Sunday, 8 February 2009
Not able to make it to lesson
For the whole week leading up to Thursday 5th February 2009 i had come down with the flu but was determined to come into college and do my filming for media. After an hour of my first lesson i was unnable to stay in college as my illness worsened, i had to go to hospital; therefore missing media. Later on that day i was informed by Henok that the group had done the filming of the bits that were to take place at King's Cross.
Lesson Cancelled
Due to extreme weather conditions (heavy snowfall) on Monday 2nd February 2009 college was canceled and all lessons were cancelled too. This meant that we had lost a crucial 3 hour media lesson that we could have use for a large amount of filming, infact I think we could have actually finished filming most of our thriller during this 3 hour lesson.
Thursday, 5 February 2009
Going back to supernatural
After our ‘not so positive’ previous lesson on Thursday, during our lesson with Mary, we seeked advice from an ex A-Level student called Rushan. Although the rest of the groups in our class had gotten ready and gone out to film the opening sequence of their thriller, we had to put our heads down and decide which thriller we were going to create, as we were very far behind from the other groups in our class.
After a long discussion as a group we decided that we were going to use Ola’s idea to create our thriller. We also explained to Rushan what Ola’s idea was and asked for his opinion on our choice. Again, to our horror he told us that he had heard of this idea before and had even tried the same idea himself and that it hadn’t gone as well as he had expected because it was a very complicated idea. He advised us to think of a new and fresh idea. We also rethought about our other group member, Henok’s idea however, we decided not to use it because his idea was also a little too complicated and could confuse the audience.
To our delight, Rushan came up with a completely fresh and original idea in a couple to minutes, which lifted our hopes very much. Rushan’s idea brought us back to our original idea, which was our idea of creating a supernatural thriller. However before deciding to use Ruhan’s idea to create our own thriller, as a group we decided if we should put this idea into action, as it was and original idea and we couldn’t waste anymore time on creating a new pitch and storyboard, we decided to use Ruhan’s idea. We also used our own ideas to elaborate and develop on his idea. We also used a another location which I had thought of. After listening to Ruhan’s idea and visualising it in my own head, I thought that using a few clips of the ‘supernatural’ character in King’s Cross and suggested that we film some clips around the industrial area where the gasometer is based. And after showing where I was talking about on google, my group decided to use my idea and film a few clips there.
As a result, we had finally thought of an idea for our thriller and plot, and now we had the task of making a list and preparing props we would need when filming and what clothing would be worn and creating a storyboard.
After a long discussion as a group we decided that we were going to use Ola’s idea to create our thriller. We also explained to Rushan what Ola’s idea was and asked for his opinion on our choice. Again, to our horror he told us that he had heard of this idea before and had even tried the same idea himself and that it hadn’t gone as well as he had expected because it was a very complicated idea. He advised us to think of a new and fresh idea. We also rethought about our other group member, Henok’s idea however, we decided not to use it because his idea was also a little too complicated and could confuse the audience.
To our delight, Rushan came up with a completely fresh and original idea in a couple to minutes, which lifted our hopes very much. Rushan’s idea brought us back to our original idea, which was our idea of creating a supernatural thriller. However before deciding to use Ruhan’s idea to create our own thriller, as a group we decided if we should put this idea into action, as it was and original idea and we couldn’t waste anymore time on creating a new pitch and storyboard, we decided to use Ruhan’s idea. We also used our own ideas to elaborate and develop on his idea. We also used a another location which I had thought of. After listening to Ruhan’s idea and visualising it in my own head, I thought that using a few clips of the ‘supernatural’ character in King’s Cross and suggested that we film some clips around the industrial area where the gasometer is based. And after showing where I was talking about on google, my group decided to use my idea and film a few clips there.
As a result, we had finally thought of an idea for our thriller and plot, and now we had the task of making a list and preparing props we would need when filming and what clothing would be worn and creating a storyboard.
Scrapping our thriller
After scrapping our political/supernatural idea for our thriller, as it was too similar to a previous students’ work last year, during Thursday’s lesson with Rebecca, our group had to think of a completely new storyline for our thriller. A few group members had a couple of ideas, we listened to each idea carefully while they explained in detail, we finally decided that we should use supernatural as our theme for our thriller opening and now we were trying to think of new ideas which were not in any way too similar to any other students’ work. After consulting Rebecca and asking her views on our new idea of using the theme of supernatural for our thriller opening. To our horror, she told us that we had chosen the hardest theme to use for our thriller, this slightly brought down our hopes of creating ideas for our thriller, as this was the second time we were scrapping our ideas. We analysed the thrillers we liked from the ones we watched clips of and concluded that the reason why they were so effective was that they were simple but also effective. With Rebecca’s help, we created a brainstorm all together and again decided to go home with the ideas we came up with our help from Rebecca and come up with ideas to suit a simple opening, we needed to develop completely new ideas, and this included creating a new plot and storyboard. We also decided that on our Monday’s lesson with Mary we would have our ideas ready, combining them and creating a new pitch.
Pitch lesson
During our lesson with Mary (Monday 19th January 2009), we had to finalise our ideas, as a group we used this opportunity to create and chose who is going to play which character in the film opening and what roles they had. Ola, a member of our group was giving the role of explaining and convince Mary who had taken on the role of the ‘investor’ of our thriller. He explained and elaborated on the main plot and themes of our thriller, variety of different camera angle shots, movements and use of soundtrack and music. However, while explaining our pitch, as a team we realised that some of our ideas had been challenged and that we hadn’t thought enough about our ideas, this resulted to us to have another group discussion about our pitch. We carefully analysed our pitch and plot and came to a conclusion that our idea was too similar to a previous students’ work which would not get us the grade we were aiming for. Therefore this led us to completely crossing out our political and supernatural idea, we gave ourselves a task of going home and coming up with completely new ideas for our completely new thriller. This made us fall very far behind compared to the rest of the groups in the class, where they knew what they were going to be doing.
Final ideas
During our lesson on Thursday with Rebecca and Laura, we had been set the task of brainstorming our ideas about what our real and final thriller film opening was going to be like and what type of thriller it was going to be. Our first task was to decide on what type of thriller it was going to be e.g. political, sci fi, supernatural. After a group discussed we finalised that we wanted to create a political thriller with a hint of supernatural. Our next task was a lot more challenging than deciding on what type of thriller we were going to create, we now needed to create a plot for our them of a blend of political and supernatural.
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.
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.
Film practice
Our first practice film, as two other of my group members and I were absent from our media lesson due to an exam, our other group member, Ola had his introductory lesson in match cut and this was his second practice. Although we had missed a lesson on our introduction to matc cut, we believe that everything went quite well as Ola gave us feed back on what match cut was; an editing technique that links two pieces of related action, resulting in a single smooth flow imagery. Also, as most of the group members were absent, Ola had to make decisions for our storyline and debriefed us afterwards on what the storyline was.
After this brief introduction, our task was to have a particular person carrying out a task or doing something specific and other group members to film them from differents angles and shots. As a group, we were working very well with each other enthusiastically, and were quickly catching up on the work we had missed out on the previous lesson.
I believe that as a team we made a great job and successfully following the forms and conventions of a real film, not making things too complicated, keeping it simple but effective.
After this brief introduction, our task was to have a particular person carrying out a task or doing something specific and other group members to film them from differents angles and shots. As a group, we were working very well with each other enthusiastically, and were quickly catching up on the work we had missed out on the previous lesson.
I believe that as a team we made a great job and successfully following the forms and conventions of a real film, not making things too complicated, keeping it simple but effective.
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