Final Group Thoughts

HEY! this is group 1D.

We are all very proud of the final result of our hard work. Our final sequence is exciting and we think it does well as an opening to a thriller.

We worked well as a group and although came across a few challenges we worked well to overcome them.

We have all enjoyed working on the project and have all learnt a lot from the experience.

thanks.

Group 1D

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Inspiration

Here is a clip from the film Goodfella's that gave us inspiration for our drugs scene. It was a good example of how we could film this scene for our opening sequence.



Group

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Music

Here is the original song that Nick Malster remixed for our opening sequence. We could only get the live version from youtube, shown below.



Group

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audience feedback questionaire

we held our screening yesterday at lunch and have read through the audience feedback questionares we made.

overall the ffeed back was very positive. the ratings out of ten were all 9 or 10, with one exception (8/9). people said they liked the narrative of the film and thought the music worked well with the sequence.

almost all of the viewers accurately described the story we tried to get across although some thought the attack was sexual, which it was not neccessarily.

possible improvements that people mentioned where that the murder it self was perhaps a little unclear and could have mybe lasted longer.

surprisingly many people said that they thought the darkness helped add visual enigma. (not in those words)

one person said that the actor maybe looked slightly too young however they were probably wrong.

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Storyboard

Here is a storyboard that we did intially before we started putting our opening sequence together.

Group

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Media Questionnaire

Male Female

Age:

What genre do you think this clip is from? (horror, thriller, romantic comedy etc.) How can you tell?

Are you intrigued to know what happens next, would you want to watch the rest of the film?

Who do you think it’s suitable for/ targeted at (age, gender, tastes etc)?

What’s your understanding of the plot? What do you think is happening?

Is it supposed to be American or British made, do you think?

Do you think the opening sequence works, does it look like an opening sequence (does it introduce the film successfully, the characters, the genre, the narrative)?

What about the clip do you like?

Could you suggest any improvements?

What would you rate it out of 10?

Group

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Final DVD Cover

Group

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First Lesson Back

We have made a lot of progress with our opening sequence and are now in the process of making it perfect. The main problems we are facing at the moment is with effects. We tried using Ghosting, which basically takes the image in the current frame and overlaps it with the same transparent image, creating a blurred effect. When we render the effect it no long appears on the screen and it chooses to appear then disappear. In today's lesson we made Ms B and Ryan aware of the problem so that they could assist us. We also experimented with colour wheel and colour corrector to try and fix the lighting differences we faced in our sequence. Ryan showed us what to do and after a little experimentation we figured out what settings looked best and are ready to apply them next lesson.

Jennifer
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Opening Sequence Titles

Titles at the start of a film make it very clear to the audience that they are watching the opening sequence. Films vary the titles they use some choosing to break up each shot with a title on a black screen whilst others use to have the titles fade in and out over the shot. We have chosen to go for the latter in our title sequence. Here is a list of the titles we potentially plan to inlcude:

• Production Companies
• In Association with...
• Screenplay adapted by
• Director/Producer
• Actors
• Music
• Casting
• Film Title

Adding these titles would give our current rough cut the feel of an opening sequence.

Mike

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(and jennifer)

more inspiration (sort of)

Still browsing through the Robert Smyth School media website and found a video about a boy on cocaine, seeing as we have this in our thriller tohught id check it out and basically its very different to why we included drug taking in our thriller- to create a more weird atmosphere, and to isolate the viewers from the protagonist, but also to anchor his state of mind. Whereas in this video it was entitled joy and it shows the people on cocaine having fun and despite the fact that they are alone they dont seem isolated and unpredictable as in ours.

Seeing as i cant upload the video this is just the link to the video:

http://www.rssmediastudies.co.uk/video/06as01.wmv

Here is also a link to the website and a couple of the short videos:

http://www.rssmediastudies.co.uk/main/prowork6a/

Jake x

INSPIRATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was browsing the Robert Smyth School media website looking at video productions and chanced upon i relly good video with intense attention to detail that we have decided to emphasise in our thriller. And also, the ending made me laugh

Jake x

party scene

We shot the party scene after school yesterday in a house. I think the shots were ok. we are capturing them now and overall they look good except perhaps a couple of hitches. the room we were in was very bright and this may look wierd considering it is supposed to be a party, we have put it in black and white however, and i think when we start chaning contrast and coulouirs etc. it will be ok.

I think a shot which works well is the one were the guy looks up from the table. it is good because we see that he is in a busy atmosphere with people around him which anchors the fact that it is a party.

we will not be able to propperly see if anything needs to be re shot until we have incoorporated the shots into our rough cut, but at the moment they look fine.

nathann
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Capturing our extra shots and Re-Takes.

on a larger computer screen shots tend to look different so it is important to make sure we quality control when we are capturing.



Overall the quality seems good and we have a lot of useable shots.



some of the extreme close ups look a little strange but i dont think there was anything we didnt have useable footage of, we could definately use at least most of our shots.



thanks

nathan

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Extra shots evaluation

Despite hazardous weather conditions this weekend we still got all of our reshoot shots and extra shots done. It rained too much on saturday so we just filmed sunday when it stopped raining 5pm-7pm and planned in starbucks again 4-5.


