First Part of Editing the thriller

Today two members of the group started to put together the first part of the thriller. However as they was watching the footage they realised there had been some errors in the filming that couldn't be fixed through editing and will need to be re-filmed. We have made a list of what needs re-filming and will do it when we next have spare time,

Filming our Visual Mind Map

Today we decided to take the camera and record ourselves making a mind map. We wrote the word thriller on a white board and asked 2 individuals what come to mind when they thought of the word. We had some trouble with the writing being visable in the camera and had to re-shoot it a few times.

Research into theartofthetitle.com

Today I visited http://www.artofthetitle.com/

I done this in order to gain some ideas for our two minute thriller. Whilst on the website i watched different openings to thrillers to get a wider range ideas and perceptions. These included, 'Days of Heaven', 'Scott pilgrim vs the world' and others.


I just watched the opening sequence to the film 'the shining' this is very dramatic as the camera flows over a lake and follows a car up the mountainside, this gives the impression that the people in the car are being followed. Also over the top of the pictures is dull and deep music which continues to progress until they reach there destination. The name of the director is first to appear on the screen and is then followed by the main actor then followed by smaller actors. 

More Filming

Yesterday myself and another group member got together our actresses and attempted filming one fo the opening sequences of our thriller. It took us most of the day as we had to keep finding new camera angles and try and share our ideas equally. It took as about half an hour film our 3 actresses crossing the road as we was trying to get it so no cars were passing on either side, this meant quite a lot of standing around as we was near quite a busy road. We didn't get as much filming as we would have liked though as the camera had soon ran out of battery. We have however now got the opening to our thriller

Thrillers within Text

Recently i have read the book 'by midnight' this was filled with suspense and i felt whilst reading it i was continuiously asking questions in my head about the book. The book felt like a traditional thriller with a protagonist and an antagonist, however different to any i have seen on tv or as films due to the fact that it is fiction.

The Story;
April Dunne is a new girl at Ravenwood school for the gifted (both financially and academically), she has recently moved from Endinborough to Highgate in London. Like any normal 16 year old girl April is interested in knowing any boys in the area but all seem very mysterious. On her first day of school she meets Caro JAckson A conspiracy theorist, and Gabrille Swift who she instantaniously likes. However after growing close to gabrielle secrets start to reveal themself as Ravenwood isnt only for gifted many of the students there are like vampires. As April realises this murders are taking place throughout the city, even with her dad being one of them and April as distressed as ever she still choses to try and unravel the mystery behind Ravenwood. On the Night of Davina's party, April and one of the vampire' s Benjamin grew closer and ended the night with a kiss, however something in April's DNA triggered something in Benjamin to become ill. A battle where Gabrielle and April draw closer to become on the side agaisnt vampires can lead to terrible consequences. With Marcus finding out the April is a born slayer he sets out to destroy her and her new lover Gabrielle. The book ends with a giant cliffhanger as Marcus nearly kills April and runs of into the dark cemetery and Gabrielle is dying after kissing April for what could be the first and last time.

List of characters and titles and how they will be presented during our opening credits

As a group we have dicussed the order in which names will appear in the opening credits of our thriller and what else we would like to include. The following is what we have come up with;
1: Panoptic Productions present
2: A film by Connor Murray
                 and Sarah Warnock
3: Starring Hollie Tuvey
4: Gera Zaharov
5: Also starring Georgia Wigley
                      Ashleigh Hay
6: Music by Connor Murray
7: Edited by Ashleigh Hay
                 Connor Murray
                 Hollie Tuvey
                 Sarah Warnock
8: Directed by Connor Murray
                    Sarah Warnock
9: Assistant Directors Ashleigh Hay
                               Hollie Tuvey
10: Name of thriller; LOST SIGNAL

My Survey Analysis

My survey was completed by 2 maes and 6 females. I was expecting most of the paticipants to be sixteen or under, however 3 of the 8 were sixteen or ovver, 4 of them were 17 to 24 and one person skipped the question so i do not know their age. 37.5% of the particpants watch movies ones a week and again 37.5% watch a movie at least once a day. 12.5% of people watch moves only once a month and again for more than once a week. The majority answer for 'How often do you watch thrillers?' was Once a month, with having 85.7%. The other 14.3% watch thrillers more than once a week. The main ways people described a thriller was by using words such as 'suspence' 'eerie' 'cliffhanger' and 'tension'. I took into consideration the results of my survey and will be using them to try and help improve our thriller.

