EVALUATION Q8

Overall, we've learned how to:

• work in a group. 

• use camera, we've improved our shots. They're more stable, straight and much more prossefional :

also to use focus:

comparing to where the small detail was in full focus:

• use sound 

the first piece we made only had two sounds, which didn't really fit with the film. 

comparing to where we used digetic sounds, as well as non digetic music which created tension.

• our editing (split screen screen)

• plan and organise our work. 

• titles

comparing to:

First of all working in a group was something that has improved on a large scale. we managed to share and take in ideas, which we then commented on in an appropriate way.

Our camera skills have improved majorly, form not knowing how to use a camera all the way to making a thriller opening. Our skills on getting shots like the close up and extreme close ups into action has really improved. 

Learning how to use the apple mac computers was hard, and using the mac softwares that help edit our films was extremely difficult. But we managed to over come that problem and got used to it.

Blogging was a major issue, we had to get into the hang of, and regularly post things on the wall, but again we managed to get into the habit of it. 

When we did the first perliminary we had a lot of problems. The lighting was really bad we had too much shadow, compare that to our final it was much better. However we did have soem darkness but to give the sense of fear. Another problem we had with the perliminary was the focus. when we were filming the cards, it wasn't clear. With the thriller we had no problems.  

The perliminary had no titles because we didn't have enough time to do that, but with the thriller we had all the titles rolling. Talking of timing, with the perliminary we had a lot of problem with organising our time. we ended up filming one shot too many times. However with the actual filming of the thriller we were organised and took on responsabilities of how long we would spend on a scene 

Another problem we had was the sound, with the perliminary we had a lot of background nose, and we didn't know how to get rid of that. whereas with the thriller we used final cut pro to get that sorted.

Finally the best thing about this whole project is the fact that we got our ideas into reality, and it was us students that did it!!!!!!

EVALUATION Q7

EVALUATION Q6 [part 2]

Today was amazing! I felt so pround watching our thriller on the big screen, it was so sudden and I thought "Oh my God, we made this!!" After watching about 50 thriller openings, I got more confident and I though out thriller was unique and stood out, because no one had simillar idea. Also, the feed back I got was very positive and the little things people said after watching- "oh I liked your one!". Screen on the Green is such a nice place, and the atmosphere was brilliant too, everyone was so excited, aplaused and laughed! What a great experience! :)


This is the feedback I got (apologise for sound in some of them!) :

EVALUATION Q4+5

We, as a sixth form college students have created piece of a low budged, indepentent movie. There's no way we can place our thriller into the real, cinema world. However, I think there are many things we can do, to distrubute our movie and address and attract our target audience.

 

• Social Networking. Today,  almost everyone uses social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Youtube, blogs and so on. We could advertise our movie by creating posters, which we will upload on our sites and send to friends and post, this way it can be seen my more and more people. We could also create trailer, which we again can post on Youtube, and can be seen my more people. We can create a page on facebook, similary to "London Shots Film Festival" (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7842147031) , giving all the details and updated about our movie. We can also create a channel on youtube, where we can post our thriller, opening and updates about thriller.

I've found a good example of indepentend movie, called "My Name Is Jerry". There's a channel on Youtube (, with the trailer, special scenes and so on. They have a video of the actor talking about movie, encougaring audience to watch it. (http://www.youtube.com/user/MyNameIsJerryMovie)

They also have a special way of advertising it. There's a little competition going on; audience should watch trailer or even the movie on DVD, they should film themselves acting, dressing and speaking the way Jerry does. Then upload the clip on youtube, and advertise their clip: via facebook, twitter, emial and so on.The winning number of views wins the contest and gets the prize. This is a good way of having fun, and brining audience into advertising the movie. We could do comething similar.

• Film Festivals

Another example I found is a university student, making short films. http://www.youtube.com/user/RadekBNU). These movies have won many awards in film festivals, such as "Best Short Film". They're screened in film festivals, and this way get the attention of audience interested in indepentend movies. The movies are uploaded on youtube, because they're short it can fit it two parts, there's also trailers for each movie. We could do the same, either post the movie or first few minutes. We can also arrange film festivals, such as London Independent Film Festival, London Short Film Festivals.  

• Another good way could be screening the film in the cinema, we could rent one for one screening, invite family and friends to enjoy. We could advertise the event by social networking, posters in school and so on. If this idea fails due to problems wint renting the cinema, we could talk to college stuff if we could screen the movie in college, with people who are interested in it. More than that, we could screen more student movies, so we'll end up with "movie session".

EVALUATION Q2

We couldn't use real actors, we only had people in our group so we ended up with a teenager being an adult in the movie. However we represented practicular social group based on the stereotypes.

• women: when the movie starts, the camera's tilting upwards and we see whan she's wearing. Part of Mise en Scene is costume, we thought about it carefully. Our character in wearing slippers, apron, dress... all of these are examples of what a houswife would wear at home.

