Final Discussion Of The Effectiveness Of The Pre-Production Process

The pre production process has been very successful in developing our initial thriller idea into an actual film sequence that is to be made. The key aspects that have helped us develop are doing necessary research, storyboarding the step by step narrative, creating the shooting schedule, lists of props, costume, cast and location. Having made each of these documents it will hopefully help us as a group to be both efficient and effective on the day of shooting and help it to run smoothly.

In the pre production progression I have really contributed to the groups activities. I have made and helped to make the shooting schedule, cast list, costume list, finding locations, cast and crew call sheets, group roles, creation of folder (collection of documents and overall editing and tidying of all sections), creating the company logo & film poster. I feel that my specific skills lie in the delegation of jobs and the organisation of the group; this is why I feel that I have been a good group producer and overseer of the whole production file. I feel that I have made the visual design of the production file ergonomically pleasing.

I have learnt so much of the past few weeks throughout the planning stages, both filmically and technically. Before we started I would never have known what and how to do any of the stages that I mentioned in the first paragraph, for example I never knew the correct story boarding method until now.

I feel that the day of the shoot is going to go very well as we have planned every aspect of the day and each cast and crew member has received a call sheet expressing what to do, where to do it and when it should be done. Although what we still have to achieve that needs further development and planning before our shooting date is the floor and lighting plans which we haven’t made due to getting a location at a rather late stage. Apart from that we are all set for the shoot day and I really feel and hope that it all goes well; we will achieve this by sticking closely to our plans made for the day.

Creating Our Film Poster And Company Logo

We decided to make a film poster for the thriller that used images that helped to promote fear. We used two images layed on top of each other and blended together using the blending modes on photoshop. The film title has had a motion blur filter put on it to try and make the viewers feel unsettled.

We found it very hard to come up with a suitable production company name so we searched for synonyms of thriller, horror and fear. We felt that the best one was 'Phobia'. For our company logo we decided to make it mirror the style and content of the thriller idea that we are to make. (Production style mirroring content.) So we thought that we would make the word made out of baby's building bricks as to show an innocent creepy feeling as our idea is based on a child's storyline.

Account Of Location Requirements

Having sent out an e-mail to the whole school requesting for the use of someones house, we finally had a reply and someone offered us a suitable location. The house is suitable as it is on its own and not in a street, this increases the characters vulnerability as we know that they aren't close to help, no one knowing that they are in trouble and are on their own. Also the house has a path and drive at the front so we can use it for leaving the bundle and seeing the car driving away.

We arranged with the owner to go and reccy the house to take digital photographs and draw accurate to scale floor plans of each of the individual rooms that we will be using. We also had to design the lighting plans by considering where the main sources of natural light are. Doing this by measuring them accurately as to know how big the area that we have to black out so that we use artificial lighting to light the space as this is reliable, controlable and consistent with continuity. Shown here are the floor plans and photos that we took.

Creating A Shooting Schedule

After completing the storyboards we moved onto creating a shooting schedule. This is a very necessary document as it helps you and the rest of the group to stay organised throughout the day of shooting and gives you a schedule to stick to. This was a tricky process though as we had to try to think about and guess the amount of time it would take us to do each shot, including all the setting up and rigging of lights. We printed off another copy of the written shot by shot document of the narrative and went through dividing it up into the different locations. We only have 4 locations to shoot in, the living room, the child’s bedroom, the stairway and outside the house. We had to make sure that it was dark for the shots that take place outside which coursed a bit of problem as we don’t want to be there too late. When then went through giving each shot an estimated time for shooting and ordered each shot into a suitable shooting sequence. We estimated that as we are hoping to use a location that’s near by, we would arrive on set at about 9.30. We decided that we would give ourselves about 30-40 minutes of setting up time between each different shoot. I then went on the computer and wrote it up into a spreadsheet that explained it clearly. So at the moment we are shooting between 10.00 and 6.00.
We also decided to create call sheets for the 3 cast members also outlining the storyline as we needed to make sure that they knew what was going on and when they were needed.

