Rough Cut Completion and Presentation

The rough cut of our piece was finished and given in on time. This was then presented to the class along with every other groups and as a class we compared and commented on what we thought was the best and worst of the class. We discovered that even though our first minute was of A grade standard, it started to loose its appeal on the second minute, a common problem with the other groups also. To improve our footage, we have to make sure that our piece doesn't become too confusing, and so we will have to re-edit our piece again so that as an opening, it shall flow smoothly and still keep the audience gripped. To get ideas, we watched openings to thrillers as a class and noted down the conventions in which were used quite commonly in the thriller openings. Conventions most used were having all the titles sequenced at the beginning of the openings along with music to fit the genre of film being shown. Actual filming with characters were not the main focus and establishing the scene and main characters were vital for each opening. So, we have taken these conventions into account and will use these ideas into our own opening when re-editing.  

My Progression so far with the Thriller Opening.

I feel that I have made a fair amount of progress throughout this project, filiming has been a real eye opener for me, as when making the storyboard I felt we had made a great thriller opening, but overtime realised initial ideas when starting and only practised filming a little before, there is a lot more thought that needs to go into what shots you need to do to make sure your audience will connect to your characters. Also, filming is time consuming and extremely difficult to get the exact conditions and exact shots you would like. Experimenting with this has helped my knowledge of knowing how to make a good thriller opening and so that part of this project has been significant for me. My lack of knowledge on the editing front has not really helped my group, and so I will be attending to extra help from my teacher, which will hopefully help me to know more about the program 'Premiere' and therefore will help my group. I have contributed to my group as much as I can when it came to ideas and helping with the work, but lack of communication between us has made it difficult for all of us to get an even amount of work each, and so I feel I could do and want to do more, but again I need to know more about how to edit to really contribute to the group significantly.

Third Film Shoot

5th february - Our story of our film opening had to change slightly, our flashbacks are now the footage in the woods, so we had to then film new footage of our main character when she is older in an office. We filmed this at Amber's house. All the shots were inside mainly, but some of the shots were by the window or through the window, and because of the snow around this time, we had to be careful not to get the snow in the shot, as it isn't in any of the other shots we have done, therefore this was to keep continuity. Filming overall went well, we got all the new shots we needed done and the shots fit in well with the rest of our footage.

Second Filming Shoot

Our second actual filming shoot took place on sunday the 25th of January, we had tried to meet up on the 22nd of january, but because of lack of members, it ended up not going ahead. One of our group members was absent, but this didn't affect our shooting. We re-shot all of our wood shots, all in good lighting and this time it didn't take as long to shoot as because of the experience of our last shooting, not as many mistakes were made. We then after the wood shots were made, filmed in Amber's house for the flashback scenes, where we had Tad Finney play the Dad and Lia Stubbings play the younger version of the main girl in our opening. The only problem that occured was that the camera ran out of battery, so to improvise, we used Amber's own camera to film with that, even though we have the footage, the quality isn't good enough, and so we shall have to re-schedule for another film shoot for all of the flashback scenes.

First Filming Shoot

On thursday the 15th of january me and my group went out and did our first filming shoot after school. All of us went along with our main actress, Maizie Cast and did the main wood shooting near Amber's house. I thought the shooting went well, all of us contributed and most of the shots got done, although we had to leave after about an hour and a half as it became dark very quickly, which meant the lighting for the filming wasn't good enough. When showing our shots to Mr Michie, we had a good response, saying that our mise en scene and costume was good, but the shots were a little shaky and were too short. So, because of this we will have to reschedule another time to re-shoot our footage and shoot the rest that we hadn't already. This will give us the oppurtunity to improve on our shots.

Presentation of animatic of thriller opening.

My group and I presented our animatic to the rest of the class. Overall, good comments, but we need to go back to the drawing board and edit some of our shots as a lot of our animatic is the main girl character in our story running, when really we need to add more of her facial expressions and what's going on in the area to create more suspense. I am pleased with our final animatic as we had flashbacks in our animatic, which is difficult to present in a storyboard, but the class said they understood the flashbacks, without the need of it being explained. Also our sounds were good, created the right atmosphere and helped the people watching it know what was going on, for example; sounds of footsteps were used for a shot coming from behind the girl, to let the audience know that it was the antagonist creeping up on her. I think when we start filming that it will go well and the animatic gave me and my group a good understanding of what needs to be included and what needs to be changed to make a good thriller film opening. I'm also proud of my group, as we are working a lot more as a team, with sharing jobs to make sure that not only one person gets the work load.

Analysis of Questionairre's.

Questionnaires’ analysis.
1) When the term Thriller movie comes to your mind what are your first reactions?
Blood ///
Gore ////
Music ///
Pace ///// //
Death //
Deception //
Horror ///// ///
Suspense ///// /

2) When you watch a thriller film what is your favourite type of thriller to watch?
Horror ///// ///// ////
Sci-fi /
Drama ///// //
Crime ///// /
Spy ///// //
Other //

3) What do you think is the main part of the building suspense in a thriller? Music, sound, setting, camera angles, pace, etc?
Sound ///// ///// ///// //
Setting ///// /////
Camera angles //
Pace ///// /
Other /

4) If you were to watch a thriller, what would you not want to see in it and why?

Stupid girls ////
Confusing/boring storylines ///// /
Chase scenes ///
Blood ///
Romance ///

5) Would you expect characters to be stereotypical in a thriller or would you like characters to represent something different to their normal association?

Different ///// ///// /
Stereotypical ///// ///// ///
Don’t mind /

6) What sort of conclusion do you most like to see in a thriller, or do you like a mix?

Mix ///// ///// ///// //
Typical Conclusion /////
Death //

7) Do you prefer thrillers to have a straightforward plot or do you prefer plot twists?

Straightforward Plot ///// /
Twists ///// ///// ///// ///

8) How much of the plot do you think would be revealed in the opening of a thriller?

Lots //
Not a lot ///// ///// ///// ////
None ///

From these results people would prefer in a thriller to have horror and pace in the opening, their favourite types of thriller are Drama, Horror and Spy. Sound and setting are most important to the people answering to make a good thriller. Things not to be put into a thriller would be a boring storyline and that people like a stereotypical plot, but with a mixed conclusion and twists in the plot. Finally, not a lot should be revealed in the opening of the plot, but enough to keep people interested.

I will use this information to help make up our storyline, pick our genre and to know what to use for our animatic - for example the pace and the horror genre should be used in our thriller opening mainly as they are most likely to keep the audience watching.