Thursday 29th January - First Filming Session

This lesson was our first filming session. After all the planning we finally got to do the practical work our group was all excited to do. After a short delay because of the whole class being present in the media studies room getting ready to receive their cameras to go out and film, we started to set up the room for us to film in. Everyone was very enthusiastic as we had all have been waiting for this part of the project.

After we set up the room we realised that we can only film a small part of our thriller because the person who is going to play the alien is not decided yet and because we did not have the costume of that character ready but would be ready for the next lesson. So we came to the conclusion that we will just film the doctor’s (Ola) role in the film. This was difficult as we could only film from one side of the room because we would have needed the other character, the alien, to be seen when filming on that side of the room. This could have easily leaded to our group making a simple mistake but as I spotted this, we avoided this error. We then decided to just do the close up shots of so that there is not much of a background like the extreme close up Ola slowly reaching the door handle to open the door with the sense of suspicion and tension. We thought this was a good starting shot because the audience will have no clue who’s hand it is which will keep them guessing as we only reveal the hand and nothing else of the person. Not knowing the identity of a character is a thrilling technique. This is also a good way to introduce a match cut as we had learned in our previous practice practical.

We then started to film inside the room but the room was too bright and would mess up our idea of this dark and lonely atmosphere so we took off the lights and got a spotlight from the media department. This was even better for us as we could now film our shadows which could be very suspenseful if we capture the shots right. This could also allow us to film parts which we could not film, like perhaps a surgery knife cutting the eye or neck of the alien, due to health and safety issues but can just film the shadow of it looking like this action is taking place on the alien. This works as an advantage for us. The spotlight can also adjust its brightness which we could use to our advantage as the brightness could symbolise the mood. It helped in not revealing the doctors (Ola) face which creates lots of suspense so we tried to catch some shots where the lighting was poor in the room but that he was still visible.

We then got on to the slow, tense and unpredictable part of the scene be using slow pan ups and over the shoulder shots. We have done this purposely so the audience has a little introduction to the character but still doesn’t know too much. This allows us to show the audience the characters sort of personality through his gestures and body language which is very effective in thrillers I believe because it lets the movements communicate to the audience instead of dialogue which is an excellent suspenseful and thrilling device. After we did our pan up shot we added a brief case so we could get close up shots of the doctor opening it at the lock buckle and so the audience become very suspicious of what is inside it. Once it opens, the audience anxiety is relieved as there is only surgery gloves inside of it and here is when we us an extreme close up of the doctor slowly putting them on causing the tension building in the scene. When putting on the gloves, the gloves are stretched as he pulls it down to the fullest so that the glove slaps the wrist of his hand so the audience identify this intertextuality sort of method and recognise the message of that action is about to take place.

The lesson seemed to go very quick and we didn’t film as much as we wanted. This was due to waiting for everybody leaving the classroom, costume changes and collection (like the lab coat from the science laboratory) and many retaken shots because people walking past when we were filming, interrupting our scene. Looking forward to the next lesson, we have a sort of miniature plan of what we will be filming and we are going to make sure precious time is not lost by setting up the filming set and getting into filming as soon as we enter the classroom.

Lastly, we discussed how we can get on with filming quickly and get into the computer rooms to start editing and came up with a solution that we will take the filming equipment out on one day during the week to film our short King’s Cross scene so that this will save time. This would be in our own free time so that we don’t have to use a lesson for this scene. We could also use our free time to brush up any certain parts in our film like using more camera shots and angles which will boost up our marks and so our thriller can be up to a standard of our full potential.

Overall, we were very satisfied of what our group achieved in this lesson. We showed teamwork and enthusiasm which are both needed in order to achieve a good result and this allowed us to leave the classroom with a smile on our face, which had not been happening in previous lessons. Now we had a little of the filming experience under our belt, we could finish the filming in maybe the next lesson or two without no delays.

LIVE TYPE

At the end of the of the lesson on Monday 26th January, my teacher told me about a software called live type on the computers in the Mac room which had incredible special effects in presenting fonts and illusions. She then asked me if I wanted to see the effects and possibly use some of them when our group gets to the stage of us editing. This programme had numerous effects and whilst I was looking through them I had seen some weird kind of illusion ones which I thought look good, especially on our thriller as it is going to be a supernatural thriller so the effect relates to it. It also provided some great fonts that would be useful while editing. This gave me ideas of how our group could add some of these effects in our thriller like where they should come in and how much of them should we use. This also gave me a great idea of how we could switch scenes by using this particular effect on this software. This effect is like an illusion where it makes the audience feels they are going through a tunnel and this could end up in our second location at King’s Cross.

This software was very useful as it allowed me to quickly change up some parts and add some parts before filming as this may have been a struggle if it was after we had finished all the filming. It also allowed me to become more familiar with the software so it saves a lot of time getting use to the software so this will speed up the process. When I told members of my group my idea they liked it and we knew what camera shot we needed for this to run smoothly.

The PROPS we will use for our thriller

Definite props:

· Two tables for the alien to lay across

· White science lab overall coat for the intruding doctor

· Black blind fold

· Doctors knife

· Red light, perhaps a bike flash light

· Surgery gloves

If possible props:

· Fake dirt/mud to put on the face of the mysterious person/alien

· Contact lenses, red if possible for the mysterious person/alien

· Ropes, to tie mysterious person/alien to the table

· Zip ties, to keep mysterious person/alien hands tied

· Torch, stand up light and miniature torch

· Ripped cloths

· Computer or laptop as a kind of life monitor or information source

· Suit case with tools inside

These props our essential and most must be present for us to start filming immediately on Thursday’s lesson. Most of the props convey meaning like the colour should hopefully, if possible, be the same colour of the flash light. However, we may use any additional props as we go along when filming.

