Timeline

As a group we decided it was important for us to make a timeline. Although this is kind of like the storyboard it makes it clear to us about the times it takes for each shot and also helps us to make the script.  It helps us with the script as we see what the most important parts are and what points it is important for us to let the audience know a little bit more and what parts the two men would say something in real life as it puts us in the position of 'what would they say at this point?' Also it helped me to understand that these two men are obviously friends as they are collegues so they would talk like any male would, we just need to understand their relationship and this needs to be apparent in the dialogue. The time line helped us understand that we need to show the friendship, and we could maybe do this by showing one of the men as being quite funny and the other quite serious, or something like that.

Here is four images of our storyboard, this gives us an idea of how long we want it to take and the kind of shots we want to include. Obviously it will most probably change as time goes on and we fully know what types of shots we want but this is a rough idea of how we want it to be. It just gives us an oppurtunity to also work on the script which is one of the areas we need to work on, but this makes us able to see where we want the dialogue to fit into!

Set design

This is our new set design. Fiona in my group drew this as the pictures that we found do not fully show how cramped we want it to be. We want it to be quite small, full with equipment and with the two chairs and men very close together taking up most of the room of the submersible. We have to show our set design to our teacher and the person who is going to help us by making it! Its really exciting as it's all finally coming together and now that this picture is done we can fully get the feel of how its going to look for our audience and really get the sense of being inside the submersible.

Props

In class we were talking about what props we need for our thrillers, heres a list of the things we think that we need for our two minute sequence:

FOR OUTSIDE THE SUBMERSIBLE

• Toy submersible
• Fish tank (3 ft)
• Sand
• Rocks/stones
• Seaweed
• Water for the fish tank
• Gopro (underwater camera)

Obviously some of these will be easier to get than others, and some won't even need to be put onto the budget (for example the water). We are also thinking of making the water murky, we'd do this by maybe either using pond water or putting mud in the water, this would create suspence as it would be hard to see anything underwater.

FOR INSIDE THE SUBMERSIBLE

• Walkey talkey
• TV screens
• Wires
• Radar
• Chairs (X2)
• Controls (for cameras)
• Keyboard
• Meters (fuel, depth etc)
• Laminated file with pictures of silver
• Blue print
• Controls and buttons

Some of this will be hard to find, for example TV screens and meters. We need it to look very technical, and full with devices.

Inside the submersible

Here is a picture (below) of the kind of thing that we want the set to look like. But we want the two chairs to be very close and for the set to be quite small, this creates a claustraphobic element to the submersible, which is what we want to create. We want there to be controls infront of the men, and TV screens, like shown in the pictures below. We want the characters to be so close because it will create the sense of them being alone underwater in a very small submersible, surrounded by water. Because they are underwater we were thinking about walkey talkeys (as we want them to be talking to the base above ground), however we think that because of the pressure underwater they would not use headphones (in picture) so instead they will use hand held walkey talkeys. (below) We think that it will be easy to film them talking to hand-held walkey talkeys too as this will clearly distinguish the difference between when they're talking to eachother, and when they are talking to the base above ground. It will reinforce the underwater world and the above ground world, which is still as important as the underwater world as thats where the majority of the film will be held.

Survey

We decided to do surveys so that we could establish a target audience. It also enabled us to understand and enabled us to realise what thriller our thriller came into, and who it was most popular for. The way we did it to make sure that we had an even number of each catergorie, we split it up so that one person did 5 males 15-18 etc..

Wordle for female 15-18

This shows that Thrillers are the least popular out of the majority of females of the age 15-18. This concludes that this wouldn't be wise to use as our target audience.

Wordle for male 18+

This wordle shows that for males above the age of 18, thrillers are the most popular, therefore this would be quite a wise target audience to use.

Wordle for female 18+
Here is the wordle for females over 18, this shows that thriller is quite majoritively popular. This could be quite a good target audience.










Therefore for our thriller we should maybe aim to use a target audience of males and females over the age of 18.

The remote control submersible.

