut down a piece of 4minute footage to a 30second production, this was because i found that everything that i wanted to include was too long for the time frame given. When the session was coming to and end we had realised that nobody was anywhere near finished with their production so Miss Rudhan said she would give us an extra session on November 5th to continue the task and she also told us that we could make our production 45secs maximum as everyone was struggling to keep their production within 30secs.

Filming production

Yesterday my group came over to my house so we could film our preliminary task. First of all we had to get Maya and Sean into their costumes and do their hair and make-up before we could actually start the filming, once we had done that we had a couple of run through to make sure they knew exactly what they was doing and then we set up the equipment. When we started the filming we decided we was going to do each shot at a few different angles so we would have a variety of shots to choose from when it came to edit the footage. It was stressful filming the footage as Maya and Sean kept forgetting their lines which meant we had to film a shot over and over again. When we got half way through we thought we was doing so well until we realised that we never had the headphones and microphone connected to the camera so when we realised we had to go back and film all the shots that had dialogue again, this put us behind schedule but we still pulled through even though it took us linger than we thought it would. We carried on filming the production but we was having difficulties with the sound as we failed to hear anything through the headphones, we tried to fix them but we found that the only way you could hear was if the microphone was right at the persons mouth which meant you could see it in the shot and that just wouldn't work. We kept the microphone as close as possible without it being in the shot and just continued with the filming not knowing whether or not we would be able to hear it. Once the filming had come to an end we then packed away the equipment and just hoped for the best.

CLC

Today me and my media class went on a trip to the CLC to learn what we needed to know to carry out our preliminary task. Whilst we were there we were given a piece of footage of a lady making a cup of tea and we were told to edit it to make in look like it had been filmed continuously. They made us do this as this is what we were going to have to do after we had filmed our footage. When doing this task i found it very interesting and found that it was easier than i fort it would be. However, when we moved onto the next task which was to film 2 people talking to each other and edit them together as one was very complicating as we had to synchronize the sound in order for them to be speaking with each other not at each other. When doing this me and my group had some complications as the people who were recording the footage never got the begging which include the clap which was used for the start of the conversation. This meant that we couldn't line up the sound and just had to work around it.
Also, we were taught how to use Green screen technology(CGI), this was very complicating as you had to keep trying different backgrounds to see which one worked best with the footage you had. If you could still see pieces of the green background then you had to change your background so you could only see the the background you want. This was a very good experience and I learnt many things that will help me in media later on in life.

Creating Animatic

Today we took pictures of the animatic we had produced so that we could then upload them onto an apple mac computer and crate a picture version of our production. We will do this by using a programme called i-movie in which we will then be able to download the soundtracks that we would like to use in the production to see whether it will go with it or not. However, a few problems occurred when uploading the pictures which meant we were unable to complete the animatic successfully, this will be prosponed to a later date when we are able to finish it properly.

Character Information

Today, my group and I came up with some background information about the characters that will be in our production, we done this to show why the plot of our production is the way it is. We decided that the man in production will be called Mr Doeski and the lady will be called Dollie, Mr Doeski is the owner of a hit man company in which his targets are people who have betrayed him in the past and Dollie helps him trap the victims with her wonderful charm in order for Mr Doeski to send a hit man to kill the victim. In the production piece Mr Doeski is very angry with Dollie as she is becoming too attached to the victim she is meant to be trapping and is prolonging the process of the attack and the man who hired Mr Doeski is becoming very frustrated as the killing is taking too long and is demanding a quick job or no money and this is jeopardising Mr Doeski's reputation.

We also came up with a script for the short piece of dialogue the characters will exchange which will be as followed:
Mr Doeski: Sit down!
Dollie: What is it Mr Doeski?
Mr Doeski: He's up my ass Dollie, I ain't got no damn time for a delay in my shot.
Dollie: I nearly got him, give me a little more time, please Mr Doeski, Ill have him I promise
Mr Doeski: (Overlapping from 'I Promise') Listen!
Pause.
No more messing with me. . . OK Dollie.

We also produced our storyboard and planned our animatic so it would be ready to be photographed in the next lesson. We also done a run through of our production to ensure we know exactly what we will be doing when we borrow the filming equipment.

Gathering Ideas

Today, we watched an animatic to gain an clear view of what we will have to produce, we also watched several case studies of others work to understand how our work is expected to be and to gather some ideas of how we want to set out our production.
Today my group and I decided that we are going to produce a crime thriller as we feel it is a very interesting type of thriller and felt that we had more creative ideas for this type than what we had for the others.We decided that we wanted it to be set in the 1920's as we felt this would be very interesting and felt that we could produce this to the best of our ability, from this we came up with some ideas for the location and these were a hotel, a basement, a car park, an office, a boiler room or a graveyard, we decided on these as we feel it would create a good scene for tension. However although we have a few ideas for the location we would prefer it to be set in a boiler room or basement. We also came up with some ideas of how we wanted to produce our production.
As we have decided on a 1920's theme we have each been assigned a role which is to carry out research on specific areas from this time, theseroles were:
Researching the cotton club and Bugzy Malone which is to be done by Maria.
Women in the 1920's and how they were represented which is to be done by Chantelle.
Men in the 1920's and how they acted e.g Being a gangster which is to be done by me.
How people dressed in the 1920's which is to be done by Maya.
Shortly after this we bgan to storyboard our ideas in order to produce a clear understandin of how our production will be fimed, we are also doing this so that we are then ready to make our animatic in the next lesson.
Finally we were given a production unit sheet to ensure we keep on track of what we are meant to be doing and to make sure we keep to deadlines.

Preliminary task

Today, I was introduced to my preliminary task which was:
Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down on a chair opposite another character, with whom he/she then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and 180 degree rule.
Shortly after this I was told to get into a group by my teacher Miss Rudhan, which consisted of people whom i feel I could work best with. My group consists of Maya, Chantelle, Maria and I as we all fell that we can work to the best of our ability with each other.
We were also introduced to different shot types so we were aware of what we would need to be using.
Now that we I have been introduced to our task we will be doing some research into thriller films and coming up with ideas of how we want to film our production and what location we would like it to be in.