(shots taken while camera tilts upwards)

•  Before doing anything we represented women as the ones who are doing something, such as typical house work thing. The wife is cleaning the table (we added subtitles later on). This represents wousewifes as the ones who clean. The OVS shot and high angle clearly show us what the housewife is doing, and we're looking at her from the top, in a way it also gives her lowe status.

There are many thrillers which represent women in a similar way for example Psycho:

There's a mid shot on a woman doing something, we see what she's wearing. Both women (in Psycho and Black Widow) look neat, which represents them as taking care of the way they appear. Unlike in Psycho, we decided to put more attention to what the wife is wearing, as it is very important in the opening as the characters are introduced, and practicular social gropus are represented.



EVALUATION Q1

Black Widow + The Stepfather

example 1

In the begining of The Stepfather, the camera slowly pans to the sharp, shaving objects to put focus on something sharp and dangerous which might be coming up. As it pans slowly, audience gets into the mood of slow and atmospheric opening. In our thriller, everything seems to happen slowly: the wife goes into the kitchen, opens the frigde and so on. As soon as she pours in the rat poison, we decited to have the ECU on the 'harmful' sign, and we did it twice, so the effect of is a 'big bang' and from slow pace, something suddenly happens. This I think creates tension and connotes something bad is happening.




example 2:

In The Stepfather, we see a MS on the stepfather, and in a way we're introduced to the character as he's almost looking straight at us. We decided to use CU on the wife's eyes, we thought this will make it more dramatic and suspicious, as it won't completly show her face. Eyes can tell a lot about the person, so in our CU it looks like she's expecting something, which again I think creates strong tension. We're introduced to the character and the way they feel. 



example 3

As we decided to create a psychological (/crime) thriller,  we really wanted to show the contrast between normal and unormal. In the Stepfather, the camera turns as the dead boy's body appears to show something's not right, this happends suddely and we don't even expect it. In our thriller, the contrast is where the wife puts the bleach next to the milk. The two objects, similar size, have a completly opposite function. This, we can almost say- a binary opposition creates the contrast we wanted to achieve by normal and unormal. It creates tension, but also is a convensional thing for psychological thrillers.




example 4

The stepfather starts with introduction to the location, the camera's tilting on the houses and the tilting stops where the get to the stepfather's house. The location in the kitchen is introduced by long shot on the stepfather and we see the kitchen as part of Mise en Scene. In our thriller, we decided to use POV shot where the wife walks into the kitchen. This gave the feeling that the audience is actually going inside and at the same time the location was introduced.




example 5

The titles start to apear when the location is introduced, we decided to do the same; this puts focus on the production company, before the narrative actually starts. So we end up with waiting for the movie, but at the same time we see the location + production, and then the movie starts.




example 6

In the Stepfather, the camera slowly pans on the family pictures. This not only tells us more about the house and possibly characters, but shows their relationship. We know who lives in the house (form pictures) and we see something's a bit wrong, we wonder what happened to them? This feeling is really important, it creates suspence. We've given SOME information and wonder. This gets us infolved with the movie. We tried to achieve this, by using ECU on the ring, when the wife is playing with this. It gives us more information- we know both characters are married, and we wonder "why did she pour the poisons to the food?" "why does she try to kill him?" "will he eat this?" and this is SUSPENCE! ...the audience wants to carry on watching the movie to see what happens. (see, you're taken in!)



example 7

When the stepfather does everyday things such as washing the dish or making breakfast, simple shots, such as over the shoulder, or mid shot form the side were used to show his actions. We thought it only showed his normal actions, but with something so wrong such as pouring the rat poison to the sugar pot we need to use shot that emphasises how bad and weird this is. We placed the camera to the table, at the level the sugar and the poison is, so it puts all the focus to it and creates tension and mystery, because we're fully focused on what's happening AND we exactly know what the wife is doing.




Suspence
It's convensional for a good thriller to create suspense. In Alfred Hitchock's words, "suspence is an emptiotional process" and "we can get the suspence element going by giving the audience information". I think that we tried our best to create the suspence and engage the audience in an emotional level. I think we achieved this by the use of match cut, and the last scene where the husband comes home. At this point, our audience should be emotionally involved as they wanna know what will happen to him, why would the wife try to kill him and so on. This is the suspence, as audience is given the information, and they know more than the character.

Here's Hitchock talking about the difference between the mystery and suspence:

EVALUATION Q4

Becky, 39, a restaurant menager. He likes cooking and taking care of everything. In her meantime she likes to spend time with her kids and husband, she likes going away for holidays. Interested in travels, likes planning holidays and going aborad for the weekend. In her mean time she likes going out with her close friends or inviting them for dinner. Shops in next, river island, gap, white stuff and zara. Ocasionally does sports such as tennis and swimming. Likes to watch a good movie on friday night, goes cinema occasionally with her kids.