Account Of Props And Costume

A major part of creating and generating realism in our thriller sequence is to have realistic costume and props so that the characters look as though they fit in to their surroundings. We are lucky enough to have a very large props and costume department at our school so we can source many of the things we need from their, but if they aren't in our school collection we then use a very good costume shop in Hazelmere. The costumes that we want to use are very simple and for the woman we wanted to create a relaxed look and feel for her so she would be wearing tracksuit bottoms, t-shirt, cardigan and slippers. We wanted the little girl to have an innocent look so we are putting her in white/pink pyjamas. Although for the man we want him all in black to reinforce the stereotype of black being dark scary.
Like with costume the props also help to generate tension which is an essential thing for us to achieve. The props that we will be needing are the child's room decorations, child's bed and duvet covers, a night light, tape player, Living room decoration, TV and remote, and car.

Finding Cast and Location

Due to the fact that no one in our group or even our class had or knew of a young girl who would be in the thriller or lived in a suitable house, we had to ask outside of our class. So I decided to write an email to all the day students in the school asking them if they would help us. We have our fingers crossed for a reply! The email that I wrote is as follows:

Hello all day students…

This is an urgent plea for help!

Does anyone have a SISTER around the age of 4-7 that can act and would be prepared to be in our media Thriller video?

AND

Does anyone live in a smallish secluded looking cottage that wouldn’t mind having their house used in a media video? This would involve a single day’s shooting.

Please, please, PLEASE reply if you can help as we need to know soon.

MAJOR FAVOURS AND REWARDS FOR YOUR HELP!

Thanks very much.

Finn Bruce, Seb Heseltine, Katie Read, Louisa Plasberg



When we got a reply from the email offering help, we contacted the people and requested images and contact details of them. We then imported the images into the cast list template that we had been supplied with. Shown bellow.

Account Of Research

We researched many different sources that we felt could help, aid and influence us in making our thriller title sequence. We looked for stories and news articles about child abductions and also films that showed good use of camera, sound, editing and mise-en-scene.

The first thing we did was look at the main theme of our sequence which is child abductions. The definition of this is the abduction or kidnapping of a child or baby by an older person. The most famous case was that of Montana Barbaro, who stole a child from a car park in Melbourne 4 years ago, and was found in a derelict house 40 hours later. There are many different forms of child abduction that exist, for example a stranger removes a child for criminal purposes, for child sexual abuse, torture, to elicit a ransom, or murder for extortion. This has recently taken on greater awareness as a result of movies and television series. We looked at some statistics about abductions and 74% of the victims of non family child abductions are girls, this helped to influence our use of a girl as the victim.

We looked at a few film extracts as research and the most important one to our thriller title sequence was the first scene of Psycho. It offers a voyeuristic look at lovers in a seedy hotel, Telotte argues, "As a result of this shift in perspective from a disembodied, narrative camera to an actual character's eye ... we are forced into a deeper sense of participation in the ensuing action." Having read that quote and seen how affective it looks in the film Halloween, (shown here in the youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKLlcI0cWI0 @ 2min 10 secs) we decided that we would start our thriller with a voyeuristic shot of the intruders POV looking into the house.

The cross cutting in the film ‘Don’t Look Now, shows how a film can be shown using a double narrative. This reflects our thriller ideas of having a double narrative cutting constantly between shots of things happening upstairs and downstairs.

This research has helped us a lot in creating a sequence that has improved narrative and filmic themes.

