We have started to start our thriller project, we were all put into groups and began a tutorial on hour to use final cut pro. We were then told we were going to have to film and edit a practice test of a simple thriller. The next lesson Mickey our technician gave us a lesson on how to prepare and use the cameras and tripods. After the introduction we started to film our trial film, we had to use 12 different shots and we had no limit to what we could do. Our story was a based on a woman who we didn’t see her face through out the whole piece until she exited the room at the end of the scene the camera then pans down on to the newspaper we see throughout and the front page headline is “killer on the loose”. I think our short film was successful as it fulfilled the brief. We also used all twelve camera shots. Most of the shots were successful as we managed to match cut the film together so it flowed easily. One of the best Shots we did was when the lift opened and she walked out as it looked realistic as there was a person in the background, also you can see imagine the lift going up with out having to see it actually moving.
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To start the process of making our thriller openings we had to look at different examples of how to make a good thriller. In lesson we watched several different clips of different types of thrillers. I have chosen The Shining to analyse as I think it’s a good example of a psychological thriller. The lighting contributes to the scene as when the boy is cycling down the hall way the lighting is bright, which adds to the shock of the twins. As the dark is considered to be scary, so people feel a sense of security. The use of the camera makes the audience believe something is going to happen to the boy as the camera is following behind him, it is also shot as a low angle to highlight he’s in control in the shot. When he’s opening the door the camera is on the same level as him to build suspension and to make the audience think something is about to happen. The music also causes tension as its slow piano and violin music, which creates an eerie tension that, builds up until the picture of the twin’s flashes up scaring the audience. We watched the clip with the sound off and it wasn’t as scary, as the music builds the tension.
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We were given the task to do another practice but for match cut so we could learn how to make our thrillers streamline. I was happy with my film work as it looks good and we had many different angels, although we didn’t get a lot of our filming done as we could not get some of the angles right. One of the best shots we had was an over the shoulder as she walks through the door as you can see the environment where she’s about to walk into. The editing was fairly easy as we shot our film according to when and where we wanted to edit our footage together. Our short film made sense as the opening shot were self explanatory. We created an element of suspense as when
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In the lesson on the 12th of January, we were told we were going to have to make a pitch for our thriller ideas to the class and the teacher. We started by discussing our ideas in the group and come up with a story line. After that we then made a shot list, of each shot we would do and how we would use the camera to show this. Today we discussed our story board further and decided on locations and props. We then planned our pitch for tomorrow’s lesson, as we have to talk about lighting camera angles, location and music to the rest of our class.
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In the lesson on thursday 15th january, we were told to prepare a pitch for a thriller that we will present to the class. Although when we had nearly finished preparing out pitch, we got told our idea was to complicated and that we had to change it and make a new pitch. In our pitch we spoke about, the music, setting, lighting, use of camera and editing. Our pitch was successful even though we had to change our pitch at the last minute.
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In Monday’s lesson, we had to learn how to make a soundtrack for our thriller. To begin we did an online tutorial for the Quantum of Solace film. We did different activities throughout the tutorial. One activity was we were given a scene from the film and different sounds. We had to play the sounds that were appropriate tot he situation an example of this was when we were given a picture of a casino and we had the noises we thought would be part of that scene, I added the card shuffling, bar ambiance, talking and the playing chips. After this, we were given a task to add noise to a piece of film; the film was James Bond climbing on to a truck, beating up the driver. The track then collided and blew up. We then started to get used to using the sound track software. We began by uploading our short film we filmed last week, we then added the sound effects such as doors opening and footsteps, as we were told to add the music on last so we could make sure all the effects sounded correct. I then found a guitar noise that made the piece seem suspicious I then added a bass beat on top.
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In Thursday’s lesson, we began filming out thriller, to do this we went to Kats house as we were filming in her attic, as we had rented the equipment out from the night before. We chose an attic as we thought it would give an element of suspicions to our film. To begin we set up the camera and lighting. We then started filming our project by filming the opening shot of our thriller, which was filming Solone tying her shoe laces, it took a few attempt to get the shot right but we got it right in the end, we also filmed walking over to turn her phone alarm off. We had aimed to film a shot of the alarm going off on the phone although when we started filming this shot we noticed we could not see the picture on the phone. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and had to get back to college for 12.15, so we arranged to meet on Sunday to catch up on the filming.
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When we met up on Sunday, we continued filming from Thursday’s lesson. We re-filmed the phone alarm, as we had problems trying to get the alarm to work properly, we could not see the picture and the alarm sound was not loud enough to hear on camera. Therefore, we decided we were going to make our own alarm by just putting a picture up on the screen and we said we would use an alarm noise from soundtrack pro. We then filmed Solone walking out of the room which took a few attempts as we couldn’t get the lighting right and she kept falling down the stairs as they were very small. Although we did get our shot and it looked very effective.
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We decided we were going to edit on Mondays as it is the shorter lesson and we would not be able to get much filming done. On Monday, we edited our work from Thursday and Sunday. The editing process was relatively easy, as we had decided how we were going to edit the piece together as we were filming. Although when we got to the end of our footage we noticed that the lighting is dramatically different on the Thursday to the Sunday, we then decided we were going to re-film some of Sunday’s footage this Thursday when it is brighter.
While filming one of the girls became ill and had to go to hospital for two weeks, so in this time the rest of the group did the title sequence and the soundtrack. We used a plain theme for out credits, as we did not want to draw the attention away from the film we had made. The soundtrack was a hard task as we have only filmed 20 seconds of our thriller, although we came up with a basic idea for the music, so when we have our thriller finished we can go back to soundtrack pro and edit the music we have already created to fit the film.
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On Monday of half term, we were told we could take a camera out so that we catch up on our filming. We started by re-filming a previous shot that did not work in our thriller due to the lighting being different. We then began to shoot the rest of our thriller outside. We did certain shots, which did not work, and we would re-film them until they looked right. We also found it difficult shooting on the main road due to the traffic and people crossing the road. We also had a problem with people looking into the camera, meaning we could not use that take. We only have to film one more shot to put at the end of our thriller.
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In our Thursday lesson we then finished editing the rest of our film together, we had already though of the match cuts and transitions we were to use between different shots. After we finished editing our film together, we had to put in the credits and film titles. We decided to have a black page with white writing on, as it was simple yet effective. All that was left was to create edit the music we had already made; although after we added the edited music on to our film we realised that the music did not match the thriller. Therefore, we started again with the music now we knew how the thriller went we could match the music to what was going on in the film. Georgina and Solone then edit the music to fit our thriller.
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