When looking for submersibles we googled remote control submersibles, and this is what it came up with. It mainly came up with submarines, which will not do, as we aren't having it in a submarine as they are too big, and we want to create a claustaphobic feeling, and more suspense.

The problem that we've had with buying the submersibles is many of them look like toys, and they would not look realistic. The white one for example has windows which look very fake and this would not look ideal underwater for our submersible. However with it having a torch on the front of it is really beneficial as we need to have a torch at the front of our submersible for many of our shots. The grey-blue one is the one that we are liking the most and thinking that we will use.

Costume

Heres a picture of the costume we were hoping to use for our thriller, it is a blue boiler suit. We think that this is what they would wear in a submersible and is quite a practical outfit that can be used for the costumes of our men.

Costumes are so important in making any film. In our thriller inparticular we must make sure that our costumes are perfect, because if they at all look not right, then this will detach the udience from the sequence as they will just be thinking to themselves, 'well submersible men don't wear that', and this will make it unrealistic. We need to make sure that we are correctly representing the men in the submersible, and if we do not do this then our thriller will not be very good at all as the whole effect will be lost.

We've been looking at places we could buy these from, and this is one that we've looked at which would be ideal to use. Heres what we found on the internet, but in the clip from Submerged we can see the man underwater wearing a short sleeved blue boiler suit. So we've been also looking for short sleeved boiler suits, which is prooving to be quite tricky.  

Heres a screen shot of the trailer Submerged. It shows the costume of the men, which we are hoping to use. Also it shows the kind of thing we want the inside of the submersible to look like. We want there to be controls everywhere, and TVs so they can't see out of it, but can just see out using technical devices, this will help with the costraphobia aspect too.

Script

The script has proven to be one of the hardest jobs. At first we thought that we could make it quite brief about what they're down there for and have as little dialogue as possible. But there needs to be some information for the audience to grab onto and to be able to understand some parts of it otherwise they won't feel involved and therefore that'll get rid of the suspence. So we came up with the idea of instead of them saying about what they are trying to find, they will have a folder full of laminated sheets of paper which have pictures of what they are trying to find. This enables the audience to have an awareness of why they are down there, but also makes the audience ask questions about what it is and why it is so important for them to be getting this from underwater. We've decided as a group that they will be trying to find some silver from a shipwreck, we got this idea from a news article that we found talking about men that went down in a submersible to find some silver.

•  To make this sequence realistic we needed to use some technical words and/or include technical devices (e.g cameas).
• We've also included the base above ground with dialogue through a walkey talkey so this enables to audience to understand that there is a base (group) of them involved in seeking what they want from underwater, and also gets the audience familiar with the voice of the man on the walkey talkey who is going to become the main character of the film.
•  Through the dialogue we have created suspence, we wanted to include that they could see something (we will also show this will camera and mise-en-scene, but also we know that people are usually vocal about problems that they are aware of when they are with people/friends.
• So by incorporating the fear of the two men and base into the speech the audience see how afraid the men are which creates suspense as they are the ones who are supposed to be in control.

Presentation 1

Above a presentation which shows pictures of underwater, and people creating the underwater world. Although we cannot use these technologies, its good to look at them for improvisation. For example we are thinking of getting a 6ft tank, which we will fill up with water and this will create our long shots as we will put a mini submersible in this, this will enable the audience to establish we are underwater. It will be dark (low-key lighting), and you can only really see the torch at the front in the middle of the screen at the beginning. By the use of darkness it will create the constraphobic sense for the characters and audience.

We decided that instead of showing the base aswell as underwater, we'd just show the underwater in the sequence. By having the base above aswell it would take the audience out of the suspense, and letting them have a breather, but I think by purely focusing on underneath it keeps the constraphobic element! So this is why we're going to just show that there is a base through dialogue and props (walkey talkey).

Here are some of the controls, of what we'd like to be in the submersible!

Music for the Thriller

In our thriller sequence we want the music to be suspenseful but not scary. Here's a video which has inspired what kind of non-diegetic sound we would like to use. This music builds up but also has quiet moments and something like this would be perfect for our thriller idea. 