Extra Shots

CU on cigarette and lips- Seemed a bit too sexual, won't be used for shot by itself, maybe part of a continuous sequence on as a very quick shot.

CU on eyes/top half of face- Possibly used with above shot, useful for wider range of technical shots.

CU on rubbing legs- Again, good for wider use of technical shots.

Shots from different sides and angles- Good, will definately use.

General notes from fridays lesson

In our lesson periods 4+5 on Friday we fully assembled our final rough cut put to temporary music. However, we did decide on several changes, mainly more CUs and ECUs to exaggerate our protagonist’s actions and to give a wider range of technical shots but also what shots to re-shoot and slight editing changes.

Extra shots

When the camera is facing him from the front of the bench we decided on several variety shots in order to break up the MCUs and MLSs:

-CU on lips and cigarette
-Possible CU on eyes
-CU on hands rubbing legs (possibly not needed as we have the tilt but will shoot anyway)
-A shot from the right hand side to see half of his face (experiment with left and right)

We also talked about a shot of him then getting up off the bench after we have already seen him walking to link the two together as if cross-cutting but in different time frames and seeing him walk up to the path we have seen him walking on.

When our protagonist is walking towards to murder scene we want to exaggerate his ‘mash-up’ state similarly with exaggeration to detail using more CUs and technical shots:

-Handheld shaky POV
-CU/ECU of shoes as he stumbles or falls (several shots in quick succession but as one sequence)

Re-shoot shots

-HA tilt from behind (cigarette dropped more clearly, possibly mike leaning back more?)
-Cigarette dropping from behind ^^^ continuity
-Cigarette picked up from front ^^^ continuity
-Pan across, mike walking in and out of frame, care with shadows
-Mike falling over after witnessing murder (both shots- without breaking 180 degree rule and so having Rachel just in shot)
-Mike cutting up cocaine with bank card camera on table from his left hand side
-Mike snorting cocaine camera on table slightly behind him so that cocaine is just out of shot
-Mike leaning back in chair after taking cocaine closer on his face than before (CU)
-Mike MLS walking towards camera
-Mike MCU reverse track ^^^ shot in between so slight change in distance doesn’t look weird, and make sure same walking speed.
-OTS witnessing murder (costume issues)

Editing issues

-Exaggerate fades, maybe used with slow motion and much longer than previous.
-Experiment with non-additive dissolve rather than additive dissolve
-Use colour wheel for black and white with emphasis on midtones rather than standard black and white effect.

cool x

Re shoot weekend

because our shooting weekend went so fantastically we don't have any footage that we didn't film. however upon watching some of our shots it appears we have to re shoot a couple of things.

we need to re-shoot the 'party' scene. This will take a couple of minutes but we need to make sure we do it well.

We have other individual shots that didnt work so well which we will discover as we become more intimate with out material.

the party scene is indoors but if we need to do any out door shots ive checked on the weather.

Generally it was:

11°C
Mostly Cloudy
Wind: W at 26 km/h
Humidity: 76%

There will also be a spot of rain, occasionally more heavy during the evenings,

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

we will need to take warm clothes.

nathan
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Killer Swans!

One problem we did not anticipate on our shoot was KILLER SWANS!!!!
Unfortunately they seemed to think we were there to attack their babies, so they stood guard throughout our filming and terrified one of our actors. We filmed a short terrifying sequence of these heartless killers and will try and put it up on the blog soon.

Mike
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Lighting

After the complete disaster that was our test shoot weekend, (i'm joking, on the whole it went very well) we realised that our shots looked very dark. The vast majority of our shots are filmed outside at night, where ther is very little light. We tried to overcome this problem by taking another light on shoot with us this weekend. After looking back at the footage, we believe taking another light with us was very helpful and made our shots look much better.

Mike
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Possible Problems

Before our shooting weekends, we drew up a list of possible things that could go wrong for us as a group. We did this so we could anticipate possible problems so they would not occur. Here is the list of thingsb that could go wrong for us.

1. Weather
2. Planning correctly and sufficiently (shot lists & logs)
3. Take still photos of us on shoot
4. Not sharing the boring jobs
5. making sure equipment return paperwork is correct
6. Not listening to eachother
7. Our actors getting bored and cold
8. Poor lighting
9. Poor Sound
10. Continuity errors
11. Actors late or absent
12. Being Rude or Abrupt
13. Making it Personal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mike
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Opening Sequence

For me this film was a sort of inspiration for our idea. In the opening scene the characters are established well as druggies and I believe there are many interesting techniques used in this film that i believe we could try and adapt to our own project. I really like the narrated voice-over throughout the film, as Johnny Depp's hallucinations are explained to us although we do not always see them ourselves.

There is a lot of eerieness created by the weird characters that I belive could also work well in a thriller, since it could create a lot of enigma and suspense around our main character.

I really like the very last shot of this clip. It is a Close-up of Johnny Depp's face and it actually looks quite scary because his character is on so many drugs. Therefore I think with darker lighting and possibly some sinister music, this could really work well in the Thriller genre.

Mike
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