evaluation pics

Pictures for evaluation

Final Thriller opening

Draft cut

Title

We chose to call our thriller 'Rushed' as it is qick and catchy, and it is the sort of thing that a thriller would be called. 'Rushed' suggests fear and urgency, which are some features of the sort of thriller that ours is.

Audience

Our thriller opening, appeals to a different kind of audience, we got ideas off the films Kidulthood, Adulthood, Harry Brown, Shank. All of these films appeal to a younger audience because of the content, the actors are young, or look young, and they also dress with the young london style. Also the audience we are appealing to isnt just youths, its a certain type of youth, from the underground, or someone who experiences bad behaviour in everyday life, and someone who witnesses, or is involved in youth gang crime.
In our evaluation we will have to reinforce this, by explaining in further detail.

Difficutlties

One difficulty we had was that it took us a while to edit the film, and get everything to look right, so as this took us a long time, we couldnt get on with the music and get the timing right for the music. So in the last two lessons we had to rush the music, and make sure everything went well,

I feel our music really suits the genre, it sounds upbeat, but at the same time its creates a dramatic, tension building atmosphere.

Voice overs

As some of the sound of the characters speaking was hard to hear, we had to do voice overs and add them to final cut so you could hear them.

I recorded Gabi doing a voice over for the last scene when she is in the phone box on the phone to her boyfriend. The one problem with doing a voice over is that the background sound is going to be different, so it will be hard to fit all together and flow correctly. The voice over for Gabi fits well, and looks correct.

Here is a screen shot of Gabi editing the voice over into the film:

Credits

list of credits

A fish in the shoe production

A funky kid film

Cast

Gabi Ping

Louka Hue

Dan Sawyer

Sam Britton

Reuben Ebanks

Kizzy Ebanks

Mari Schweitzer

Costume design- Sophie Tim

Film editing- John Davis

Cinemaphotgrapy- Sid Jones

Original music- Kizzy Ebanks

Production design- Olivia Smith

Produced by- Sam Cohan

Directed by- Davis Oakley

Main title- Rushed

Deadline

Today is our final lesson to finish off our thriller opening. We have to do the following things:

Put the music and the footage together, put the voice overs in that we recoded last lesson, and put in the credits.

Soundtrack

Kizzy was was working on the soundtrack throughout the last few lessons, we looked at the non digetic sound that was used in other thrillers and we tried to imitate the style to make our thriller as realistic. Here is a sample music at the rough cut stage before it was properly edited.

Feedback from draft

Each group showed their draft cut to the class in lesson, and we all gave each other feedback. The feedback for our draft thriller opening was as follows:
Positive comments:
-Good camera angles/ shots
-The punch looks good
-Easy to understand what is happening

Negative feedback:
-It is not a thriller
-The sound is not very good

We discussed the feedback that we received and we thought that people said that our sound was not good because we have not finished editing, and have not yet put the music with the clip, so when we are finished, the sound will not be a problem. We also thought about the the criticism that it was not a thriller. But we still think it is because our thriller opening, as it is an opening to a crime thriller, concentrating on the fear fear of crime amongst youths. We thought that people may have not categorized ours as a thriller as the rest of our class are all doing different types of thrillers (such as psychological thrillers).
Here are the posters to two different types of thriller, a psychological thriller, which many people chose to do, and a crime thriller, like ours:


Just from looking at the two posters, we can tell how different the two types of films.

Editing

We are still editing our thriller opening, are final cut draft deadline is due in Friday. Today we have edited our film, but have faced problems such as we think our opening is going to be longer than 2 mins, because it is nearly 2 mins long and no way near done editing, to fix this problem we are cutting out unnecessary scenes we had before to shorten our opening. We have also used the blur effect for when after Louka punches Gabi, because we thought it would give an effect of Gabi's senses being confused, and her vision being blurry. Also we have used the cropping effect, we used this at the beginning of the opening, because the scene of Gabi walking was too long, so we arranged the scenes differently and had them com-binding with each other to save time and still establish.

Deadlines

We have two lessons in which to finish the rough cut, so we still have got a bit to do, we have to edit the whole film, add credits, and finish the music for the film.