26th January – A New Beginning

Our group was the only group left in the classroom as all the other groups went out filming. Mary introduced our class to an ex-A level media student called Rushan and he became very useful in relighting the morale within the group. Because we left our political thriller behind we decided that me and Ola would make up our own thrillers over the weakend and present it to the group and decide which one we should use and then that would be our final one. After looking at both thrillers we had a vote of which one was the best for our group to use and Ola’s one was chosen because it was simpler than my thriller idea.

However, it was not as simple as that, we analysed Ola’s thriller and there were not some satisfying parts to it. We looked at the good and bad parts and began to have feelings that it was too basic and predictable. Rushan also suggested that he had already seen this thriller idea and that it had not turned out well when the filming practise was in sessions due to his personal experience. He then advised us to try and come up with something more fresh so then my thriller was but forward, but even I admitted that mine was too complicated for just an opening sequence of a thriller.

Before the lesson our teacher, Mary, told Rushan about our previous supernatural idea. While our group was trying to create another thriller, again, Rushan brought up our supernatural idea but put it with a different twist because he thought that our group should stick to something different and that he was very interested in a sort of supernatural thriller. This inspired our group as we all wanted to do this supernatural thriller from the beginning but was told it was really hard and that no previous groups in the past had ever done one in the past from our college. We knew it would be a challenge and we were all confident that we had potential to create an extraordinary piece of film work. We all decide we would do this supernatural thriller and this boosted our confidence and increased the morale within the group.

We then committed ourselves to do a new storyboard during the lesson and finish it by the end of the lesson so we can start filming immediately on our Thursday lesson. We add some parts to the sequence it makes it more understandable. Everyone in the group had a task to do, Selma was looking up locations for where best to film, me and Ola made a props list and wrote down all the camera shots we will be using (which Ola has already posted under “New Supernatural Synopsis”) and Sevin was roughly drawing up the story board with annotations. Sevin suggested that we could film partly in King’s Cross as she said there was a beautiful environment which would good look on film, (these pictures were researched by Selma and our also posted on our group blog). Teamwork played a vital role in us completing the work all in that lesson so we were able to learn we could trust and rely on each other because we really needed to as we were so much behind the rest of the class. We left the classroom with delight and had finally got back on our feet.

Saturday 24th January – Saturday out looking for possible filming locations

On Saturday, a couple of members from our class decided to look around for locations that we could use for our thrillers. We all showed our dedication by being present in this activity we knew what would be useful for us in making our thriller. From my group in it was me, Henok, and Ola (group 2 representatives), Tony and Nicole (group 4 representatives) and Eni (group 5 representative). We met up together to look around London for good effective locations. We started by looking around Angel but did not find any useful places as it seemed a bit ‘dry’ according to us so we quickly moved on and decided to look around the Embankment and London Bridge area as we had a feeling it would have some good visual locations next to the themes giving it that natural feel to it. It would also be more appealing to some our thrillers. We found some incredible sceneries while exploring the area and me and Ola started to think of what our thriller could be about as the locations were sparking thought through our heads.

We spent a good couple of hours in London Bridge. Tony took some pictures on his phone, as it had a good camera. Tony and Nicole loved the location and decide they wanted the location meaning that me and Ola had to let them have the particular location because we were not still sure what our thriller was going to be about. If my thriller idea is picked on Mondays lesson, then we would be using a great site I identified in London Bridge by the Bus station as there was a beautiful view of a white staircase were we could get many camera shots of the suspect in my thriller.

Overall this was a good experience for us and showed that we were all willing to sacrifice our own time to enhance our performance in our project. We discovered some amazing locations which could be used for our upcoming potential thriller as mine and Ola’s thriller can both use these locations.

Thursday 22nd January – Scrapping Our Original Thriller

This lesson was probably the most depressing lesson we had for our group because we felt in a state of stalemate. Our group was not progressing because we had ditched our idea of our thriller and decided to make another one because the other one was too similar to a previous AS thriller we had previously seen. So we decided to leave behind the political thriller and come up with just a supernatural thriller. We spent most of the lesson doing this and had many suggestions of what it could be about but none of them is what all of us had in mind and would be too difficult to film. This started to affect us as sign of giving up started to appear. Mickey and Merissa (media technicians) came over to our group to help us come up with ideas that would help us become alive again and become more enthusiastic but this did not really help.

Rebecca, our teacher informed us that a supernatural thriller was the hardest of the thriller genres to do. This put our group even more down as we had to start again even further back. We then had moments when the group had stopped talking to each other because it felt like we had failed the whole project already. Rebecca brainstormed with us about what we liked about the previous thrillers we had seen before in the hope of us getting our motivation back. She asked us what parts we liked and why we liked them. This was good as we were thinking of trying to do the parts we like with our own twist but our group wanted to be more original as we had made that mistake already and we had paid the consequence. These made us learn that we had to do this project the hard way and not the easy way of just changing up parts of a previous thriller. We also learned that the thrillers were better to be simple but effective and we soon realised that we had wasted too much time thinking too hard of a plot when it should at most only have a small twist and we were going at it like we were creating a whole film. This was a useful lesson as we now knew that there was no time to be wasted and we needed to get through this as soon as possible.

As a group we decided that each one of us would go home and create a new and fresh storyboard with developed ideas for Monday’s lesson so we can get straight into filming. We would pitch our own thrillers to the group and have a vote on which thriller idea is the best one for us to do as our final one and quickly move on from there to catch up with everyone else in the class. However, we still left the class stressed, and hoping that we can come back with something to look forward to.

Monday 19th January – Presenting our Pitch

In this lesson we were given some time to finish our pitch and present it to the class, like how real film maker present their idea to huge film companies such as Warner Bros, Paramount and 20th Fox. This was an exciting task and our job was to convince Mary (our teacher) if she would invest in our thriller. When presenting, we talked through all aspects of our idea for our film we aimed to make it sound new and exciting so this would already be a test of how good we can grab the audience.

