Progresssss

Well, since Ali and Olivia decided to jet off to New York and Russia I was left on my own. So, Wednesday's double lesson was dedicated to working on music on garageband because I wasn't confident to do any major editing or changes whilst they weren't there. AND Mr M was in Russia too, so if i did something terribly wrong, no one would be there to help me :( So I waited til Thursday's lesson and Ms Mann helped me create some still images, of our close ups of photographs within the shed. We did this because the footage was very shaky and it looks so much better now! I then changed the sequence around (I hope Olivia and Ali dont mind!) so the photos are at the start. I had this idea that we could play upbeat happy music over this section, tricking the audience into thinking its all happy families. But then it changes and is a lot more sinister than first thought. So yeah, that's about it really. Then I carried on working on more music :]
Cant wait til they get back... I've been lonely :(!!
x

Final filming!

Well we are now all done with filming :D
Last night we shot our "interview" scenes at the RAF police station on base at Honnington where my dad works! It all went to plan and we got all the shots we needed! It was so exciting aswell with the red light that came on outside the door, the tape recorders, the OFFICIAL police documents...me and Ali loved it haha!


This is the interview room we shot in. It was a bit different to what we expected to be like but hopefully will still be effective!

Below, is what my daddy wore. We dressed him in a suit to make him look official and superior as a policeman. I think it worked :]





This is Olivia in full costume and make up. As mentioned on the other post, we applied fake bruises to Olivia which look really horrific and will hopefully help tug on the heart strings of the audience. Furthermore, it may develop an enigma of how did she get these gruesome bruises?

Also we dressed her in a pretty floral dress to make her look innocent, young and girly.

Change of plot!

To elaborate on what Olivia said in her last post, we are thinking of changing our narrative and overall plot ideas. We were filming last monday and just thought the whole voyeurism concept had been overdone and we wanted to do something a bit different. However, it doesn't change the storyboard much as we are still going to use all the same shots. Our new narrative is going to be that Olivia's character, Nancy Jones, has been seperated from her father for many years and he continuously follows her, taking photos, breaking into her house , just to steal possesions that belong to Nancy. Something then obviously happens between them...consequenting in Nancy being interviewed by the police.

We all think this is more of an imaginative storyline and is a bit different to past thriller openings

xx

Storyboard

Ok so this is our storyboard. Sorry it has taken sooooooo long, me and technology don't go well haha!! But yeah we are still in a way following our storyboard but the narrative might be changing, we are thinking maybe instead it is a relative that hasn't seen their children in a long time so it's not as sick and original as a stalker idea. So i guess we shall see how it goes.

We shall hopefully be filming our last piece of film on wednesday hopefully, because me and Ali are going to New York and Russia so poor Dani will be on her own (sorry) so we do need to do our last filming this week.

Practice bruises.

In media today, me and Olivia decided to try out fake bruises with make up in preperation for shooting at the police station

Olivia practiced on me first because she wanted to have a go...I looked like a damlation, as you can see haha v v v

I then did her and mine were significantly alot better...if I say so myself haha
So I am now a make up artist as well it would seem!

So now we have costume and make up sorted for NEXT wednesday night :D

YAY

Well today we completed shooting all of our "shed" scenes. It was a long old day (haha) but we managed to shoot everything we needed and nothing seemed to go wrong..except Olivia burning herself on a plate that she'd put in the microwave!
So, relieved were half way there on the filming side of things.. just cant wait to upload everything to start editing and then shoot at the police station on wednesday :D <<<<< Highlight of this year already, I cant wait :D
xxxx

Picturessssssss =)

Before and After shots of the Shed.
Check out our mise-en-scene ;)

Student examples

During class time Mr M and Ms Mann gave us time to watch some past student examples so we can learn through their possible mistakes and gain some ideas for our own openings.

One common mistake made throughout most of the openings we watched, were the occurence of continuity errors; either someone walking behind the action, one minute and not the next, food and drink, positions in the framing etc.

To solve this problem we are going to take as many photographs as we can of our set and positions so we hopefully dont commit any continuity mistakes.

Alot of the thriller openings we studied used very rapid editing which is a common and effective media technique to create tension and mystery. From the start of planning we knew we wanted to use quick edits within our flashback scenes and bright flashes.

