What we did Today

Today we have worked on completing our ident which is coming along well and we are close to completion. We have decided to use some sort of shattered looking text because it looks great and with a bit of tweaking, could work really well as our logo. We are also going to use the colour red as a highlight of blood for our ident and we are going to shade the bottom half so they are different shades and it's looking good.

We finished our ident and it looks pretty cool, as we used 3 rectangles as a background to our red text and it all looks really good.

Target Audience

Our target audience is obviously from the age of 12 upwards but we also want to reach this film across to the middle aged audience as well as the teenagers/young adults. We are choosing this age because we want our film to be sophisticated and clever and to make you have to think to follow along with it, we think this is for more of a mature audience than a younger audience. We wish to reach out to a mature audience but we would like to please ages of many ranges above the age of 12 of course.

Other People's Work

This is work from other media studies students that work well and have really caught the idea of a thriller.
I think this is quite a good piece of work as both the music and the editing both work well with the filming. The music is played continuously throughout the opening and isn't all that noticeable but it works well as it's background noise and works well as tense music. This clip is quite good for a thriller and all the different conventions used all work well



This is a really good thriller as the suspense and tension throughout the film is held and kept at a high level to scar the viewer. The masked murderer is a good touch as you don't see who he is and at the end he leaves his mask which is a good touch on the thriller. The editing is quite slow which also helps to keep up the tension and the suspense.

Future of Filming

We failed to plan to film again over half term so we're going to film on the weekend of the 26th, we will book the cameras for this weekend and hopefully get all the filming done this weekend for editing throughout the next week.

Story Board

Click the images to enlarge.




Shot 1 - Establishing shot - Silence in the shot while the the you see the phone in the corner as well as the body laying in the bed.
Shot 2 - medium shot - of the laptop and the phone hen the phone rings and breaks the silence abruptly.
Shot 3 - Medium/long shot - More shots of the phone when the phone goes to answering machine.
Shot 4 - Extreme Close - up - Of the phone as the cop rings to warn Daniel about his posts on the blog leading him to danger.
Shot 5 - Extreme close - up - Of the laptop on the page of the blog as it is mentioned showing the name of the blog.
Shot 6 - Extreme Close - up - Of the blog again except this time showing different pieces among the blog to show what it' about.


Shot 7 - Extreme Close - up - Again of the main blogs that give away what he is using the blog for and who he is trying to find.
Shot 8 - Close - up - Of the murderer as he is cutting off the power to the house (we are actually thinking about not using this because we think it will then be quite difficult to incorporate lighting and to film under those conditions).
Shot 9 - Medium shot - Of the blog and the phone as the guy is cut off from the voice mail and music may now be incorporated now.
Shot 10 - Close - up - Of the bottom of the door as you hear loud footsteps getting closer and closer to the door getting louder as well.
Shot 11 - Match on action shot - As the murderer on the outside of the door starts to open the door.
Shot 12 - Medium shot - Of the murderer on the outside slowly coming into the house and the music will get louder here.


Shot 13 - mid shot - Of the murderer entering Daniels room after pick locking his door. We may also use a low angle for this shot as well.
Shot 14 - Long shot - Were the murderer is walking closer and closer too Daniel. This shot will show both the murderer and the end of the bed.
Shot 15 - mid shot - Of the murderer pulling out a knife that we assume is going to be used to kill Daniel.
Shot 16 - over the shoulder shot - The murderer is looking down on Daniel who is laying in the bed, leaning over to stab him.
Shot 17 - mid shot - of the murderer stabbing Daniel, although we won't show the knife going into him for obvious safety risks. At this point we can see that the body in the bed is a mannequin.
Shot 18 - Low angle - Of the murderer holding the knife and falling back, he believes he's committed the murder successfully until he notices something and looks down.



Shot 19 - High angle - This is were the murderer has just stabbed the mannequin and Daniel is revealing himself with a gun from under the bed.
Shot 20 - Close up - Of Daniel and his gun showing that he now has the power and that the murderer is basically screwed.
Shot 21 - This is were we will show the title of our film after the sound of the gunshot.

Editing

Today we have converted our video files into a format the mac accepts so we have brought them in via memory stick and we are going to see what they like today and have a go at editing them. Most of our shots so far look quite good for what we were looking for though we have also found out that there is quite a lot we need to change so this upcoming test filming is gonna be quite helpful to us for experimenting purposes. With the editing we are looking for both quite fast effective editing as well as slow paced suspenseful editing so we are going to see how this works on our test film that we have done.

