The effects we used

We used these effects:

• Wind blur
  
• Zoom blur
• Colour correction
• Brightness and contrast (bezier)
• Sepia
• Tint
• Mask feather
• Image mask
• Colour tint
  
• Blink
• Noise
• Day for night
• Speeding up/down
• Solarize
• Invert

Screen grabs

These are screen grabs, they are stills we have taken from our video.

Finished Project

This is our final project.

The first rule of producing.....

...... is GET IT DONE!
So, therefore, I have spent the past few lunches (one with Lousie) working on the timeline, and... YAY it's all in the right place. So that saves one job for friday.
What still needs to be done:

• The soundtrack needs to be re-timed to fit with the footage, and then transfered onto the movie
• We need to add credits to the movie.
• We may need to cut down a few clips, but probably not.

Thats it.

Rough Cut Evaluation and What there is to be done

What worked well:
Although the rought cut was not an accurate replication of our final idea, it was still fairly recieved by other members of the class. I regret not coming to class on monday because if I had, I could have explained how the footage was arranged and an hour and a half worth of work could have been salvaged. However, we got some good feedback and useful things to improve on.

What still needs to be done:
Effects still need to be added to the clips to make them look more obscure and interesting. Also, a clip order needs to be finialised, and we need to arrange the clips in reference to the music. Some aditional filming may also be done.

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.

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.

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.

The Credits for our thriller

These are the credits, each lines is what will appear on a new shot:
Frank Waterman

Amanda Trough

John Keroscene
Benjamin Dover

With Teresa Richardson

Casting Designer
Nick Potamitis

Costume Designer
Clair MacKenzie

Original Score
Chris Hulme

Editor
Louise Housden

Director of Photography
Alice Walker

Story by
Mark Patterson

Written by
Philip Smithson

Produced by
Nigel Parker-Loose

Directed by
Terri Vineall

Life Films Present

Arcanum

Font Styles

Here are some examples of font styles I thought might be good to use for our titles:

Some more thriller intros

I thought I'd post some more thriller intros which I was inspired by, unfortunately the embedding wasn't working, so I've just given the links to you tube.

http://www.youtube.com/v/h5lbZCGrt4Y&rel=1

This is the intro to a movie called "Ginger Snaps". I think it's very effective because it immediately confronts the audience with some rather unsettling images of teenage girls pretending to kill themselves. The music mixes classical violins with a contemporary beat which underlays the mix of new and old which is continued throughout the sequence. During the sequence, we are introduced to two girls, although it their faces are not always clear until the end of the sequence when we see them in a classroom. The sequence consists mainly of pictures which are zoomed in or out of, or sometimes panned. These are spliced with small clips of the pictures being taken. It's set in a suburban looking house for parts, and a more traditional, sometimes Carrie-Esq house for other parts. Not much about the story is given away, all we find out is that there are two teenage girls who seem to have odd hobbies.





http://www.youtube.com/v/NG-Z6-nFQBo&rel=1

This is the start to a movie called "Swordfish". It's quite interesting because there are no titles or writing throughout the whole intro. We are introduced to a character, although we don't find out his name, we only hear and see him talk about Hollywood and films. He's the only person we see fully in the entire sequence. Mostly the sequence looks as though it's being shot through a hand held camera, however, it switches between this and more professional looking shots, for example the cigar being lit. We don't learn anything about the story or setting, because all we see is a gray wall, which doesn't give anything away. We don't really hear music, but there is a small, quiet classic sounding song in the background.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxgeH8InR9g

"The butterfly effect" is a psychological thriller, in which a man revisits his past through diaries he wrote at different times in his life. In the title sequence, the first thing we see it the chaos theory about how even a flap of a butterfly's wing can cause a tsunami half way across the world, we then see the main character rushing into a room, and writing a note. The room looks like an office, and the note he writes entices the viewer and makes them want to keep watching because they want to know who the "her" he's writing about is, and why he could be dead if someone finds the note. This then leads on to butterfly's flying around and scans of brains during which the title of the movie appears. This is all accompanied by some classical string and woodwind music, which builds suspense.




