First Production Meeting

Today we had our first production meeting with my group. Firstly we talked about our favorite ideas in the group and then tried and agree on our favorite 2 ideas in the group. The first one is about the Psycho family which was Anna's idea and the second favorite was Jacky's about a man that found out he doesn't have much time to live and wants to have revenge on all the people he had fights with or disagreements with before. 
 

Thriller Groups

Today the class was divided into groups of four, it was completely chosen at random. I am in a group with Jacky Li,  Danel Azimova‎ and Anna.Martynyuk.

I only really know Jacky from this group so it will be nice to get to know the others. I am looking forward to working with them as they seemed to have interesting ideas.

Thriller Ideas

For media studies the class had to come up with some thriller title sequence ideas, I personally don't watch many thrillers which caused my ideas to not come across as scary as most in the class.

Idea #1:

Plot:

Guy that left school at 15 because he would prefer to skate and go out with his friends, has a part time job as a waiter as he saves up for his first car.

One day working he feels a strong pain in his chest and finds it hard to breath, ends up going to the hospital and finding out that he has a desise and the only way that he would be able to live more then 2 months would be with a new lung which would cost a very high amount that he can't afford (Possibly something like £15k)

He knows that he and his parents can't afford it and he doesn't know anyone that is donating their lungs.

His parents always wanted him to go to boarding school as they thought that it would "get back on track with life" they also told him how "you make the best friends in boarding school"

So he comes up with the insane idea of using the £3k he saved up for boarding school, just to gain enough of someone's confidence to come with him to "friends party" (without anyone knowing) which turns out to be a sketchy doctor that would kill his friend and transfer the lung to him.

Title Sequence (Ideas):

Establishing Shot Of His Room,

POV:Wakes up sweating, checks his phone and sees he only  has 2 weeks left..

Follow shot as he walks to the cafeteria analysing every possible victim

As the cook serves the egg on his place he asks, you ok?

Black Screen

Fade In " 6 Weeks Before..."

Close up of his alarm:

Long shot of alarm: Alarm goes of and his hand hits the top of it

He Sits up and then his mind races forwards to where he was working at could barely breath, then skips to the doctor telling him the bad news

Idea #2:

Plot:

Guy/Girl goes to boarding school to take a levels and his parents pressuered him into getting academic classes (Further Maths, History, Business &  English) when she really wants to take artistic classes (Photography, Media Studies, Drama & Art)

He ends up changing his classes to the artys ones without his parents knowing, ends up having to lie more and more about how he's classes are going,

⋅he got beat in the past trying to explain to his parents that he wants to do something more artistic and wasn't into academic classes

⋅has constant nightmares of his parents visiting his school and finding out and sending him to the army

⋅Parents are both really well known for either scientific discoverys or mathematical

⋅because of his constant loss of sleep he starts failling in his classes

Title sequence (Ideas):

Estabalosinhg shot: of parents fighting and screaming at him at the dinner table

Follow shot: he runs to his room and locks the door

Establishing shot: of him on his bed

Close up: of his face into his pillow

Close up of the door handle: They are hitting it hard after three hard hits it blasts open and he wakes up in a car arriving at his new boarding school

parents are debating if he should take History or economics, he stays silent

Pan shot: of him getting out of the car and walking into the boarding house carelessly

Fade to Black

(The following idea wasn't thought out as much as I found it less interesting then the first two ideas.)

Idea #3:

Something to do with a middle aged man finding out his girlfriend left him many years ago because she was pregnant but didn't want to raise the baby with him.

Title sequence(Ideas):

POV:Man is driving up to the school.

Establishing Shot Of the school parking:he parks the car and stares at a window

Close up: of his face against the window looking up

Camera looks at one particular window from inside the car.

After several seconds of waitting he opens a bag in the back of the car and takes out a knife then hides it in his pocket.

Follow shot: of him walking in and past the receptionist as she asks "hello, where are you going?" (he takes no notice and walks up the stairs) "visiting hours are only  on weekends"

As he gets close to the room he takes the knife out of his pocket and puts it up his sleeve.


Idea #4:

 I haven't developed this idea very much, but it is basically a man that has been kidnapped and is trying to escape from a van. His hands are tied and theres a bag cros the van with a knife in it.
It would be a sequence of a man trying to pull the bag closer and closer to himself without the driver realizing.

Prelim Task

Here is our completed prelim task:

Kyle Cooper - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Kyle cooper was the executive producer on this project, showing of his amazing graphic design skills through this title sequence. He did a good job setting the genre and mood for the film. 

