Filming our thriller- 'Tied'

Tuesday's lesson allowed us to begin filming our thriller film. We explained our story and plans for filming to Mary, and had to do a complete storyboard showing each shot that we were going to film, in order to be let out to go to our location. We already had a clear idea of everything that we wanted to do with our filming, so it was quite easy to create a detailed storyboard although it was quite time consuming. When this was done, and Mary was happy with our storyboard, we got all of the equipment we needed, which included the lighting kit that we were going to use so that our film didnt have a grainy colour to it due to the darkness we wanted to film our story in.
We went to our location which was a canal thats situated closeby to the college and got everything set up ready for filming. By the time the lesson was finished we had only done about half of our shots that we wanted. We found that it was much more time consuming than we expected. However, it wasnt a problem because we got all of the shots we wanted, and in all of the different ways we wanted to shoot it, in order to do our match cuts and prepare for filming.

I think that we were all happy with what we filmed and I can see alot that we can do, concerning the editing, to finish it up and make it look as realistic as possible. Lauren and Ufuk did a good job with the acting, and myself and Karess did lots of filming that we were happy with, and I think that it is going to look very professional. Tomorrow's lesson, if we are happy with all of the shots that we took, we will begin editing, which I think will be a very difficult process because we have lots that we want to do with it and plenty of ideas but I'm looking forward to seeing the final product.

Filming the thriller part 1(Tuesday 27th January)

In today’s lesson we were told to film our thriller as we have planned on Friday. Firstly we had to do our storyboard so after finishing the storyboard we went to the location where we were planning to do the shooting. We went to the local park which had a canal and couple of trees. We have done a small piece in the filming because we’ve finished our storyboarding about 20 minutes till the lesson finish, so we sacrificed our time in order to try to get as many shots we can in that day so it won’t be a waste. We have only took the shots which we were planning to do in the morning. There were shots like Lauren and Karess saying bye to each other and going in different directions, which shows establishing shot of the location. Later on we take shots of Lauren walking in the park then myself following her. Finally we done the shot when I was grabbing her and make her faint and used the match-cut technique. I think we have to improve in some of the shots but overall I am satisfied with the effort that has being done today.

Thriller Film Preparation- Pitch.

On Friday's lesson, we gathered all of our final ideas for our thriller film, showed eachother our ideas and used all of this to put our pitch together that we showed to 'a panel' and the rest of the class, in the second part of the lesson. We made a spider diagram which included all of our plans for filming and editing. This included the synopsis, camerawork, lighting, jobs for filming and many more. We also brought in a few probs that we are going to use, to give everyone an idea about what to expect from our film. This included the scary white mask that our 'killer' will be wearing, and a few candles to show how we will use lighting to create the mood that we will try to put across.

The title for our film is 'Tied' and this agrees with our plot for our thriller, which uses the main image of the victim being tied to a tree by her hands. Also, we liked this title because it also has the connotation that she is also tied up mentally, and she is entrappred in her situation. We thought this would be a very intruiging title for our film, and would allow us to do alot so that our filming could live up to this connotation too.

Dan gave us permission to do our filming, as our pitch was quite successful, and we will put all of our planning into good use when we start filming in Mary's lesson on Tuesday. We think that we have done enough planning to make sure that everything goes smoothly when we come to film, and we hope that our hard work shines through in our film.

The Pitch(23rd January 2009)

In todays lesson our task was to pitch our ideas to Micky, Dan and Marissa. We were told in the previous to pitch our ideas to the class. As a group each of us had different roles to organise till the presentation. We had concentrated on topics such as :
-The synopsis
-The camerawork
-The lighting
-The music
-The audience
We have all gathered our ideas in the sugar paper then wrote the things we are going to say in a different paper. My role was to concentrate more in the music and the lighting. We were brave enough to be the first group to the presentation and I think the judges were quite pleased with us. The only thing that Dan has pointed at is the lighting because we were thinking about the majorly shooting will be in a dark lighting.
Our thriller is named 'TIED'. The character who will be taking role is myself and Lauren. I will be the killer and Lauren will be the victim. Lauren will be tied in a tree and they will be flashbacks going forward and backward. They will be props such as candles, mask and rope to be used in the scene in order to add more effectiveness and make it more dramatic.

Preliminary film (2)

This preliminary film task also allowed us to get more adventurous about our ideas for our Thriller film that we will be filming very soon. As we are going to be doing a pitch on our lesson on Friday 23rd, we can be confident that after this experience of filming and editing, our group will be able to carry out our film very professionally and put our ideas into action!

