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.