Strengths of our final piece: Both of the members of our group were very confident in editing and the editing, we believe, is one of our strongest aspects. We are also very proud of the simple titles, taking inspiration from similar films such as Scarface and Pulp Fiction with the simple text on a black background.
Weaknesses of our final piece: Because we had to cut a lot of the footage out we still believe the storyline doesnt come across as clearly as we'd like but there didnt seem to be much trouble in understanding it from the screening so we have subsequesntly stopped wondering about this.We also think in the night scenes, due to the lack of good quality lighting, the quality wasnt very good, so if we ever film again we will try and do most of it in natural daylight to improve the quality
Our editing of putting footage together is complete with our whole story being present in the video file.
However, now we are refining clips to ensure that there is no tiny errors in the footage, for example in the last second of a shot in the garage there is a small wobble of the camera which we had to remove just by simply cutting the end of the shot away and deleting it.
We are also incorporating our soundtrack now as the timeline is all in sequence, we are fading each of our two soundtracks in and out as we have one 'good' soundtrack and one 'mysterious' one.
After having our work reviewed a number of times we have been able to edit some of our action matches to ensure they cut on point at the time of action. We have had to do this a number of times for all of our action matches, however it has made a clear improvement to our work.
On top of this there have been some shots that we have been told are not neccessary in our film, for example there was a shot which we had incorporated of the main character (Jake Nolan) getting dressed after waking up. But, this wasted time and was not an integral part of the build up of the story.
Another piece of feedback we have received is the quality of some of our shots could be improved. For example in our final shot we used the zoom button on the camera to created a zoom out-to-establishin shot. But we were told this didn't look right using the zoom on the camera. So to rectify this we reshot the footage using a steady tracking shot.
Our most important feedback and change to our work has been our ending. Originally we ended on a very depreciating anti-climax which doesnt leave any sort of a cliffhanger looming over the story. However we decided to change this to finish our story with a zoom out establishing shot showing the murderers lair with blood stained sheets to leave this final impression on the viewer.
After showing our project to numerous people, we have taken their opinion into account and have decided to re-fil our ending this weekend.
We will make it clearer the woman at the end is the killers wife by calling him 'darling' and having the man hold her waist, creating more of an association with the two having a relationship.
We also need to film a shot we forgot where the killer leaves the house from the outside to action match with him leaving his bedroom door in work clothes.
This lesson we finished putting in all the filming we did in our re-shoot as well as some other bits we needed to film at the bedroom and bathroom location.
We also went through and found two fonts to use for our titles :
We are also currently experimenting with transitions and key frame techniques to make the titles appear in an interesting way.
Next lesson we will finish off putting the titles on and also try and work on the soundtrack, this is hard to do however as we need to know the exact timing of the ligh/dark changes to make the sound change between tones at the point of transition.
We have changed our idea multiple times and have finally settled on an idea we beleive will be effective and is not to complicated to film.
We are keeping in the opening scene where the killer catches the victim and drags him away but then we will cut to black and have a tiled credit, then we will action match 2 shots together like we had planned on doing before, then put in another tiled credit and repeat this sequence until the final tracking out shot of the garage when the killers wife opens the garage and it is cleaned up.
Also after the showing of our rough cut we have decided that the title 'identity' doesn't really fit and we are currently in the process of finding a better title using the synonyms we came up with before
In the opening the costume used to convey meaning to the audience, shows firstly, a young female in a balet uniform dancing. This is something which usual would be protrayed as very innocent however, in the context of the film with the low key lighting which causes a shadow on one side of the dancers body and dust filled, empty room it becomes very unnerving and adds a very strong sense of mystery.
The shots that follow this are of a similar feeling, their is a slightly old fashioned bedroom, an old, posh hall and an old and posh dining room. These are all slightly low key lit with shadows being cast from the characters' bodies. This adds further to the sense of mystery in the opening sequence.
Camera-
The first shot is an establishing/long shot showing the dancer in the middle of the empty room. It is used to add context to the action and convey the mystery of the scene. If it were just a close up of the dancer it would not allow any mystery to be felt.