Preliminary Film

The lesson of 16th January, the group completed filming all that was needed for our preliminary match cut task. Using all of the shots that we had, Tuesday's lesson gave us the oppertunity to edit these shots which we did to the best of our ability in the time that we had. We made sure that each shot went smoothly together, and that we selected the shots that showed the various different camera angles that were filmed. Also, we wanted to make sure that the shots where dialogue was involved, were very clear and put the point of this practice film across. We thought that although it is a fairly simple film, it put enough across to the audience and told what was going on in a very effective way. We edited it so that it was believable, but also so that suspence could be added. This stage went very well and the group worked well together to make sure that the best was made out of the good filming that was done on Friday.

Everybody has definitely progressed in their skills, from the first to the sencond practise films as it seemed more natural to use a variety of different things in both the filming and editing work. Also, I think that it was much easier to edit the second film because we knew exactly how to use all of the programs in order to make the editing very effective. Also, I think that I have gained a much better understanding generally, about the productive side to media and everyone in our group definitely have grown in knowledge and skill.

To some extent, I do feel like we followed the conventions of real films but also challenging them too. By this I mean that although our film was only meant to be short, we used realistic looking props, good dialogue, a clear structure and a wide range of different camera shots- all of which you would expect from a real film. However, as we were limited as to what we could do with this preliminary film, we challenged the forms of real films because there were limits. However, we made the best out of what we had and I think it paid off. Our location was cleverly chosen because of the amount of light that we could have in that room, and the use of chairs and tables made our film look more realistic. This location allowed us to walk in and out of the scene and gave us a big enough space to shoot in.

I think that our practice film does allow us to make any comments about representation because the two characters in the film are of the opposite sex, so we had to think about how we were going to represent each person. We decided to use low angle shots to present the male character, stereotypically, as the superior, in order to make the audience aware that he is the one they should be more weary of. The girl, on the other hand, looked to be inferior because of the high angle shots she was mostly filmed at. This showed the different representations of gender and allowed us to use this to our advantage in our practice film.

After seeing the final product of this preliminary film, I think that our group did very well although we would have liked to have got the chance to add music and add a few more tweaks, concerning our editing. However, I think that it went very well and the actors and camera woman did a very good job.

Preliminary Film(Tuesday 20th January)

In todays task we were told to carry on editing our work from last lesson. In our second filming we had a different task to do and I think it went well. The second practise film, I personally think was much better than the first practise because the lighting wise first practise film was a bit dark and didn't let us see the scene properly whereas in the second practice it went well. I think the location for the second practise was better than the first one because we had a great variety of space and more quite. I think Camera-shots has being done good and gave us the right understanding of what is going on by using the techniques such as 180 reverse shot, match cut and the close-ups has being done in order to show the characters feelings.

preliminary Match Cut Task

Making a short film(Friday 16th December)

In today’s lesson, our task was film a short scene where a person walks into a room and shares conversation with another person. We had to include elements like Match Cuts, Shot/Reverse Shot and keeping the 180 degree rule. Lauren was the one who walked inside the room and start talking to me whereas Karess was the one using the camera.

We have had planned our work last week so we had plenty of time to the shooting and then editing. It took us about 20 minutes to finish the shooting because we were well organised. After shooting a small scene, we had to edit what we have done in order to make the scene make sense. The shooting went well because we were filming in the storeroom, which was a quite place to film. After the filming, it was time to the editing. Editing at the beginning took a bit time because of the lack of organisation. We have started the editing but we could not finish because we had less time and editing took more time then I was expecting.

I have learnt a lot filming with a group because we all got different ideas and we bring all into one then it creates a good idea. I am pleased with my group except the absence that occurs a lot for the members in my group. I’m a bit nervous about the thriller though.

