Planning idea's for our Thriller

Dear Catherine

Thank you for your email, as filming would take place outside Museum Opening Hours (before 10am or after 6pm) we do need to cover costs to keep the Museum open, including staffing costs. Our standard filming rate is £450 per hour which we reduce to £150 per hour for students and we would not be able to reduce this costs any further.

Please do advise if you would like to go ahead with the filming and I will be happy to investigate available dates.

Best wishes,
Debbie

Debbie Dowden
Events Officer

Imperial War Museum
Lambeth Road
London
SE1 6HZ

Tel: 020 7416 5393

Once again,  the price was too high to be able to film at this location. So we settled for using our studio at school and placing our thriller sequence in an old bomb shelter, in both the past and the present day.

After these many attempts of finding a location to film in, we came up with our final idea of BLITZ.

Thursday, 16 December 2010

Planning idea's for our Thriller

 Dear Sir/Madam

We are currently in the process of planning our AS Media studies coursework Thriller Sequence at Hurtwood House and while searching for locations we stumbled across Cane Hill Asylum. We researched it and found this website and were wondering if you could give us the details of the current owner as we were wondering if there was any chance we could possibly be able to use it as a film location for a day in January. There will be profesional teacher supervision aswell.

Many thanks in advance for any information you can give us.

Regards,

Charlie Manton, Sophie Greig, Catherine Ward Thomas

Hurtwood House

Radnor Lane

Holmbury St Mary

Dorking

RH5 6NU

However we heard no reply from Cane Hill, so moved onto other mental asylums. After phoning many of them up, we rang the Surrey County Council who told us that there would be too many insure procedures to complete if we wished to film in a derelict building.

At this point our idea once again took a turn as we decided on a plot change. Instead of setting it in Victorian times we moved forward 50 years to the era of World War 2 and took our young girl to a tube station. After contacting Aldwych Station we discovered that it would cost £250 p.h which we could not afford.

Our idea took another turn when we thought about other locations to film in and came up with the idea of using an exibhition at the Imperial War Museum:

 

 

Dear Sir or Madam,
We are currently studying for our Media AS level and need to produce a 2 minute opening sequence of a horror/thriller movie. We came across your 'Blitz Experience' exhibition and fits our theme perfectly. We were wondering if it would be possible to film there for a day in early January. We understand that it costs £150 p.h, however as we are students we cannot afford a morning's worth of filming there. Would it be possible to reduce the price to allow us filming there for around 4 hours.

We have been planning an opening sequence revolving around one 8 year old girl who has lost her mother in a bombing, we would like shots of her wandering around the bombed streets of London after the bombs have dropped. Is there any way of getting these shots without paying the full price? After our exam we would be happy to offer you the footage we shot and the finished sequence if it is any use to you.

Many thanks,

Catherine Ward Thomas

Media Studies Dept.
Hurtwood House School
Radnor Lane
Holmbury St Mary
Dorking
Surrey
RH5 6NU

The museum replied with this email:

 

Dear Sophie,

Thank you for your email, as filming would take place outside Museum Opening Hours (before 10am or after 6pm) we do need to cover costs to keep the Museum open, including staffing costs. Our standard filming rate is £450 per hour which we reduce to £150 per hour for students and we would not be able to reduce this costs any further.

Please do advise if you would like to go ahead with the filming and I will be happy to investigate available dates.

Best wishes,
Debbie

Debbie Dowden
Events Officer

Imperial War Museum
Lambeth Road
London
SE1 6HZ

Tel: 020 7416 5393

Once again,  the price was too high to be able to film at this location. So we settled for using our studio at school and placing our thriller sequence in an old bomb shelter, in both the past and the present day.

After these many attempts of finding a location to film in, we came up with our final idea of BLITZ.

Shot List for BLITZ

Tracking shot of bunker

Close up on posters

Close up on foods

Tracking to desk

Close up on newspaper and leaflets

Close up on chair and gas mask box

Cut to bed/feet Panning shot up girl’s feet

Pan up her body

Pan up to her head and over her shoulders

P.O.V shot of her writing

Extreme close up of diary

Wide shot of girl looking around

Close up of her shuffling back to bed

Cut to black

Medium shot of breaking through of bunker

P.O.V shot of torch sinning round

Close up of propaganda poster

Close up of books

Wide shot to see ghost

Media close up of bed

Close up on diary

Over shoulder shot of man reading diary

Wide shot to reveal ghost

Cut to black

Black frame

BLITZ.