It only takes a couple of seconds to realize that this is a murder mystery genre film. The entire sequence has cartoons that give of this film noire feel. The entire sequence only uses three colors, black, white and orange. Even the blood is orange, but its still easy to tell apart from the rest. The title of the film already gives of the impression of this film containing romance, action and crime. The kiss kiss obviously indicates the romance side and bang bang most likely wants to come across as gun shots. This giving of the impression of this film being about action and crime. The impression of this film being action is given of by the pace of the title sequence, most of the time the camera is moving quickly displaying things such as a man jumping over a fence and a woman being pushed of a building. Kyle Cooper also choose not to show any faces in the title sequence, this causing more mystery towards who is the killer and who is getting killed. Very smart tactic by him as this causes the audience to want to watch more to figure out more about the story. 

Thrillers What Are They?

Well the Oxford Dictionaries defines it as "A novel, play, or film with an exciting plot, typically involving crime or espionage" and I agree.  A thriller can contain many things, horror, action even a comedy. I believe that they are all like sub genres. Inception is a great example of a thriller with lots of action, we can tell this straight away from the trailer:

One of the more recent thrillers that I've watched that has a similar combination of genres (thriller and action) is Lucy. This film only got a 6.5/10 on IMDB but I found it to be a great film, very exciting and thrilling. There were some slower parts to the film which didn't have that much action but it was still building tension which is what I'd expect from this film, a good balance of tension and action. Here is the trailer for Lucy. 

The Riot Club is a good example of a thriller with less action, but still very thrilling (mostly towards the end). Which can also make a great film, I personally prefer a thriller with more action. 

Actual Coursework Task Defined

Video

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

Preliminary Shoot

To prepare us to make our thriller we had to create a preliminary sequence. In this sequence there is a short conversation between two people, we were given a storyboard and a script.

This is the storyboard that we used, it has some interesting shots. Such as the first shot which is a wide shot, this is also an establishing shot as it establishes that the two charters are in a room. the next shot is a over the shoulder shot showing what the male is seeing. We also had mid and close up shots. We also took extra footage of super close ups and point of view shots just in case in the stage of editing we might prefer them. We used a close up over the woman's phone to show pictures of her and her husband.

In the end we agreed that the story was about two people dating but the female was married to another man, and the guy she is dating is trying to convince her to tell her husband about them. We also used a super close up on the woman's face before her boyfriend leaves to show how sad she is and to build up tension. 

Account Of Prelim Editing

On Tuesday the class went to the editing room, where we sorted and edited a sequence of footage. We were using Adobe Premier Pro, which I am pretty familiar with as I've been using it for the past two years with other adobe programs such as adobe after effects and adobe Photoshop.
On the left of this screen shot we can see our out takes that have been named in order of what comes first and what is happening in the take/shot, we also put in abbreviations this such as CU for close up or MS for mid shot. They are also organised into folders. The First one being the rushes which contains all the raw footage, We made this folder so we can always check back if we delete any footage by mistake or if just anything of that nature happens. The second folder we created contains the shots that we decided to use, we choose these shots because they had the best fitting camera angles and acting, this folder was named log bin. Once we had all this done we went over all the shots in our log bin and cut the extra footage to make it feel fluid and then moved them into the timeline. When cutting the footage we used the short cuts I and O (I for mark in and O for mark out). In the top of the timeline we see that each audio clip/take is represented by two rectangles. The lighter blue ones represent the actual footage and the darker blue ones below the center represent the audio recorded with the footage. In the middle we see a preview of the footage we are choosing from the folder and on the right there is a live feed from the timeline.

Sexy Beast - Opening Sequence Analysis

In this title sequence we see the first five minutes of Sexy Beast, and in this sequence alone we already discover a lot about what seems like one of the main characters. This being Gary Dave, played by Ray Winstone. The mise en scene shows the audience that Gary is a rich and mean guy in his 50s. 

From the second shot we can already tell a lot about Gary, this overhead shot shows him laying down on a beach chair taking in the sun, his tan shows that he has been doing this for a while. We also see alcohol, cigarettes and skin lotion on the right. All of these give of the impression that this man doesn't have any worries, possibly he could be on holiday.  

From only the opening sequence it is hard to tell if the genre is a comedy, drama, action or crime. Seeing the way he narrowly misses the massive boulder, then he barely reacts to seeing it in the pool and then the water hitting him makes this seem like more of a comedy/action film. The fact that he seems incredibly rich and that this boulder barely bothered him also drives the audience to think that he might have been a gangster of some sort in the past so this didn't scare him compared to what he has encountered in the past. This leading me to think this film could also be in the genre of crime.  

Overall this sequence leads me to think that this film is about a retired gangster or successful business men that somehow gets called back into the game. Whatever this might be. I liked the camera work, many overhead shots of him and the pool. 

Below is the opening credits sequence: