Evaluation

Evaluation on Prezi

Final thriller opening

First draft and feedback

This is the first draft of our thriller opening. The initial change from this version to our final one may not be very visible, but we felt as though a few changes had to be made. The first change that was made was the font used. We felt as though the old font wasn't scary enough to be in a thriller film. Also, the outlining of the letters made the font less effective. Therefore, we changed the font and removed the outline around the letters. The second change we made was the credits. We didn't use technical words such as 'directed by' and 'edited by', as we thought this would look tacky and take up too much space. Therefore, in our final piece, we have not included these words, but just our names to show we were all involved in the production. Finally, we cut a small amount out. We cut the zoom into the phonebox because we firstly thought it would just waste time, as before our piece was 2:02 (now 1:59), and secondly because it zoomed into the wrong place. The significance of cutting the phonebox not only saves time but it makes our opening look professional and clean.

Directors film

This short clip was taken during one of the filming sessions. We did this in order to show how the director and the rest of the group put together this scene. It shows how we worked together as a team to produce our thriller opening but also how the roles were clearly established within our group.

Filming Log

24th February 2012

Today we filmed one of the scenes in our thriller opening. The scene that we filmed took place in the study area of our school, and the props we used were newspapers and paper. We cut articles about murder and deaths out from newspapers, and stuck them to the board in the room. We then drew red circles around letters in the newspaper articles to spell a name. This name would be the name of the woman who the man is targeting to eventually kill. After we had done this, we filmed the board which was an effective shot, as it didn't look as though it had been filmed in a school. Although there were problems such as trying to not make it look as though it was in a classroom, however, we overcame this problem by changing the position of the camera; holding it a different way. We also filmed pictures of people on paper, with their names below and a red cross across their picture, apart from one girl- the girl he is targeting to kill. We filmed this in the same room on the desk, and closed the curtains to make it darker and thus more effective. We re-filmed this part- filming it in a different location- the same props were used and the same storyline was used, but we used a different location and the layout of the room was slightly different. 

2nd March 2012


Today we filmed some shots that we are going to use for the title sequences. The scene we filmed was of a hand covered in blood. We filmed this in our school.  We used paint to achieve the 'blood stained' look. The problems we faced was we wasn't sure if it would look real- but it did. The sink shot was accidental, and I discovered it when I washing the paint off my hand. We think this would be effective because it doesn't look planned- it looks as though blood has literally been splattered over the sink, as though the killer has been here. However, despite the fact it looked effective, we didn't use this in our final. This was because afterwards we realised it didn't really have any significance to our storyline. It wasn't a huge loss as we had other shots that also looked effective and had more significance to the storyline.

4th March 2012


Today we filmed in our local area. We filmed the scenes that will be used for the title credits of our opening sequence. We did two shots of the telephone box because we wanted it to seem isolated, and that the killer lived in a quiet, low key area. We achieved this by filming the interior of the phone box, and then filming it from across the road. We also filmed the train scene. We wanted to show the train going away from the camera, to show the end of something and the start of something else. It was to show how the killer was travelling to a new place- we achieved this by putting the phone box scene afterwards to show this was the area he travelled to. At first we saw the cars going past as a problem, however afterwards we realised it may actually look effective- to show that this is a normal place and cars just go past as usual. Therefore, we kept it in but shortened it down a little bit.

5th March 2012

This was the final day of filming. We filmed the main part of our opening sequence in school. We used Karuhn to play the part of Arthur, and we used the props which were a black hat, black coat, black briefcase, newspapers and a syringe. We found it difficult to make the shots look effective, because of the position we were standing in, but afterwards we found that a handheld shot actually looked effective- adding to the tension. The final shot we use is of the killers hat, gloves and weapon. This is to show that he's gone to murder Jade, like he was planning. It also adds to the suspense, making the audience wonder what has happened to him and Jade. We wanted to achieve this effect so as it would make the audience want to carry on watching. Initially I was against the idea of voyeurism, as I thought we had enough Film Noir conventions in our piece, and that it wouldn't fit in with our storyline. However, Karuhn, Gamze and Rabia convinced me that it might be an effective idea to put it in. We filmed it, and afterwards when we watched it, it looked effective, so we all agreed to keep voyeurism in our opening. We re-filmed this again, because we didn't think it looked effective the first time around- so we shot it in a different location, as the lighting was more suitable and matched a thriller genre more than the other location did.