BLITZ

Blitz[1]xsxx[1]

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We have begun to mind map and think of ideas for our thriller 2 minute film sequence.
One of our ideas and our favourite one so far was the idea of the blitz in the underground, having a small girl looking for her mother in the tube station in London, using ideas of the layering and scratchy frames in seven we wanted to have this theme showing short sharp flash frames of this ghostly girl, me and my group made a PowerPoint to show off some of our beginning idea's...

However throughout our idea planning we came to a few obstacles that were some impassable, the price of the location and time on our hands, we came to the conclusion that with a much more simpler set we could concentrate on the mise on scene using props and then have our sound and set looking simpler. To do this we had to however change the location idea that we had originally planned, instead or a tube station we thought an old shelter in the time of the blitz, therefore still keeping our blitz idea but creating a simpler way of doing this.
The flaw in our plan was the plot, we had concentrated too hard on location and not enough on what the 2 minutes is going to consist of.
the idea we came up with was still involving a little girl and still involving the spooky ghostly feel to her, however we decided to begin our sequence with the blitz period happening and her alive writing in her diary, showing a lot of shot extreme close up shots of the things she is doing in this shelter. Then the bombing and sound effects of World War 2 end the first section of the sequence opening in modern day as a man with a torch breaks into the shelter. Using a tracking shot, everything that was once there is still there but in a wreck with blood splattered on the war time posters. we see flickers of this girl as he moves the torch around but he doesn’t see this, leaving the audience confused whether they saw what they thought they did, to finish the sequence we see the girl clearly and the torch is dropped and smashed as we fade to a black out. Then in type writer the title of the film to come 'BLITZ' is then shown. We also want to incorporate titles within the story, for example, in newspaper articles etc as well.
this is our now final beginning idea of our two minute film sequence thriller.

THRILLER DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION

There are many small and big key points to a thriller film which makes it a thriller. Things like a pace or movement in camera, sound and plot that invites the audience into a thriller film.

A genuine, standalone thriller is a film that provide thrills and keeps the audience gripped or hanging on the edge of their seats, as the plot builds towards a climax thrillers have been slightly influenced by the horror genre; they have more gore, violence, brutality, terror, and a lot of deaths, but the main thing about the thriller is the plot being gripping and serious, its when the story line is clever and complex and realistic.
Similar things separate the thriller from other overlapping genres like adventure, spy, and war and in some case science fiction. Thrillers are defined not only by their subject of plot but the way they approach the film. For example a gripping story could be portrayed in a more comic or slow way which makes it not a thriller.

 The opening credits of the film Seven show a sinister music and scratchy picture, using layering etc, inviting the audience into a thriller. The images we are seeing are of books and writing and old warn fingers, skin peeling, scissors and cutting paper etc, we know that this is to do with the film about to start however we don’t know what relevance it is to the film yet. We know after seeing the film that every single shot in this film sequence is relevant to the plan that is revealed in the end but it invites us into the movie with a sort of open narrative however not completely as in the film the man in question is revealed from us until the end, you never see the faces you see hands only. This sequence I believe however isn’t trying to give us a clue on the plot but to open the film with a mood that mirrors the films mood.

Seven could be sold as a mystery story where a detective finds out who the killer is of these people, however that is not how the story is shown. The murders are another type of clue towards the resolution of the story and the murderer is although kept out of shot with a closed narrative until near the end, this whole film is approached in a thriller genre. This backs up the idea of the thrillers main conventions being how they approach the story not what the story itself is about.

For example in seven the scene when they are chasing the murderer through the corridors the whole scene is set in a thriller mood, with fast moving frames, canted angles and the chase like all thriller films would show a similar sequence of fast movement and suspension with gripping music somewhere in the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6prDFbjn_Q

STUDY OF FILM SEQUENCE

Batman begins[1]d[1]dd cwt

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Batman begins opening sequence

MOOD BOARD

Mood board cwt

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A mood board is a collection of pictures, themes and titles to help me create my mood for our thriller

This is a mind map of ideas that we came up with for a theme to our 2 minute thriller sequence.

PRELIM POST PRODUCTION BLOG.

After shooting our prelim task from all the different shots it was time to put all the correct shots and favourite shots together in final cut pro. We learned how to access all our footage and choose the best from each by checking them in and out. We then had one of each shot and the next step was to pick the small part of each that help the scene come together with a lot of shots. This however all had to show the following.