Test filming

This previous weekend we have been filming a test for our final program. We feel like we followed our storyboard almost perfectly but some of the shots have not turned out as well as we had hoped and we are planning on having another test before we film the final thing. This test has helped us to learn the effectiveness of the shots we had planned and we are going to have re-think some things and we are going to design another storyboard though we don't want to drift too far away from our original.

We are planning on filming gain over half term so that we can get another idea of what kinds of things work for our film and what don't. We are hoping that once we do this second test we can compare the to and get a great idea for filming in our final piece.

Certificate

We think we are going to make our film a 12A, because ours has violence along with a real life subject and with the blood and language that we would include. It is not violent enough for either a 15 or an 18.

Filming tips.

Today we got together and created a brainstorm about some good filming tips. These are what we thought:

• Think about different shot types
• Organisation - Time - Decent shot list, Tick it off as you go
• Think ahead - Credits, where will they go
• Stick to your storyboard if possible
• Shout out shot number before each shot/take
• "Lights, camera, action"
• Sort out roles - Swap if necessary
  
• Think distance - Camera, Sound
• Lighting - TEST!
• Perform!

We are going to try and refer to these during our shooting so that we can create a better film using these skills and tips.

Crime thriller

A crime thriller is obviously as it states revolved around a crime like a murder or a serial killer. This genre has often had another name that some people often consider it to be a genre on it's
own, this genre is film noir which was created many years ago for the standard term fo all crime thrillers though this term is only for the blak and white crime films of those days, we now call it neo noir which isn't black and white but is an updated film noir.
Examples:


This is a neo noir because it follows the same conventions of film noir it's just updated. This film is basically set in a city full of crime hence the name sin city.


This is also a neo noir film.

Action thriller

An action thriller is is hard too find because thriller ans action films are a lot alike but they rarely join unless they have that more of a suspense and tension and chase scenes that a thriller would have.
Examples:

This is an action thriller because the plot goes more out of reach of the action genre and into the thriller genre. There is a lot more chase scenes in the is film than others and this is a thriller because a man has lost his memory and people are hunting him don for hat he has done before and that is what makes this film an action thriller.


This film is a lot like the Bourne films in that there is a lot of fights and they use a lot of conventions that are similar of the same to that of thriller films. This film has been remade with loads of different actor and the genre and the capabilities of the films has grown with it so this film has grown into an action thriller.

Shot list

Shot's we will be using:

• Long shot - Of the murderer breaking into Daniels house.
  
• Close up - Of Daniel when he pulls himself from under his bed and reveals his gun.
• Extreme close - up - Of the words o his blog as we pan across some of them.
  
• Match on action - The murderer is going into the bedroom and we see him start to open the door and then we cut to the other side of the door of him walking in.
  
• Establishing shot - This is were we have many still shots of different areas of Daniels room cutting from one to the other rapidly.
  
• Medium shot - When the murderer is looking down on Daniel under the bed. We film him from his waist upward.
• Low angle - The murderer is looking down on (point of view shot) Daniel who is under the bed and he is preparing to shoot him.
  
• High angle - This is when we are looking up from Daniels point of view and he has pulled out his own gun and is preparing to shoot the murderer.
  
• Point of view - Of both Daniel and the murderer in the gun scene.
• Over the shoulder shot - Were we shoot from over the murderers shoulder looking at Daniels gun.
• Reaction shot - Of the murderer when he sees Daniel revealing himself from under his bed and pulls out his own gun.
  

Production roles

Dom - Director - because we are filming in his house and he has made the storyboard so he has a better idea of what we are going to do.
Dom and Stephen = Sound, Editing and Cinematographer
We will both do these job because we both believe that 2 minds are better than one when it comes to these particular jobs and we will both be acting and in those times we will both have to swap being cinematographer. We are both fairly new too this so we will both be able too help eah other advance our skills in these area's.

Actors

Daniel - Stephen - We want Daniel to look casual and wear normal clothes like a casual guy with a horrifying secret. We want him to be nothing special and to make him look like every other working class people walking the streets.
Murderer - Dom - We want the murderer to seem threatening and Dom is tall and really good at pulling off theses roles. We want him to be intimidating and frightening as if Daniel doesn't stand a chance against him.
Police man- Dom - Again we want the police man to sound threatening as we only hear his voice and Dom is good at making his voice really deep and scary, really tough sounding and threatening and someone too be scared of.