Here, the protagonist (Arthur-Karuhn) is standing in a mirror looking at his reflection, and the reflection of a dead body is shown which surprises the audience. 

Here, there is a close up of the antagonist (Clare-Louise) to show what Arthur does to his victims. We used the hat as a prop on the character to show it was Arthur- it represents him.










7th March 2012

Because we have finished filming, we moved onto the editing process. Here, we would cut parts of our piece out and add a soundtrack to make our opening more effective. This was the hardest part of our project, because it took the longest amount of time. I learnt how to use new technology such as iMovie and Garageband. Once we had finished this, we uploaded our opening onto YouTube, and began to work on our evaluation. 

The printscreen above is a screen layout of GarageBand. Here, we selected a variety of different sounds ideal for our thiller opening, and edited them alongside our video, so as they ran in time with each other. This took quite a while, as we had to select suitable thriller music, as well as choose some sound effects such as thunder and a door creaking. However, Rabia, who was the main person in charge of music, did the base of the soundtrack, and we all took it in turns to add parts to it. We then listened all together, and if we didn't think something sounded effective, we agreed as a group and removed it. I think this was effective as not only did we work as a team to achieve something, we successfully created a soundtrack which works effectively with our opening.

In addition to this, we had to cut our video and select the parts we wanted the most. Our opening was only allowed to be two minutes long, and so we chose the most important parts to feature in our opening. As mentioned, we used iMovie to do this, and after learning how to do this properly, it didn't take that long.

As you can see in the print screen, not only did we use Garageband to make our soundtrack, we used some music from iMovie, such as the heartbeat effect used for when Jade's name is spelt out. This sound effect was not featured on GarageBand, so we were either going to download it from YouTube, or use it from iMovie. We came to the majority decision that we were going to use it from iMovie, as we would have to covert the YouTube clip into MP3. Furthermore, we had to use transitions in our piece. This was particularly difficult as it wasn't just a matter of using any transition, we had to select the ones that were most suitable for a thriller film.

GarageBand Experiment

In today's lesson we experimented with the software GarageBand. We did this to firstly learn how to use it, but also to see what kind of sounds we could add to our thriller opening. This won't be used for our final thriller opening, but at the end we will all put our compositions together and make a composition which is suitable for what we have filmed. Over the course of the lesson, we experienced several technical problems, due to not knowing how to upload it onto YouTube or onto our blogs, however, we worked as a team and came to a solution and worked it out. We did this by firstly saving it and editing it with iMovie, and then saved it as a Quicktime file, which we then uploaded onto Karuhn's YouTube channel. Despite the fact we went through a variety of technical issues, we have now learnt how to use GarageBand, and will use it to create a soundtrack for our final thriller opening.

Additional group information

In today's lesson we allocated ourselves with the jobs we are responsible for, we also did a list of the locations, cast list and props list. 



Job Allocation: 
Gamze Kaya - Director
Rabia Jawaid - Music
Louise O'Loughlin - Editor
Karuhn Nahar - Camera


Props & costume: 
Syringe
Photos
Newspaper
Red paint
Gloves
Telephone
Arthur: Black blazer, black hat, mobile phone.


Cast List: 
Karuhn Nahar - Arthur
Louise O'Loughlin- Clare


Locations: 
Hanworth Bridge
Exterior Edgar Road
Interior Apartment/Flat- School. 
Telephone Booth