Continuity editing
The most important thing that an editor must keep in mind is continuity. It is said that a good editor is when you don’t notice its there, for example. When you are watching a film and a shot changes to a closer shot. We don’t notice that we may have jumped towards the subject of the shot by about 10 meters. The thing that makes this smooth and UN noticed is the continuity. Continuity is hugely important when cutting during movement or dialogue. For example the door opening from outside at the beginning of our prelim task had to match the next shot of Sam entering; the door must swing in time to when it was opening from the inside. Also in our scene we had a switch of shots during dialogue, to match the continuity in their lines we had to make sure that the gap between talking was a realistic pause, not to fast or slow. This took us a while to get perfect as before we left the gap too long and it appeared the actor had forgotten his lines.  This was also helped later on, when we felt as a group that Sam left a pause to long in the scene, using our editing skills we managed to make the gap smaller and yet it still ran smoothly. These methods can be divided into temporal continuity and spatial continuity – literally TIME and SPACE, within each category. Techniques can cause a passage to be continuous and discontinuous editing, causing viewer disorientation and throwing the viewer of guard.
An ellipsis is an apparent break in natural time continuity as it is implied in the film's stories sometimes. The simplest primary way to keep continuity in a scene is by filming the entire scene from each shot, this means that when we were editing we could pick out any point in the story with any angled shot. For example we decided to try having the close up of the keys at the end of the scene to make this work we would have needed the sound of the door closing, however we did not film the whole scene from that angle so we were not given that freedom, this is something I will try and make sure we do in our later tasks.

Logging in my shots
The layout of the window consists of two clip viewers, one is to see the raw footage played and the other is the newly edited footage. Underneath that is a timeline, this shows all the clips put together, you can adjust each of them from here, all the editing to the scenes themselves takes place here. In the left hand corner the log bin is placed. This is where the narrowed down shots are placed.
To start our editing process we needed to get all our footage from the final cut server, we then checked it out onto the desktop and opened it in final cut pro. Every thing we had shot was put into the rushers bin; we had to select out the shots we needed to put the scene together and forget the failed or not as good a shots. Our selected shots our then put into the log bin.

Organising my shots
Referring back to our story board, we decided to only use it as a thin template. Selecting the right shots for the right lines were mainly based on the original story board. However the odd shot was a judgement of my group of what looked best and best told the story.
The story board given could have been interpreted in many different ways, we decided to make the more dominant character the one pushing and urging the other character to do whatever they were meant to do, this character was called Sam. The more victimised character was called Laura. We show this because we sympathise more with Laura. However we decided to give the ‘bad’ guy more screen time, simply because the more threatening expressions on Sam’s face helped tell the story. Laura was shot in victim status and we show that we sympathise more with her in our editing because at the end we put a shot in of her looking sad and scared, this helps us sympathies with her because we relate more to her feelings after seeing the scene finish with screen time on her.

Shot order
Our shot order was important to show eye line matching with juxtaposition and help demonstrate continuity and sequential editing to control the story line. We had some interesting shots that we wanted too include in our scene, to enable it to still make sense we had to put our scene in time with the rest of the dialogue etc.
Basically we put the storyline first, making sure it made sense, that was our priority for shot order.

In all I think our prelim post production task went well, we all worked well as a group, all had an in put in what was to be edited out and what was put in, we maneged to get the task done quickly and efficiently, we discovered the few mistakes we made, for example our 180 degree line rule was broken in our establuishing shot. However it pulled through well for us all. 

PRELIM EVALUATION

For our prelim task we started by creating a check list so avoid making any mistakes like before. We were given a class room to film, had blonde lighting and cleared the room for space, we set up a table and chair where the character of B sat.

The location
The location I firstly thought was the short straw of all of the options but with the lighting and a space, it worked out just fine. i liked how we had a door that we could show was coning from outside of the building it was also nice for an establishing shot.
the role i took was the same as everyone else in my group, we all rotated, behind the camera roles, calling the action line and taking the directors shot, finding good shots and angles that showed different idea's each of us wanted to portray, e.g. the hero shot etc, check listing each of the scenes we had covered and ticking off essential keys to the picture being filmed, for example white balance, focus, rule of thirds, exposure etc...

