How we organised ourselves and what we did

Before we filmed our thriller, we didn't know much about filming, we only knew the basics of shots and editing. So we knew as a group we had to make sure we were organised so we managed to stay ontop of things.
In order to organise ourselves for filming our thriller, we set out a list of what we needed(including props and equipment) for our shoot. All we were given for our shooting was a hd camera and a tripod, the rest we had to organise for ourselves. We knew we only had a certain amount of time to complete shooting our thriller so we tried to make a start straight away.
To play our teenage girl for our Thriller, we managed to find an actress from our school(Tia Simon- Campbell). She gave up her free time to come to our location and shoot for the day which was much appreciated. We thgen also managed to find Josh's dad to play our teenage girl's father.
When we managed to find our actors, we then had to look for a suitable location in the Croydon area close to our school so everyone will be able to make it. We managed to find a location to shoot our thriller which was at a house in Surrey because our main idea was for the film to be shot inside in a normal family home. During filming, we had to make sure that the filming was done witin a certain amount of time because our thriller idea is that the daylight is dusk, so we had to make sure our shooting outside was completed befor it got dark outside. We chose the daylight to be dusk because it gives the audience a more dark thriller feeling and this would make opur film seem more interesting than broad daylight. Not many other thrillers are shot when outside is completely bright, there is always a slight shade. Before filming, we had to make sure we had the correct props for our thriller. We had sto make sure for certain that we had the pictures of random teenage girls because it was going to be in the shot. So a few days before shooting our thriller, we walked around school asking for girls permission if we could take a photo of them for our thriller, then the pictures would be threw away afterwards. We also had to make sure that the father was dressed smart(suit and tie) like he has just got home from work. The teenage daughter also had to make sure she was wearing normal clothes that she would wear when shes in the house.

Ashley

Why we chose this idea for our thriller

Our thriller opening is called "Taken". The thriller is all about a teenage girl aged 15-17 years of age that realises that her father has been taking pictures of other girls her age. The teenage girl goes into her fathers room thinking that she will find her birth certificate for her homework project but then finds disturbing photos of teenage girls. She then searches one of these girls on google, and thats when the film ends. The idea for our thriller was to make it a psychological thriller and make the audience think about it afterwards instead of just watching it. Also we chose this idea because othis was the idea that everyone agreed on without any dissagreements or anyone feeling unsure.
Our group decided to choose this specific idea because we believed that this idea made us think of so many ideas to have for this opening. All other ideas we came up with were typical thriller/scary ideas that other groups were thinking of shooting. I also believe that our group idea is different from every over groups ideas. By doing a film that is more scary, there is a specific system you have to follow in order for it to work. So therefore this didn't really make us come up with any origional ideas.

Ashley

Was up people its Josh, here i know its a bit late but this is my pre-production blog. 1 how did our idea come about.

In the early week me and my group where brainstorming ideas every lesson, we had one idea of a girl runing through a forest/woodland while being chased by a man reach a clearing then shes caught. I like this idea it buit suuspense and was very fast paced and would have made an audience think and question.who is this girl? why is she bieng chased? Who is the person chasing her? This has all the elements of a thriller. Personally i liked the idea but i thought this rasises issuses of representation because it is a generalization, that it would be a women runnning away in fear or painc, as opposed to a man.

2 Another idea was. That the character wakes up to a wrecked house detroyed furnitiure smashed glass and blood stained walls. As the character walks throughthe house the opening shows flashes of the house being ransaked by unknown people. Finally the character reaches a room witht the door closed but bloody hand prints on the door, the charcter opens it looks in closes it in disgust then goes to leave but there is a mysterious tall figure standing behind him. I felt this idea of seeing a "after the storm past" type scene would have been effective to see how a character would react would fill the audience with huge tension, wondering hat sort of force it would have taken to wreck a house like that or how much pian must a person be in to bleed that badly (yes its morbid)but they are all ideas and thoughts that would manifest in the audiences mind.

3 This was our final idea for the thriller opening. It is set at twilight the opening is man in a nice car pulling up in his drive way in front of a nice house gets out and enters, then says a few lines dialogue to his daughter then as he leave the daughter asks him for her birth certificate but he dosent hear her as he slams the door as he leaves again. So the daughter goes off and looks for the birth certificate on her own, goes into his wardrobe sercing and finds a box of photos of girls but one sticks out as if it has some meaning to her. so she types it ito the computer but then the scene would cut out then. We thought this one would be best becuase it starts of innocent enough with a fasther coming home, and being caring and what-not but when the audience see our charcter find all thses ppicture the audience will be woundering if this man is truly as wonderful as they where lead to beleive. So this is how the idea for our performance came aroundWe all like and we thin k it will make a great opening.

