Finished Product

Here is out finished thriller introduction.

Please double click it to watch the full size video on YouTube.

Todays Activity

Today we did the recording of the phone call. This has gone successfully and we are going to import our recording into our final cut film so that we would have finished with that part of the film. We have today been alerted that we have to have our thriller finished by the end of Wednesdays lesson and we have a bit of work left to do but with no delays we should be able to have our thriller completely finished by the end Wednesday. We still have to shorted our film by about half a minute and just neaten up the soundtrack so we should be fine and able to reach the deadline.

Thriller Rough Cut Complete

This our thriller rough cut that is not yet completed but we've done most the work on it there are just a few things left to add.

Our Rough Cut

We have basically finished our rough cut deadline though we are missing a sound of a decent gun shot and the police man on the phone. We have edited our footage but the problem is overall it is 3 and a half minutes long so were going to have to fix that this lesson as the limit is about 2:30 minutes and we are gonna struggle to make that.

Phone Call Script

We are planning to include a phone call in out film so we are going to film that outside of the film and then put it in. We are now making a script for that phone call now:
A police will be the person on the phone, warning Daniel about the consequences of his open blog on murderers.

"Daniel, this is Lloyd, the chief of police, i need to speak to you about your 'blog'. You're creating problems for yourself that you just can't handle alone so you need to take your blog off the web, and if you don't, the police will have to take action. The people you're accusing are bad men and you're just provoking them so for your own good, please take down the blog..... An emergency has just struck up here so I'll have to go, I'll try and ring later and just remember Daniel, be careful..... *phone hangs up*"

Plan For Today

We have decided after our previous filming on Monday we are now going to capture all our work and we are going to begin editing and we are going to work on the sound of our film as well so to be prepared as well as possible for a draft in for Monday. We think we are going to focus on the editing as we think it is more important and we both have different ideas for the music so we need to talk together to discover new plan for sound that we both agree with. We have both decided on a both a slow and fast-paced editing for a nice clean effect for both the fear and the suspense of the film. We believe we have filmed everything necessary for our film so we will not need to film again because we have all the footage required.

Credits

We have got to different ideas for our credits that were still thinking about, one is having plain credits with white text and a black background swapping from the credits to the movie. Our other plan is too play the movie and the credits simultaneously overlapping each other, we will be using white text for this idea to highlight the credits as we filmed most of the movie in the dark. This is the making of one idea:

This is a little mock up of one idea for credits we have used an effect called typewriter which writes the credits in one letter at a time. I think that this is a good effect and we may use this effect for our credits the effect is to put in our credits running simultaneously with our film.
Example of credits with the film:



These ideas are still under consideration and we may think about changing the ideas for our credits but at the moment the filming and the editing and making the soundtrack is much more important than this at the moment.
These are a full list of our credits:

• A production by LeNoblePittuck
• Cinematography by Dominic Noble and Stephen Pittuck
  
• Editing by Dominic Noble and Stephen Pittuck
• Sound by Dominic Noble and Stephen Pittuck
• Director Dominic Noble
• Starring Dominic Noble and Stephen Pittuck

We will include our ident in the credits to show the production companies logo so they can maybe recognize the company.

Recent filming

This weekend we have done our filming, we are going to edit the footage today and see how it went but we think it went well and we got most the footage done along with a few new renovations to our film. we are going to hopefully have filmed everything necessary and we were much more planned this time than last time so we the filming is of better quality.

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.

Political Thriller

This is a political thriller.
A political thriller is a thriller tat is based on political power struggle. The idea of this is to show somebody trying to gain political power, through means which are rarely legal whilst their opponents try to stop them. Although they mostly follow the same base plot lines, they all vary in many ways to make each one individual and much more interesting. The films are usually based around international or national political scenarios, but issues surrounding war and elections are the favourite scenarios because they leave the most room for conspiracy, action and just general elements that could be thrilling.

What’s the Plot?

