VIDEO OF EVALUATION

EVALUATION

Post Production Questionnaire Results

1. Do you like the storyline of the film ?

2. Do you believe the music suits our film ?

3. Do you think that the dolly scene is better then the shadow scene?

4. Do you feel the actors were convincing ?

5. Were the titles effective ?

6. Do you understand the rewinding scene ?

7. Do you notice the 'BANGS!' in the shot of every title ?

These were the results of the post-production questionnaire. The sheet that was handed out to be filled in is below.

TECHNOLOGY

The technology that i used was very assisting me in all different areas of my research, such as finding films that were related to my thriller, for this i used YouTube. There were many videos to watch from and without this website, many of the areas that we had to over would not have been possible.

Secondly, Adobe Premiere Pro was the very advanced editing software that i edited my thriller in. The capabilities of this programme are very advanced and i was able to turn a raw piece of film into a 2 minuite thriller due to this software.

Film company sponsors

We chose LIONSGATE Entertainment as our main sponsor for our production because "they are the leading company with next generation studios with major presence amongst the production and distribution of motion pictures within the UK". They are also a company who invest in smalltime motion pictures that are made by producers who are believed to be 'upcoming'.
We also chose UK Film Council to sponsor our thriller because they are a company who have £15 million a year to invest across the country in a series of short feature films. Being supported by the UK Film Council who give them the funding. They welcome applicants for all kind of film- from commercial mainstream, to experimental, from genre movies to personal documentaries and from animation to live-action thrillers.

FONTS

The font that my group and i chose was a font that we all felt portrayed the correct style of genre that we were aiming for. It is a spooky/mysterious feel to it and it portrays the correct type of genre that we are aiming for. The font has a slight glow to the edges of it and gives a sense of not knowing what will happen next. The titles are introduced along with a 'BANG!' sound effect. We chose to put this sound in-conjunction with the titles because we believed that this gave it a sudden surprise effect that we are aiming to achieve and it may help us to scare the audience.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack that we decided to use was called 'Samara Morgan theme- the ring soundtrack'. This soundtrack took us around 6 days to find, we searched over 35 theme tunes until we eventually found this one. Our search took so long because we felt that within a film or TV programme, the music was the thing that made suspense and that made all the drama take place. Without music, it is very boring to watch a programme such as '24' because there would be no build-up of an action sequence without a main song or sound playing in the background.

The sound effects that we used were very easy to find, we used videos from www.youtube.comand put them into a video to sound converter. This was done because we had to, somehow, get the sound from the video onto our USB and then pug the dongle into the computer to upload the sound into Adobe. However, we found some problems when doing this because we were not copying the files to the computer but simply 'temporarily' placing them into the video, but when the USB stick was removed, the sound disappeared from our opening sequence. What we did instead was copy the file to the computer and then within Adobe Premiere Pro, import the file from the computer that we wanted to insert.

TITLE

I believe that the title was one of the most important parts to our thriller. This is because a title will determine whether or not someone will be interested in watching it. If you have a title that intrigues you, it will make you want to find out more about it.

What we did was think of the story line of our thriller and think what it was about, then we brainstormed a random group of possible titles, some which were good and some which were bad. Finally after various hours, we decided on the title, 'The apple doesn't fall far..'.

We collectively decided that this was the best title because it was a play on words, in our story, the girl kills her dad eventually and through-out the opening sequence, we learn that he also used to abuse her. The saying, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree is a very common and well known saying. it means in other words, like father, like daughter. We felt that this was most appropriate as we only include half of the expression, leaving the other half to be wandered upon and therefore getting the attention of the audience to make them want to see the film.

On Thursday we began our filming for our title sequence to a thriller, we arrived at our location in Radlett at about 4.45pm when we got to our location we had an option of 2 rooms to film in, one of them was more classic and old fashion than the other with stained glass lamp shade from the 1970's and a small fireplace with an antique style rug on the floor. The other was a more open room, more modern with grand furniture however yet again contained a fire place.

As a group, we decided that it was best to film in the first room because this was more of a scene we were trying to create set in history.

We also decided that due to the male actor not being able to attend the filming session on this particular day and that we had to film on this day because this was the only day we could do, we decided it was best to only film one scene where there is a shadow of the girl getting abused by the father on the wall. We had to have one of our group members to act in this scene as the face was not visible and this was the only way to get this scene done.

We were each assigned to roles, Nicky was filming, Rebecca was doing the lighting for the scene, Anneliese was doing the directing and i was doing the acting, playing the role of the father.

Throughout the duration of the filming, we found that the shadows on the wall were very hard to create due to the size of the room and the power of the light.

One main problem which we had was the amount of time we had to film, we all found that it took much longer than expected to set up the scene and all the lighting and furniture as we desired. All together this probably took the best part of 40 minutes and this wasted alot of time and left us with only 30 minutes to film.

Another problem we had was that we wanted to make the abusing look real but obviously we cannot due to the fact that we are using a 6 year old girl as the daughter. What we had to do was, once my hand was on the girls face, i had to push her head to the side, then in editing, we will make it look as if i am actually hitting her on the cheek because we will speed the scene up.

