Feed Back of Final Production

• How effectively edited is the thriller?

• Great use of filters which are placed perfectly within each change of shot. Reuse of the shoe shot creates a relapse effect that increases tension.

• Thought that the repetition got a bit boring after a while but showed a lot of mystery. All in all great work.

• Discuss the use of sound in this thriller, both diegetic and non-diegetic. What emotions does it invoke and how effective is it?

• Crackling of leaves is effective use of diegetic sound.
• Speech; screaming adds reality to the & suspense make you wonder whats going on.
• Music; fits well - right pace of music for the visuals. Not too fast/not too dull. Strings often used in thrillers, which fits with conventions.
  

• What words would you use to describe the visual style?

• Always a point of view shot. Invokes a sense of confusion. Put in position of victim or murderer.

• Highlight at least three things that you think are good about this thriller and two areas for development or suggestions of how things could have been done differently

• The heart beat in the music is good.
• The music itself is also good.
• The shaky camera, works to a good effect.
• The titles could have been a bit more subtle and they lasted a bit too long too.
• It was a little too much of the same type of shot, not enough variation of angles - also plot was a little confusing.
  

Individual analysis

I think our finished project was an all round good finished project. I think its very interesting quite intriguing and i would like to watch it too see the whole of the film.
Our music worked well as it built up tension by ggetting faster and ythen a lot slower when the titles were coming to an end. The sound of the feet crunching on the leaves below their feet made good sounds and worked well too.

Individual Work

I think that our final piece was quite good, it fit together well, and the scenes only jumped slightly once, the reason for such a jump was to mark the end of one scene, and the beginning of another. We started off using three characters, but in the end we used only brief shots of two, and the voice of another. Others in our class have commented that it works well. And that is what I believe as well.
For me, the editing and camera-work mixed completely. Everything we did with the camera was edited; sepia tone added and saturation increased.

7Feedback :( 8

• questions proposed to the critics

1. Can you describe what happens in our thriller ?
2. Would you describe our video as thriller or horror ?
3. Would you carry on watching ?
4. Have you made good use of Final Cut?
5. Did you like it and why ?
6. What would you change ?

• answers that were given by the snotty critics

1. Not much, someone is in a wood- not sure actually Blair Witch in colour haven't a clue just a person moving
   
2. Thriller, more half and half though,-neither- imitation of Blair Witch but unsuccessful
   
3. No sorry, seemed to boring, too much of the same thing- no, too boring- no it didn't seemed to go anywhere
   
4. some shots were great, great colour titiles went well, more cuts, more variety, more time spent on the killer- the titles are good but same shots not much editing and very repeptitive
   
5. yes and no, good shots at times but go on for far too long
   
6. • Colour
     
   • filmed at night
     
   • trainer shot was unclear
     
   • different effects
     
   • more diegetic sounds used, breathing, rusting etc.
     
   • less woodland
     
   • different camera angles
     
   
   

7Future Essay Plans 8

A discussion of the filming process:

• What happened in your filming ?
• What role did you play?
• Were there any issues with the props, location, actors?- How did you deal with them ?
• If you had the chance to film it again what would you do differently
  

A discussion of the editing process:

• What involvement did you have in the editing process?
• How successful was your finished project?
• How you worked with the music and visual effects?
• Explain your mise-en-scene (visual style)

An analysis of your final piece:

• Include a discussion of music, sound, mise-en-scene, action, editing, narrative, use of characters.

• Include a discussion of thriller conventions and how your piece deals with these, which conventions does it explore.

7"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."8
Wittgenstein

After assessing the situation that we were creating to film we delved with a script. We eventually came to the conclusion that we use suggestion and suspense. This was our linchpin to try and create something that resembled an old silent film, as these films were the foundation of all modern media. We then went down to the foundation of language to try and help us with a narrative and we stumbled upon the scriptures of Wittgenstein. This added security for our decision to not include speech as it would make it supeflious.

7Our Musical Influences8

As a group our musical tastes and interests varied to the greatest extent. We all, though, had a very mutual agreement that film music was underrated, under-celebrated but mainly a catalyst to exposing the true emotions that we attempted to put forward on the footage. Although our soundtrack is somewhat basic, we have been experimental and bold in our musical adventure. The composer who was out main influence was Danny Elfman who is both experimental and bold in his work.

we have had a few problems with the camera settings, the widescreen option has handicapped our different types of photography.

7 Titles 8

this is a list of titles that have to be included into our work.

• A TR.ACK production presents
  
• Josh Howlett
  
• Kathryn McAleer
  
• Josh O'Connor
• Chloe Vant
• Film editing by Josh Howlett & Kathryn McAleer
  
• Cinematography by
  
• Original music by Kathryn McAleer
  
• Directed by Chloe Vant
  

Myspace Banner Generator @ JellyMuffin.com

7 The Plan of Action 8

• main aim is to cut down length of footage!
• edit effects e.g camera filters
  
• sort out problem with the wide screen setting
  

7 Response 8

Editing:

• This is still a rough cut so if it does go on for too long, we will cut out the bits that do not make sense and make it long. We will smooth over other parts that do not fit together properly. We will also try to use an effect to blur out the cars.