I chose these examples because they show how varied the thriller genre is, they are all very different movies, which would be put under the thriller genre.

Some locations which may be used

These are just some places near my village I thought might be good for our final piece. For example, empty train station, main road, shops, centre of my village, train line etc. I thought it might be a good idea because it will help us visualise the places more easily. I also made a video of a cul-de-sac which might be good.

Feedback

-Be careful on roads and while frying egg, these could be dangerous
-Make sure it's not horror
- Check there are no people in the shots on location
-Good that we have no actors
-May have to do a lot of filters in final cut to keep it interesting
-Not clear name (good and bad)
-Make sure we know what location means in comparison to shots and props.

Pitch

Title : Arcanum

Plot: People are missing. Empty streets will fade slowly in, soft eerie music playing in the background to show the dead silence that has infected the world. we will then have loud, screeching, screaming music and flashes of disturbing and distorted. then cutting once more to the soft eerie scene.

Locations:

1: Empty road
2: post office
3: abandoned car (in road)
4: Eye
5: Cul-de-sac
6: Open door/lawn mower
7: hall way
8: Hand/arm
9: Bathroom tap
10: Frying egg
11: flower on table

Fleshed out idea

These are some of the locations we're going to use for our thriller:
-A 10/ other main road
-Cemetery/Church
-Village/town center
-Cull-de-sac/Suburban housing estate
- Empty rooms in a house
-Knocked over news stand
-Car abandoned in middle of street
- Bathroom with running tap/half used tooth brush
-Half Hung Out Washing
-Lawn mower tipped over
- Half cooked food

The idea is that these places have been recently abandoned, like people have been vaporised, or run away instantly, or stuff like that. These images will be inter cut with flashing sort of weird images. Then we might have the name of the producer etc coming up over paintings. All the flashing images are gonna be like, barbies heads being squashed, and like guns to peoples heads and stuff like that.

Initial ideas

We have each had ideas for the opening sequene of our thriller;

Louise's idea:

'Death at a graveyard', Shadowy figure standing in a graveyard and slowly moving up to the camera, then he disappears and comes back in a jump to a extreme close-up. Then he appears in a bus stop with blood on his hands.

Chris's idea;

Footage of empty streets and other places you would expect to see people, for example a play park etc.with mellow slow and basic music. Shots cut up with very distorted, fast blurred imagery that is not recognizable as anything in particular with high pitched racket in background. Titles appear over the calm, mellow shots and film name at very end.

Terri's Idea;

A man fussing around his house, fast chilling music following him as he goes about obsessively moving and cleaning before switching to fast moving disturbing scenes of violence.

Alice's Idea;
Through the eyes of a mysterious man, the camera follows a route to a play park, where a little girl is playing, the man advances, and when the girl turns around, she stabs him.

Battle Royal

Battle Royal is a great film, and I chose it because it has a sense of childlike fear that you only find in japanese cinema. It's surreal the way the woman on the video is so cheery when she's instructing a class of kids to kill each other. It's a really great film full of suspense, especially at the start of the movie when all you see is a little girl covered in blood smiling with reporters going "She did it, she won! She killed them all!". I think the way the whole class and the room their in is mainly greyish, it creates a contrast to the video, in which, although the colours are still quite dark, the colour stands out, making it seem all the more spooky, and when the teacher kills the student for wispering, without blinking an eye, it makes the whole thing more surreal and disturbing. I would like to get this sense of disturbence across because I think it's what makes a thriller good.

Introduction to the group

Hello, we're going to be making a thriller, and we're in a group! Heres a little more about us.....

Alice - I will be helping with making outfits and music, as well as thinking about location

Chris - I cant do anything really well but i know how to do most of it adequately

Louise - I will be making props, as well as doing camera and editing work

Terri - I will be doing the majority of the camera work, and will work on the story line

There you go! Thats us! Yeah.....