Locations

We are planning on filming in Dom's house because we feel it fit's the needs of our film better. We are going to film in a spare room in his house, this room has access to the outside and that is the were the murderer will come in. We are going to film when it's dark so that we can get a nice chilling atmosphere and so we can get that dark feeling that we are looking for in our film.

Time of Filming

We are hoping to film on the weekend of the 7th because we want to get our filming done so that we spend most of the other time working on our editing, credits and soundtrack. We think filming on a weekend will be better because we can then film for longer while having quite a lot of time to improvise and fix mistakes. We also plan to film later in the day when it's darker, as that is when the introduction is set; it has to be reasonably dark outside.

The backup plan is to film as soon as possible after the weekend so that we can still focus on the editing and the soundtrack.

Lighting

We are going to film in Daniels room when it is dark for a thrilling effect and to create more tension. We will have little lighting from the hallway as we will use to make sure we can see the characters in the room. We will have quite a bit of light on the characters as we show high and low angles of the characters. We will have Daniels computer on his blog so that will be our second source of light which will be that light that when we pan around the room this light shows everything. We want a small like lamp post lighting like this here:

Costumes and Props

Here is a list of the props we will use:

. A computer + monitor


. A land line phone


. A bed


. A mannequin of sorts


. A knife


Spud Gun (Painted Black)


These props will help in making the journalist's room, house and clips of the characters seem more realistic and interesting. All of the props are prepared already, except the 'mannequin'; one idea for said mannequin is to use somebody else and tell them to lay still in the bed so the audience will believe he's an immobile object.

Costumes

The characters in our thriller introduction both have very different sets of clothing. The journalist, Daniel, will wear very ordinary clothing, a casual shirt and jeans; this is to make him 'look' like an average person. The murderer, however, has a much more distinctive set of clothing. We plan on having the murderer dress in completely black, along with a black jacket or coat, and wearing an obvious mask; the reason he has to have a mask, is so we can fade from a picture of him on the blog, to a real clip of him breaking into Daniel's house. Using the mask as the centre of fade.

Musical Inspirations

We will include a dialogue speech when Daniel is on the phone to the police man who is warning him too be careful about unveiling the identity of the murderers. Other than that we will not have any dialogue or anything but we may include one short nappy line from Daniel at the and after he murders the murderer.

The music from the hills have eyes is very good and works like it should and scares you almost as much as the film does. This music consists of quite big beats and then different crescendos every now and then. This creates a very suspenseful atmosphere this also is the music played when the monsters are about or something bad is about to happen.

Also the music from cape fear is really good as it's tense and is really exciting loud music that gives you the feel that something bad is going to happen.

Similar Thrillers

Our thriller introduction cannot really be related fully to any film in particular, but instead, different aspects of lots of thrillers. The first one is Cape Fear, because it is the idea of a killer tracking and killing his victims; this is relevant to ours because it is about the murderer coming to kill the journalist, but it's also different because we have the twist at the end where the journalist kills the murderer.

One shot I plan on including in our introduction is one of the camera panning down from the manikin to show the journalist hiding under the bed with a gun; I found this to be similar to a part of the anime style scene in Kill Bill. A lot of our establishing shots will be zooming around the journalist's room, showing different elements of it, making the audience spatially aware of the area. I got the idea for this from different parts of 'Panic Room', where there camera zooms around the house, showing certain places in detail.



We also found our thriller idea to be similar to the anime 'Death Note', as the story of this anime revolves around a boy called Light, who kills criminals in the world to make it a better place using the Death Note. This is similar to our idea as Daniel, the journalist in our film, wants to kill all of the murderers he finds in newspapers; and this is exactly the kind of idea Light had.

Psychological thriller

These are good examples of psychological thrillers.
Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the wide-ranging thriller genre. However, this genre often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre in addition to the typical traits of the thriller genre. Also, occasionally this genre will border into the also wide-ranging Horror genre.
Silence of the lambs is really good for the suspense and the way it makes this film a psychological thriller. The suspense and the tension throughout this film is amazing and it keeps you on edge throughout the whole of the film. The fact that this detective is working with a cannibal to catch a criminal is really a unique type of thriller as it's not really been done before in most thrillers, and the ending were the cannibal ends up escaping really keeps the tension at a high and leads the film onwards past this one.
We are going to make a psychological thriller so we are looking closely at these. We are going to do a psychological thriller because me and Dom both prefer them to other thrillers and they seem to have much more of an effect and are much better than other thrillers.