Camera-work

• The shots are meant to be shaky and unfocused, due to the stalker running after the girls and to find a hiding place.

Mise En Scene:

• We liked the effect of the lighting, because of the different times of day, different areas of the forest and different amounts of light being let into the forest. Dead leaves are always in the forest at this time of year, adding more would be less realistic. The stalker is a 'normal' person, so having any kind of 'special' outfits would make it less realistic.

7 The Review 8

Rough Cut and feedback




Editing:

• Beginning sequence goes on for too long and we began to get bored. Liked the camera views increasing tension where he was watching them.

Camera-work:

• Camera-work is good - clearly supposed to be shaky but would be more effective if had some steady camera work in contrast.

Sound:

• Silence & high pitch at the beginning is really effective, footsteps are also good and so is the breathing.

Mise en scene:

• First shot had a good misé en scene. Second; the lighting didn't work, didn't look very thrilleresque. The lighting of several shots were not very good.

• Foot shots with leaves were good = more dead leaves would have been more effective.

• Cars in background weren't very good. Looked a bit out of place. Costume of "Killer" not the most effective.

• Good headlessness!

7 The Review 8

• We didn't deviate from our shot-list too much. We used some of the same closeups and the pictures Josh drew on the storyboard are similar to some of the shots we have made. We have used the storyboards outline the whole way throughout the introduction.
• We had many issues during filming the scenes we seemed to resolve many of them rather easily though. We had a problem with the location we couldnty all get to the chosen area on the same days so we chose to use a closer location for filming. The second location we chose was still a forest like area with a 'creepy' look about it due to the hidden tree's and odd shapes in the tree's.
• As we decided to do a lot of our filming in lesson time we made sure the whole of our group were with us at all times so we could get all parts of our filming done within each time slot we had.
• many of rhe actors had a problem with our costumes as we would were different things each lesson after doing this once and having to change and delete half of the footage we did not make this mistake again. We just used footage when the audience could barely see what we wee wearing things, due to different angles.
• If we could do things differently i would make sure we could all get to the same location at the same time as planned so we could get more filming done.

7 Update 8

After filming all our footage last term, we now have all the editing to carry on with. We started some of the editing last term, this included learning and trying out different ideas with the day to night effects on final cut express. We are now going to Try out different idea's wit other areas of final cut express and experiment with other effects.

The things we have left to do are:

• The editing on 'final cut express'
• We have to add the soundtrack into our introduction and check it still fits well with the filming.
• We have to add our credits into our introduction.

7 The Change of Location 8

• This is our new location for filming.
  
• We changed our location of filming because of logistical difficulties and the availability of or previous filming venture. This is the Long Road wooded area
  

7 The Problems 8

• for today, Wednesday the 6th we took the camera out to try some more shots, we faced the problem that our characters were not wearing the same outfits as the last me we gathered footage, because of this we are using the footage that we have previously recorded. we are trying to edit y using day for night editing tool, this gives the footage a different colour we are using a kind of sepia color, this is the most effective color we thought this is because, we have a lot of footage which is blurred, adding this color gives the footage an even more blurred affect.

7 The Footage 8

• we booked time with the camera to take home with us, unfortunately due to reasons with other group members we did not gt the time that we needed to record more footage. although having this extra footage it would have been useful, we are going to work around this problem by using some of the test footage that we have recorded. once we right our final piece of writing we can write how not all plans to smoothly and that we faced some problems with our filming.

7 Update 8

• The group started to put together a soundtrack for the thriller introduction, that will be our non-diagetic sounding as it will be created for the audience to think whats going to happen next. It will create suspense and get the audience holding onto there seat intrigued in what would happen next. The diagetic sounding we will have is the scream as the young girls run away and the giggling of the girls when they are messing around.

7 Update 8

• On Monday 4th February we took the camera out and started filming some starting point of our thriller introduction. This included the main outline of what we would do throughout the thriller introduction so we had a main starting point for the introduction. This meant we could just edit, fix up and change parts of the filming we had done.

Teacher Feedback

Your blog is looking good. Make sure that once you have finished testing out some effects on your test footage that you upload it and explain what you were trying to achieve.
It is really important that your blog effectively communicates what you intend to accomplish in your thriller.
You need to ensure that you get organised and plan in your filming so that you get the footage you need, I am a little concerned that you don't have any camera time in outside of lessons.

