Feedback to rough cut

1) How would you describe the visual style?

• eerie
• spooky

2) use of editing/lighting/framing

• sun rising looks good

3) Which single image is most striking? . . . . and why?

• the egg, who's cooking it? if no one's about . . .

4) Give one example of an effective use of the following elements:

• props or settings - house, car, daffodil
• costumes - no characters or people
• performance - nothing really happened
• improvements - involve more things, leaves a lot of questions

Nothing really happened, could be bad or good - suspense, whats going to happen? but boring if theres random things pop up on the screen.
Need to have lots of busy people etc before the 'noise' then show the emptiness.
leaves many unanswered questions, it does not give too much away and keeps the audience guessing!

5) How would you describe the mood/atmosphere of the opening?

• creepy/eerie/empty/deserted

6) What other films/TV shows does it make you think of and why?

• ? something where people have died? car crash?

7) How has the music/sound been used to create atmosphere?

• We liked the dripping noises at the beginning - creepy, emphasis the emptiness
• We also liked the heartbeat - adds tension/suspense

8) How would you describe whats happening in the opening?

• nothing happens - empty scenes = mystery

9) Who are the characters

• no characters

10) What do you imagine the films about?

• people disappearing

11) What questions do you still have?

• what's happened to the people? where are they? why the car has been left with an opened door

12) What ways could the sequence be better?

• make more sense
• connections between shots
  
• more narrative e.g. examples of why they are gone (possibly abstract)
  

Our music soundtrack so far.

The music we included in our animatic and our rough cut is currently being changed to make it sound more eerie and empty, also in the short, flashing sequences we are going to make the music more climatic. We may also be adding a voice over of a television news report to give the audience a sense that something has gone wrong, also we may be adding some piano or slow violin music to the eerie footage to make it seem more empty and surreal.

Filming

Although I did use the shot list, I added several shots and locations as additional footage, also some
shots were cut as they were unrealistic. There were a few problems with location, in that people were
actually about early on a sunday morning, and were in the shop I was filming, therefore they got in some
of the shots which meant that I had to wait a long time for them to move. Also, I could not do our original
idea of filming a static TV because it got lines on it and looked bad. If I had the chance I would have
shot in the summer so that it was lighter earlier and there would be less people around. I also would have
found more interesting places to take the shots from, and maybe changed some locations to be a bit more
shocking.I would have also not filmed when I was ill and when it was warmer, so that my hand wouldn't have
shaken as much.

Sound in our thriller

The main use of sound in our thriller is the music soundtrack, which chris and Terri have been working on. Although we plan to also include other sounds like, TV static and possibly diagetic sounds, we have yet to decide on, possibly something like a hand clap or a crisp packet being opened or something similar.

Additional filming

Me and Alice started to film a couple more shots around Cambridge. Some were taken down by the train station and over the bridge. We took some shots of an abandoned building then some over the bridge where we found loads of little streets, so we took some at different angles. Down an ally way was another shot we took, this was difficult though as people kept walking by. After this we moved on and took some more like a cemetery and dark places which looked scary.

Filming

It's now 8:44 on a sunday morning, I've been up since 6:49 filming empty roads and shops, which are surprisingly busy for a freezing cold day, especially a sunday. However, I did manage to get the empty A10, an empty village centre, and a few salvageable shots of shops, however there were a bunch of annoying meldreth-iens who found it nessisary to come and stare directly at the camera. After narrowly avoiding death by cold face, I came home to watch the footage, and some of it's useable, although the most of it may need to be thrown out because of cars and people wandering into shot. I have about 15 mins total at this point.

Names in a title sequence

I watched a selection of film title sequence and i realised something. i realised that longer names look better than shorter, although in real title sequences they cannot do anything about this we however can. for example instead of chris the name christopher looks more professional. also second names look better longer than the first. a few double second names also look good.

Filming

Most of the filming we will be doing will be done during half term in Meldreth. After the shots are taken, we will review them and see if we need to re-shoot any of them.

Font

This is a font i have choosen which is from a game called Arcanum. The other image is of the map that is for the game.

Our Animatic (finally)

Finally completed after some troubles, unfortunately we were unable to include titles for now. Although as listed below we know what titles we are going to use. The music in our animatic seems to fit in well so far, although we plan to change the music to suit the footage more, as at first it appears a little too repeatative and eventually gets a bit boring.

Storyboard Example

Story Board for feature film 'Drona'

I decided to add this example so you can see what we are trying to achieve. Also it has some shots that we will be doing like the mouth shot and the long shots of rooms.

Shot list

Arcanum

• Shot 1 - Side, long shot of a main road
  

• Shot 2 - Long shot of a village shop, zooms in on door

• Shot 3 - Medium close up of abandoned car

• Shot 4 - Extreme close up of a barbies eye then blinking

• Shot 5 - Long shot of a cul-de-sac
  

• Shot 6 - Medium close up of a front door of a house, zooms in on the door

• Shot 7 - long shot of inside hall, zooms in down the hall

• Shot 8 - Extreme close up of a hand with a peircing through it, flashing fast

• Shot 9 - Low angled shot of a tap which water is coming out of, then camera move up to a birds eye view

• Shot 10 - High angled shot on frying pan which zooms in

• Shot 11 - Close up of a vase of flowers slightly dying

• Shot 12 - Extreme close up of someone bitting their lips

• Shot 13 - Long left cornered shot of an empty living room with static TV

• Shot 14 - Long shot of upstairs hall way

• Shot 15 - Long shot of empty bedroom with clothes scattered across the floor

• Shot 16 - Extreme close up of a hip

• Shot 17 - High angled long shot of the garden from the upstairs bedroom window

• Shot 18 - Low left angled shot of three garages
  

• Shot 19 - Close up of abandoned bike

• Shot 20 - Extreme close up of a TV screen with the title on it

This may change as we shoot.