Planning our FilmToday in our lesson we brain stormed ideas that interested us and that we all liked. We is my group; Ellie Houghton, Josh Walker, Amy Barnes and I. We started off by creating a mindmap of our ideas and developing our ideas from there. First IdeaAfter receiving feedback we decided that this idea was not scary enough we discussed how we could improve it and this is our new idea: Scene opens with news report of kidnapping. Cuts two the mother sitting with her friends chatting at a girls night, they mention this criminal. cuts to a flashback of her meeting the babysitter and saying goodbye to her kids who didn't want her to go out. Cut back to her with her friends, she recognises the description of the criminal and thinks it could be the babysitter. Cuts to the babysitter trying to get the kids out of the house and into the car. cuts to mother driving home. cuts to babysitter driving out of drive cuts to mother getting out of the car running into the house the door was left open and the house is empty. Mother breaks down after seeing her child teddy bear left on the floor. Titles appear on the screen... ResearchAfter we came up with this idea we each looked at different media products that had similar storylines of the thriller genre for inspiration and so we could pull out aspects that we both liked and disliked of our idea. The first media product I watched was the trailer for 2013 thriller horror 'Prisoners' starring Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis. The plot is about two young girls that are abducted and the following search for the abductor by the police. After police arrest a young suspect to only be released soon after, the father of one of the young girls kidnaps the suspect, interrogates and tortures him. This dark film inspired the kind of shots we intend to put in our film. It's dark tense moody soundtrack inspired song choice for certain intense scenes in our film.
The next media product I looked at was the trailer for still unreleased american thriller 'Kidnap' it stars Halle Berry as a loving kind single mother that's child gets abducted at the park. The mother chases the abductor down the highway in a high speed car chase. Despite this effort she loses the child and tries to rally up support to find her child. I and the team really liked the how you as an audience even if you don't have children really sympathise with her journey and struggle to find what is most important to her. We also liked the techniques of jump cuts and fast paced music in its use of building tension and conveying a sense of realism of what it would be like to be in her shoes. But also as we want to shot a fast paced car scene this really gives us some material to base it on. ScriptThis is the first version of our script. Script: Gone 1 Open scene with news report on TV REPORTER John Houghton 28 has escaped from her majesty’s prison Bristol. 2 years ago he was conducted of the abduction of 6 young children from the Weston Super-Mare area. If anyone sees anything suspicious or anyone that looks similar to John Houghton in the image you can see now on the screen please report it to the police immediately. 2 Cut to scene of 3 women in a kitchen sitting around the table. FRIEND 1 Improvised casual convocation. Zooms in on Friend 2 face FRIEND 2 Have you heard about that man that has escaped from prison? FRIEND 1 Yeah, I saw that on the news earlier, the said he was a child abductor, it’s so freaky!! 3 Cut to flash back of the mum at home meeting John the baby sitter. MUM Hi. Nice to meet you, sorry about the short notice. JOHN No problem. MUM The kids are upstairs in their rooms. They need to be in bed by 9 and I will be back at about 11. Help yourself to the food I left out in the kitchen and this is my number in case you need anything. JOHN I’m sure we will get on just fine. MUM Bye then! 4 Cut back to the women in the kitchen. Zooms in on the mums face, she has a worried expression. MUM I I I have to go!! 5 Cut to John trying to get the kids out of the house and into the car. KID 1 Where are we going!?! KID 2 I don’t want to go, get off me!! 6 Cuts to mum running home. 7 Cuts back to kids in the car hitting on the windows screaming. 8 Cuts back to mother running. Runs into the house, the door is open she sees teddy on the floor and picks it up. She begins to cry.
Shoot LocationsShoot ScheduleFilming DiaryFilm Day 1 On 9th January 2017 we shoot the newsreel scene. We shoot this in H7 Shoot Location 1 we booked it out so we would definitely be able to use it. We got there cleared a space to film the scene, set up the green screen and placed the lights, umbrella and a light box, out to correctly light the scene. As none of us had ever used a green screen before it took quite a while to set up. This was frustrating but eventually we got there. We then got William Maitland-Round to go through his lines and put on his suit. He then read his lines out with ease and acted convincingly. We used the start of a BBC newsreel for our news scene above to the right is the resource we used and above to the left is our final newsreel. We are happy with how it's turned out, there is a slight glitch but seeing as it will be quite far away in the shoot it won't be noticeable. 16th January Today Sir gave us feedback about the timeline of our film which stimulated changes in the sequences order. We changed the storyline to create more of an element of surprise because if the news report was at the beginning of the film the audience will already know something bad will happen. But if we open the film with her walking the audience is unaware of what is happening until it is later revealed. We have also changed our script. This is our new story board. Film Day 2 On Saturday 21st January 2017 we shoot the scene in which Emma, the mother, walks from her house to the girls night. This was shoot in Wrington starting in a housing estate ending up in the edge of the village, surrounded by fields, and rivers.