Process Of Storyboarding

We now began to start work on our storyboarding. The first process of this was to type up a step by step plan of the narrative. Once as a group we had got a solid narrative set in stone having made any necessary changes (of which we made a few) to make the sequence run more smoothly and to help enhance the realism. We then went about turning the written narrative into a shot by shot document. We had to make sure that this included all the titles/credits that would appear through the sequence. Having done that, I as the producer had to delegate out to the other members in the group the different shots that they would storyboard. When we began to produce the storyboards we had to create a different word document for every page of the storyboard, numbering both the shots and the pages. Once I had collected together all 12 sheets from the different members in the group, we went through looking for continuity, for example making sure the time of each shot was written as ‘2s’ rather than ‘2secs’ or ‘2secounds’. Once every shot was checked and if necessary corrected, they were printed and the artist began to draw the pictures explaining the shots in more detail.

Here is a picture of the template of which we entered the shot data into. We had to write the, Location, action, shot movement, sound, lighting and editing information. Then when all this was completed, they were printed out for the drawring to be drawn in.

Choosing The Group Idea And Our First Production Group Meeting

After everyone had presented their thriller proposals to the class we all voted on our top three ideas. Our teacher then went about giving each group the one that had most votes from within the group. In our case, it was my idea (as described in the previous post).

In our first production meeting as a whole group we looked at the narrative that I had presented to the class in my presentation. We went through step by step changing and updating the storyline so that it both made more sense and the sequence ran together in a fluid and flowing way. We had to develop the idea to make it as visually effective and scary as possible. We managed this by getting rid of the baby listener sequence as for the woman not to hear the baby listener she would have to have the TV on really loud, and she wouldn't do that if she had just put the child to sleep. So The narrative of the updated storyline is:

A women putting her child to bed and mum turning on the night light (see the night light go on from outside.) Women coming down the stairs and into the living room. Women watching the TV. Audience see a man entering through window. Goes up the stairs and lots of quick cross cuts of man entering child’s room and taking it. Women unaware of anything as watching TV. Audience sees man leaving carrying something. The women has had enough of flicking through channels so turns the TV off hears a car door shut and sees some car lights leaving. Goes to investigate and finds front door open. Sees a bundle down the path. Opens it up and finds toy/tape playing creepy innocent child music. Cut away of child’s empty bed. She then looks up at house, child bedroom light off and ground floor window open with curtain blowing in the wind.

Account Of Giving Your Presentation On Possible Thriller Ideas.

We began the process of planning our foundation production with each member of our class giving a detailed presentation on a potential idea. This presentation examined the narrative structure, casting, locations, props and most importantly the way in which the sequence would generate tension and appear generically authentic. My idea is of a women and child in the child’s bedroom saying goodnight and being watched from outside. The woman then comes downstairs, with a baby listener and starts doing some hovering or watching the TV very loud. The audience sees the wind blowing a curtain and a shadow enter through a window. You see the lights on the baby listener going right up to red, as if there is someone screaming in the room, but mother can’t hear anything due to the hover noise. She starts to watch some TV, audience then sees the shadow of the man coming down the stairs and leaving, he is carrying something. (Privileged audience knowledge). The door bell rings and she goes to the door which is already open. She can hear the sound of something down the path. She goes to see what it is, as she gets closer there is a tape player, playing either a nursery rhyme or a recording of the mum reading the child a story. She then gets to it and finds her child dead. Slow fade as she falls to the ground crying (slow mo).

The key points that will create tension in my idea are, being shown that the house is secluded and no one can help them. Feeling like there is someone watching from outside in shot 1. The audience seeing the man entering when the character doesn’t realize. (privileged audience knowledge). The creepy eerie recording playing on the tape at the end.

Our target audience would vary from the age of 15 upwards as the horror/thriller genre attracts all ages. Although we would focus mainly on the male genre as a typical stereotype is that males prefer action/thriller films. Our target audience is from any social class as it dosent effect our film.

The type of institution that would produce this film would be a major Hollywood production company, big budget and A-list celebreties.

Here are photos of each slide of my Presentation:

Account Of Lesson On ‘What Is A Thriller?’