Our thriller plot was a political/supernatural thriller. We chose to do this because our group very much liked a previous AS thriller which was a political thriller so we wanted to make ours something like the previous one with our own twist on it, as we added the supernatural side of it to make it more unique. Our plot was kind of simple as it was just about a business man in a suit walking around Canery Whalf with a suit case in his hand. He enters a popular building lift and then leaves his suit case on a step in the building.

We talked about eight elements of how we will produce this thriller which were: the key images, kind of setting and location we would be filming around, Lighting and how we will use it, Camerawork and the choice of shots and angles and why we will use these particular ones and how it conveys a particular meaning, Music and how will use this crucial aspect to create a particular mood and atmosphere, who are the audience and how it appeals to them (what was used to show this), our Storyboard showing the flow of the opening sequence and finally the production schedule (when things are going to happen).

This was a team based task so we split our 8 categories between us so that we have 2 sections each to present. I talked about the Music and Audience, Ola talked about the Camerawork and Storyboard, Sevin talked about Location and lighting and Selma talked about the Images and Production schedule.

For my parts I suggested that we use slow tension building sound like perhaps heart beats. The heart beat would gradually increase as the tension builds up so that it will keep the audience on the edge of their seats making it more thrilling. The audience is aimed at the age group of 18-26 year olds as research tells us that political thriller are usually aimed at and watched by people of this age. It is also usually aimed at men because most men like these sort of movies but also research also proves that there is a reasonable amount of women watch political o supernatural movies.

However, while pitching our group began to realise how similar it was to the previous AS thriller and this was also familiar to Mary and the rest of the class. Mary’s feedback was very useful because we could have easily fallen into the trap of making this piece of coursework that has already been made which would mean that our group wouldn’t get as good as grade as we deserve. This made us think hard and hope began to fade away slowly as all our hard work would need to start again. We decided to scrap our whole idea and start with something fresh which would stand out amongst the rest. Our new challenge was to think of how we are going to overcome this mistake and make a new sequence to our new and improved thriller. This did affect our group as we have to now catch up as we are very far behind our class.

Alfred Hitchcock: Let ‘Em Play God.

This is a very interesting article about Hitchcock’s view about suspense. He has carefully analysed and came up with a solution to come up with a great method to create suspense. It is also interesting as he distinguishes between suspense and surprise. Hitchcock’s state of mind in his theory about suspense is fascinating as he believes that the audience should play God, meaning that they should know more than the actors as the characters. As the norm is that people believe a murder would cause the most suspense, Hitchcock disagrees with this and makes and important comment stating “Just because there is a touch of murder and an air of mystery about a story it is not necessary to see transoms opening, clutching fingers, hooded creatures and asps on the Chinese rug.”

One other thing Hitchcock talks about is how the mise en scene plays a huge role in creating suspense. He believes it is important in a story with sinister implications to use counterpoint, great contrast between situations and background. He mentions many movies that fail to make the most of the mise en scene like having a house filled with shadows, the weather dull and stormy throughout, the moor windswept, and the doors creaky.

I agree with Hitchcock on his point that states that it is necessary for a director to change his style in order to develop new characters and a different story in each film. I believe it is crucial for a director to do this because exploring different ideas and techniques in filmmaking is vital to keep the audience to entertain. Just like how music artists have to change their music slightly because there audience doesn’t want to hear the same kind of thing again and again.

I have learnt that Alfred Hitchcock is a master of keeping the audience on the edge of their seats as we all know he is the mastermind behind the classic film psycho. He showed the power he could create using his techniques of suspense and the film was so popular it created the intertextuality of the image of the shadow showing the dagger stabbing the woman in the bath.

The most fascinating and so true comment he made was when he said “suspense is created when you let the audience play God and if the audience does not know whether a character is a hero or villain they will not know whether to cheer or weep.” This made me think how I would react to a film if I was in this situation and realised that he was totally right about this. This changed my concept of how a thriller should be conducted and tried to think of how I can avoid this when starting my thriller.

This article taught me a lot and gives me the idea of looking beyond the obvious and expected. He analysed why certain films don’t have good suspense and explained reasons for it didn’t. He also came up with a solution of how suspense should be developed. This was simply “Let ‘em play god”, which is basically allowing the audience know more than the actors. At first this came as puzzling to me but then it all came clear of why his theory is right. This man has understood the extreme methods of creating a great film and this is shown in all his films and I know I would be taking tips from him to help me make my thriller the best it can be.

28 Days Later - Analysis

We see a man coming down the stairs into what appears to be an empty hospital. He is dressed in a hospital gown suggesting he is a patient here. The camera uses a longshot, so the audience can see the whole of the set, to allow them to make their own judgements about situation that the character is in. The character shouts ‘hello’ where this echoed throughout the hospital suggesting that he is alone.

The next shot shows an awkward camera angle showing the trying to use the public pay phones, where all the phones are hanging off their hooks. This communicates to the audience the people have already been here and left in a hurry. The tilting camera angle is used, perhaps, in order for the director to convey confusion to the audience of the character via this camera shot, as the tilting of heads/ viewers of a human symbolises confusion also.

We then see that the character cannot be answered via the phone and he drops the phone in anger, and a variety of camera shots are edited in a faster sequence. A medium long shot is then used to show the character as a blurry figure to divert concentration from the character to the phones to emphasis his loneliness in this place.

Within the next couple of shots the character is seen crouching down in the form of a medium close up opening a can of fizzy drink. The next shot is an over the shoulder medium shot, which displays the scene of spilt fizzy drinks in a mess on the floor by the vending machine. The director has used these particular camera shots in the particular sequences to unravel slowly to the audience the idea of panic in the form of discretion as the scene suggests the vending machine has been broken into. Also the way he drinks the Pepsi can of drink is very interesting because the hospital looks like it has been trashed by some sort of hooligans and savage people and he drinks in a way that looks very savage.

