Shooting Schedule

Our shooting schedule

Style of editing

Styles of editing
There are many different ways of editing a film, and transitioning between shots. The most popular ones tend to be the most simple types as they are seen as more professional.

Straight cuts
Straight cuts are the most popular form of transition. They are seen as invisible as one shot instantaneously changes to another with out a break in between. These types of cuts keep the scene realistic, and they don't break the viewers concentration.

Dissolves
Dissolve transitions are also very popular. They feature one scene fading out into another scene, and at the mid point both scenes can be seen together. Directors may decide to use to link characters or objects.

Fades
Fade transitions are when the shot gets darker or lighter of a scene. The scene will either get darker until the screen is completely black, or lighter until its completely white. These can either indicate passing of time or death of a character.

Wipes
Wipes are when a shot is pushed off the screen by another scene. Often these are pushed from left to right, to indicate a passing of time. And can be used to link two different locations with things happening at the same time.

Jump cut
A jump cut can be used to shorten the length of a long scene, but cutting out different parts without changing the scene or the camera shot. This breaks continuity and can be known as discontinuity. It can draw the audience attention because it appears that the scene has changed but it hasn't.

Graphic Match
Graphic matches are when the director uses a particular shaped item, and connects it to another scene with an in the same shape as the one in the first scene and uses a dissolve to link them together. This was made popular by Alfred Hitchcock in psycho during the shower scene.

Second production meeting

Second production meeting
Our second production meeting, we decided what the story line to the thriller opening would be. Also, we assigned each other each position in the planning of the film. I was given the job of creating the story board and the animatic for other blogs. Leon was given the location sheet which would have the location of each place that we filmed. Gottfried was given the treatment blog, and the shot list. Tino was given the costume and prop list.

Initial Ideas

Initial Ideas

In the beginning we came up with two ideas, both featuring Gottfried as the main character. The first idea that we came up with had the working title as "Asleep", the second being "Arrangement"

Asleep

The thriller opening entitled asleep featured a man put in a coma by one of his long term enemies. Whilst in this coma, the victim re-lives the horrible events that led up to him being in the coma, which featured the killing of his best friend. What he relives is in short quick flash backs, and by the end of it he wakes up, which signifies the end of the opening. 

Arrangement 

Arrangement features a popular local rapper that finds himself in trouble all of the time, and would have been killed earlier if not for his friend saving him from his enemies. After a party the rapper and his friend are discussing the rappers ways, and his friend asks him to change. The rapper doesnt like this, and gets angry at his friend, telling him to delete his number and get out of his life. The rapper instantly finds himself in trouble and without his friend there to help, he is on his own. 

We decided on "Arrangement" for our final idea because it seemed to be the most realistic one to be able to complete to a high standard with the given equipment and time that we had.

anamatic

Our final animatic.

 

Second day of Editing

Second day of filming
Today I began editing the second sequence of the thriller that we are producing. Me and the rest of the group were sitting together deciding which ones of our many shots we should use for each particular scene. This helps us come to a fair conclusion of which are the best. The editing is successful as this particular sequence is almost completed.

How to film a thriller

How to film a thriller 
In this example of a thriller, we can see good uses of camera shots and sounds to make a thriller out of nothing. The very first scene is of a wide shot of the main character walking.
This makes the actor look small and insignificant to the rest of the shot.






The second shot is a tracking shot, of close up distance, we can see a chest upwards shot of the actor.









A medium shot follows this, we the actor walking down the path way











The next scene is a POV shot of the actor walking into the cave. this builds up tension, makes the viewer feel like they're entering the building themselves

When the actor reaches the inside of the fort, we start hearing sinister non diegetic music playing. This increases the intensity of the scene and has the viewers on the edge of their seat.

At this point, we can see a POV shot of something unhuman, it is low and moving fast so we know that it is a danger to the actor, along with the intensifying music. 

When we have a close up of the actors face, we can tell that he has spotted the danger also, and is surprised. This is effective as the viewers will be having a similar facial expression.






The final shot we have is of another actors eye, this is an extreme close up. This is intimidating towards the viewer because we have no idea what is going to happen next, whilst the eye will have more understanding of what is happening.

First Day of filming

First day of filming
The first day of filming features a scene of a party inside my living room. We had a few friends come over and dance and act for us as if they were in a party to give it a more realistic effect. We found this to be successful because the shots are good, and they will be featured in the thriller.

Designing/making title sequence

Title sequence
Today we began to edit our studio ident for our thriller. Our studio ident features a shot of cars passing, and a person on a bike coming onto screen. The cars are sped up to move at 150%, then slowed down to 75%. This gives the ident professional look. After this, we see a flash of white and a person on a bike with the words "rider productions" written just about their head. All of the studio ident features shots done by me and my group.

Preliminary Task

Preliminary Task

Cheryl is the name of our preliminary task. It features us with a range of different editing techniques, featuring match on action, graphic matches and eye line matches.
Eye line match

The first of the editing techniques that we see is an eye line match. We see Gottfried looking at his watch, then the camera switch to the watch.



The effectiveness of this is that the people watching feel like they are apart of the acting, as we are able to see what the character is looking at.







Graphic Match
The next editing technique we use is a graphic match, the effectiveness of this is that the two shots are linked together and it continues the continuity.

180 Degree rule
Mistakenly, we broke the 180 degree rule, this led to our shot looking unprofessional. We tried to amend this by flipping the shot in Premiere Pro when was editing. This didn't work perfectly, but it left the shot looking tidier than before we flipped it

Overall, the positive elements of our film is that we managed to add in a lot of editing techniques successfully. To improve we should spend more time planning, and trying to get the shots done to our best ability rather than just completing it in the moment.

Finished story board

Complete story board

Today, I finished the story board for our thriller, I am very happy to have completed it.

Second Day of Fliming

Second Day of Filming
The second day of film we done was on Friday 20th March. We filmed the main part of our sequence outside of my house. This is slightly different to where we had planned to film on the location sheet, being Leons house. Even though the change of scenery, we were still able to complete our filming successfully.

The Birds

The Birds
The birds is an Alfred Hitchcock directed thriller featuring the actors Tippi Hendren, Rod Daniels, and Jessica Tandy. We see our main character Melanie Daniels, (played by Tippi Hendren) start off in a pet bird shop, where she first meets Mitch Brenner (Rod Daniels) who plays a practical joke on her. The pair clearly hit it off, and Melanie decides to continue the joke by driving 60 miles to drop off a pair of love birds to Mitch's younger sister as a birthday present. Whilst she is driving away from his mothers house on a speed boat, she is attacked by a seagull that leaves a deep cut on her forehead. The locals find this attack very odd.












The further we get into the movie, we start to see a rise in the number of birds attacking, and the severity of the attacks. We see a flock of crows attack the school children whilst they are trying to flee the area. Later, Melanie and Mitch find the local school teacher dead at her door step by what was clearly a bird attack. The final attack of birds was on Mitch's mothers house, where the birds violently and desperately tried to break in and attack everyone inside. They managed to avoid the attack, until Melanie walked into the room that the birds had managed to get into. She survived an attack, and the birds seized after that. They managed to leave the house surrounded by thousands without being attacked.