How will we create suspense?

We wanted to use a technique which gets the audience to look out into the distance, then gets shocked by coming popping up close to the screen. The way we'd do this was having a extreme long shot of the ocean so that the audience look into the distance, juxtaposed to big close up of something which will scare them. This is scary as it creates suspense and makes the audience jump. Here are two videos which are examples of this technique: 

Thriller Idea Outline

We've been discussing our Thriller ideas in class, and here is what our ideas are so far... 


Title: 'UNDER AND ABOVE'
The reason for this title is because its the life underneath and above that are featured in the film, the picture shows this.. 

Tag line: 'Is it best to know the unknown?'
Description of 2 minute sequence: Men in submersible are in contact with men above (in base). They are looking for an ancient artefact. But then something goes wrong with the submersible. Base loose contact, and the submersible never returns.
How we show the 2 minute sequence (through camera): Man in base (main character, most screen time) walks into the control room (tracking shot of his feet, then see him put in code – close up of hand - and open leaver). He walks into the control room, lots of computers and technical devices. Cross cuts to men in the submersible, establishing over the shoulder shot of window in the submersible, cuts to close up of driver of submersible. Cuts to the radar (diegetic sound of beeping). Then camera jerks, show men faces shocked and worried. They try to fix it. Try and call above base. (camera shot goes up) Cross-cuts back to base, diegetic sound of man saying ‘hello’ but it’s a fuzzy sound. Dialogue of main man, asking if the submersible people can hear him through walkey talkey. Fuzzy sound on walkey talkey, main man trying to fix it, fiddling with technical things. Dialogue of man in submersible asking if the main guy can see what the problem is. Then they think its calmed down, close up of the main man, hears in the walkey talkey a crash, tries to get attention of the submersible men, no-one replies.
Establish suspense: through the music something like video in other post, shot types (for example the juxtaposition of an extreme long shot to a big close up – shown in youtube videos on next post.)
The information given: the radar tells them they are trying to find something. Also the fact that they are in a submersible and the control base is in contact with that. They’re having trouble (camera and submersible jerking).
Information not given: The reason they have gone down there in the first place. And why hasn’t the submersible come back up? What is the uncertainty?
Main plot: One submersible is going down to find ancient artefacts, but does not return. Another is sent down to try and find this submersible but what will happen to it and will it return?

'Watching'

In class we watched a documentary called 'Watching'. This documentary was about film and how the beginning sequence of a film can be done in totally different ways and showing how the first sequence is the most important part of the film.
The first 2 minutes needs to grab the audience, it needs to get the audience onside as they decide quickly whether it'll be what they want or not. Thomas Sutcliffe says: “films need to seduce their audience”.
Director Jean Jacques Beineix says there are risks with 'instant erousal', these are that the film should grow. The audience should have questions of which they don't know all of the answers. By making it grow it raises the question for the director what do I do next? And the audience questions what will happen next.
“A good beginning must make the audience feel that they don’t know nearly enough yet”. The audience make an early adjustment to what they think the movie will be about. But it is important for them to not know everything. In the opening sequence they want to establish many things for example location, characters and also they have to understand what type of film it is going to be.
Critic Stanley Kauffmann describes a classic opening as getting the audience on your wavelength. One example he described of being a good opening is a close up of a building, then in the window, then to receptionist desk - this establishes the organisation of the world.







This video above is the title sequence of 'SE7EN'. It is so affective as it tunes the viewers into the movie, and fore-shadows what is going to happen in the film. It 'hits the audience on the head, and wakes everyone up'.









Here is the opening sequence of  'A touch of Evil', by Orson Welles. He wanted to plunge everyone into it, he wanted to shock his audience straight away and be original and different, but the studio were cautious. So the effect Welles wanted to create was lost, they made credits, so it wasn't like the beginning of the film. Orson Welles was obviously not happy so he wrote a 500 word lette asking them to reconsider but the studio won. So they decided to start the film in the more traditional way, instead of using Welles more drastic idea.
I learnt about the trick of opening with the ending, and visa versa, this is what's meant by the term 'a favourite trick of Film Noir'.