The next scene is showing him outside, there is an ambulance sign shown in the bottom corner, which confirms to the audience that he is in a hospital setting (tilted camera shot shows that the character is in search of something as he is looking around.)

A birds eye view shot is then shown of the car park below where it appears to be an ambulance van has been turned over laying on its side. The following shot is of London bridge over the themes- where the camera shot lingers to emphasis time, again as with the other shots showing no actual human in the scene. The director emphasises this by showing the character walking through these normally busy locations alone. There is no sound, just silence, this emphasises his lonliness and also helps create suspense to these scenes and helps build tension as the audience are curious as to what is going to happen next, close up shots of the characters feet walking through empty bottles and rubbish on the streets, suggesting to the audience that something has happened here previous to the character being there, again, the ‘unknown’ to the audience is what is building suspense to the storyline. Again the audience is shown a turned over us, while the character is shouting out again ‘Hello’ and receiving no response.

The following couple of shots are long shots which I think were deliberately done to show the audience the extent of the emptiness of the streets and his loudness portrays this by no other sound overcoming his sound so his sound is very clear. The diagetic sound is similar to the old western cowboy movies when there are is empty land and usually see the big ball of hay blow past in by the wind. It also makes you feel alone as well and dull within yourself. I think the sound is very good in illustrating what it all about.

The various camera shots from long distances and unique settings, like in the tilted over bus, gives the impression that someone is watching him and spying on everything he does which makes the whole piece look very suspenseful. I think this clip is thrilling in its unique way and the camera shots and sound play a huge role this film to create suspense and confuse and thrill the audience.

5th January - Past AS Thrillers and the Box Office

The first lesson back from the Christmas holiday, we started to learn about film openings and so we watched a documentary and were given a question sheet to fill in which watching the documentary. We were particularly looking at the techniques used by different directors, such as Orson Welles, Thomas Sutcliffe, Jean Jacques Beineix, Kyle Cooper and Stanley Kauffmann. The whole concept of the documentary was too see what was more thrilling in an opening sequence, an explosive start or the build up or vice-versa. The ones in favour of having an explosive start believe they immediately have the audience’s attention and the ‘please is received straight away whereas the ones in favour of the slow build up argue that they allow the audience to know a little about the story but are eager to know more, resulting in them being ‘pleasured’ at the end. Directors state that they are under pressure because when making the trailer, they need to add most of the best bits so they can tease the audience, but this leads to ‘no surprises’ during the film because they would have seen all the best bits in the trailer. The documentary also reveals some of the problems that directors have with publishers, because some publishers disagree with the directors decision like Orson Welles wanted no credits at the beginning of his film ‘A Touch Of Evil’, but publishers at Universal Studios argued against his decision and changed this.

After the documentary, we then watched previous AS thrillers from last year. The first one our teacher showed us was astonishing and I actually believed that it was a real thriller because of how real it looked and could not believe it had been done by some media students in the last couple of previous years. The thriller was called ‘Blasphemy’ and it was so technically and cleverly done. They also used an intertexuality from a famous Brad Pitt but what made it look really good was the editing of all of it. We could tell it was really thought about and our teacher revealed to us that some of the members of that group spent whole days in the editing room to make everything look perfect, and it did.

The second thriller clip we saw was called ‘Essex road’ which I thought was more realistically done by an AS student. I really enjoyed this clip as everything made sense at the end and the type of camera shots they used with the very effective mise en scene. I also liked they way they used their flashbacks as they clearly indicated to their audience that the activity happened in the past. However, they could have made a few adjustments to improve their thriller but I enjoyed it very much.

The next couple of thrillers we watched were:
‘The Untold’ which was about a teacher on her way to school where one of her pupils had been abducted. This one was good for the variety of camera shots and angles they used.
‘Timecode’ was a little confusing at first but created great suspense. It was about a boy waking up with a brief case. He is handcuffed to the brief case for some reason. They had incredible shots of the skyline. I think they had a very good location and the sound was unbelievable as they used someone speaking but the audience does not really know what it is about.
‘Days Are Numbered’ looked very professional. This was about a man rowing in a bout sees a suspicious looking girl. The shots were outstanding, as the film had come out beautiful on film as the sun reflects nicely on the water in the canal. They also used some good fades.
‘The Fragile’ was very suspenseful as we see all types of shots, especially unexpected ones like in an isolated barn and a hole through a wall. They also used some incredible sound which made me feel like I was living that actual moment in the film.
‘Not Alone’ was the perfect example of the slogan ‘simple but effective’. It was all in one location and was about a boy washing some cups in his house. What was good was the great match cuts they used and the sound. The lights turned off a cup of tea was made on the table when they came back on. This made it suspenseful because we had many point of view shots so we felt like we were in his shoes, which I believe was good because we saw everything in his perspective.

Finnally, after the clips were all over we started to look at cinema audiences of 2007 and found out that females are more likely to watch less tense and action packed films than men as the statistics state that they usually like films like Hairspray, Enchanted and Attonement. Men were more likely to watch action packed films like 300, Die hard and Spiderman 3. we also found out that men usually watch thrillers more than women.
The Box Office Statistics show that James Bond Quantum of Solace made £5,164,182 but the movie with the highest total gross to date is Mamma Mia with £67,879,439 which was due to the record breaking DVD sales, beating the pirates of the Caribbean.

Reurn of the Supernatural thriller idea.