Another common negative for most of the openings were the integration of titles. We haven't really spoken a lot about our title sequence but we have looked at some styles (post from Ali below v v v)that we like the look of for our main title.

Finally, we found that the most effective thriller openings used the best music. The key to creating an atmosphere in a thriller opening is most definately in the use of non diegetic music. We shall produce this on garageband in the later stages of production. Also going to include diegetic music in our flashback scenes, most probably upbeat 70's/80's music to keep up our running theme from our prelimanary task :D

oh yeah ....WERE FILMING TOMORROW WOOOHOOOO :D


Hopefully everything will go as planned....but knowing our luck SOMETHING will go wrong :(
See you all tomorrow!
xxxxxx

SHOOTING :]

I thought i'd write a litte message giving everyone an update.
We've booked out the camera for Monday so we have the whole day at Olivia's, to shoot flashback scenes and any other shots we may need. Also were going to practice "fake bruises" see how they pan out, so we can decide whether to use them in the interview scene. Were hoping to shoot that either Tuesday or Wednesday night were not too sure yet... depends when is best for my daddy (who is now co-starring!!) and for Olivia's uncle who works at Stowmarket police station :D Then in our lessons on Wednesday and Thursday we can start uploading and editing!!
YAY I'm SOOOO EXCITED!!!
Ta-ta for now
xxx

Costumes & Make Up

The conventional costume for thrillers is very naturalist, everyday clothes.
These pictures from the film, Final Destination, show the characters to be of the same age as our actress and therefore wearing appropriate clothing, eg. jeans and a t-shirt. The colour of the t-shirt should be a light colour like white to project it's connotation as 'innocent'. The t-shirt should also have short sleeves to allow for the cuts and bruises to be visible.

The make up used in Final Destination was very subtle, again adding to the 'pure' representation of the characters / victims.

During the interview scene the Actress' bruises come apparent, in order to do this we have found some pictures that we would like to recreate using different shades of make up. We hope to practise creating the bruises before hand to make the preparations on the day of filming quick and easy.

Memento

In class we studied the film Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan in 2000. The plot of the film is about a man named Leonard "Lenny", who suffers short term memory loss due to a mysterious accident. He is using notes and his tatoos to hunt for the man he believes murdered his wife. The film is not in chronological order; the first shot is technically the last part of the story. Throughout the film the narrative changes from the end of the story to the beginning of the story, with the chronological scenes in black and white.
Me, Ali and Olivia really enjoyed this film and would like to incorporate some of the techniques used, into our thriller opening.
Firstly, we would like to use flashes of white between our flashbacks to make the audience feel on edge and create some mystery as the audience wont be able to see as much as they may like to. This is used in the bathroom scene in Memento.



Also at the start of the film a high angle shot of Lenny is used in black and white. One of our ideas for the opening is to have a high angle shot of the police interview room (in black and white possibly?) to recreate a CCTV point of view to show the audience the setting and give another aspect of voyeurism. We may also add to the shot (in the editing room) a record sign and a time and stuff so it actually looks like it is footage from a CCTV camera.

Leon: The Professional

(Referring to the first three minutes)

The music is tense at first, adding tension to the beginning of the film. But it quickly changes direction to a more uplifting style yet with drums and flutes keeping the tension and therefore making it conventional of the thriller genre. As Danielle has previously noted, we are keen to avoid this convention, and instead use old happier music to juxtapose the narrative and ultimately give an impression of unease.

The scene in which dialogue is used, we only get close ups of Leon's face, keeping his identity concealed, something we are keen to incorporate into our interview scene, hiding Olivia's face to allow for the audience to make the connection between her character and the pictures of her in the shed themselves.

The use of the milk in the scene adds a sense of normality and some humour (such a man would choose to drink milk over of the usual alcoholic drink, but also an early sign of his softer side). We are considering using drinks on both locations, in the shed scene, and the interview scene. In Leon it is clearly visible an error in continuity with the amount of milk in the glass at different times, to avoid this we aren't going to have our actress drinking out of the cup in the interview scene, instead just playing with it to show her nervous state. In the shed scene the cup is more of a background feature allowing a graphic match, rather than it being in use, therefore we don't have to worry about it during filming.