The shadows on the wall were very effective because it gave it a feel as if it was a flashback which is what we are trying to achieve. There were also many good points about the scene, such as the furniture was older furniture which helped us create the time period we were aiming for. The lighting was exactly what we wanted with the lamp shades being old style.

Hopefully, this week we are going to film on Tuesday and during this filming session, we intend to film the first scene where the father is laying dead on the floor and the girl is sitting there in front of him playing with her toys very innocently. For this we need to go and purchase some prosthetic blood. This is because the man will have to be lying in a pool of blood for this to make the scene more realistic otherwise the viewer may not know what is going on with a man laying there on the floor.

On Saturday we filmed the scene with the dead man and the girl with her toys on the floor. We started by taking a variety of photos to decide where we were going to film. We decided that the best place to film was facing the main fireplace. This is because the fireplace is a very old style burner and looks very classic. Also, this enables us to include a light shade that is a very old 1970’s style shade. This is where we are aiming the scene and the time period in which it is set in.

In addition, once we decided where we were going to film , we asked the man to lay down on the floor, we asked him to wear a white t shirt that would get ruined and a pair of old jeans. Before he layed down, we asked him to lie on a towel, this was part of our risk assessment because when we were squeezing the prosthetic blood out on him, it could go on the carpet and there was a warning on the packaging that it could stain materials. So we placed a towel underneath him however when we filmed we removed this.

We then decided that in our shots we would include the fire place, we decided this because the fireplace is an old looking fireplace and a fire symbolises danger and warning, and the girl appears o be all cute and sweet however as we find out, she has killed her father which is unexpected.

When we were filming, we left the curtains open slightly, this was to show that there was a small amount of natural light in the room. This light, we believed represented hope which could be related back to the young girl. In addition, we placed the man by the light, which could represent the man as now finally being at peace with himself because he was abusing the daughter.

Once we had decided upon this, we chose where to place the young girl. We decided to position her in front of the man, closer to the camera because we decided that we would use a slow change in focus and slow zoom from the foreground to the background to change the viewer’s attention. This would enable us to create a creepy effect and in editing we could add some music that would make the viewer feel more evolved with all the action.

Equipment

The XL1S is the best interchangeable lens mini DV cam corder in the world. It offers broadcasting quality and a wide variety of changeable manual functions. It was built for users with professional needs in the media industry.

A camera dolly is a specialised piece of filming equipment designed to create smooth camera movements. The camera is mounted onto a dolly and this has wheels on it which is then pushed around to give a smooth feeling to the filming. Dollys come in all different shape and sizes, usually, the professional ones used on film sets are used in conjunction with a track that is placed along the path that the directors wish to film from.

Lighting is very important on a film set, this can create many different moods or feelings to a scene and can change the meaning of something completely.

Key Light - A key light is the main light that is used to highlight the form and dimension of the subject in camera. With a key light, you are also able to create a silhouette effect which is essential in films using a Film Noir effect. These types of films include directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Nicholas Ray.

Back Light- A back-light is used to light up a subject with an illumination affect, This causes the edges of the subject to glow, while the other areas remain darker. The back light is usually placed directly behind the subject in a 3 point lighting set-up.

Fill Light- The fill light is often softer and, by definition, less intense than the key light. T. For example, a fill light that is a small fraction of the power of the key light will produce very high-contrast or low-key lighting, while filling with half or more of the key light power will produce a high-key, low-contrast tone

REFERENCES

2 films that i have chosen to reference are 'Orphan' (2009) and 'The Amityville Horror' (2005).

in the trailer of 'Orphan' there is a scene in which we have tried to replicate where the girl is swinging on the swing. This gives a sense of loneliness and a sense of separation from all of the children's friends. In the scene that we shot however, it is dark whereas in the other one, it is light, we filmed this in darkness because we believed that it would add to the sense of mysteriousness.

Above, you can see on the right, the girl from 'Orphan' and on the left is our shot that we filmed, in both of these scenes we can see that the girl is alone with nobody there which shows that she is different from other children. Also in both of our films, there is creepy music in the background which adds to a sense of mysteriousness.

In 'The Amityville Horror' trailer, there is a scene where the clock rewinds, this gives an effect of going back in time. This is a very common technique used by film directors. In my film, we wanted to create an effect of going back in time but we also didn't want to just film a clock rewinding because that is very common, what we decided to do was film the entire project and then at the end of it, once it was on Adobe Premiere Pro, reverse the entire film and speed it up to over double its speed, we also raised the light intake on it to give it an effect of a dream, and then we added in a rewinding sound.

In the first picture we can see the clock rewinding however in the second picture below the time one, we are able to see that the image is more hazy and brightened up, we did this by editing the light intake settings on Adobe Premiere Pro. We did this because we found that this created a sense of a dream rather that if we left the colour settings as they were filmed and this looked more like the affect that we were trying to create.

Storyboard

RISK ASSESSMENT

Risk assessment is a process that is used to determine the risk of many different perspectives in filming, these include, the risks that can be carried with lighting, cameras, props, location ect.