These are shots of our first day filming, the images above are of the first part of the first scene. On this day we shoot our first scene in which Emma walks to the girls night, it starts with her texting the girls about her leaving now, and ends at her friend's house. Over the journey of the scene the sunsets setting the time, and scene. A rural village were supposedly little happens.
Film Day 3 On the Thursday 26th January 2017 our third shoot, we shoot the girls night scene. We shoot thsi at Shoot Location No 2 Amys House. This scene features Amy starring as the host of the girls night a fellow mother. And Nina the other friend who is not a mother. Ellie was originally in the shoot but due to complications we removed her from the scene. Lighting wise we used a light box to create a stronger lighting as well as having Amy's house lights on. ![]() February 2017 Since this shoot we have been looking though the content from Film Day 3 and have come to the conclusion that we need to reshoot kitchen scene as the conversation and audio was not good enough and we will reshoot with a full script. We are happy with all of the other footage and have edited it all up to the end of the walking scene. We have also been looking on Soundcloud to try and find the appropriate backing track and safe music that is royalty free. At first we looked for songs that weren't typically thriller style songs and had a happy tone to make it feel uneasy but then we realised it would not create enough tension and suspense. So then we looked for spooky songs that had a child like element. In the end we decided on the track Darkest Decision. https://soundcloud.com/nrw-music-142561825/horror-soundtrack-demo The song is both childish but very tense with some sort of jingle at the start followed by synths. In preparation for our reshoot we wrote a full script of the dialogue that will be exchanged between the characters in the 'girls night' scene. Film Day 4 On the 13th of March we reshot the girls night scene with a fully planned out script. The footage is significantly better and we will be able to use it. An evaluation of our shoot is that it the footage features little bits of mirrors and windows that have tripods and lights in. This is a bad thing and means that we have to cut some scenes more than we would have liked. We will take greater notice of this in our next shoots. 17th March Today we started to create our title for the film on photoshop. We had an idea to have a word morph happen on the screen with just one letter change at a time. We used a website called http://xworder.com/MorphBuild.aspx to build a successful word morph of real words. The words that our morph will feature will be feased, teased, tensed, sensed, seised,ending with Seized out films final title.
Film Day 5 Today the 28th March we shoot one small clip of Emma turning her head to see if she is being followed when walking to the Girls Night. We reshot this down the alley way that leads to the church it will look very similar to the previous shoots and is in the location of another shoot so wont break continuity. However the colouring and lighting of the shot was slightly different we did film them both at sunset, but a january sunset is very different from a march sunset so the colours and levels of light were not identical. We fixed this problem when colour grading the shot to match the other clips in iMovie. When we got to Shoot Location 2 we filmed a shot of Emma running out of the kitchen from both sides of the door so we could action match the action, we then shot her running down the stairs to find the teddy bear. None of us knew how to use manual focus on the Nikon DSLR so I played around with the camera for five minutes, and found the focus button on the lens and practiced using the manual focus so I could film the focus pull scene. In this clip Emmas footsteps walk down the stairs in focus and a teddy bear s at the bottom of the stairs the focus pulls from her feet to the bear. When filming outside we used a light box and moved it around for the different angled shoots. The very last shot we filmed was a high angle shot that made the character seem very vulnerable and portrayed her fear but also how small and violated she felt having someone stalk her as well as take her children. 29th March We needed a gate sound effect for the shot where Emma (Melissa Harrold) walks through the gate. Ellie did some researching on youtube and ended up finding a realistic gate sound which suited the shot; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnAeuW3Pi2Y. In order to put this effect into iMovie, we needed to convert it into a mp3 file. Ellie did this by using http://convert2mp3.net/en/. This allowed us to add the sound effect to our shot. Today we added edited all the remaining clips into the Opening Sequence on iMovie and add the titles with a clock sound effect to the match and completed the media product. Final Narrative The storyline has changed quite a bit over the course of making this opening sequence. The final narrative starts with Emma, the protagonist played by Melissa Harrold, walking through a village, the camera follows Emma smoothly with a range of shots and movement including a tight close up and a steadicam pan. During these shots there are titles saying "mango media" and "watermelon productions" these would be the names of our film company if we were to become a real company producing the film to be televised on TV. Here is also when we listed the actors starring in the production, we used the font Helvetica because it is simple and sleek. Emma walks through a gate and into the large garden that leads up to an intimidating house. She arrives at the house and knocks on the door. The tension disappears