Discussion of Appropriate Technical Competencies

Holding a steady shot sounds easy as it is and although it is a very basic skill, many fail to demonstrate this skill.

Camera Movement:
1) Panning shot - the camera moves slowly across from side to side from a fixed axis.
2) Tilt shot - the camera moves up and down from a fixed axis.
3) Crane shot - the camera mounted on a crane, moves around a distance above ground level.
4) Tracking shot - the camera follows the action, moving along tracks laid for that purpose, often pulling backwards from a scene.
5) Rolling shot - the camera moves diagonally, making the image askew (often used to suggest that a character is ill or drugged)

Cinematography:
1) Long Shot - Allows us to see the whole of the setting.
2) Mid Shot - More of your body language and some of the settings.
3) Close Up - Shows expressions or feelings or emphasise feature.
4) Extreme Close Up - Directing the viewer to a very specific feature in detail.
5) High Angle - Used to represent vulnerability and lack of power, weak.
6) Low Angle - Represents a powerful status.

These are the 6 main variety of shots that we had studied and in our thriller we have tried to use if not all then most of these, however our thriller mainly consists of extreme close ups and mid shots. The reason why is because we wanted to create a sense of mystery and emphasise the activity that was going on to the audience.

Health & Safety

Safety for our own well being and others around us comes first and so we had come up of what we had to take caution to.

Props to be aware of:- Hammer
- Screwdriver
- Stanley blade
- Steel chain

Setting to be aware of:
- Careful not to trip of dustsheets on floor
- Mind walking into existing furniture and objects
- Vigilant whilst moving the tripod legs around in small space

During the actual filming of our thriller we had to be aware and take caution for a small number of safety aspects. One issue was that when the light bulb had been on for a while it had become extremely hot even after 5 minutes of turning it off, so to protect our hands we had used a few layers of newspaper to cover the bulb before changing its direction to light a different part of the room. Though we had not expected the problem with the light bulb we took it in our stride and took appropriate caution to it as we would any other health and safety risk. Another safety aspect we had to be aware of was some of the objects we were using, such as the Stanley blade and screw driver, whilst using these items we had to take extra caution, always having it pointing away from us as it could cause a serious injury or cut if used inappropriately.

Filming: Day 2

Day two was when we began our filming and as expected was at what time we had achieved all of our filming. However we had established a further problem in relation to the lighting, the shed window was allowing too much light in the room which made the footage on the camera too bright for the scene we wanted to shoot, consequently we used a dust sheet which we used to hang over the existing curtain on the window which filtered the light and dimmed the room enough for us to film (we have taken a picture of this as proof). All the shots we needed from the shed, we had completed, although this filming time did run into our own time because whilst filming the camera battery had died on us which meant we had to take a break to allow time for the camera to charge before recording our last shot. We are now able to go away and edit our thriller next lesson which means any time we have after that will be used on the thriller, to touch it up, add music & transitions between shots.

Filming: Day 1

On the first day of filming we didn’t in fact do any filming as setting up and preparing Ryan’s shed ready for filming took longer than we had originally expected. We began making the shed ready for filming by covering everything up with dust sheets to conceal all the items in the shed such as, a television, fridge, sofa, which were all irrelevant to our thriller and also to create a degree of mystery as we wanted the audience to speculate what was hiding beneath the dust sheets. We commenced by cutting out text such as, jealousy, killer, murder, from magazines and newspapers which we then laid onto a table beside photographs of random people which was going to be one of the shots we took. The last thing we accomplished on the first day of filming was adjusting the lighting as we had unexpectedly discovered that the lighting in the shed was far too bright for our thriller as the only light source consisted of 4 light bulbs, as a result we came up with the solution to remove 3 bulbs leaving the remaining 1 to light our thriller. However there was another problem, the individual light bulb gave the camera footage an orange glare from the orange walls, which was not the type of lighting we intended to use. Subsequently we pinned a sheet of newspaper on the ceiling in front of the light to act as a filter, significantly reducing the orange glare (we have taken a picture of this as proof). We had ended the day with the settings and props completed, ready for filming next lesson.

Cast, Props & Costumes

Cast:
The cast of our opening will only include one individual from our group of four, having an actor is not essential because our thriller consists of mainly close ups and mid shots where the identity of the actor is not at any point fully revealed. In addition we wanted the audience to ask themselves, ‘who is this person?’ leaving them in suspense throughout.

Setting:
The whole of our opening will take place in Ryan’s shed, we tried our best to make the place look cryptic and by doing so we painted text onto the wall, pinned weird work onto the walls & concealed everything, which only the shapes and outlines of the object could be seen under the dust sheets.