Film Practice

In todays lesson we learnt more about different types of shots that we could use in our Thriller. The shots included a match cut which is where a transition that involves a direct cut from one shot to another, which "matches" it in action, subject matter, or actual composition. This kind of transition is commonly used to follow a character as s/he moves or appears to move continuously. Film continuity is often dependent on match cutting. Match cutting can also be used in a montage sequence, to show a similar activity occurring over a passage of time.
We used this today in our film practice frequently and found that it made the seen much more interesting for example as shown previously in the viedo the actress (Lauren) walks into a room but instead of showing this from one standared shot we used a match cut which also enabled the group and i to include various types of angled shots which we thought would increase the quality of our work. I personally thought that this would make the scene much more interesting and enjoyable to watch instead of using the average one shot as we could see the scene from several angles and learn a lot of key elements to the scene which in our case included a bag in the actresses hand which was a crucial part of our short scene.
Unforunately due to previous absenses and complications this was the first time that this final group and i had worked together unlike other groups in the class. I initially thought that this would be an issue as it takes some time for people to work well with one another and communicate sufficiently together but this did not come to be an issue within this group as we all knew what was needed to be done and the roles that we played.
Filming comes quite naturally for me so i thought that it was vital that my role was behind the camera so that the group could do the best and this also allowed me to grow in the filming department. This was approved by my group which meant that we could promptly begin filming giving us more time with editing which is for me the hardest part of producing a film scene.
We continued filming quickly as we had planned the shots that we were going to take and filmed them instantly. The group and i then had half of the lesson to begin editing and it was here that we wanted to get a headstart and hopefully complete all of our editing at once, but we were aware that many problems can sometimes appear on the footage making the editing process that much more difficult and we remained cautious just in case any did show up on our work increasing the time that we had to spend on it.
But we were still unaware of what was yet to come.

The Editing Continues

Continuing from the previous lesson the group and i remained editing our short film. As simple as i found it, it had come to our attention the that the footage was quite too dark which we were not able to identify whilst filming as the quality on the camera and on the computers are some what different. This really made the group and I wary that the rating of our footage would decrease but we still pushed on to complete the editing as we felt that the teacher could still identify the range of shots that we used and see our strengths in filming.
As the editing continued we finally managed to complete our practice filming excersise and we were able to look fully at it and analyse the strengths and weaknesses that we feel about the footage. After a long ananlysis on my work i came up with this conclusion

Strengths: I feel that me being behind the camera enabled me to take control and gain a lot of experience. I feel that i worked quite well and managed to include a variety of shots. As a group i feel we worked fantastically together as we all had our roles and knew exactly what we where to do and i feel this played a big part in the success of the footage. Although the panning shot that we certainly wanted in our footage came to be quite difficult i thought fast and came up with a solution that made it possible and worked hard to achieve great footage

Weaknesses: I feel that planning was a key weakness in the group as there was a large amount of things that we should have thought about thoroughly before we began filming but due to our eagerness in wanting to start as quickly as possible it led to several issues that we had to recover from very quickly including the lighting which i have spoken about previously. The location that we where going to film in also came to be a weakness in filming as we couldnt find the appropriate location that was suitable for the style and mood that we wanted to create.

Overall the group and i managed to overcome the troubles that we came across and pull through to create a good peice of footage, although there are a large number of things that i wish to change i feel i did he best that i could do and showed the skills that i have as a director

Storyboard Tutorial(Tuesday 12th January)

In today's lesson our task was to create a shot list for the storyboard which we had and the Match Cut Exercise.

We had a story of a guy who chain smokes while copying the confidential files to the computer and plans to a CD. He packages them and is seen posting them. To show this story board we have listed the shot types, angles etc to show it in the storyboard. After doing the task we get to watch the short film they done and we saw our mistakes which we wouldn't of done. After watching the short film we've learnt about a shot called match cut. As we were showned in the short film we had to produce a match cut with story we had being given.

To conclude this, we've done a shot list exercise then learnt the match cut shot. After doing the task we had being given an another task to show if we really can use match cut with the story that was given.

Watching Thrillers(Friday 9th January)

In today's lesson our task was to gain ideas from the previous A level students who made thrillers last year. We have watched about 6 of their videos and analysed on the mise-en-scene.

The elements that will make a good thriller is to seduce the audience into long term commitment. The reason for this is because if we knew much information about the film, we wouldn't bother to watch. The other element which will make a good thriller is the camera shots being used correctly, i.e. can be an establishing shot at the beginning to inform the location.

The videos I have watched from the previous A level students has being done well, especially the soundtracks which has being used good in the scenes. In one of the videos I've watched the flashback which they showed was well done because the camera shots has helped a lot.

Sound Editing(Tuesday 6th January)

Our task in today's lesson was to watch a scene from 'The Casino Royale 007' and to analyse the soundtracks. We have watched the scene then later on enter the section 'Sound Landscape' which gave us more information about how their manage the soundtracks in the film.
After learning about how to manage the soundtracks in the movie, everyone had an opportunity choose one scene out of the four. I have chosed the casino scene and I didn't have any diffuculties about managing the soundtrack.
After doing the editing on the sound for a film after we get to edit on our short scene with the limited soundtracks.