As we are all working on different things we should have everything finished quicker, By the end of next lesson, Gabi should have the editing finished and we should have the music finished and then we can add the credits in, and polish everything off.

change

One idea that we had at the beginning when we started planning was we were going to use to different cameras, so one still camera filming everything, and then a hand held camera that me and kizzy were going to use to mess around with and film the Cribs idea that we had, the reason we wanted to use the hand held camera is because we thought it would make it look more realistic, and the viewers would see our point of view.

But as we changed the story line slightly and we wernt using the bit of me and kizzy filming ' the cribs thing' we decided to take the hand held camera bit out.

One thing we decided to add in, is when the gang are mugging gabi, one of the boys are filming it on there mobile, so we have the footage from that, which we felt look really interesting , as you get to see the fight from there point of view, and as that what some teenagers do, they film fights and post them on the internet, we felt this brought in the aspect of teen reality.

In todays lesson we all decided to work on differnt things, Gabi started with the editing, Louka and Kizzy were working on the music and i was working on the blog.

With the editing Gabi started by cutting everything up so it would be easier to edit, and piece together, we filmed quite a lot the other day and i think we got everything filmed in one night, but what she is doing in todays lesson is seeing if we missed anything out, to see if we need to film anymore another night.

Louka and Kizzy are working on the music, for inspiration they looked at the theme songs for tv programes like Skins and Missfits, they tried to get ideas from those. They were working on the programme garage band to create music. Garage band also has effects such as footsteps, that we could use in our film, to make it more realistic.

Filming - day 1

Today we have started to film, we all met at Kizzys house, because this is the location we have planned to film. We have already researched the area, so we know when, where, and how we are going to film. Firstly we filmed Gabi, we took a long panning shot of her, as if it was a CCTV camera, we thought this would add dramatic effect, and also it shows the mise-en-scene, aswell as establishing Gabi's character. I filmed Gabi from on top of a garage roof, she was standing near a car pretending to have just come put of it, she then turns and walks up towards the stairs i am filming from. The first time we took this shot we looked at it and thought we should add Kizzy and Mari, walking past her, to again establish the characters and show they are all living in the same area.
We faced problems whilst filming, because we started filming whilst it was still dusk, and the later scenes where darker, but we have a solution, because the later scenes are mostly inside a carpark, and the other scenes are outside, but it makes sense for it to be darker, because would be later in the day.

Change in plot

We visited the location the day before and looked at the areas we were going to film, we decided we wanted to film in the dark, to give it a dramatic effect.

One of the shots we were going to film, was the shot from kizzys window looking out on the boys beating up gabi, but from the window we couldnt really see the carpark, So we decided to change the storyline slighty, so instead of Mari and Kizzy finding out by looking out the window, they find out by louka posting the video on facebook, while Gabi is getting mugged one of the gang members films them. As the video has been added on facebook it adds modern culture and youth, as these days its all about social networking.

Plot.

Gabi is walking through a carpark, you can see that she is wealthy and posh, as she leaves a nice car and is walking around in heels, louka and his gang then approach her and start to mug her, they steal her phone, and shove her up against the wall and punch her. Whilest this is going one of the boys films it on there phone so they can put it on the internet later. After they mug Gabi they all run off and run around the corner. They then say bye and louka says that he needs to go and meet the girls meaning mari and kizzy, louka then posts the video on facebook from his phone. It then cuts to Mari and Kizzy in Kizzys room, trying on clothes and on facebook, Louka was supposed to meet them a while ago, and is really late, they try and ring him and go on his facebook, Kizzy then notices that louka has posted a video on facebook they watch it and its the video of them mugging gabi, Kizzy and Mari reconise Gabi and are really shocked at what they are seeing, they realise that Louka is going to be in a alot of trouble, Louka then knocks at kizzys door and they go and answer it. The last shot is of Gabi in a phonebox crying on the phone to her boyfriend Tommy who has a big reputation of being a nutter.