Today, we finally completed all 40 of our questionnaires, we chose to take 40 surveys because, it was an even number for each one of us to have 10 questionnaires to carry out. we also believed that this was a substantial enough number so that we could achieve a wide spectrum of people to take a survey result from.

Below is our questionnaire that we designed;

I now have the results we obtained from all 40 of our questionnaires which i have put into numerous bar graphs ;

From these results, we will base the rest of our filming on the outcome of these results because we believe that this information that we gathered are what the audience requires.

We have made a final date to film which is this Saturday the 27th February. This should hopefully be our final day of filming and then after that we aim to begin editing our thriller.

My group and I intended to start filming last week on Monday, however one of the members in our group was not able to attend so we made a group decision to postpone the filming. We then made a schedule of when we are filming to enable each member of the group to know exactally what the filming dates are. We decided to make this because this way, we are all much more organised and there can be no excuses for not being able to attend the filming.

For our opening sequence to a thriller, we have decided that we are going to have to film in an old wooden classic house, we will also need to film in a quiet park where there are swings and on a quiet street. Our idea is to have a girl playing with toys, focus changed to the background and we see the dad laying there dead on the floor surrounded in a pool of blood, then we see a flashback of a shadow on a plain wall of a girl being abused along with sounds of shouting and crying. ( all in shadow on the wall) Then it rewinds to the beginning shot which is a girl on a swing, quietly in a deserted park, and singing to herself with a doll in her hand. The doll then falls on the floor (match on action) in slow motion ( sound of door shutting as doll hits the floor) change scene to girl shutting door, we see the girl walking through the hall in the house, going to sit down, she sits down with the doll ,smiling and platting the dolls hair, over the shoulder shot over dad and we see the dad bringing the newspaper up after seeing her play with her doll, and making sure that she is okay by asking her 2 or 3 brief questions. The dad then proceeds to carry on reading the newspaper and lifts it back up to read.2 Seconds later, the dads newspaper being put down, then still over the shoulder, we see the girl sitting there cutting the dolls hair with a big sharp knife staring at the dad with dark thick makeup on her face and blood dripping from her. Then it ends with a loud scream of a man.

Tomorrow we are beggining to film, we are going to one of the members in our groups grandparents house. This is because they have an ideal location for what sort of place we want to film in and it is local to all of us because it is in radl

For the actors, we are using a 7 year old girl who lives in radlett, she is a cousin of one of the members in my group. For the role of the father , we are using a parent as this is very easy and practical. We have now purchased the prosthetic blood. In addition, we have also got a doll that we are going to use.

TYPES OF SHOTS

Close-Up

In the close-up shot, a certain feature or part of the subject takes up most of the frame. A close up of a person usually means a close up of their face

POV (point of view) shot

A point of view shot is a short shot that shows what a character is looking at. We see the view from the actors (subject’s ) eyes.

Over the shoulder shot:

In film or video, an over the shoulder shot is a shot of someone or something taken over the shoulder of another person. The back of the shoulder and head of this person is used to frame the image of whatever the camera is pointing toward.

Establishing Shot

In film and television, an establishing shot sets up, or ‘establishes’, a scene's setting and its participants. Usually it is a shot at the beginning or end of a scene indicating where, and sometimes when, the remainder of the scene takes place.

Extreme Close-up

Exreme close-ups, show the audience/viewer real emotions of a character or extreme detail that would normally be seen in such shots as a close-up or long shot.

Medium Long Shot

The medium closeup is a further shot from a close up but it also is not a long shot. This shot shows the face more clearly, without getting uncomfortably close and is usually from the waist upwards.

Throughout the past 4 weeks i have been filming my preliminary task, this consists of filming various types of shots, for example over the shoulder, match on action and 2 person shot. I finished editing my preliminary task on monday the 18th of january.

I chose to film mine with Anneliese Meisel, Rebecca Ross and Nicky Leslie. Throughout the duration of the filming, we came across many pros and cons about filming in the way that we did.

Firstly, some of the pros were we filmed in order of what was going to be shown on the screen, this was good because it meant that every person knew what we were doing and how it connected to the previous or later part of filming. We also made sure that each person had a go at filming which proved to be very good because it helped us gain the knowledge of who was better at filming. Finally, we made sure that each member of the group was aware of what was going on in the current and next lesson just in case one of the members of the group were away and their space had to be filled.

In addition, some of the cons were that the dolly used, was faulty and so on some of the footage, it was very shakey and bumpy. this footage had to be scrapped and could not be used. Another bad thing that i found was that not every team member knew exactally what their roles were. This will have to be changed for the thriller video because each member should have an individual role rather than each member do whatever because it will get too complicated.

We also found that during the editing process on Adobe Premiere, the sensitivity of the microphone was wrong, we found that in some shots, the background was a lot noisier than that of which the other scenes consist of. We also found that when we were filming without the dolly and we were holding the camera, the microphone tended to make a rustling noise.

Overall i really enjoyed filming and editing my preliminary task and found it very challenging at first but towards the end it was very enjoyable. i really enjoyed the editing and found that very easy to do once i learnt the correct skills for Adobe Premiere which was the editing software that i used.