Heres the opening to 'The Shining'. It creates suspence as it is picturesque yet pursues the car as a preditor. We know that the people in the car are travelling in the wrong direction. The menacing music emphasises the suspence in this isolated area.

Powerpoint

We have used powerpoint to help with our thrillers. This helped us to talk and explain our ideas to our group and our class when we had to pitch our ideas. Above is one of the pages when we were creating this powerpoint, we talked about the location, main plot of whole film, characters in it and the 2 minute sequence.

This is our powerpoint that we used to pitch our ideas. When we were talking through our ideas I think it made it clear which ones we liked and which ones we weren't to keen on. Our first idea is called 'underwater'. One thing that we decided to do whilst talking was not to make it supernatural and just make it a psychological thriller. I was not keen on the supernatural idea at the beginning as I didn't think that that would make it a good thriller, and that it would be must more thrilling if it was to do with the mind instead of the supernatural super powers affect. Our second idea was to base it on the news story 'man jailed for faking own death'. When we were talking to the class we decided not to show the man walking past his own death as a) this would make it too obvious, b) because it wouldn't be realistic as if it was true he would not risk getting himself caught. Also by talking through the idea we decided how we needed to talk more about what the main plot was going to be as we had just focused on our 2 minute sequence instead of the whole film.

Our third idea was Human Artwork, this was an idea I quite liked but I feel we should have not shown the meat and that we should have just made it look like a normal artist but make it suspenseful by going really close to everything and have music quite has an eery and thrilling aspect to it. I think we could have done it not very gawry and more about the psychological problems of the artist. This would have quite a thrilling aspect to it. Our fourth idea was about a man collecting valuables from the women he has killed. We felt this was a good idea, but the eBay was not, as the reason a murderer would keep the possessions is to keep the power he felt when he took those womens lives.

Our Thriller Ideas ![1][1]

Initial ideas for thriller

Psychological thrillers interest me and I'm thinking that I would quite like to explore this subgenre. The characters, plots and locations are less predictable. For example The Stepfather is in someone’s house, yet in Shutter Island it is covered over a whole island. Therefore there’s a whole range of locations.  
What do they have in common?

•  Someone struggling with reality.     
•  Messing with the mind.
•  Character-driven.

According to Hitchock what is the difference between mystery and suspense?

Hitchcock is the master of suspense.
He says that 'mystery is an intellectual process' and 'suspense is an emotional process.' An intellectual process gets you working something out. Whereas an emotional process only happens with you have been given information.

For example: if a bomb goes off in a room it doesn't lead up to any suspense,  yet if they are told in 5 minutes a bomb is going to go off this
creates suspense as they have been given information.

What is genre/subgenre, why is it important (for institutions and audiences)?

What is a genre?
Genre are the codes and conventions.
Conventional means that what you find typical, things that you would expect to find. You can see this when you think about these three aspects:

• CHARACTERS
• LOCATIONS
• PLOT

There are different subgenres in the genre thriller, these are for example:

• Action Thriller
• Conspiracy Thriller
• Crime Thriller
• Disaster Thriller
• Erotic Thriller
• Legal Thrillers
• Medical Thriller
• Psychological Thrillers
• Political Thriller
• Religious Thriller
• Spy Thriller
• Supernatural Thrillers

For each of these you know what what to expect. For example the characters in Supernatural Thrillers could be ghosts, vombies, vampires etc.. and the location could be in dark places, in fields, in haunted houses etc.. and the plot would also be quite predictable. For the audience that likes these kind of films its easy for them to realise that they want to go and see it.


Why are genres important?

• There is an expectation from the audience of what they'll find.
• Genres help the audience choose what they want to see.
• Helps to target the audience.
• Helps market/sell the film.

What is a thriller?

• Something that puts the audience in the position of feeling scared and vulnerable.
• Any film that gives you that heart-beating feeling.
• A film that makes you jump and has an element of danger.