Props:
- Stanley Blade
- Newspaper & magazine cut outs
- Dust Sheets
- Paint
- Flick knife
- Screwdriver
- Photos
- Hammer

Location, Time & Organisation

As a group, we have decided that our entire thriller will take place in Ryan’s shed. There are many advantages for this, one of them is that previous media students have used weapons such as a knife in their thriller in public areas, which when being waved around from someone else’s point of view can mistakenly come across as a crime to those who are unaware and so they will call the police to investigate and not only will this waste the polices time but also the students as they will have some explaining to do. So by us using a knife in our thriller in a concealed space prevents any interruptions or false assumptions meaning we can get on with our work without having to worry about any disturbances of this nature. Another advantage is that because Ryan’s shed has not finished being decorated, it gives it a grimy appearance which will benefit us as we are filming a thriller and want the setting to be as grisly as possible. A third advantage is that the shed is a fairly small space which means if there were any lighting problems for example, too much or too little light then solving the problem would be manageable as we wouldn’t have to worry about dealing with a huge deal of space.


The picture above represents the layout of our filming location from a bird’s eye view. The extra rectangle near the top left corner corresponds to us filming from the outside. The N/A area was not used and the picture and key pretty much sums up what we had to work with.

Time:
We are planning on starting and finishing our filming, ready to edit within 2 double lessons. On the first double lesson we are hoping to organize Ryan's shed and begin our filming and then finish off any outstanding shots in the next double lesson. The reason why we have given ourselves only 2 double lessons to organise and film is because our thriller is going to take place in a very confined space, which means to film our thriller we only have to move the camera about in a small area which we should be able to quickly film what we need. However if we do need extra time to film then that is what we shall do.

Organisation:
Ryan will be the only individual appearing in our thriller, whilst Mitch will be the camera man doing the filming, leaving myself and Mike taking care of the lighting, fitting and removing the props and adding any constructive suggestions during the filming process. We are not intending on using any additional pupils in any process of our thriller.

Anomatic

We was given a story board to complete which had boxes for us to draw animations in and besides it was another box to write what is happening, the purpose of this was not to determine exactly what our thriller will be but so that we can get a rough idea of what our opening will be about and the type of shots that we could use. It is likely that our actual opening will alter from the storyboard because there is a possibility of us coming up with something which we did not think of during the making of our storyboard as we progress. We then had to compose an animatic from our story board, which consisted of us taking pictures of each and every animation we drew which when played one after the other in a video made our animatic.

Initial Ideas

This was the initial ideas that we had produced, an intake of all our ideas as individual, which we was then going to analyse after as a group and pick out all the aspects and ideas we had preferred over the others. This way everyone could see each other’s ideas and compromise within our group of what we wanted to use and what we could leave out which means no arguments and everyone happy.

Survey & Results

Survey
I have created this survey in order to gather constructive information which will aid me identify my target audience both gender and age group, what they look for in a thriller and thrillers which they make out to be successful, which we will hopefully analyse and pick out aspects from these thrillers, which will help us achieve a fine thriller opening.
This survey was taken by 30 people.


Results
As you can see from my results, our target audience are 17% male and 13% female, consisting significantly of teenagers, which is going to encourage us to produce something quick and satisfying to the teenage generation. Being teenagers ourselves gives us an advantage of what our target audience would want in a thriller opening, which means we have a rough idea of the type of work to produce which will satisfy our target audience, working in our favour. The 2 most popular thriller openings that our target audience selected, were Saw scoring 9 out of 30 and Seven scoring 11 out of 30, the 3rd most popular thriller scored only 4 out of 30 which as you can see Saw, the 2nd most popular scored more than double than the 3rd most popular. The elements of a thriller that our audience thought would make a fine thriller was suspense which scored 17 out of 30, more than half which gives us an idea of what they are looking for in a thriller. The type of thriller that out audience most favoured was a suspense thriller which will encourage us to produce something consisting mainly of suspense.

Preliminary Exercise & Problems

We have been using a camera to film a preliminary exercise, which is going to be used to see what we are capable of producing at the beginning of the course and therefore does not to be a master piece. After filming the real thing, later on in the course, the two pieces of work will be compared together, which will determine if we have learned any new aspects and skills in media, capability of using the camera, and the ability to effectively edit the film and justify why we have made specific changes, e.g. a black & white shot. We carried out and filmed our preliminary exercise in a school classroom, we filmed it according to a sheet which was given to us and we had to include all aspects on the sheet. The sheet went like this:

1) Wide shot: “A” enters room
2) Over the shoulder: Both in shot, “A” closes the door
3) Close up: “B” replies
4) Wide shot
5) Over the shoulder: “A” replies
6) Close up: “B” replies

7) Wide shot
8) Over the shoulder: “B” replies
9) Close up: “A” replies
10) Over the shoulder: “A” leaves and turns back to reply
11) Wide shot: “A” has a final word, then leaves
12) Close up: “B” is left alone

After filming the preliminary exercise, we began to edit what we had filmed. We begun by cutting out any bloopers or test shots, secondly we began shortening shots so that none of them dragged on from any extra recording which may have occurred. We then added in different transitions between shots, such as jump cuts, dissolve shots, for a smooth transition. Lastly we added in text and a black fade out to finish the preliminary exercise.



Problems:
After filming our preliminary exercise we discovered that a basic guideline in film making, known as the 180 degree rule, states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. This meant that we had not included this in our preliminary exercise; however it gives us a heads up to remember this in our actual thriller opening.