We had a presentation in class about what is a thriller. We examined the concept of a thriller and learnt that the thriller genre is difficult to define because so many of the emotions and reactions that come from thrillers are part of the whole experience of film. It is a meta-genre. There are many different types of thrillers, most commonly, crime, psychological. Supernatural, political and espionage. However the problem with thrillers is that they only rely on intricacy of plot to create fear, apprehension and suspense in the hearts and minds of the audience. It plays on our most basic worries by drawing on the most infantile and therefore repressed thoughts. These thoughts can be voyeuristic, sexual or violent. Yet the thriller manages to achieve this by raising questions in the minds of the audience, and they use universal themes that are of the struggles of love, death or money. This is also achieved by a scene of delay, as when something eventually happens, there is a sense of relief from that tension. The audience enjoys watching pain and suffering being inflicted on the characters as our pleasure is derived from their discomfort. Finally the word thrill is ‘to pierce’. Giving you an unpleasant feeling, and the thrillers that we produce must draw on all these influences, evoke primitive, gut-level feelings rather than more sensitive, delicate emotions.

Account Of Editing Our Preliminary Task

Once all the footage from our shoots of the conversations between two people were shot, the footage was then digitised and put onto a firewire hard drive to be cut and edited using the Final Cut Pro software run on G5 Macs. We then had to watch each take of every shot and log all of the best shots into the log bin, (rejecting ones that included actors’ mistakes, were out of focus, poorly constructed/composed or broke the 180o rule and thus compromised continuity and reality). The best shots were dropped/dragged onto the final cut timeline. We then went about editing the shots to put them into a logical sequence by trimming and extending the key shots to enable smooth continuity editing, that generated illusion of a continuous event (conversation). We did this by observing the simple rules of construction and cutting on motion whilst following the 180o directional/position rule giving a smooth and seamless final look.

Account Of Shooting Our Preliminary Task

Our preliminary task consisted of us filming a conversation between 2 people. The objectives of the task was to lean and familiarise ourselves with the camera, and learn to use the technical settings accurately, such as the composition of shots, framing, focus and continuity. The task was also to practice and understand the concept of constructing a narrative sequence using the method of continuity editing. We also learnt how to produce footage (rushes) that could then be digitalised, letting us log and cut on a timeline using non-linear editing.

Whilst we were shooting our Preliminary Task there were 4 main technical areas that we had to pay close attention to. These areas were Camera, Sound, Story Boarding and the 180o Rule. We didn’t need to worry about aspects such as lighting and mise-en-scene etc. as it was only a basic task and we weren’t using lighting or carefully constructing mise-en-scene.

We were constantly changing and adjusting the settings on the camera. The set up was an important part, we had to make sure that the camera was set up on a tripod and levelled properly using the spirit level bubble. Using a tripod meant that we could do pans and tilts in a very smooth way and aspires to high production practices.
One key technical area that we had to take into consideration was the framing of each shot. When we set the camera up for each shot we had to set the focus (making sure manual focus is on). Zooming in to the furthest point in, focusing up and then zooming back out meant that everything between the camera and the point we zoomed in on was in focus. When we were positioning the shot we had to take into account whether we were giving the subject sufficient headspace and also looking, walking or talking space. When choosing the angles we had to think about the effect that they might make, such as high and low angles affect the status of the subject felt by the audience. Before we were able to film we had to check that the settings on the camera were correct. These include, making sure that the white balance is set to the right kind of light (inside – artificial, outside – natural) the exposure is set to the right level letting in the right degree of light through the lens for the particular shot. Also making sure that the gain is set to 0 if possible and making sure that you let the tape run for approx 30 seconds before you start filming onto it. This is because sometimes when a tape has been played a lot the beginning can stretch and deteriorate and glitch.

The sound that we recorded was recorded using the mic mounted on top of the camera. This is a directional microphone but because it was always pointing in the same direction as the camera we didn’t need to worry about making sure it was facing the right way. We had to make sure that the levels on the camera were ok so that the sound wasn’t distorting or peaking.

On a few occasions we had to stop and think about 180o rule, this is the invisible line that runs between the camera and the main action that must not be crossed as it dictates the direction of movement. All the movement of the subjects must also be in the same direction to ensure directional continuity.