During today’s lesson with Mary we were given advice buy an ex a-level student (Rushan). All the rest of the groups in the class had gone out to film and we were behind. Once again, we had to revise both of our two potential thrillers. After spending some time looking at the good and bad points we had a group vote and my thriller idea was chosen. I then explained my thriller to Rushan who then told us he had seen this kind of thing before and had even done something similar whilst he was on the media course. He told us that when he done this kind of thriller it did not go well and advised us to think of something else. We all decided that Henoks thriller was good but would be a little too complicated and could potentially confuse the audience. After a few minutes, Rushan came up with a truly inspiring idea, which I was interested in from the time he said it was going back to our old supernatural thriller theme. He pitched us some of his idea then we as a group had to decided if we wanted to take on this thriller… the answer was yes. We developed his idea further and added a different location to it with a suggestion from Sevin. Sevin suggested that we did some parts of the filming around an industrial site behind King’s Cross; at first I must admit I was a little sceptical about it until Mary ‘Googled’ the area and showed us the area, this convinced me that it was a good idea. After all this we started drawing the storyboard and making a list of all the props that were needed to film and the clothing to be worn.

Props for our thriller

Two tables

White overall

Dirt/Mud

Contact lenses (red)

Black blindfold

Ropes

Zip ties

Knife/Machete

Bike light(red)

Ripped clothing (trousers and shirt)

Plastic gloves

We need to get most if not all of these props for Thursdays Media lesson as this is when we simply must start filming.

New Supernatural Synopsis

• We start with a shot of just black; this is a close up of the floor.
• Tilt up to show the feet of person 1.
• Go around person; close up of person 1’s hands.
• Close up of person 1’s face and they are blindfolded.
• Show the blood on the face of person 1.
• Close up of person 2’s feet at door.
• Then close up of door handle, person 2 opens door.
• Match cut, we see person 2 coming in from point of view shot of person 1.
• Point of view shot looking slightly through blindfold at person 2.
• Point of view and over the shoulder shot of person 2 walking towards person 1.
• Close up of scalpels being cleaned.
• Point of view shot as he takes off person 1’s blindfold, this is in slow motion.
• Close up of person 1’s eyes.
• Flashback in black and white showing a flashing light, this is filmed at a Kings Cross Industrial site.
• Person 2 walks up to this object and picks it up then scene ends.

location

15th January - Preparing for Pitch

This lesson was used to prepare an idea for our thriller. We were put into groups to decide what kind and how we want to do it. This was useful as it made us think about the locations and budgets for our thriller. It also made us figure out who is doing what in the group so everyone is occupied equally. We suggested a schedule plan so that we know exactly what we are doing all the time and that we do not fall behind.

Firstly, we all announced our ideas to the group to and had numerous discussions of what idea we should use. We tried to use certain parts of someone’s idea and mix it with another person’s idea so that it could eventually come out good. After a while, we started to get mixed up because the ideas were not coming together so we thought just to come up with something simple but effective. To help us figure out what we wanted to do, our teacher allowed us to watch some AS thrillers from last year so that we can have a clearer idea of how our thriller should be. We learnt a lot from the previous thrillers like the location they used to portray what was going to happen or what they were doing, like one clip was set in Canary Wharf but the filming inside the lift was done at the college. This clever strategy benefited them because perhaps they were never allowed to film in one of the buildings in Caner Wharf so they used the college lift without it being noticed in the thriller. This allowed our group to make suggestions of what parts of our thriller should be filmed out of the college premises.

After this we brained stormed our new ideas on a large piece of sugar paper. We came up with doing a political/supernatural thriller because it we believe it will be unique and very much thrilling. We thought about the location carefully so that every aspect of our thriller has meaning to it and if we have permission to film in a particular. We planned all the camera shots we are going to use and thought about effective they are going to be to convey something.

This lesson was very useful as we now have a better idea of what we are going to do in the future so that we do not waste time because we are all confused.

12th January - Second Practical (Match Cuts)

We were given a practical task of filming using the match shot technique. Me and two other people in my group (Sevin and Slema) were absent the lesson before due to our AS psychology examination. This left Ola to explain to us what he had done alone in the last lesson, which did cause confusion between us. We missed a vital lesson and our out come had to pay the consequences.

Ola had already drawn up a storyboard for our practices practical and he explained to us what he had come up with. We then got ready to start filming but were not too sure where our filming location would be. Our plan and ideas kept on changing constantly and made the whole process more baffling. We decided to film in the corridor for our first shot. Through much of the filming, we had to take numerous shots because they didn’t turn out how we wanted it to be. The mood was down for a while because of the frustration of the perfect shots we aimed for and that we wanted to challenge and make the practice filming session better than our previous one about the newspaper thriller which I believe turned out better than expected. With a little help from Micky (Media Technician), we were able to be back on our feet again and our shots started to improve slowly.

Suddenly, thoughts were flooding our minds and our group was fully switched on but the time was an issue so we had to try and do the basic shots first but did have effectual attributes. We had accomplished the classic walking towards the camera down the corridor match cut which flowed smoothly and also completed our own opening then closing the door match cut. This came out superbly and was better than expected as Sevin and Selma thought of how to do it during editing making the outcome of our group’s practical come out much better.

We learned how to act as a team more in this practical then in the last one because during the last practical (newspaper thriller) there was only Me and Ola present during that lesson. This made us do all the filming by ourselves which was hard at times because it was hard for us to be present at the same time in the film, making us act towards something that wasn’t really there so we had to use our imagination very much, but this was not difficult as me and Ola both did Drama GCSE. Me and Ola coped very well during this and made us more independent because the other two members let us down by being absent. This made us feel that we could do this project all by ourselves but we learnt that we were wrong as the other two members are vital to us as they helped very much through editing which made the presentation more effective , appealing and enjoyable. So this session we decided to let the girls act in the practical so that our group could form a balance between camera work and acting. I believe they did an equally as good job. This process allowed our group to solve its problems and made us more enthusiastic making morale within the group to increase. By the end of the session we didn’t finish the production but had belief that we are very capable of achieving high but only if we work together properly.