Casting the characters-Kizzy and Mari

Kizzy and Mari's characters were the easiest to cast , we wanted to use two friends as the people that witness the gang of young people and the victim outside, we wanted these characters to be girls because we thought it would be more realistic for them to be together as they could be at a sleepover etc. Because these were the last characters to be cast it was obvious that kizzy and Mari should play these characters as Louka and Gabi were already cast.

Additional shots

Due to the recent changes in the character of Gabi, we have decided to add soe more shots to the beginning of the sequence in order to establish her character. To show that Gabi's character is older and more wealthy, one of the first shots will be a longshot of Gabi, to show her outfit. We will also include a close up of Gabi's phone, to encourage the viewers to notice her wealth. Also, there will be footage of Louka's character and his friends approaching Gabi, from a longshot, in order to show how threatening the situation is. We also will swap between footage of the boys, the girls in the house and Gabi walking down the road, to build up three different stories and then bring them together.

Casting the characters-Gabi

We decided to use Gabi as the victim in our thriller opening , this was because we decided that she was the most innocent looking, also because Kizzy would be filming at this point so it made sense, we decided not to cast any extra's to be walking alongside Gabi's character, this is because we wanted the character to seem as lonely and vulnerable as possible in order to create more suspense.

Casting the characters-Louka and his friends

The main factors that helped us decided on who each character would be was the way each of us looked , because Louka is the only male in our group we thought it would be most effective if he was appearing as a more threatening character, we also decided that we would also use some of loukas friends as extra's, they would also play the Loukas friends in our thriller opening to help create a kind of gang looking group of friends. for example , here is a picture of the group of main characters that feature in the film KiDulthood.

Characters- Mari

Mari's character is similar to that of Kizzy's, in the way that they are both regular, happy teenage girls having fun. She is also a friendly, good student at college like Kizzzy's character. Kizzy and Mari will act like they know louka's character from college, and they know that he is misbehaved and gets into trouble with the police often. We also thought of someone on television that is similar to Mari's character, and we thought that Julie from desperate housewives is similar to Mari's character, as Julie is a young and friendly college student:
Julie is similar to Mari's character because Julie is fashionable, popular and friendly.

Change in plot and characters

We decided to change the way that the character Gabi is going to be represented, this is because we changed the plot slightly by decided that her character would appear more wealthy and therefore out of place in the location it is set in, we plan to do this by adding jewelry, a prop such as an expensive mobile phone and using the way the character speaks as a way of identifying her social background. We also still wanted her character to look innocent , we decided to keep the idea of her wearing light coloured clothes to help to portray this, however she will now be wearing heels to make the character appear more feminine and vulnerable, this will also create a more obvious difference between the way that her character and the characters, Louka, Kizzy and Mari are dressed.

here is an example of the type of phone she will be carrying .

Characters- Kizzy

Kizzy will play the character of an average teenage girl, having fun with her friend (Mari's character). The type of character she plays will be able to relate to the audience, as films about youth crime are often popular with young people. She will represent the steriotype of happy, energetic, friendly teenager girls, as opposed to the alternate teenage steriotype which is violent and rebelious (which is represented by Louka's character). We thought of the kind of character Kizzy would play, and we thought that her character resembled the character of Anna from desperate housewives. Here is a picture of Anna:

We thought that Kizzy's character would be similar to that of Anna, as Anna is quite a typical teenager, in her attitude, as she is reasonably well behaved, but does have an attitude, like all teenagers are expected to have. Also, she dresses in a similar way to how Kizzy will dress, as both characters are interested in fashion.

Characters - Gabi

The personality of Gabi's character is innocent, vulnerable, and wuthdrawn. We can tell this by the way she will be dressed, because all her clothes are white, creating an image innocence, like an angel. Also her shoes will be flat to show she is young, and not old enough to wear high heels. Her hair will be down and curly which would also add to the young look, as if it was straight and tied back it would make her see, more aggressive, and fierce.
Another personality trate if gabi's shy, and introvert, this is be also shown in her body language, her arms will be folded, saing she is shutting out everyone, also she will be getting attacked so she will feel small.
She will be wearing make-up, but not heavy make-up, just natural make-up, which will say she is innocent, and not portray a view of fierce.
Gabi's character will be based around Selina Gomes, we chose her because she acts on a programme called Wizards of Waverly place, which is a show on Disney channel, and this is portrayed as an innocent, child friendly channel. Therefore Selina Gomes is a perfect example for Gabi's character.