The storyboarding produces the technical account of shot action, sound, movement, angle, editing transition, timing and lighting. We were infact given some very basic storyboards, which just outlined the task for us. They were very prescriptive to ensure that we didn’t break continuity. Although we were allowed to add in some extra shots, for example we did a focus pull from foreground in focus of the man worrying pulling to the background in focus of the women entering into the shot. We also added a pan shot of the women just before entering into the room. These additional shots provided variety and choice in the editing process.
These were all the main aspects that had to be taken into account during our shoot. In our next task we will have much more to think about when we are using lighting and all that comes under the topic of mise-en-scene.

Intro To Using Final Cut Pro Editing Package

In the lesson on editing, we were taught the 5 main aspects of the editing process using the Final Cut Pro packages that are run on the G5 Macs. Firstly all the footage from a shoot are taken (and rushed to the studio, giving the footage from the day the name of ‘rushes’) and then get digitised from tape and put onto a firewire hard drive. This making it portable so that you can edit from any computer in the edit suite. Secondly, you have to go through a painful process of logging. This entails someone watching each and every take of a shot and choosing the best one. You then select that section of the tape and log it, discarding the bad takes. Thirdly, we were shown how the editing takes place on the software. We learnt how the footage is placed on a timeline; this makes it very flexible and easily modified and adjusted. The forth aspect is actually dropping the best shots down and onto the timeline. Once the shot is on the timeline you can trim the shot, adjust the colour and the speed, (up or down). Then the fifth and final step is adding suitable sound on top of the clip. You can also add any buzz tracks and manipulated digetic or non-digetic sounds including music soundtracks and effects to add impact to a sequence. This process allows a narrative to be constructed from a selection of apparently unconnected shots and organise and arrange them into a logical sequence.

Intro To Video Camera

Having learnt about stills cameras, we then continued to go on and learn about how to use a video camera, the type of camera that we used is a DV cam. We were taught how to firstly, erect the tripod to the desired height, attach the camera to the tripod, secure the microphone, and then finally bubble the tripod so that you have a well-framed image. Then came the basics of how to set up the on screen controls. At the top of the screen, the battery meter and time code are displayed. The time code shows how many hours, minutes, seconds and frames you have filmed for and how far into the tape you are. We were taught that we should always remember to only start filming at 30 seconds into the tape, in case the beginning of the tape is damaged. We were shown how to adjust the appature and shutter speed, which control how much light is let into the image and are displayed in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, along with the gain control, this adds false light to the image. At all times this must be kept as low as possible, most preferably at 0dB as it can cause noise on the image. The white balance control that is used to tell the camera weather we are shooting inside or out and are displayed as either a light bulb or sun symbol.

Intro To Stills Camera

In our first lesson on cameras, we were given a digital camera, we learnt about the aspects of using and understanding the appature (the cameras eye), focusing the lens, changing the shutter speed and the settings on manual mode. Once we had been taught how to use and operate the camera in the correct way, we were taught how to compose a picture in the correct way. The use of framing, for example the shot size and giving the character suitable looking or walking space etc. Another area to consider is the composition of the photograph, most importantly being the rule of thirds. All this governed by the 12 composition rules.

Why I Chose Media Studies!

On arriving at Hurtwood House I decided to take the Media Studies course as I am very interested in learning about the way that the media industry is run and also the styles and techniques used in film production. I want to do something within the media field as a job later in life. I am very interested in, advertising, photography, graphic design, film producer, event/music management etc.

My favorite TV shows that have truly inspired me are, 24, Damages and The Mighty Boosh. The films that I have really enjoyed and have stayed with me and will stay with me forever are films such as 'Its All Gone Pete Tonge', 'Trainspotting' and 'The Interpreter'. All these are made by fairly small film company's (compared to Hollywood).

I am very much looking forward to learning more and more over the next two years studying media.