Feedback to finished footage

• There was a flash up of a previous frame at the beginning of the film
• The music jumped at the start of the film which was a bit of a glitch
• The shots were too long
• Some fades were a bit too long
  
• The newspaper shot had a bit too much background sound
  

Teacher Feedback

Our teacher evaluated our footage over the weekend and has given us a small list of improvements to address before submitting our final piece. They include the following:

• To get rid of the jump cuts by doing an L shape audio edit
• To edit our text, thereby making it the same size and also overlapping it to add effect (note one of our titles was overlapped and we have been encouraged to do the same with all our written content). In addition, we were told to exclude the word starring as it gave too much of an old-stereotypical style which we felt want too appropriate for this type of piece.
  

ROUGHCUT PEER FEEDBACK

This is the rough cut peer feedback:

Strengths:

• We liked how it was in the dark abd well brought up
• Good parallel editing
• Titles: good, stand out, good font
• Long shots, creates suspense
• Great props
• Good shot location

Constructive Critisim:

• There was a few jump cuts
• Transitions not very smooth
• Cuts between shots

Overall we are proud with the strengths and the improvements as they outweigh each other, we will work on the critisim.

Newspaper

This is another newspaper we made to go in the opening.

After origionally making our concluding soundtrack only four bars long to act as a concluding moment to our thriller opening, we have decided to double the length of the track to accomodate some extra footage that we are considering adding. This extra footage entails some phase shots of our characters and of the set to add more uniqueness to our piece as opposed to just simply portraying our title and then cutting. The idea to end our piece this way has been taken from the final scenes from "The Lord Of The Rings, The return of the King' where Frodo and Sam are seen stranded on a rock; the shot then phases out into black before coming in again with eagles flying in through the background. Now obviously we wont be incorporating hobbits or large birds into our opening, however the idea to have shots of our charcters faces and thier concluding expressions phase in and out at the end will supply a lead to the rest of the film should it of been made, as well as again offering a slightly different ending to just orthodox conclusions.

Progess

Post filming and it has ended up a success. we altered some shot selections as well as some of the dialogue which we felt more appropriate. We also went with another form of lighting to what we had originally decided on; this proved to be much more effective for the filming. We have now started the editing for the rough cut.

Problems with filming

The original two locations we were going to use; the underground bunker and behind the stage have both now been stopped from students being allowed to film there. We have now come to our third location, the changing rooms, which we will lower the lighting or turn them off completely and it should add the effects of suspense and unknowing. We have now booked the room for filming and so next lesson we will start filming for our final product.

Planning for filming

Costumes - as told in previous post including:

shirt, tie and badge

hoody

Lighting - as dark as possible but still able to make out characters, this will add to the suspense and keep the audience 'in the dark' about many key points such as the identity of the characters

Equipment required -

• movie camera
• tripod
• still camera-to take shots of us during the filming process
• shot list

Titles - created in photoshop to be edited into our film in final cut, the titles include the production logo, characters and management team; directing and producing

Sound - We think that it will be best to use both diegetic and non-diegetic sound. We are using a dialogue in the opening as well as music in the background, during times when the characters are speaking the music will fade out

Filming practice

These are two shots that we have done to experiment with. They give us an idea of what some of our shots will look like in the final piece.

Mise-en-scene

Props
Mirror, Shirt & tie, trousers, Torch, chair, rope

Costume
Character 1
Shirt & tie, trousers, formal police man


Character 2
Hoody & jeans


Setting
The setting will be a dark cold, underground room.

More Ideas

This is an idea from are opening, when the character is doing up a tie, looking in the mirror. This screenshot is from the film Se7en, it also does give the idea of some mystrey to whats happening. In our opening we could also have the police badge shown in this shot (which is still to be made)

Location influence

This is a scene from the film Saw. The scene is based in a bathroom, similar to one of our location ideas. Like in Casino Royale, this scene was a main influence when trying to choose on a location that would be suitable for our opening sequence.

Filming Locations

These shots above have created an almost 'bunker' look as a possible site for shooting, to create that undercover, suspense feel. We would use lighting techniques as well as various camera shots to create tension for the audience as well as incorporating diegetic sounds to add that 'chill factor' and keep the audience on the 'edge of their seats so to speak. The idea for this type of location came from the torture scene in 'Casino Royal' where they are in a ship bunker

This is a simple prop idea that will be added to the shot and eventually play a key role within the scene

the shots above are trying to create an alternate feel from the bunker shots previous, for the audience in that we took our inspiration for this setting from the Saw film's, supplying an almost perilous, no-hope scenario for the character whilst still sustaining the theme of a thriller. we thought this an effective area to help emphasize our title 'misconception' as some audience members would look at this setting and view it as a simple room, whilst others may identify the similarity between it and the film inspiration we took it from; by which time they should have identified the theme/mood of the shot. again, as with the bunker shots, we will incorporate different camera angles and shot types as well as diegetic sounds and lighting techniques to add effect.

Progress

Today we are looking at fonts for the titles.

We are also going to create the final idea for the film.

Fonts that we ahve come up with include:

• Trajan pro

Different titles within the film will obtain various sizes and fonts to emphasise various moods that will be incorporated into our thriller, for example 'a Measham film'.

We are also researching various font style idea's on a renowned site called www.freephotoshopfonts.com

This is one idea.

The photo below shows two of our ideas in photoshop whilst creating the titles. The mix of two different fonts in one title works quite well we think and adds to the mood of the video

Ideas

These are some more ideas for our opening thriller:

• With the news report idea, the crime is being reported on the television, and the victim is the one watching it in a dark room. When zooms out you see the victim in the chair watching it. We will use photoshop to make the news report effects such as the banner at the bottom.
• The title of 'Misconception' is what it says on the tin, it relates to the what the actual film is about. When watching the film the audience will be misconceived. However the mix up with the police man will not be shown at the opening.
• The idea is that the opening is the ending of the film, and the film looks back on what happens before.
• The 24 type shots will show for example the hostage 'as such' his face and the next shot of his hands tied up

This is a mind-map of initial idea's for what to base our thriller opening on. As the text in this shot is small, below is its contents...

• criminal interview idea- short answers , yes, no, maybe. criminal interviewing policeman without audience realizing( title of opening maybe 'misconception')
• '24' style shots
• bodyparts shot, to show nerves and reactions, biting lips, sweating, hands fidgeting, heavy breathing
• news report on TV, zooms out from TV to reveal the shot is then in the scene.

the other screen shot is of our storyboards, within which are several approaches we could take in order to stage our opening. In other words they are creating a visual image of our idea's (see above).

During the creation of our thriller opening we were tasked to create a short piece for a production company to place at the start of our thriller. These are photos of the process of creating this production logo. It is a game of noughts and crosses that then fades out to reveal our production name: Criss Cross Productions

After we finished this video, we realized we would quite like some changes to be made to our video. Instead of just one nought moving across we decided to use three. The updated video is shown below. We as a group think that the updated video is a lot better and adds more effect.

Student work

This is a good thriller opening because of the two things happening at the same time. With the title 'Piece by piece' and the idea of playing chess and slowly beating the other player then he is slowly losing his chances of staying alive.
The music in the film creates a feeling of suspense and action at the same time. The tempo of the piece gets faster as the video progresses adding to the content in the video.