Match cutting became more understandable in the way we can use it within our group and has become familiar in using this shot in our ideas before filming. This simple 180 degrees rule helped us fully understand the effectiveness of it and why so many professional films use it to create a specific feeling or meaning and also allows them to view a character from different angles which could perhaps symbolise the another personal side of the character. We were able to analyse the film properly, how editing does this effect and how to incorporate this into our film production.

I feel that we followed the forms and conventions of real films but didn’t use our time properly to finish. The wasted time at the beginning of the lesson cost our group very much. We were able to create suspenseful surrounding this technique with only the tools available to us so this sure does challenge the conventions of real films as they have much better equipment and also use some special effects what have the same effects as our practical. We still created a suspenseful atmosphere through match cuts what was key skill we had to use that lesson. The lighting was not really an issue we could really tackle but some lighting was used naturally without us meaning to use it like when Sevin’s match cut in the corridor, the other half of the corridor was darker which could illustrate that she is walking into trouble. That was pretty much about it for the lighting. The camera was used very wisely from us as we tried to stick to the storyboard but had to come away from it a few times to add particular shots. We tried to use various camera shots to give different perspectives, including point of view shot. These shots all had some meaning into them like the point of view shot of the room number as we wanted the audience to focus on this and keep this image into consideration. The mise en scene was not so much thought about because we had to rush into filming and that me and some group members were absent making it a little difficult to understand the storyboard plot at fist hand. The editing was coming along well but was disrupted by time again so we were not able to add any sound which is obvious in the film as we can hear ‘Action’ and ‘cut’ throughout the film. This was also were the match cuts were put in and we discovered other match cuts we could used from the footage we filmed, this was due to use learning more about the editing process showing that we have the power to control what sort of image comes across a character.

Our practise film could make little comments about representation by the way the camera shots are portrayed as we use extreme close ups to show a certain anxiety in the footage and the focus on room number as it could mean a particular thing but there was not as much representation as we would have liked to put in.

Overall, our group was not completely satisfied with our performance in the second practical production because of how it turned out and knowing that we were capable of making it much more better and effective. Within the group we felt a little disappointment because we know we can achieve much higher with all of our potentials. However, this taught us a valuable lesson and that we are not daunted by this slight failure. This will give as an eager trust to aim higher for the final thriller film. It made us only stronger and we all took into consideration that we need to use each other and time more effectively. I think this is a useful process in terms of using match cuts and resolving our group problems and has made us much more enthusiastic.

8th January - Match Cuts

I was not in this lesson due to me having a psychology examination. My absenteeism meant I had to attend a workshop for my teacher to explain what happened during this lesson. She explained that the basis of the lesson was match cuts. Match cuts are when an character being filmed is carrying out an activity and the audience are shown the character doing the activity at different angles or camera shots showing how powerful the camera use can be important in allowing the audience to understand what is going on and a sense of what the character is like. It is also a great technique to use in creating suspense as it allows the audience to see what the character is doing at every angle. This was a little bit confusing while she was explaining it to me but when she showed me a clip showing many match cuts in became very clear to me and made me understand why many thrillers use this camera technique to portray a particular thing. The clip had a simple plot but the use of camera shots and music made it much more thrilling than it really was. This gave me some ideas of how my group could construct our thriller using this technique. The following lesson, my group member Ola was in on his own in the lesson I was absent in because it was not only me who had the psychology examination, it was also the other two girls in my group (Sevin and Selma). Ola kept us updated on what he had done that lesson. He had filled in a sheet about what our group would be doing in our filming sessions in terms of Camera shots and use of angles, what is going to happen in each scene, if there would be any use of dialogue, the overall plot and where all the match cuts would be shown in the film. This meant that he had made all the decisions about the elements we would be using so we had trusted his work and we then waited to see the outcome. This did cause a little confusion in our group as we didn’t know entirely what was supposed to happen and it was very difficult for any of us to interfere and change particular parts because we were not very sure of the match cut procedures and what he was trying to illustrate in this piece of practical work. This showed us that we needed more discussion within the group before we start any filming practical. This is explained more in the next blog.

5th January - 4 previous AS Media Clips, Documentary and Box Office Statistics

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Saturday out looking for filming locations

On Saturday myself (Ola) and Henok (group 2 representatives) went with Tony and Nicole (group 4 representatives) and last but not least Eni (group 5 representatives). We all sacrificed some of our Saturday to go around places in London searching for filming locations for each of our groups. At first we looked around the angel area and found that the surroundings did not really fit in with our personal tastes and thrillers. We all decided to around the Embankment and London Bridge area. Tony took pictures of some of the places that we visited via his mobile phone camera. Tony and Nicole decided London Bridge would be their filming location and this meant that me and Henok had to choose a different location. If our group decides to go for my thriller idea I picked one of the college offices and Tower Bridge to be my two main primary filming locations.

Scrapping our original thriller

During Thursday’s lesson with Rebecca, our group had to take on the task of rethinking our overall storyline for our final thriller, as our initial idea was not really well thought out and was too similar to an a-level thriller group of the previous year. We were trying to think of another supernatural thriller idea but with no avail. After seeking help from Rebecca she told us that this was actually the hardest of the thriller genres to do. After hearing this and finding difficulty thinking of a new thriller, we were advised by Rebecca to start from the very start and scrap the whole supernatural thriller idea. We told Rebecca everything that we liked about previous thrillers that we have watched (the fact that these thrillers were simple but effective) and from this she brainstormed possible thriller ideas for us. After this we as a group decided to go home and each come up with developed ideas; this includes a new plot and storyboard. In Monday’s lesson we will all come in and pitch our ideas to each other then pick which one we like best, thereafter we will tell Mary about our new idea.

