Planning: Pre-production paperwork

Pre-production paperwork

Location recce form: This is a summary of all the locations that we have decided to use. Everybody in the production cast will be given one of these as it provides the visual information they need to know about our thriller locations.

Risk assessment form: This is an analysis of our locations, it identifies which risks might occur and how we plan to overcome them. Everyone in the group will need one of these in order to know all information needed to know before filming.

 Location release form: This is a legal document which agrees for everything that goes on. It is based on our rights as a production team and is given to every group member present.

Release and consent agreement:  This is a legal document which discusses the terms and conditions for all the actors in our thriller. This document is given to all group members and includes full analysis of the terms of our production and what we will be doing. 

 

Planning: Character representation

Character representations

Character representations are how each character within a film are presented to the audience. It is vital to choose a characters representation well as it will be what the audience judge the character on. It will help the audience to decide whether they see the character as a good person or not and if they like them or not. Character representations can be built from factors such as appearance, voice, body language and facial expressions. It is important to include a variety of personalities within characters in a film as the audience will have a variety of views from different character personalities.

 

Character Analysis:
This is the female victim in my thriller. She is described as a female victim as she carries the conventions of a typical vulnerable female. This is evident by the colour of her skin and the fact that she has a young face which gives off the idea of the female being young and petite. Her facial expression shows that she is a happy young girl who lives a good life. However, the choice of t-shirt design makes it evident that she may also have a hidden persona but this again is unclear but becomes clear during the film. The age of this character is 15. This was chosen due to the fact that it follows conventional age stereotypes for young female victims in thriller movies. Also the gender stereotype of the victim being female proves stereotypes truthfull as it is in fact usually a female who is subject to being a victim in a thriller movie.


Character Analysis
This is my character in my thriller. He is the Antagonist. This is evident from the dark choice in clothing worn by him. He is wearing his hood up which shows he does not want to be seen or is not very open about his views. Also, his body language, being very scary and closed off, shows that he does not want to be bothered and may be violent. His facial expressions show that he may be annoyed or vex over something, but it is left unclear of what it is about, this leaves him a mystery to the audience. This character chosen falls specifically gender stereotypes of Antagonists by being male. It is conventional in typical thriller films to have a male Antagonist which is why a male was chosen for this character role. Also, the Antagonist being 17 is also an age stereotype to thrillers as the Antagonist is usually of a teenage age such as the movie; Scream. This helps to prove the stereotype correct and is why we included this age for our Antagonist.






 

This is the boyfriend of the female victim who is acting in the thriller. He is described as a caring and friendly character. This is evident from the choice of clothing the character is wearing, being a lighter colour than the antagonist's black suggests that this character has no sense of evil within himself. Also, from the smile, evident in the picture, it also suggests he lives a very good and stable life. This character is aged 16 as it usually conventional for the boyfriend of a female to have an age difference of a year or so.

Planning: Storyboard

Storyboard

This is our group storyboard. It contains the key scenes within our thriller and analyses the key micro-elements we will be utilising

The factors explained within each frame consist of;

Camera shots

Location

Props

Lighting

Actors

Sound

Dialogue

Editing

Narrative description

Planning: Editing

Editing

Introduction: We plan to use our research to help us choose the editing we will be doing in our thriller. Using this research we know that editing is vital in making our thriller conventional and effective towards our audience.

 

1 - Fade to black:  In our thriller we will use fade to black when the female victim leaves her house

and when she arrives at the house party. The usage of this edit will keep the audience on their toes and help them follow the victims whereabouts with a smooth transition.

2 - Flash bulb: This will be used in the party scene and during the transition to the park scene when the female victim is walking home alone. We will use this edit as it will be effective with the lighting that we will be using at the time.

3 - Slow motion: Slow motion will be in action during the park scene when the female victim drops her bottle of alcohol. We will use this as it well highlight the iconography and when it smashes she then gets kidnapped. This will make the audience be aware of the trouble that she will be facing

4 - Fast editing: We will use fast editing when the antagonist is torturing the victim. The fast editing will be used to show the fact that the antagonist is going crazy and images of the female victim with her boyfriend will be shown. We will do this to depict what is going on in the antagonist's head as it allows them to have a better idea of why exactly he attacked his victim. 

5 - Jump cut: Jump cut will be utilised in the park scene as it shows the audience what is happening. We will use this to create fear amongst the audience for the female victim.

Planning: Mise en scene

Mise en scene

The mise en scene plan to use in my thriller consists of the following:
-Lighting
-Setting
-Iconography
-Costume
-Body language and facial expression

The lighting we are going to use in our thriller is mainly natural and low key lighting. The natural lighting is shown when we will be inside the house of the female victim and also the male character (Boyfriend), because we will be using the house lights to give the audience a calm feel about the situation. We use low key lighting in the park and the unknown location where the victim will get tortured. The lighting in the park will be low key as it is late at night and it is hard to see, this is used to give the audience an eerie feel to what is going to happen. With the torture scene in the unknown location, there will be bright lights when the victim will have the bag on her head taken off to make it seem as if she is being blinded by the light, also as the antagonist is torturing the female there will be a camera shot at a medium size which shows the victim get slapped by a machete and this will be shown as a silhouette.

With what is going to happen in the setting of our thriller, is that there will be three main locations within the thriller, the first location is the house party. We use this because this is conventional because the teenage victim would go to a party which links to the fact that she is young. This is where the danger starts to happen, as the scene develops you see that the victim walks into the park and this is the second main location as the victim gets kidnapped at this point in the thriller. With what happens in the torture scene this is where the main action will happen as this is at a unknown location and this is conventional to the thriller because being in a isolated location makes it hard for a victim to be helped.

The iconography within our thriller is the phone because the victim ignores the text that she receives from her boyfriend to not go to the party. Also as the scene carries through there is the vodka bottle  this is what gets the victim drunk at the house party, this is conventional because teenagers get drunk quite often at house parties. When she is at the unknown location and the antagonist gets close to the victim gets the slap from the antagonist with the machete. As the victim has been knocked out there is a shovel that will be shown to depict the fact that the victim could be left for dead or alive.

The costume of our characters will be represented as conventional with the antagonist as he would be all black and won't be seen in most of the thriller. The boyfriend will be shown as casual, and so would the friend of the boyfriend. But the girlfriend would be shown as sub verse because the clothing that she would wear is revealing in order to show her vulnerability.

Our main antagonist body language that will be shown is that he is strong and tall, to show the strength and the fear that the antagonist can create towards the victim.

Planning: Preliminary task

Preliminary Task

Purpose:

The purpose of the preliminary task was to test out each member of the groups ability to use a camera. During this task we experimented with the camera using a variety of sizes angles and movements. This task was also helpful as it helped us to identify which productions roles each group member would be taking. The preliminary task has helped us gain some understanding of how we can film our footage.

Scenario: Our narrative is that there are two friends that are walking to their destinations when the bump into each other and have a brief conversation. They then go their separate ways as they are both heading somewhere.

 

  Group roles:
Darhyl - Camera operator/editor
Sandro - Actor/editor
Sean: Director/actor
Khloe: Location manager

Difficulties whilst filming: Whilst we were filming we had some difficulties in where we could film from and the camera angles to use. Also we filmed in a busy setting which meant that someone appeared in our footage.

Difficulties whilst editing: The first problem we came across when we were editing is that the footage of the task had been too long so a lot had to be cut out. Another problem was that because of the framing of the character sometimes the subject didn't stay in the centre of the screen.




 What have I learnt: I have learnt that when we actual film our thriller, camera angles, sizes and movements will be vital and much consideration has to be put into our selections.