More filming

Today we had planned to do more filming and get alot done as it was very cloudy all day which gave the effect of it beinging close to nightfall. However our main actress failed to show up as she didnt know what time we was filming, we attempted to do another part of the thriller with the stalker in his bedroom, but he could not stay in order for us to film. In the future we will make sure our actors and actresses dont have any plans and know the correct time which we want them there.

Participants

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

There are 4 participants in our thriller;

Hollie Tuvey (Image one) - The main character who is the stalkee

Georgia Wigley (Image Two) - One of the main characters friends

Harley Mason (Image Three) - Another of the main characters friends

Gera Zaharov (Image Four) - The Stalker 

Also their are 3 images of the producers;

Sarah Warnock (Image Five)

Connor Murray (Image Six)

Ashleigh Hay (Image Seven

Filming

Today the group left the lesson to go to one of the group members houses to do some filming. We was hoping to get quite a lot done. However it took us a long time to set up as we had to arrange props such as make up and hairspray on a computer desk in order to make it look like the main characters bedroom. As it took us a while to get this perfect we didnt have much time filming, we also was trying to figure out camera angles so we could see both the girl and what she was writing so whe we zoomed to the computer it would be easy to read, and not go pixilated. This has maybe caused us to rethink this part of our thriller. In order to film more next time we will have already set up the props and figured out the placing of the camera.

Setting up for our thriller

Today myself and my group signed the camera out to do some filming, however we realised we needed to set up the room which was filming in which took up most of our time. In part of our thriller the stalker is standing infront of a wall of pictures of one particular girl. Our time today was spent printing off these pictures and sticking them to the wall ready for the next time we film. I will be uploading the pictures we took of us putting up pictures as soon as i can.

Garageband experiment

During free time i went into the media room to test out the garageband application. I was hoping to get together a piece of music to put with our ident. However it took me some time to understand the application, by the time i had recorded a piece i needed to leave. I have saved the music onto the computer and will be testing it out with our ident image to see if it fits.

Scenery/ location for thriller

Yesterday myself and another group member went to take pictures of scenery which we will be using in our thriller. We also took pictures of each other taking the pictures as evidence that we took the pictures ourselves. We tried to get different angles of each shot to see how it would be better portrayed in the thriller video and make it easier for us when filming. Today we put the pictures on final cut express and edited them together. Below is the animatic which was created.

Storyboard

Today we finished our storyboard on final cut express and put music with it, however whenwe uploaded it onto youtube the sound no longer worked. We are aiming to get this fixed shortly, but for now I will upload the video which we have got.

Mobygratis Approval

The member of our group who askedfor the licensing of the two tracks recieved confirmation of the licensing of the tracks shortly after.

Mobygratis

Today, within the group we discussed the type of music which we would like to play in our thriller and agreed on two main tracks that we believe will go well with the opening scene to our thriller. One of the member's of our group has requested the use of both the tracks, and we are now awaiting for the reply. In order to gain a wider range of music we will also visit different websites such as unsigned.com. As a group we have decided that we would like to secure the licencing of around ten tracks, this will enable us to have a wide variety of music to chose from.

Storyboard Attempt

Today we finally finished our storyboard for our actual thriller, we took pictures of it and were trying to put it together on final cut express so it would become an animatic and be simple to upload onto youtube and onto our blogs as a video. However whilst using final cut express the system crashed and we lost our work, we will try again next week when we next have a lesson.

