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.

Final opening sequence feedback

What is your favorite shot and why?

- The shot of the tap was very good because it leaves lots of questions.
- The egg shot was effective at engaging the audience.
- The tap shot, good close up, good effect

What is our thriller about?

We asked this question to see whether an audience would be able to guess what had happened and what it was about, overall people generally commented that they did not know but thought this was effective as it gets them asking a lot of questions.

What would describe the atmosphere as?

- Very tense, it was created very well from the music and random clips.
- The heart beat sound was very effective
- Very creepy and tense
- Achieves a sense of isolation and desertion

What shot would you remove and why?

Overall people suggested that we should remove the egg shot as it seems to random a shot compared to the deserted places. Another suggestion was to remove the flower shot as it was less effective and seemed out of place.

Update on our current work

We are currently working on editing the footage to make it all the more eerie and empty looking, we are achieving this by making some shots darker and also adding a pinkish tint to some of the outside shots to make it seem as if the sun is just rising. In addition to this we are also adding a sepia tint to some of the inside footage to make it seem older. This has made our footage look more like a thriller movie and less like home-made footage.

We have got our slow footage in order and we are currently working on putting our fast images into the 2 or 3 second gaps. After this we will add titles and work on the transitions, and also add our finalised music.

Diagetic sound

For our music soundtrack we needed to include more diagetic sound, so me and Louise went out with the camera to record sounds. We managed to get some banging sounds, movement sounds ie, running through leaves and also some crunching of plastic and metal. We plan to cut out the footage and just use the sounds to input into our music soundtrack.

In addition to this we will cut down our fast scary music clips into 2 or 3 seconds to fit in with our footage. Once we have done this we will add the sound track to the footage and make sure the timings go together.

Rough cut feedback

Our rough cut of our thriller project was not as good as we had hoped, as we encountered problems with editing the footage, although we managed to get enough cut and edited to fit in with our rough music, although it is not in order you can get a sense of what the final project will be like. You can see the sort of empty eerie shots, although we have not yet edited our flashing scary images so could not include them, hence why our footage does not yet match with the music.

We need to cut our shots down to a usable size and get them into an order, also we will need to adjust the lighting and add some effects to make the shots more effective to engage the audience. Our music is currently being adapted to fit the footage and also changed to make it more eerie and jumpy, we are attempting to add more of a climax to our fast music clips. In addition to this our short flashing images need to be worked on and adapted to fit in with our footage and music.

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.

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.

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.

Suface -Student video

We all liked this opening because of the short quiet clips along with the loud distorted clips, the music ties this all in well together. You can tell straight away that this is a thriller because of the music and blood in water.

The structure of the opening is interesting as the short and long clips of action tied in together to give it a creepy disturbing look.

There isnt a lot of mise-en-scene but the use of the 'blood' in the water gives it a very disturbing look and also makes the overall sequence more creepy. the camera work in this is interesting as we get a range of shots along with various action sequences.

The use of sound is very important, in this opening, as it ties together the action scenes, also gives it a jumpy and very creepy feel. Editing techniques are used for this sequence to make it fast and distorted, giving it a thriller feel.

The only SFX used is the 'blood in water' which gives it a slow and surreal atmosphere as it shows the names of the people involved, which i think is very effective at making it scary.

Fight club

This opening is very intriguing because you cannot quite tell what it is about, as it zooms out, although when fully zoomed out you can see it is a frightened looking man with a gun in his mouth, which leaves a lot of questions open about the movie.

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.....

Haunted mansion!

I choose this opening because normally all openings are just of the titles but this one tells us the story so we get a fell about it, without giving it all away. It has dramatic music to carry the horror setting to it. Also as it gets to the death of Elizabeth the music gets faster and louder. Then with the hanging of the main character the camera angles show it in a scary way as it is pointing upwards so you see it all. The thunder and lightning effects also adds terror to the sequence and makes you want to watch more.

The costumes in this film are both modern and medieval to show the difference between the two time genres that are included in the film, also shows how the past is merging into the present.