Characters. - Louka

The personality of Louka's character, is a stereotypical "bad boy" young offender, who hangs around with his friends, who are also youths, who live in a rough urban area.
The stereotypical youth wears the costumes shown in an erlier blog.
This idea of rough youths is a good idea for a thriller because in this time period, people are scared of gang violence, especially from youths.
Loukas character is forseen as young, dangerous, and reckless. The fact his friends are with him, makes him seem more threatening, and untouchable, also would inhance his confidence, and cockiness, because he thinks he is untouchable with hs friends backing him up, but what he doesnt understand is his friends wont always be there for him.
Louka's personality will be shown in his clothing, he will be wearing hoodies and trackies, with his hood up, saying he doesnt want people to know what he looks like. Also the script, and language he will be using will be known as slang.
Louka character will be based around Aml Ameen, because he acts in a film called Kidulthood, which is also based around youths, and gang violence. Aml Ameen plays a cold blooded, youth who only thinks about his mates and parties, we thought he would be the perfect example for Louka's character because in the opening Louka and his mates are going to be shown harrising Gabi.

Shot list

Today Gabi made a list of shots that we should include in our opening sequence. The shot list is as follows:
1) Midshot, hand held of Kizzy showing the camera her TV
2) Longshot, hand held of Kizzy showing the camera inside the fridge
3) Midshot hand held of Kizzy showing the camera the view of a car park out of her window
4) Camera zooms into a longshot of what is happening outside in the car park
5) Canted angle out the window, zoomed out a bit, as the camera is put down quickly
6) Hand held longshot showing Mari running towards the car park to help Gabi
7) Longshot of Louka and friends running away from the scene (with the sounds of a siren)
8) Canted tracking shot of Gabi lying on the floor, beaten up
9) Longshot showing Mari and Kizzy on their knees to help Gabi

I tried to include a variation of different shots, to make the sequence more interesting. I included the use of canted angles to make the action more dangerous, and to make my character look more vulnerable and hurt. I also included a tracking shot to show my character, when she is hurt lying on the floor, as I think that this would be an effective way of creating suspense, as if the camera moves quite slowly the audience will be eager to find out what has happened to her and if she is okay.


Here is an example of a tracking shot:

Cameras

We have missed one lesson this week due to ILP meetings, so we still havent dicussed how long we should take the camera for, the options are take for 2 nights in a row, or 2 seperate nights, i think 2 seperate nights would be the best option because then we can choose the days we film, and in the weekend we might not all be free aswell.

Costs

The production of our film will not cost anything because it is taking place at Kizzy's house which is in Cambridge, so it is easy to get to. Also, unlike our children's film, we should not have to buy any props, as all the props we will use we should already have, and we will already have the costumes, as they are just casual clothes.

Costumes for Gabi

As Gabi is playing the role of a victim of an attack, we will create the image of an innocent girl by making her wear white, simple clothes. This is an example of an outfit which will suit the role of Gabi:
But instead of high heels and a big bad, Gabi will wear flat shoes to create the image of innocence.

Costumes of Louka

As Louka is playing the part of a teenage gang member, him and his friends that will be present in the shot will be wearing dark clothing, to make them appear more threatening, with their hoods up to hide their faces. Here are examples of what Louka and his friends could be wearing:

Costumes of Kizzy and Mari

As the main characters of our film are teenagers, Kizzy and Mari will wear casual, fashionable clothes, to reflect their personalities and interests in fashion. These are some example outfits of what they could wear:

Editing

The editing will be slow and normal at the begining when Kizzy and Mari are in kizzys house messing around with the camera. The slow, relaxes pace reflects how relaxed Mari and Kizzy's characters are. However, when they run towards the car park to help Gabi the editing becomes fast pasted, in order to build tension and show the panic of the scene. At the begining the camera swaps between the hald held camera and the still camera on the tripod, so we get views from both cameras. Credits will be in between the action, to add tension, by cutting up the footage to make it more interesting.
Here is an example of this type of editing in a film called 'Harry Brown', which is a film similar to ours:



As you can see, in this opening sequence the credits are displayed in a white font on a black background which is quite effective, as it is plane. This idea could be considered for our opening sequence.