Josh

Thriller Directors and Actors

Alfred Hitchcock is said to be the master of the Thriller. Hitchcock was born in 1899 in Leytonstone. He was known for his fusions of suspense and humour and virtually invented the thriller genre. Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades. Director of such works as Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds and The 39 steps, Hitchcock told his stories through intelligent plots witty dialogue and a spoonful of mystery and murder. In doing so, he inspired a new generation of filmmakers and revolutionized the thriller genre, making him a legend around the world. Other popular thriller directors are Michael Mann, Wolfgang Peterson, Stephen Hopkins and Martin Scorsese. Scorsese was born in November 1942 and is an award winning director. Scorsese's work addresses themes such as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption,[1] machismo, and violence. Scorsese is widely considered to be one of the most significant and influential American filmmakers of his era. Some of his most famous works were Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas. Thrillers also have a set type of actor that is always used. Popular thriller actors include:
• Al pacino
• Matt Damon
• Morgan Freeman
• Barbara Stanwyck
• Denzel Washington
• Jodie Foster

Shanice x

Editing Stages

Once we had reviewed all the footage it was time to edit and put it all together. We knew that we all had to edit at least one section of the opening and tried to do this effectively. I was able to take part in a lot of the editing myself and overlooked most of the editing process. I found that most of my group also did this which was a good way of working as we were able to give opinions on all the different shots so that we were all happy with the finished product. However, some members of the group did not do as much or chip in as much with the editing as others. The editing process on the whole took quite a while. This was because we had filmed a lot of footage for example different angles and shot types. Therefore we had to sort through them all and decide which ones to use and how to use them. This takes time to make sure it is all fluid. We also needed time sort out our match on action shots as they take quite a lot of time to get completely right. I found the most difficult part was keeping continuity between shots. Also making sure that the story was portrayed clearly and effectively. The match on action was also very hard to get correct however, once done it really complemented the piece. Something that we did during the editing stages was the soundtrack for the opening. Me and Ashley focused on this as we have experience working with sequencing programs and making music on the computer. We wanted the music to create a mood of mystery and unease. We also wanted something that we could fade in and out of the piece so that you could hear the dialogue clearly. We feel that the soundtrack created does this well and it added an extra touch that realy made it feel like a thriller. Overall the editing process went very smoothly and we feel that we were able to produce an effective thriller.

Shanice x

Uploading and Reviewing Footage

Once we had finished filming it was time to upload our footage onto the computer and begin the editing stages, however before you edit you footage you must review it all, name each shot and discuss which ones are god and could be used and which ones can be deleted. We uploaded our footage off our tape onto final cut pro and started reviewing. As we went through each shot we named them to make it more practical when it came to the editing stage. We also colour coded them for the beginnng of our piece, middle section and ending. As we were looking through the shots I found that we had little continuity issues, something that it was very important we addressed and made sure we did not include them in the final piece. I began to take notes of small things like this that I noticed to make sure that we remembered to rectify issues similar to this. Also our fears were confirmed when we watched the shots from the bedroom as some were just to dark and were not able to be used in the piece at all. This was a real disappointment, however gave us something to think about for next time. Once we had watched all the footage and organized it accordingly it was time to start the editing stage.

Shanice x

Diary of Filming Day

We all arrived at our location on the day of filming. We had previously decided that we were going to try and film everything on one day so had created a schedule to follow. This schedule stated in what order we were going to film our shots which would give us some stability and help us with our time management. The first thing we did was split into two groups to get things done more quickly and efficiently. Two people were in charge or organizing the set and preparing the pros and two people were in charge of setting up the camera and talking to out actors about what they would have to do in each scene. This really helped us as a group and I feel was a time when we shoed good teamwork. If I were to do this project again I would definitely use this method again. Once we had fully set up we started filming our first shots of the outside scenes. Unfortunately our male actor had to leave by a certain time so we were unable to shoot the outside scenes later on in the day when it was dark, however we pulled through and filmed some good shots from different angles. We then moved onto the inside shots and the dialogue between the father and daughter. This was filmed in the dining room to make it look like she had been doing her homework before he walked in. After these were complete we started to work on the door slam scene. This caused us some difficulties as we found it hard to get the timing perfect. We ended up having to keep doing shot after shot to keep it continuous. Once we had mastered that we started to focus on the upstairs scenes. This is when we encountered our biggest problem, the lighting. We found that in our main bedroom where the most important scenes were going to be filmed, the light was incredibly dim. We tried every avenue we could think of to try and generate some more light in the shots. After lots of effort and little change, we decided we going to have to just film the shots and hopefully change the lighting during the editing stages. Another problem we faced was filming the close up of the pictures. This was because we were either zooming in too fast too quickly or not zooming in enough. We found a way to sort this out was to do a couple of practice shots until we got a feel for the camera and how fast and far we wanted to zoom in. This really helped us and in the end we were able to get some good shots. Finally we moved onto our last shot in the computer room where the daughter is typing the name into google. I decided to add an extra touch by putting the chosen picture next to the screen and we felt like this really added to the shot.

When decided who did what shot we decided to play to each others strengths and make sure it was even so that one person was not doing all the filming and the others were just standing around. I also came up with the idea that if u were not filming a shot you would go set up and think about the next shot to save time and make sure we were working efficiently. This worked very well as we ended up finishing on time and we could move from shot to shot fluidly. Overall the filming day went very well and I feel that we worked well as a team. However, if I did the project again I would check the location for vital factors like lighting to make sure that we come prepared for all problems that we could face.

Shanice x