7 The Influences 8





This is the clown from IT, although The Shining is a Horror we had influences from this

7 The Camera Broken 8

• On wednesday we did some practice shots in the long road wooded area. This was useful because it gave us extra direction on what we are going to shoot in the real film introduction. The tape was mucked up so we lost all of our footage, :(

7 The Location Information 8

• we have decided upon our location for our shooting, We have decided on a wooded forest site in Newnham, this is not far from the college site so it will be easy for us to reach.
• this will enable to create the scary woodland images we want to create

7 The Shooting Schedule 8

• We are doing an over night shoot rather than a weekend, we are starting on a Monday night and ending on wednesday

• The storyboarding stage may be followed by simplified mock-ups called "animatics" to give a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing. At its simplest, an animatic is a series of still images edited together and displayed in sequence. More commonly, a rough dialogue and/or rough sound track is added to the sequence of still images (usually taken from a storyboard) to test whether the sound and images are working effectively together.

7 The Unknown 8

This is the animatic for our thriller

7 Shot List 8

• The shot list for our opening title of a thriller...The unknown...is:

• Shot1- This is a shot of two girls setting up their tents whilst camping. This will be a long shot through trees and branches.

• Shot2- This is the stalker kneeling down on the floor looking at the girls through his binoculars. This will be a closeup.

• Shot3- This is the actual view through the stalkers binoculars. This is a mid shot due to the binoculars being a close up as such.

• Shot4- The first picture of the clown without the binoculars covering his eyes. This will also be a close shot so w get to see the scary features of the clown.

• Shot5- The stalker now pulls one of the girls from behind as she goes off to collect the barbecue from the car alone.Close shot is needed

• Shot6- The forest is shown through panning and there is only one girl to be seen.

• Shot7- The stalker burying the body behind a tree far from the other girl. Long shot but a tree is slightly in the way.

• Shot8- Another close up of the stalkers face and the girls face as she sees the clown and then she screams and runs.

7 The Important Stuff 8

• Whilst this lesson is about the important stuff introducing each other in the class to what we are doing our openings about we are also making sure we have our animatics and our presentation ready for the class. We also need to make sure our blog is updated though.

• Okay first things first we have our letter in which means we can use the camera outside of college time. We have negotiated times and we think that next tuesday would be a good time too start our filming as we have a whole day to create different scenes and times of the day.

• We have yet to create our list of times that we need our cameras for though and will also get this done through out the lesson.We also have sorted our files out so we will not get any of our work deleted due to an accident.

• We will start some test shooting and footage so we can get the angles correct and the lighting correct so we do not ruin time with our planning and different types of mist and fog. We do not want it raining when we do our filming so we will work around this.

7 Generic Conventions of Thrillers 8

The Generic Conventions of thrillers are varied as a thriller can contain pretty much any plot, but the idea is to entice the audience with confusing plots and mystery. Although generic , the thrillers main job is to confuse and have ambiguity. This therefore would surprise the audience, and not follow their first suggested conventions. These surely are the generic conventions of a thriller. In our thriller short we are having an evil character who is a vicious killer obsessed and possessed by Satan. We are also having two girls going camping, this is very reminiscent of film like The Blair Witch Project. Unlike The Blair Witch Project we are film in a third party view. This is to separate our short from being a horror, in that we do not intend to scare the audience, but thrill them.

Ideas

8-Ideas-7

• Disorientation. r
• Devil. r
• Demon. r
• Darkness.
• Girls shopping. r
• Stalker. r
• Eerie music. r

7 Storyboarding 8

We spent the beginning of our second planning lesson looking at storyboarding. We got shown the advantages of making a storyboard which included

• having a guide of which places to go
• we know what movements the actors have to do
• the director(s) know whether the planning is working or not

We decided that one of our group members would do the main drawings (Josh) and then the rest of the ideas would contribute to the ideas and drawings too. We haven't thought of many ideas yet and are having discussions about many things such as, which area we are going to use which type of music, what actors (male and/or female).

We had ideas of an eerie effect and having mist in the shot and Kat and Chloe running around in a foggy and misty garden, with childish giggles in the background. Then there is shots of a clown (Josh) and having him holding different 'harmless' weapons. We see him walking towards the girls in a stern angry manor, yet he is creepily smiling, completely contradicting himself. The girls hear clown giggles and slowly turn around to see this mad clown slowly walking towards him with his head down and his hat showing, he slowly lifts his head with a scary smirk on his face, the girls scream and start to run....blackout and title appears.

the reckoning

analysis on the reckoning project from 2007

7 Analysis on The Reckoning (2007) 8

• Our group discussed many things about this opening title sequence and we like many things about it.
• There was no dialogue in the sequence so made the audience focus on what the actors were doing rather than what the actors were saying.
• The music fits in very well with the moved keeping in time with the beat and pace.
• The mise-en-scene was accurate as they had good props, good setting and good costumes making the sequence look scary and authentic.
• The titles were in the corner of the shot so not too drag to much attention from the action.
• The genre was clear the audience know straight away that the film will be a thriller.
• The editing was unfocused but this made a really effective impact, because the plot of the sequence is distorted and unclear at this moment in time.

All group members contributed to this evaluation.

Welcome