Mise en Scene

The location is Norolk Street, Cambridge, we are filming most of the opening at night time, and in this location, the reason for choosing this location is its centrel and also looks like rough area. This adds to our fear factor of violent acts by youths. The setting is going to be dark because, then unable to see who the predators are.

Credits

We thought about what credits we needed to include in our opening sequence. We though of the following:
Director, co-director, producer, actors, costume designer, camera crew, production company, sponsors, creative and media, music director, based on a novel by David Harrison.
We can make up some names and include our own names for the credits.
Here is an example of some clear opening credits, from the film 'panic room':

here is another image of our ident.

We decided that our ident logo needed alot of work so we spent alot of this lesson changing and modifiying it. we added animation and a theme tune.

Displaying the credits

At the beginning of our opening sequence we will display some credits, and instead of hearing music the audience will hear Mari and Kizzy's voices in the background making our home movie, saying things like 'this is my messy bedroom and my kitchen.' This makes the audience really interessted in whats happening as they can't see it, so they want to know whats going on. We thought of this idea after analysing the openinh sequence of 'Harry Brown', a film with a similar theme as our film, which is youthes and crime.
Also throughout the sequence the screen will go black and credits will appear. This will make it more interssting so it wont just be footage, there will be credits and well, also it will create suspense.

Planning the plot

Plot.
Me and kizzy are at kizzys house, making a home movie messing around with the camera imatating the tv programe cribs. For this part of the film we are using both the handheld camera and the camera on the tripod, so we get mine and kizzys point of view and the still cameras point of view. Kizzy walks around showing her house, filming it with the handheld camera, she then shows the window and the view of the carpark and says something like this is the lovely view of the carpark. We then see the view of the carpark through the hand held camera, kizzy then says what is that, and we see a girl lying on the floor, with a group of boys around her beating her up, then we hear sirens in the background so the boys run away. we then run down the stairs, leaving the handheld camera at a canted angle, so the viewers can still see the body lying on the floor, and me and kizzy outside trying to help. The still camera follows us running down the stairs and outside. we rund around the corner to help the girl, we then figure out its gabi and we try and help her. there is then a high angle shot of gabi lying on the floor and then a long shot of me and kizzy kneeling on the floor looking after gabi.

storyboarding

Today Gabi finished drawing and planning the shots with the storyboard.Here is it finished:

Analysis of another crime thriller opening

As our thriller is a crime thriller and uses the current phobia of youths I have decided to analyse the opening scene of a similar film. 'Harry Brown' is a recent film with the same theme.


Mise-en-scene:
-The credits are displayed in a simple way, just white font on a black background.
-The scene of the characters is dark, and they are all wearing dark clothes. This is to make the scene look dangerous.
-The opening sequence shows the use of drugs, which is something often associated with teenagers.
-Graffiti is on the walls to give the viewer an idea of the city location.
-Gun and shooting are shown, also things associated with young people.
-Overall the mise-en-scene is used to create a typical image of teenagers that people fear, relating them to drugs, guns and danger. It also presents them in a threatening way, as they are in a big group in a dark alleyway, covering their faces.

Sound:
-Loud sound of a motorbike, shooting, woman screaming and boys shouting, adds to the danger of the scene.
-Characters talking; slang and swearing. This shows their negative attitudes.
-The loud crashing sounds etc makes the viewer on edge.

Camera work:
-For the motorbike scene the camera is hand held. This makes the viewer see what is happening from the character's point of view. It is intended to scare the viewer and make them feel involved in the scene.

Editing:
-When the screen is black and displaying the credits, the voices of the characters talking can still be heard, which makes the viewer wander what is happening in the scene, until the scene is revealed. This adds to the suspense.

