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