Treatment for our thriller

Outiline of Ideas;

• Stalker
• Abandoned Park
• Fog
• Room Full of pictures showing obsession

What Resources will be needed;

• Tent
• Small Room
• Pictures
• Fog?
• A Lake?

Justification of ideas in relation to our thriller;

• Suspense
• Shadows
• Point of view shots
• Danger
• Mysterious chartacters
• Tension
• Death? (Mystery)

Conventions of the genre;

• Low Level lighting. shadows
• Isolated/deserted/confined spaces
• Quick Editing - fast paced
• Point of view shots and frantic camera  movements
• Eerie sounds / silence
• Ominous Character

Research into real films of the genre;
No country for old men 2007;

• Antagonist is the main characte

Manchurian Candidate 2004;

• Political and psychological - room with lights, constant changing of scenes, camera movement

North by Northwest 1959;

• Crop Scene - Red Herring

Research into Potential Target Audience;
Young women as our film would be psychological rather than filled with action and weapons.

Proposal to how your project would appeal to the target audience and beyond;
Young women are more inclined to watch thrillers that also fall into the catagory as horror. Ours woould do this, therefore the females would be more likey to enjoy it. Furthermore our main character is a female so she will be eaasier to relate to.

Our final company ident - Panoptic productions

As a group we chose which two idents we believed to be the better designs and edited them both on Livetype in order to make them more effective and more like famous production company idents. Below are the two idents which we edited, Design 3 and Design 4;

Design 3;


Design 4;

As a group we decided that Design 4 of the original ideas was the best so the ident featured above as design 4 is our final production company idea and will be used for our 2 minute thriller opening.

Ident and logo ideas





During lesson we were talking about creating idents and logos for the opening of our thrillers. In our group we came up with 4 different logo's in which we could choose from. We chose to make each one different from the next, as we felt if they were too similar it would make the decision of which one to pick harder. All the files were have saved in two file formats: .psd, the Photoshop file so that I can edit them later, and .png, so that the empty areas remain transparent.

We chose the name 'Panoptic Productions' as the word 'panoptic' means to view things from many directions. This links to our coursework, as each shot of our thriller will have to be viewed from different directions in order to make it a high-quality opening. 

Design 1;

This design was inspired by a drawing which Connor, a member of our group, made a long time ago. Cartoon clouds are often used in work by artists who usually specialise in forms which are less realistic. The font is a brilliant striking blue which corroborates with the cloud, the blue is the colour of rain which is produced from clouds. We added a glow to both the cloud and the text, we thought this made them seem more angelic and dainty. If we were to use this image it would not include the grey background, it would just be transparent, this was only added to show the shape of the cloud.

Design 2;

This is the second design which we came up with. The white area would be transparent in the actual thriller. We decided to use faces which are angled in different directions as  it relates to our company name. Also the text and faces are very cartoon like, this creates the effect of a fun and young design. However we feel as though this design is lacking in something, although we cannot figure out what, so we will be less likely to use it as our final production company ident.

Design 3;

Our third design is inspired by pain splats. We felt that the bold colours, pink and purple, were a good choice as they stood out from the page and were more eye catching then other colours. Also the font is bold and eye catching and looks as though exploding out from the paint. The design is simple but effective, we think this would go down well once place on livetype.

Design 4;

This design is the favourite from the four. We think it is an ironic take on the Columbia pictures ident. AS Columbia pictures use a woman features as standing on a podium holding a torch. We have created a different futuristic character within the ident and also have place him on a podium like Columbia pictures have done. As we come from an industrialised area we have chosen a skyline to the design. The white area shown in the picture however will be transparent.Once we have placed the image onto Livetype we could edit a background into with moving clouds, which is another reference to Columbia Pictures. The text is separate from the picture so it can be moved freely on the page one we edit it onto Livtype. This means we can place it exactly where we would like it to be on the screen without shifting the design of the ident.  

Visual Brainstorm

Today we went out with the camera and recorded 2 members of the group's opinions of a thriller. We did this to get a better understanding of the genre. Below is the video.