In our thriller opening we will be including some of the same features, such as the hand held camera effect, as we plan to do this at the beginning of our sequence. Also, we are planning to use the black screen with white writing for the credits, and we could consider playing the sounds whilst the black screen in on, in order to add suspense.

This is our finished ident image .

Costumes.

The cast is going to be Louka, Kizzy, Mari and Gabi. We are all going to act in the opening and all going to film, there might also be some of loukas friends in the background to add more of a fear factor of violent youths, also because more youths will look more intimidating.
Louka and his friends will wearing hoodies and tracksuits, we will be using mise en scene to create tension and suspense typical of a thriller because cant see who the boys are.
Kizzy, Mari, and Gabi will be wearing typical casual clothes.
The influence will be the phobia of violent youths.
The credits will be running through the opening, we are not sure about the font yet, we are still deciding.

Today we are still thinking about when to film, because we dont all have the same frees as each other, so we need to work out a suitable time that fits us all.
Kizzy and Gabi are looking for pictures for our ident, this is our logo for our production company.
They have been searching things like Mr Team Alex, to see what comes up in Google images.
We our also thinking about the plot of the opening, because we came across a problem with, why would kizzy and mari run out the house if they saw someone with a gun, they would most likely call the police. We came to a decision that they will call the police and we wil play police sirens in the background, and louka and his mates will run, leaving gabi on the floor.
Gabi is also doing the storyboard for our opening, she is drawing the pictures, and writing a description underneath each one.

We finally decided that we would create a crime thriller, because we noticed that many thrillers being made were relevant to the fears and phobias represented in the news and media. For example, the fear of the government turning against people and the fears many people have today of gangs, knife crime and youths. a recent thriller playing on this idea is 'Harry Brown'.

Music

We then brainstormed the music for our thriller opening, we thought about the different ways in which music could enhance the suspense created with the camera work, for example using childlike,clssical and happy music to put the viewer into a false sense or security only to use loud bangs, screams and other sound effects to shock them.We looked at the 'afterschool'trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGFbWhlVezo

Further ideas

We also had the idea of taking snapshots on a digital camera of mobile phone , this would create an innocent image, which would mean we could play around with the idea of putting something eery or unusual in the background to unease the viewer creating the feeling of isolation that is commonly used in thrillers.

Thriller ideas

we are thinking of the theme of our thriller, either psychological, political. Also kizzy thought of making i animation, but we thought animation wouldnt be as scary as real life.
A New idea is making it like the blair witch project, from a first person perspective, because this creates more tension, and a scarier atmosphere.
Another idea was filming some of the scenes on a mobile phone, because this would create an amateur effect and feeling of innocence.

Definition of a thriller

In this lesson we all brainstormed what we thought was the definition of a thriller; we thought of examples such as, butterfly effect, the number 23, silence of the lambs and the misery. Collectively we decided that the main features of a thriller was the feeling of isolation,they usually start of slow paced to build tension and suspense, taking the idea of using people everyday fears and phobias to mentally unsettle them.

preliminary task 2010

Due to the unfortunate weather conditions, not all members of the group could get to lesson. So Mari and Gabi had to work with Becky from another group to make the preliminary video.

Evaluation:
There is a continuity problem in this video, as in one of the shots our teacher is sitting in the background, and then in the next shot he is not there.
The 180 degree rule- this is very important. It refers to an imaginary line which cuts through the middle of the scene, from side to side with respect to the camera. Crossing the line changes the vierwe's perspective which may confuse the viewer. For this reason, crossing the line is avoided. In this preliminary task we followed this rule.

preliminary task 2010

Today we are planning our preliminary task. We are thinking of where to film it and have decided to film it in the corridor of the G block. Mari and Kizzy will be the two characters in this task having the conversation about the Christmas holidays. This time we will follow the 180 rule, as in our previous preliminary task we broke the rule. Also this time we will think about our positioning so that it is easier to film.
Here is the script:
Kizzy: hey Mari, you ok?
Mari: Yeah not bad thanks,you?
Kizzy: Yeah I'm good. How was your christmas?
Mari:It was great. How was yours?
Kizzy: It was good thanks :)