The story of our film is about this guy called Daniel Moore. When he was young his parents were killed by a serial killer who was granted freedom, this has had a dramatic change on Dan’s attitude, he now follows his own path of his eluded justice where he keeps old news paper articles on released criminals and he hunts them down and murders them. Our story is of the secret peril he is actually going through and of the unlucky policeman who was handed his case.

We are only planning on shooting the beginning scene where a criminal who he has revealed is threatening him but unknowingly the criminal is out thought by Daniel and is killed himself.

More Refined Plan

On the desk is a computer and phone, and it fades the sound in with the phone ringing. It then keeps showing shots of the room until the phone goes to the answering machine, there Daniel’s friend will be saying things like “Daniel! Stop putting these claims on your blog! You are basically leading these murderers to you. What the hell are you trying to do? How did you even come up with these suspects? They’re going to kill you, you know?” ect. Whilst this takes place, the shots will be of the computer monitor, showing zoomed in areas of this blog Daniel has been writing. Panning along sentences such as ‘I finally figured it out, the killer is’ and pictures of suspects. This will then go into the scene of the killer coming into the house which was described in the pitch.

Thriller Introduction Pitch

This doesn't give all the information about the introduction or plot, but I tried to shorten it for the pitch:


Before I talk about the introduction, I shall talk about the basic plot of the thriller. It is a psychological thriller about a journalist called Daniel Moore, he is a 24-year-old man who used to work for a local newspaper for 2 years, but when he became 23, he set up his own newspaper. He called it ‘The Daily Reveals’, because this is no ordinary journalist, he reports on killers and murder cases in the area, giving out information about the cases which he shouldn’t. For example, he writes about who he suspects the culprit may be. After writing about them, he kills said suspects using tricks and blackmail to lead them to him.


The introduction starts in a dark room (Daniel’s bedroom), and we see the shape of a body lying in a bed, which we assume to be Daniel. On the desk is a desk lamp, and under it a copy of a newspaper, with the title ‘CLOAKED MURDERER REVEALED’, and a picture of a man in a cloak, with a suspicious pose. The picture then fades into a live action clip of said murderer, breaking into Daniel’s house by picking the locks on the doors. He then walks into Daniel’s bedroom, and sees the body lying down on the bed. There is then a close up of a gun pointing at the head of the body lying in the bed, and the gunshot; causing the audience to believe Daniel Moore has just been shot. The camera shot is then in front of the ‘dead’ body’s head, showing that it is in fact a manikin, but the murderer cannot see this. The shot then goes to behind the murderer, showing his triumphant pose, but then scrolls down to his feet, showing under the bed; there we see Daniel Moore, lying under the bed with a gun pointed up at the murderer. The screen blacks out with a gunshot, and a voice over of Daniel saying, “Kill or be killed”

By Dominic Noble

What Is a Thriller?

A thriller is a film that's true purpose is to thrill or shock you and uses different methods and conventions to excite you and doesn't try to horrify you like a horror film but doesn't much more subtly. A thriller focuses more on the plot than on the characters and this builds great tension on the film and makes the film more enjoyable to watch and to understand.

Generally, thrillers focus on plot over character, and thus emphasize intense, physical action over the character's psyche. Psychological thrillers tend to reverse this formula to a certain degree, emphasizing the characters just as much, if not more so, than the plot.

The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying upon others minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the others mental state.

evaluation - preliminary task by Stephen Pittuck

For our preliminary task we did a simple scene consisting of a conversation and quite a lot of walking. We used many shots in our scene first of which is the establishing shot and we had a few different variations of it where I’m walking through the camera then when I’m walking through the building and also when Dom is tapping on the table.

We then had our match on action shot when I started to open the door from the outside and then we did a quick cut to me walking through the door on the other side. We also used a match on action shot were I started to grab a chair and then we cut to me moving the chair to sit with Dom for the conversation shot. Our conversation shot also had a lot of reaction shots and close up’s as well as zooms for an intense scene. Close up’s were also used in the match on action shot.

