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.

BBFC - Certificates - 15 and 18

15 certificate - Allows all of; drugs, nudity, sex, violence, horror, imatible techniques and language, but more brief and discreetly - and if in the purpose of the context, if it's necessary.

18 certificate - as 18 is known as adult, all of the above is allowed as it is the person's choice to whether they want to watch what the film is involving.

I think my film will be a certificate 15, as I don't believe our ideas so far are at a point in which a 15 year old couldn't watch our film because of the content.

Continiuity Task

Video hasn't been uploaded yet.

For the continuity task, again like in the practice film task we had to film 2 people, (Jamie and Amber), having a conversation, only this time for some reason, we had to come up with ourselves why person A (Amber), had to leave. This meant we had to come up with our own script as well as storyboarding and filming.
Our group decided that our script would be that Jamie had cheated on Amber with her brother and she had found out about it from somebody else, so she went storming in to confront him. We came up with about 18 shots. I took charge of storyboarding, as from learning from our animatic task, someone needed to be in charge of that. Also, because storyboarding was one of my stronger sklls, taking charge of it let me develop on this skill further in trying to get the drawings done quickly and efficiently, and also to make sure that what I am drawing will be the image in which us as a group wanted. Amber and Jamie did scripting and Huw did the filming, so communicating and working as a group has improved also.
Overall our continuity task was quite good, although it could have been improved by changing camera angles when starting a new shot, editing needed to be worked on and Amber needed to be at a high angle on camera to show that Jamie was inferior to her as he was in the wrong, as low angles were used on him, but also on her, which didn't make sense. Also on positioning of camera as it was slightly tilted.

The level we got was a high level 2 - low level 3.

Practice Continuity Task.

For the practice continuity task as a group, we had to film 2 people (huw and amber) having a conversation, being able to make sure that our filming continued smoothly. The filming went well, the 180 degree rule wasn't broken and it mainly flowed well. Except at one point when we made a mistake of not having Amber sit in a chair in which she was sat in 2 shots later, so bascially appeared from nowhere. So I learnt that you have to make sure that your props and people are in the right place as well as the camera. Also shots of people entering and leaving are extremely important for continuity and can be easily forgotten, so I have learnt that they need to be there. Otherwise pretty good, it was good to have a practice task so that for the real thing we knew more about what we needed to be doing and what we weren't doing.

Analysis of Animatic.

Because of technical difficulties, ( our animatic didn't get complete as the laptop went missing and then got deleted off of the laptop ), I am unable to show my animatic onto this blog post.

For our animatic we had to come up with a series of shots using a storyline in which we had to make up ourselves. This was to be a 60 - 75 second opening of a film. We were given the first 3 shots and then had to carry on with making up the shots in the animatic ourselves.
Our group decided to do 4 shots for our storyboard each, which ended up being a bad idea as all the drawings are different. This made our group learn that only one person should be in charge of storyboarding. Also we needed to be working more as a group, as instead only one person took real charge and did the most work.
If we were able to finish the animatic, I would have helped more into developing the animatic and also with making diegetic sounds and adding that to the final product.
Overall, it didn't go too well, but I learnt a lot from it and so this will help me do better in my other projects.

Thriller Analysis Conclusion

In conclusion I discovered that to make a thirller opening it really depends on the sub genre when making it to how it is made. Main conventions used are pace of editing - to create atmosphere and intensity, mise en scene - as it gives clues to the audience to what will happen in the film, stereotypes - helps viewer understand what is going on, music - the music you choose needs to go well with the editing and camera angles to create a certain atmosphere depending on the type of sub genre you want to do. When making my own thriller opening I will take what I have learnt from analysing all of this and put it into my own opening.