Things they have in common,

• Elements of death
• Make the audience have an emotional response (worried, fearful, excited, tense).

There are differences in these thrillers though,

• Some are thrilling in an action way, some are thrilling in a psychological way.

An action thriller is for example Kill Bill, they are adrienaline packed.
A psychological thriller is for example Shutter Island, Iception, they are playing with the mind.

Here is a list of a few thriller films,

• Shutter Island
• Insidious
• Silence of the Lambs
• The Shining
• Room 1408
• Kill Bill
• Se7en
• Grave Encounters
• Taken

This is the trailer from ‘Shutter Island’. The first clip shown has non-diegetic music that sounds menacing. The clip is of a ship coming forward in the mist, this creates an image of danger and that someone important is coming. At the beginning the clips are edited to fade to black, this makes it jumpy as you don’t know what’s going to come next after the black screen. There is a clip of three of the men walking through the gates to shutter island, it seems important as they are in slow motion and the dialogue is ‘welcome to shutter island’. This indicates that they are here for something very serious and that they are very important characters. Two of the men’s costumes are long brown coats and brown hats; this creates an image of them being detectives. There is a clip in the trailer of an old lady who has blood shot eyes, she doesn’t have much hair, she is quite old, she looks frail, and this creates the image of her having an illness as her pale skin against her blood shot eyes indicates illness. A prop of the woman’s character is handcuffs, this shows that he has just entered into a hospital for the criminally insane. The sound of her whispering ‘shh’ to him shows that she probably has a mental illness as he hasn’t made a sound, with the non-diegetic music stopping shows just how quiet it really is and that she is imagining him making a noise. The dialogue before this moment is ‘we take only the most dangerous and damaged patients’ and by showing her shows just one of the damaged patients, and seeing this women is quite a scary image. DiCaprio is the man actor in this film, one of his pieces of dialogue is ‘its like their scared of something’, he whispers this which creates an eerie effect as they obviously are scared of something but we are unaware of what that is at that moment. There is a clip shown where DiCaprio is asking a woman some questions and she gives him a notepad that has writing in it and at the bottom has the word ‘Run’, to emphasise this they show the word ‘Run’ close up, and the music has a heavy beat when it is close up to that word. This suggests that this is very important and gives them clues. Towards the end the clips get faster together, and shorter, the music tempo also speeds up and makes the climax build up and up and up to the titles being explosive over the screen. Then there’s a silence and a black screen until you see DiCaprio being attacked by a monster from behind him. The camera work for this is that we see him behind bars, and then all of a sudden something appears from behind him very quickly and grabs him.

Here is the trailer of 'The Wave' which is a German film. It is thrilling as it shows clips of a normal school, normal students, being changed by one man. There is a point of view shot of the man looking out onto the playground, this shows the distance from him and the kids on the playground, it also creates a sense of him being alone and having nothing. This clip is a montage of all the clips, I feel this has a more and less gripping sense to it - it may have a less thrilling factor due it not being continuous but also in a sense a more thrilling factor as it is very jumpy and that adds to the thriller as thrillers are meant to make you jump and for you to be on the edge of your seat. There is an over the shoulder shot of the man looking at the classroom - the classroom is empty, but then there is another over the shoulder shot later on in the clip which shows all of the children who have his control (all standing infront of him, looking at him, standing up to him) this is a contrast of him going from nothing, to rise to get such control of so many people. There is a clip of the students marching to him in the classroom, all joking around and him saying that's the power of unity', but we see that one of the boys (the last one we see in the clip, at the back of the room) is taking it quite seriously, this shows that the power of unity is taking him over and he is likely to be dictated. Now it is as if they are his soldiers, and the normal students are no longer individuals in their own clothes saying how dictatorship will 'no way' not happen again, they are now 'together', one body and are now his army. The costumes show that they are no longer individuals as they used to come in colorful home clothes yet now they all wear the same white (neutral) clothes, this shows that they are now all together and have formed their own group. The clips towards the end get shorter and shorter, this builds up the climax of all the clips as we want to know what it leads up to. There is a clip of the students running up the stairs which makes them look like troops as if they are getting ready to go somewhere. They also is a clip of some of the students running round the town putting up posters of 'the wave', which makes them look like a gang, all going round putting out the flyers of their group. This is juxtaposed to a clip of one of the students looking up a gun on the computer, this shows that it has turned to violence. The last clip is of the man looking around nervously, as if he is thinking to himself 'what have I done?', its almost as if he has seen the awful consequence of what he has made happen. The non-diegetic music in this clip sounds like the ocean (which it is meant to as the film is called 'the wave'), this is affective as the ocean takes things in, therefore the students are being sucked in by this man (who is the leader, like the sea). It has drops in the song which are strong and powerful, but then it also has the flowing bits which build up to climaxes. When they are marching in the classroom, the non-diegetic music stops, this makes us able to just hear the marching of them all being together, we get the sense of unity. There was a sound of an almost drum which goes in time with the writing that comes onto the screen, it does this throughout but one that stuck out for me was when it said that 'he became their leader', this shows the power and the force that this man has got. The use of the drill creates an alarming sound and it indicates danger.