once the new music starts and image is on as the characters are stood around a table laughing drinking 'wine'. We took inspiration for the building and dropping of tension from horror film 'The Ring'. There are now two new characters that Emma has joined at this house for a girls night. The characters in this scene are called Sue and Nina in the script to make them sound like realistic names for mums but there names are not said in the film. The characters chat about Poppy Emma's child and how she didn't feel right leaving her with the babysitter. This provides the audience background to the whole scene. After talking for a while they go and sit down on a sofa Sue (Amy Barnes) says "shall I put the film on" the news comes on and and Nina (Nina Halper) says "leave the news on for a second". The news reader informs of an escaped kidnapper. Nina then mentions how it is the same guy on a newspaper she passes it to the other girls. Emma Pauses and has a moment of realisation. She gets up in a hurry and runs out through the lounge door and out the front door to find a teddy bear on the steps. This tells the audience she was being followed all the way to the house and the bear was left as a message to Emma that John Houghton the kidnapper has her child, he is taunting her. The titles come up a letter changing one at a time until it says Seized, then the letters start to change again and the the titles fade to black. This is the finished film:
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TypographyWhat does a logo say about a TV show? A logo for a TV show can tell you a lot about the shows premise.
![]() The font of US TV show Stranger Things is reminiscent of an 80s film or TV show this hint towards the era that the show is set in. It also hints to the Stephen King thriller elements which gives you insight the strong thriller jumps and long build ups.
Our own play with Typography
HelveticaHelvetica is a font used by hundreds of brands around the world, each one has slight differences. Such as; Colour, Shape of its surroundings, bold, italic, light, thick. The Art of the TitleThe galleries below feature different title themes with different images that are relevant to the show and context but might not be actual images from the show. Westworld Westworld is a sci-fi western thriller about realistic robots in the future. The images in this sequence all feature some sort of technological machine. In order; the robot creating piano, robot creating false muscle, robot drawing eye, robot playing the piano, robots making love, robots playing piano, robot drilling a robots brain, robot loading a gun and finally the most zoomed out shot of a robotic human riding a horse with a gun in hand and robotic arms still creating parts of the horse. All of these images tell us about the show, all the robotics hint towards the integral plot element of the robots in the near future. The piano playing tells us of their intelligence and the guns tell us of an imminent battle and violent themes. The Walking Dead The Walking Dead is an American horror drama television series in which the world has been destroyed by a zombie epidemic and it is about the survivors survive and the problems with the living that are left as well as the dead. The the first four images from above are of props from the shows characters, the other images are all photographs of the shows settings like the prison in which this season was base, and an abandoned building one of the main character visits to face their past. Stranger Things Stranger things opening titles consist of close ups of the different letters that gradually come together to build the shows titles, In each close up of the letters there is an actor or actresses name in the center of the screen. The opening titles are like a puzzles different pieces being pieced together, with all the different pieces coming from different sources and locations, this is like the show as you watch the shows events like an investigation the different characters all have separate information which they find out on their paths and these get put together before the end of the season. GenreGenre is all about our need to classify and label the materials available to us. It allows is to quickly categorise and select the different forms available to us. These include;
Codes and ConventionsCodes A code is a set of determiners that we as an audience 'read'; it is a set of signs that carry meaning. Conventions Conventions are the parts of a film that determine its Genre. e.g A horror would have a victim and a villain. A comedy without a happy ending can not be truly considered a true comedy as it breaks the conventions of comedy; it is instead a "Black comedy".
Our task is to create an opening sequence for a horror or thriller. So I looked at some examples of horror opening sequences to inspire ideas. And to analyse what I like and dislike about them.
Analysis of gender representation within a ThrillerHere I analysed the representation of gender within popular thriller TV show 'Luther'. Analysis of gender representation within a Thriller Here I have analysed the representation of another thriller tv show 'The Fall' and compared it to 'Luther' the first thriller TV show I analysed. This is my lenses film video displaying the different lenses we can use in school and techniques using the cameras focus and blur abilities. This is our final version of our Preliminary Task. This is our preliminary script ![]()
This is our storyboard This is our final version of our Preliminary Task. Evaluation of Preliminary TaskDifficulties
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Reuben Lyons17 - Churchill Academy Archives
December 2016
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