 

 

EVALUATION Q6 [part 1]

First lesson back after the deadline we watched everyone's thrillers, I felt nervous as we didn't show it on the big screen in front of everyone, but it wasn't as bad as I expected. After watching we had to write what we think of other groups' openings in terms of technical lang and also how it made us feel. They did the same to ours. We got very positive reviews, everyone liked the way we used bleach and rat poison, they liked the sound and everyone felt sorry for the husband who's coming home! Many people said they would like to carry on watching it to see what happens, in other worlds we created a piece of suspence! Here's a world cloud we made using http://www.wordle.net/ :

the rough guide to horror movies

Funny, but few days ago I found a book called THE ROUGH GUIDE TO HORROR MOVIES. I had a little read through and I found some information interesting.

"So what is horror?
This strong emotion, one of the oldest and deepest of humankind, is what we feel when anything frightens us or promotes fear or terror."

This made me think about the purpose of making thrillers... I think that thrillers as well as other movies are meant to entertain us, in a level we feel engaged and should literally be out of our seat, wanting to know what will happen. Watching movie and feeling frigtened makes us feel entertained. If it didn't, why would these type of movies be watched for so many years?  (First horror movie was made in 1895- Haunted Castle, it was only two minute movie, but this was the start of suspense)

soundtrack pro

This is another tutorial I've looked at, this time about SoundTrack Pro. Mainly about how to remove background noise. This is what we struggeled with most, now I know I will remember!

meeting th deadline (stressful times!)

Well... I officially can say: OUR THRILLER OPENING IS DONE !!!!

title that appears at the end

Today, we spend about 5h adding sound and titles. I must say-it was stressful. I had moments where I felt like giving up but we worked our way through and finished it, and when I watched it I felt proud. To manage our time, me and Fahmida were incharded of music and Abde did editing and titles.



Using with the SoundTrack Pro



With music... well, we didn't MAKE our own one, although we tried. We found good example on youtube, which we really liked and were deprerate to use it. Technician helped us to convert it and we could upload the song into out movie. It was not copy righted, and the artist said that people can use his work as long as they credit him, so we did and our music was made by Dilan Sripek (bless him for making amazing piece of music that perfectly suits our opening). We added some parts such as digetic sound and some effects as well.

When it comes to tiles... I wasn't incharded of it, and to be honest I imagined them as something else, but still... Abde did a pretty good job.

I can't wait to see the movie on the big screen and only today it hit me that we've done a good job!

 

rough cut

Below we posted the rough cut, however after it we still made many changes such as:

• little change in point of view shot
• split screen on the phone
• redo the milk scene and use real mink !!!
• redo scene with pouring in 'rat poison' (not on the clip)

...and we're done! :)

Rough Cut

organising out work

I kept a diary of what days we'll do what and I decided to organise it and write in in a calendar. over 7 weeks it seems like we've a lot of work.

final cut pro in true grit

I read article about making of True Grit, and they also used Final Cut Pro! I felt so profesional, because in making so serious movie the same editing programme is used!

"We had to get the movie done in very short period of time. Final Cut Pro, becaufe of its efficiencies and speed, enabled us to meet that deadline"

-Joel Coen

Rest of the article: http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/in-action/truegrit/

livetype tutorial

Time to imporve my LiveType skills with tutorial how to use it. Basics, but worth going through it.



editing, editing, editing



title sequence + names

Today we finished editing !!! And we moved on to adding titles,
as we want it to appear "in the movie". We've also written down what titlel we will have and we decided to go with classic opening sequence. We've also made up names that will go with it, it was the funny part!

livetype timeline

Using LiveType seemes a bit hard, but as we looked at different examples and so on, we got into how it works and with time we could easily find what we were looking for.



Fahmida laughing at the microphone



We also recorded voice machine message. We used microphone from the camera to do this, we went into small and QUIET room. We also recorded the part where husband speaks, we thought it would sound better if it was re-recorded. (The quality would be better).

For now; me and Fahmida are incharded of sound and Abde's doing the editig (well, adding titles).



Parallel Edining

One of our editing techniques is parallel editing. I've looked at how it works and I found a good example from movie- Silence of the Lambs, where through cross-cut tension is built. And I also think it adds suspence and keeps the movie gripping, as again we know whats happening in two places, whereas the characters in the movie don't have clue what's happening e.g. outside.

Here's the example:

filming day 3

So we finally finished filming !! I think we worked hard and got all the filming out of the way. It's all about editing now, and adding sound!

Overall, I think the shoot went well. We were quick but the quality was still good, and of course we redid shots 100 times to get it right. I enjoyed filming more than acting, it's not my thing... We also thought about our thriller and decided to take some bits out that won't work and I think we worked well as a group today. Here's another quick movie I made with pictures and music:



font

I also started thinking about fonts we could use for our movie, I went to www.dafont.com and had a look at examples. Here's a few I liked.