Lighting
Our lighting was a blond and simple light. we decided to plot the lines we were given on the idea that action B had to go and drive somewhere, using car keys as prop and indicator to the viewer, the set was an average room with no dark twists and a simple what could have been an office, this meant the two standing lights used were all we needed, we used no other over head or room light.
it was effective because is make the room bright and simple, the light was very artificial room like and life like. Apart form our establishing shot when we used daylight (naturalistic) it was effective because it wasn’t a distraction and it was a complimentary light to both of the actors.

The filming
We set up the camera in the right way, remembering to bubble the camera especially when filming outside on uneven surfaces, the tripod was level in every shot thanks to our check list. We did at least two shots of each scene to make sure the camera angles and focus etc worked well, as we were moving around the room the light was coming from different angles of the shot so the lighting balances did vary slightly until we adjusted it. We made sure the lighting stands and any other equipment we used was not in shot and kept the continuity between each shot so look professional.
We made sure to also link the continuity we filmed the whole scene from each shot, for example the wide shot and over one shoulder we would film the whole shot again.
Again thanks to our check list we did not break the 180degree rule and even in the establishing shot we kept the camera from crossing the 180 degree line.

To make our shots more interesting and let us experiment with some idea’s also to show our understanding, we decided to create a hero shot for Actor A and look down upon Actor B. this helped the viewers hopefully make sense of the plot.  We had no structured plot line but decided to make A the more favored role using shots and the prop of the keys we decided to leave to the viewers imagination. Also actor B was sitting down and Actor A had the appearance of towering over her, making her look like the under dog.

Our terminology was kept professional, we used the words, stand bye, role camera, camera rolling, action and cut. We didn’t need to use anymore words other than over it again. This kept the filming efficient and we didn’t waste time with miss communication.

Our filming lesson was a well learnt and I enjoyed doing it, I know that I will now watch a film and see that depending on how many angles shot in one scene could be the least amount of times they went through the dialogue. The filming its self was very efficient, we had learnt from our extreme failure in our test run and had made a check list of everything we had to remember.  Our group got on well and we all had an input in choice of shots and everyone had a fair share of playing director and camera operator.

INTRODUCTION TO THE VIDEO CAMERA

Camera shots and Camera movements
What I had to remember when using the cameras

Time code, white-balancing, aperture settings, focusing, the 180 degree rule, spatial settings,

Spatial settings helped to show the viewer the space there in as well as portraying spatial relationships between the characters, for example a close and friendly relationship between two characters would mean that they could be shot in the same frame, and an antagonistic pair of characters could be shot in separate frames. This has exceptions.

White balance is when the white areas in a frame are adjusted manually to tell the camera what every other colour in the room is in comparison. For example a white wall would be white balanced to help the brown door and oaker table find the colour in comparison. if the white wall was adjusted to look cream then the rest of the colors in the scene would appear darker and same the opposite way around.

Focusing is key and something i forgot to pay special attention too when we were given our first task to film, the focus is an essential tool to create a clear picture; it is also used to shift the audience's attention from one item to another. For example a man in the background is in focus he then looks towards the bottom left hand side of a camera and goes out of focus, the item he is looking at comes into focus at the front of the scene.

The 180 degree rule is a rule in which the camera cannot shift past one side of the shot, if the camera begins filming on one side, the camera can go anywhere that does not cross over the 180 degrees.  This prevents the actors appearing to have swapped places or the room to seem warped, for example, a shot and reverse shot must be shot on the same side as if the camera is across the 180 degree line the characters can seem to have swapped places, also if the door stars on the left of the frame it cannot suddenly be on the right as it will appear strange. There is an exception to this rule which is the arc rule when the camera whilst filming crosses over the line. This is allowed because you see the camera crossing over and it doesn't warp the set.

The proximity of the shot is also broken up into many different categories to give off different roles or effects,
The wide and extreme wide shot
This helps the viewer see where the plot is taking place. This is usually used as an establishing shot.
The medium shot
The medium shot, shows the subject of the scene close up, but not close up. Like a full body of the character.
Close up shot
This shows the subject of the scene in close, like a head and shoulders. This allows us to feel more familiar with the character.
Extreme close up shot
This is a more non naturalistic shot as it is unlikely for in life anyone to get that close to people and see there emotions, this is to show emotions or perspectives of the character and allows us to become very familiar with the character etc...


