Constructing Our Product

Production Process:
We started by having regular weekly meetings to discuss any ideas we had, anything interesting we had seen on a film or television (to do with thrillers of course) and to discuss how we would film it. After a series of meetings, we decided to stop talking and start the action. We had a relatively good idea on what to film and how to film it. we did some shots a few times to get used to the camera etc. After this we were ready to roll the film for good. After filming what we thought was the perfect thriller, we realised that it wasn't so perfect after all. For some reason, the camera seemed to cut chunks out at the beginning and the end or each scene. So we decided to re-film the whole project again the next day.
The next days filming went a lot smoother as we knew what we were doing. we had to do a few scenes twice due to inconsiderate teachers, who looked at us, then the camera, then decided to walk past before asking "Are you filming?" Even with the outtakes, we filmed it in pretty good time. We decided that we had enough time that evening to start on some editing. As a group, we were extremely pleased with our continuity.
We tried downloading music from Moby Gratis, however they let us down, so I decided to search FreePlayMusic.com were after a good hour of searching, i found the perfect piece. After playing around with transitions and other effects, we decided it was time to add the finishing touch and call it a wrap. The music was on, the filming was done, the editing finished and finally, the dreaded thriller which we conveniently named "The Watched" was completed.

Decisions Made:
We decided that our thriller would be:
During the day (while it was light)
At our school
Consist of two characters, the stalker and the victim
Would have no props
Would have no extras
We would use a variety of shots, angles, sounds and transitions in order to add affect

Changes to original storyboard:
We did not really make that many changes. We did however make a few at the ending of our thriller. we decided to change the ending from the stalker following the victim then killing her, to the stalker following her so far, then getting to the victims destination to leave a spooky message. We did this because we felt that it gave more suspense because it is what we call a cliffhanger. Other than that, we did not make any changes to our storyboard. To show these changes, I made another storyboard with the new ending which I will also post on this blog.

Discussion of technical competencies:

Holding a steady shot:
This was relatively easy due to the fact we used a tripod. The only time we did not use a tripod was when we wanted to use a Point Of View shot, and in these cases, we didn't want the camera to be too steady otherwise it looses its purpose and effect.

Framing the shot:
This again was pretty easy because we had spent so much time looking at different ways to film shots. We had it all set up in our minds which, thank goodness, were along the same lines. Due to this reason, it was easy for us to frame the shots.

Using different shot distances:
This was the part of the thriller that me and Katie found slightly harder, we were not too sure what distance would make the shot more effective. To avoid loosing the effect, we filmed all our shots at different distances in order to catch the best one, then we chose the best one while we were editing. so overall we used the best distances depending on the shot/scene.

Shooting appropriate material:
Before planning, we both went away and watched classic thrillers such as Psycho and Dial M for murder by Alfred Hitchcock. This is where we decided to use our shots to an advantage, we feel that we filmed our thriller different to other groups due to the amount of research we did. Also from our survey, we realised that in order for a thriller to be successful, you must add the following things:
A murderer
Police
Night/Dark
Damsel in distress
Scary villain
Guns (weapons)
Confrontation between villain and hero
Mystery
The unexpected
Suspense.
However, me and Katie decided to go another route and miss out most of the things listed about to try and make a thriller that was different and people would not find boring to watch. We also tried to get shots of both characters in order to show tension. This was made because the audience could see the stalker was there, but the poor innocent victim couldn't.

Editing:
During our thriller, we mainly used straight cuts. This is because as the shots change, we wanted to use fast editing which was created using the straight cut. we used some transitions in order to either cover up a filming mistake (only once) or to add effect when we felt it was appropriate. We wanted the audience to feel anxious and we wanted them to. In order to achieve this, we used a series of transitions towards the effect to jump between shots, which has a disturbing effect. We was at one point going to try changing the camera to black and white, however we thought that by going black and white, it would look more like flashbacks rather than what is happening in the present time. We also tried to use as many different shots and angles as possible in order to keep the audience interested. I feel that this was successful.

Mise-en-scene:
We started our mise-en-scene meeting by discussing what we think the characters should be wearing. We decided that the victim would wear white, and the stalker would wear black. This is because they are opposite in colours and we wanted to portray the opposite characteristics that they possess. We also tried using the position of the camera, rather than what was on the screen. For example, putting the camera in a position to watch the victim being followed by the stalker behind a bush, rather than a simple shot down the alley. This showed that nobody else could see them and that the victim had no way to escape. We thought that our mise-en-scene was good.

Sound:
The only sound that we use in our thriller is music that we downloaded from www.freeplaymusic.com. The name of the piece we used was Only Human. We decided at the beginning not to use dialogue because we wanted music all the way through, and if the characters look like their talking but no words come out, then it looks rather fake and tacky.

Graphic Matches:
We did not use any graphic matches in our thriller.