Heres the first video that I have embedded into blogger. Its the clip from The Stepfather that I analysed.

Editing the Preliminary film

In class today we used a programme called 'Final Pro Cut' to edit our prelimiary films. Firstly we just watched through our shots, to see if we got all the cuts we wanted. Then we made a 'bin' and named that 'rushes'. Once we had put all of our shots into the 'rushes' we were able to start editing and cutting our film into how we wanted it to be. We learnt that you cut by using the letter i and o, for the start and finish of the bit you want to cut in, also that you use snapping to get the cut smoother. At the top of the screen we had two screens where we could see in one of them the bit we were cutting and in the other how the film was looking so far. Once we had done it a few times we all got the hang of it quickly our timeline started to get longer and longer. We were all wanting it to look and sound perfect so we spent a lot of time making sure that the audio fitted together right - and although that may have taken a bit of time once we'd got it, it sounded so much better and was worth that bit of time to get it right!

The Stepfather

Shooting Preliminary Film

In groups of 4 we started to film our very first film. We had a sheet of paper with a scene on it that we had to shoot. It gave us the angles and a bit of dialogue. Two of the people in our group acted it out, and the other too filmed it. But we made sure that the two that acted it out had as much of a go with the camera than the others. I was on the shooting team, not the acting. This went well and I started to get used to using the terms 'Stand By' 'Rolling' and 'Action'. We worked well as a team, and made sure that the camera had been focused and white balanced before we shot anything. We also all helped set up the camera, in the position we wanted it, this helped us work together and made sure that everyone in our group was able to do it. This task was all about communication with eachother and seeing as we were able to do this very well we managed to finish early so we added extra shots. Some close ups, some high angled and low angled shots. I really enjoyed shooting the preliminary film, it was my first time of really using a camera in the way we did it. It showed me how important working together was, also how important detail was and how once you've got the hang of it you were able to really get stuck into it!

Using the 180° rule!

We got into groups of 4 in this practical lesson. The lesson before we had learnt all about the camera so now it was time for us to put what we learnt to practice. Our group filmed a girl sitting down at a computer, clicking on something, then standing up and walking away. The reason for doing this small sequence was the get used to the 180° rule! Also by using different shot types (mid-shots, POV shots, over the shoulder, low-angle shots, high-angle shots).

Learning to use a Sony NX5 Video Camera

Our first practical lesson we learnt the basics of how to use a Sony NX5 Video Camera. In groups of four we were given a Sony NX5 Video Camera and tripod. We learnt how to handle the equipment safely, how to attached the pan-handle, learnt how to bubble it, how to set up the tripod. Also we leant what we had to make sure we did before we filmed anything (e.g zooming in as far as you can then focusing it, then also before every shot you needed to set the white balance).

My first blog.

Hey, this is my first blog account ever. I've made this account for Media Studies A level. I have no clue how to use this or what I am doing, but hopefully I'll get used to it :)