Before anything is shot the director will shout stand by to make sure everyone is on the ball and ready. It is also essential to never cut or record unless the directer calls it. It is important to leave a long gap at the begining and end to allow plenty of editing space this is called leading out. Turning over is a term used by the director to tel the camera man to speed up, rolling is a term used to tell the director and actors the camera is recording but the actors dont start the scene until action is called.


I found that moving from a still camera to a video one is very different, the only similarity is the fact it captures what is infront of you, the movement, the while balence the angles are very different. however the cinematography in video and photography in still camera canj be similar in artistic filming, but the shots in a video is normally one of many and can be simpler.
I found the filming its self easy until i watched over and saw all the many mistakes i had made. Including, focusing and spatial thinking. my focus was very incoinsistant and the spaces I used were too small and cramped. I will now, having learnt not to, be aware of these mistakes and work on improving and polishing them in my next task.

INTRODUCTION TO PHOTOSHOP!

Adobe Photoshop is a graphic and picture editing tool. It enables the user to alter, manipulate and create images either from existing photos or found images.


In the lessons previous to this one we have been learning how to start to use Photoshop from scratch; this was from cropping photos, putting images on top of other images and layers to darkening shadows and adjusting contrast levels and exposure etc...
We used tools like the marquee tool for selecting, and cutting box shapes around a part of an image. We also used the clone stamp tool; this makes a direct copy/clone of the highlighted section of the image previously clone stamped. We used the burn and dodge tool to make an image more edgy by darkening areas and lightening areas to bring certain aspects of the image out. For example to give a person a realistic black eye you can use the burn tool around the area of the eye and it will look realistic. All these tools were very useful my favourite was the burn and dodge tools, because you can make subtle but dramatic changes to an image.


My image was mainly focused on layering and opacity as i thought that a classic sunset experimented with curves and hue to make it look abstract and interesting as a nice background with a beautiful image of a horse, reflected against itself creating a non naturalistic image.
the tools I found difficult were the selection tools, lasso tool and magic wand, this was because it was hard to select small details with such a broad selection, this was solved slightly when I used the feather tool, this made my cu out image look more smoothly cut.
I find Photoshop easy to work with the tools i know so far, and i like judging what an image needs to make it better.


Photoshop is very useful in the media, and is used in everything that has been shot and put in magazines, adverts, film etc, this is because every image has been manipulated to look as the creator wants it to. An advert poster for a film will need to be perfected but many more things to create an interesting eye catching image to make you want to see the film. Another advertising branch that would use Photoshop all the time and rely on it are, make up adverts like mascara enhancing etc.

BASIC SKILLS ON CAMERA WORK AND COMPOSITION

Photography brings a visual language that is universal in understanding. We must then understand its vocabulary which consists of shapes, textures, patterns, lines, colours, shade of light to dark and sharp to blurry images. Just as we must learn to arrange words in a coherent order in order to make sense when we write or speak, so too must we put visual elements together in an organized manner if our photographs are to convey their meaning clearly and vividly.


Composition means arrangement: the orderly putting together of parts to make a unified whole; composition through a personal, intuitive act. However, there are basic principles that govern the way visual elements behave and interact when you combine them inside the four borders of a photograph. Once we have sharpened our vision and grasped these basic ideas of principles, then we will have the potential for making our photographs more exciting and effective than ever before. Few techniques I can employ to help improve my composition.


Producing pictures that are pleasing to someone other than me will make my photography much more rewarding. One of the popular rules in photography is the rule of thirds; this is because it makes a photograph less static as well as producing nicely balanced easy on the eye picture. Also, as you have to position things relative to the edges of the frame it helps get rid of ' tiny subject surrounded by vast empty spaces. 
Rule of thirds are basically Imaginary lines drawn dividing the image into thirds both horizontally and vertically. You place important elements of your composition where these lines intersect. As well as using the intersections I can arrange areas into bands occupying a third or place things along the imaginary lines. As you can see it is fairly simple to implement. Good places to put things; third of the way up, third of the way in from the left etc.

INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA STUDIES

MY DOCTOR WHO TRAILOR

My doctor who trailer 

In media studies this year I hope to learn how to understand film language and representations of characters in a film. Understanding the different characters used in different genres of film. Learning video camera skills and then editing it in post. Learning Photoshop and basic compositions, learning how to story board and follow it when filming. This would all come into pre-production planning that I hope to have lots of to make a professional and well thriller sequence.