The 180º rule is a very important concept in video and film production. It refers to an imaginary line that cuts through the middle of the scene, from side to side with respect to the camera.
Crossing the line changes the viewer’s perspective in such a way that it may cause disorientation and confusion. For this reason, crossing the line is usually something to be avoided. This is used to continually keep with the idea of continuity editing.

Continuity editing is were the majority of film sequences are edited so that time seems to flow, uninterrupted, from shot to shot. This is to make sure that everything fits together perfectly and sop that nothing seems out of place or it looks like sloppy editing.

Evaluation of Preliminary Task by Dominic Noble

For our preliminary task we used a variety of shots to show our understanding of continuity. Our first shot was an Establishing Shot, this is to show the audience what is going on and where the characters are. For our product it was the shot of Stephen walking down the path outside in the snow.

We then did a slightly unexpected shot, another establishing shot if you will; where we had me tapping my finger on a table, just to show that something is going to happen. We continue with the establishing shots as Stephen walks up the stairs, but then move on to a Close-Up shot. This is rather self-explanatory, but it means to have a shot, which is zoomed in or just close to the subject or object.

For our product our close-up shot was one of Stephen opening a door, it was a close up of the door handle and his hand coming down to open it. This then continues on to a match on action shot, is when you cut during an action to another camera angle, showing the previous action from the same point in time that you left it, in our case on the other side of the door.

We then have a reaction shot of first Stephen looking shocked at something in the room as he turns on the lights, and then one from me, where I stop tapping the desk and look up at him. This is also a long shot, as we are both in the shot as Stephen walks over and grabs a chair next to me; going on to a second match on action shot as we move onto a different angle and Stephen continues sitting on the chair from the point he left.

Our last and most important element was filming a conversation between us; when I talked, the camera was on me, and then when it went to Stephen talking the camera flipped over and looked at him. This had to strictly follow the 180° rule, which meant keeping the shots on one side of our conversation; it’s not allowed to cross over.

Preliminary Task

Here is our preliminary task made for the Thriller Project.

Preliminary Task Script

Stephen walking into building, walking into door over the camera. This is a long shot.

Goes to shot of Dom sitting at a desk, tapping the table with his finger. This is a low angle shot.

Establishing shot of Stephen walking down hallway towards a door, then starting to open it with a close up shot of the door handle.

Match on action shot of inside the room, looking at the other side of the door, with Stephen opening said door from where we left on the last shot.

Stephen grabs a chair and sits next to Dom, following by asking the question "What are you doing?"

Filming a conversation begins, as Dom says "I’m merely sitting here, poking this desk." This is done with the same low angle shot of him before, but this time looking from the side like a conversation shot.

Stephen looks puzzled and asks "That sounds boring, shouldn’t you go to lessons anyway?"

Dom looks up and stares at Stephen for a second, with an intense zooming in shot on his eyes, then it returns to normal as he states "No."

Stephen then says "Well, I have a lesson in here next, so would you please leave?" looking a little irritated at this point.

Dom looks back down at the desk and continues tapping, then after a minute of silent shots of the two, says "Okay."

Dom then stands up, with both in the shot, and walks off slowly.

We see a shot of the door again, and Dom opens it and walks out.

The camera is then looking at Stephen, who is facing the door, watching as Dom walks away; he then turns back to the desk they were on previously.

The last shot is a front shot of Stephen saying "That was weird.." as it fades out.

Preliminary Task, Location and Props

We will be filming around the media block and use the long hallways and the available rooms for our scenes.

We are going to be using a basic chair and table set and the impression of an office. This will show the work the student is doing and the vast amounts and lots of work will be spread around the desk. We will then shoot the conversation were we will add another chair and then we will close the space of the office into a small area were the 2 students are talking to show the little space between them.

Preliminary task

Our preliminary task is going to be a plain walking scene with few lines of dialogue. We are doing this so we have more time to focus on achieving the goal of taking all the correct shots.

We are just going to have someone entering a building to meet someone and we will get all the shots together from that.

Welcome