Pitch Lesson with Mary

In the lesson on Monday 19th January 2009 with Mary, we had to finish planning our pitch. In my group, we used this as an opportunity to designate different roles to different people in the group and I took on the role of telling the ‘investor’ the main plot and themes of our thriller and the variety of different camera shots and angles that were to be used. Whilst delivering the pitch some of our initial ideas had been challenged and this made us think and ask ourselves questions. After thinking thoroughly about how we was to put our whole scene together we decided that it was too similar to a thriller made by previous students and also that it would not get us the best of grades. This lead to us taking drastic action and scrapping the whole political/supernatural thriller ideas that we had. Our task was to now go home and think of a completely new thriller, this left us very far behind the rest of the groups in the class.

Filming (match-cuts)

In Mary's lesson our group had to go off and film different shots and it had to be someone doing something, in the previous lesson our class learnt about match-cuts i wasn't able to attend this lesson so one of my group members had to briefly explain it to me. In our piece we had to include a lot of various shots and a dialogue, we started with the filming and had to re-do some of the shots a couple of times so when it came to the editing we had numerous shots to choose from. we had to be really careful with the timing the location and try and keep it the same or make it link up to one another instead of having a completely different shot that has nothing to do with the previous shot and tohelp us do that we had a little help from a teacher just to help us understand the whole concept of filming and how certain shots can create a certain affect needed in the clip.

After the filming we transferred the files of the filmings we done to the computer ready to edit, we had little time to edit our shots but with all our quick thinking and being more familiar with the editing we were able to complete our clip on time, which i personally think is great it has everything we needed to include, but we weren't able to add soundtracks to it due to the time limit so we focused on just completing the editing and making sure it had all the shots,the dialogue and making sure it was steady.

Final thriller ideas

In our lesson on Thursday with Rebecca and Laura we were given the task of coming up with some ideas about what our real and final thriller film opening is going to be about and what type of thriller it was going to be.
The first thing we as a group had to decide was what type of thriller it was going to be; after a long group discussion we all agreed to have a political/supernatural thriller.
After we had decided what type of thriller our film opening was to be, we had to make a plot to go along with this theme.
Summary of our plot:

• A ‘business man’ heading down the stairs/escalator.
  
• ‘Business man’ walking through the crowd, we use P.O.V shots at this point and Mid-shots.
  
• We then see him heading unto the DLR and once again, we use P.O.V and Mid-shots.
  After this, we cut to the next scene showing the city skyline and Canary Wharf in the distance (this shot is going to be filmed from Greenwich Park).
  
• Throughout all the scenes above, we get constant close up at the suitcase.
  
• The ‘business man’ then gets into a lift and we use match cutting again to show him as he gets off the lift.

• Finally, the suitcase is left on a set of steps.

Whilst doing all of this we also had to incorporate all of these ideas into our pitch that we are going to present next lesson to Mary. We had designated different tasks put to different group members as everybody in the group had to speak during the pitch. A pitch is when directors go and propose their ideas to publishers e.g. Fox Century or Warner Bros.

Second Film Practice (Match Cuts)

In our second practice film we had to incorporate some use of match cut technique; this is where somebody is filmed carrying out a task or doing a specific thing and it is shown from different camera angles and shots whilst they are doing exactly the same thing. Considering my group was not in the lesson before this second film practice, I think everything went very well as I told my group what the task was, what match cutting was and the plot of the storyline. After this brief introduction, we got straight down to filming and everyone in the groups’ enthusiasm really helped this second filming practice to go swiftly along with some advice and help from Mickey.

Between the first and second practice I have learnt what match cutting is, how to incorporate that into our filming, how to analyse filming and make sure everything is filmed exactly the same, how to get different shots together and edit them to make them flow smoothly, and finally the 180 rule.

I personally think that we have followed the forms and conventions of real films, as these forms and conventions are simple but at the same time affective. We created a tense atmosphere without the need to dim lights or have thundery weather etc… Editing was done appropriately and we included quick cuts between scenes to impose a sense of unease amongst the viewers; these are all things that real films have and so did ours.

18 December 2008 - Lesson before the Christmas holiday

This lesson we were analysing four movie clips from the films 28 Days Later, The Shining, Collateral and What Lies Beneath. First, we brainstormed all the different types of thrillers and examples of these thrillers. We came up with Murderous Passion, Psychological thriller, Political thriller, Super Natural thriller, Innocent on the run and action thrillers. All these different types thrill the audience in their own separate we but do the same job in thrilling the audience. This gave our group an idea of what kind of thriller we would like to make and how we need to prepare to do it like them but also made us decide we also want something unique about our particular thriller like how the other thrillers all had something special about them.

We were given a large worksheet given us space to comment on the sound, Use of Camera, Music, Editing and Setting and location. This gave us the idea of how a thriller is usually constructed and how the use various element to make the scene more effective in thrilling the audience such as in 28 Days Later they use tilted camera shots which is unusual and in Collateral they use the camera focus effectively to show the audience a significant message. Once we filled up all of our sheets, we were able to have a much clearer understanding of how we could construct our thriller. We learnt how effective the various camera shots and the carefully thought about selected sound all contribute to make the thriller more and more thrilling.

Match Cut

In our Thursday lesson we were given an introduction into what a match cut is; when a character carries out an activity and we are shown the same thing but from a different camera shot or angle. We were given a scenario where a character was to sit down, enter a password, download files, copy it to a disk, put it in an envelope, smoke his cigarette and then finally post the CD. Had to write down how we would film this shot in groups. Unfortunately for me all the rest of the members in my group had an exam so I was left on my own. Thus leading to me having to work with another group for the first half of the lesson. After this we had to watch the video of the scenario and point out where the match cuts were. After this activity I was on my own as it was a group activity; we had to fill out a sheet describing what we would be doing in our filming session: types of camera angles/shots, what would be happening in each scene, the dialogue, the overall plot, and where the match cuts would be. I had to make all the major decisions by myself as I was the only present member in my group. We would have done the filming during this lesson but it had to be postponed to the following lesson as members of the class were due to an exam.

4 previous AS Media Clips, Documentary and Box Office Statistics

In our first media lesson back from the Christmas break we watched a documentary about film openings and we were given a question sheet to which we had answer questions to. We learnt about the different techniques that different directors used e.g. Thomas Sutcliffe, Jean Jacques Beineix, Stanley Kauffmann, Kyle Cooper and Orson Welles. The main argument of this documentary was if an explosive start was better than a build up or vice-versa. Directors in favour of the slow build up starts argued that if you do this you have the audience knowing a little bit about the story but eager to know more therefore the ‘pleasure’ is at the end. Directors who argued that an explosive start was better said that you immediately have the audiences attention; the ‘pleasure’ is given straight away (when using a date as a metaphor). Directors say that they are under increasing pressure to add all the best bits to the film teasers and trailers thus leading to ‘no surprises’ for the audience as they would have seen these bits already. The documentary also talks about how directors may face problems by the publishers as the publishers may disagree with some of the directors decision and can easily overturn the directors decisions; for example Orson Welles wanted no credits at the beginning of his film ‘A Touch of Evil’ but the publishers at Universal Studios disagreed and changed this.
After we watched the film openings documentary we watch about 6-7 clips of previous AS Media Students from in and out of the college. The first clip that we watched was ‘Blasphemy’ which was in my personal opinion outstanding, I could have easily been fooled into thinking that it was done by professionals. The intertextuality was from a famous Brad Pitt movie and the plus point of this AS clip was the groups use of props, location, camera angles and shots, and most of all… editing. I would rate this group 4.5/5 and they would have got a 10 if it was not for a boy in the clip having his trousers hanging low.
The second clip we watched was ‘Essex Road’ which I thought was also truly acceptable. The plot was about a police officer (C.I.D) who was investigating a murder or kidnapping, he falls asleep and we see what may have happened to the girl. This groups main strong points was their use of mise en scene, their use of props really created a great affect and also helped us to distinguish different characters. They also used flashbacks appropriately showing where evidence dropped and flashing back to the evidence in the police station. I would rate this group 4/5 and the ways they could have improved are for example through using black and white to show us that the police officer was dreaming. After these two clips we watched five more which are as follows:
‘The Untold’: This was basically about a teacher on her way to school where one of the pupils had been abducted, this group got most of their grades through their diverse use of camera shots and angles.
‘Timecode’: This was about a boy waking up only to find that he was handcuffed to a brief case, they had really nice shots of the city sky line and the editing was also good (noises of a code being entered).
‘Days Are Numbered’: This was about a man rowing a boat on the canal when after a few minutes he sees a girl who is looking very devious. This group had some really good camera shots and rather fine editing; where they show the sunlight hitting the water and they use this as a fade into the next scene.
‘The Fragile’: We are shown an isolated barn, forest, fast zoom through a hole in the wall and sharp non-diagetic sounds. After this we get a really good shot of a bicycle wheel fro the side and from the top.
‘Not alone’: Very simple but affective plot. A boy washing a cup at the sink and we start seeing him from the outside the we go into the house, the lights switch off and somebody magically made him a cup of tea which we later see (the cup of tea) when the lights are turned back on.
After watching these clips we looked at cinema audiences in the year 2007and looking at the trends we found that females were more likely to watch light hearted, romantic-comedy and comedy movies such as: Hairspray, Enchanted and Atonement. Whereas men were more likely to watch action and war films such as: 300, Die Hard 4, and Spiderman 3. Looking at these statistics we also found that males always tended to be the most likely gender group to watch thrillers, examples include: Ocean’s 13, The Bourne Ultimatum, and 28 Weeks Later.
Looking at U.K Box Office statistics from the 14th-16th November 2008 showed us that the distributor taking the most weekend gross was Sony Pictures thanks to James Bond: Quantum of Solace with £5,164,182 but the movie with the highest total gross to date was Mamma Mia! With £67,879,439 which was mostly due to its high amount of DVD sales (highest selling DVD ever, beating Pirates of the Caribbean).

what lies beneath analysis

Our homework for the Christmas holiday was to choose one thriller clip and analyse how suspense is created within the clip. The clip I have chosen to analyse is ‘What lies beneath’ because it used different techniques to demonstrate how camera movement, sound, editing etc. to build up tension within the clip/scene. Firstly the camera is on the main character of this scene, there’s a long shot to show us her movement and where she is , her facial expression is uneasy which indicates something is happening out of the ordinary, as soon as she stops on the stairs because she noticed something, the camera moves across in the same direction she’s looking at (panning shot) and that’s where the tension levels go high, the audience do not know where the camera I going and what it’s going to show and we know its something negative. The lighting is dark showing its night time which definitely makes the house creepy and scary, its gives us a clue on what’s going to happen next. There are low angle shots over the shoulder shot , close-up, and also point of view which is the most effect, it makes the audience feel what the character is feeling, uneasiness, tension, fear, curiosity etc. and we see what she see’s which makes it more interesting with all the steam in the bathroom which makes the character seem weak because she can’t clearly see anything especially where we know something bad is going to happen and were unsure of the outcome. Throughout out the whole clip there’s slow scary music (non-diagetic) and it gets louder and louder as she gets nearer to the door, there’s a track in towards the bath and we know each step she takes is a step nearer to the danger we think she’s going to face. When she gets to the bath the audience expected something to happen and nothing did we carry on looking at the bath and there’s water filled up in the bath and it seems that’s she didn’t fill it up and makes it very unusual which gives us another hint of something bad happening with the water so we look carefully at the bath and the water looking at the characters reflection then we see another persons reflection appear and the music goes loud and quick which plays a part in the tension created, if there was no music we wouldn’t be as scared . Then obviously she screams and her husband comes running to her rescue, the music changes all dramatically then there’s a close up of the water going down the drain showing that it is not the end and more is going to happen so the suspense isn’t gone it’s just low and it can go high at any moment which is what we expect after seeing that.