There is then an extreme close up of the dancers feet perfoming intricut steps. This portrays a slight feel of attention to detail and precision about the dancing as it seems to be very neat. This doesn't seem to ass to the mystery of the sequence, however it does enhance the character, making her seem more on the side of the viewer as they are straight away positioned with her performing this tricky sequence.
Sound-
The non-diegetic sound certainly adds to the sense of mystery, it is a piece of orchestral music using mostly strings and piano. It matches the ballet theme very well so it is very subtle to the audience. However, it is a high pitched piece of music and is a very slow tempo.
Dialogue and non verbal language-
The first example of diegetic sound we here is the female narrator, talking about the ballet dancer. However the end of this speech is what conveys the shocking part of the story to the audience, "...She kills herself". This line is said with a pause so it creates suspense. Also the non diegetic sound seems to fade away to be less prominent, again making that particular line more prominent.
After this the narrator seems to be speaking as the main character telling the story to the audience. But there is a kind of montage of a different group of voices all talking over the music so that what they're saying is portrayed to be very important to the audience.
Media Audiences
Target audience-
The target audience for the film is, as the film is certificated at 15, 15+ but more specifically it is targeted at 15-29 year olds. The main character and other essential characters in the film are all female, this makes the primary audience to the film 15-29 females. This is also influenced by the setting or the story being revolving around ballet.
The graph shows the average rating of the film (according to IMDB) dropping after the age of 29. However it is not considered slolely a female film as males gave very high ratings also due to the thriller nature of the film.
Readings-
Being a male teenager, I am inside the parameters of the target audience as it includes both males and females. The film is a psychological thriller so it is very popular with many teenagers who are often targeted for thriller/horror films. Male teenagers are likely to follow the general readings of the film and are most lilkely to follow the subjective view as opposed to the older range of the audience who are likely to follow a more objective view.
By being obvjective viewers in this case, many adults are more likely to be drawn into the storyline of the film rather than the psychological aspect of the film.
Institutional Context
Stars- Stars included were:
Natalie Portman- Who has been in previously well known films such as: 'V for Vendetta' and 'The Other Boleyn'. 'V for Vendetta' also being a thriller movie with a similar target audience.
Winoner Ryder- Who has appeared in 'Edward Scissorhands' a well known film with a wide fan base, this will help to attract an audience to watch 'Black Swan'.
Mila Kunis- Who is a very famous actor and is thought to have helped bring in a wider male fan base.
Studio production- The film was produced by Fox Searchlight studios, so was an industrial released film Marketing- Black Swan included all the usual marketing strategies- Tv ads, bus adverts, and online adverts. But it was well known for its well designed striking posters which created some 'buz' about the film. (example on right)
Currently we are in the process of editing our footage, the difficulties we are facing our getting tied down in the discrete details of editing to early on in the process. For example a lot of time can be easily wasted on prefecting titles and transitions rather than timing the cuts between one action shot and another action shot.
Also we are finding timing and matching the actions together can be time consuming. As we have to decided to include more action match shots since doing our first section of filming we have to first ensure that the camera work will allow a smooth transition between actions, but we then have to ensure that we cute both actions so that they meet about half way through to creat a smooth transition.
At this point in time we have filmed a large majority of our footage in our main location. We completed around three quarters of our storyboard clips.
This leaves us with about 10 shots left to film in our two remaining locations, we will have completed this within 1-2 weeks.
Currently at this stage we are editing the footage we have recorded.
We are also planning for our final shots to be filmed, for instance we have been thinking of props and costumes that we will need.
Going forward we still have to finish the finer details for our remaining shots, this will include us planning props and costumes, as well as organising days and times to shoot and co ordinating this with our cast.
Also we have to spend some time editing our sound track as it will include different types of music.
One of our shoots includes some filming in a bedroom, the pictures below are some of the shots that we are going to use.
During the day we like the amount of natural light that gets into the bedroom as one half of the shoot is going to be in the morning when our main character wakes up.
We also like how the plain white sheets and plain walls do not draw the viewers eyes from the action in the scene.
One thing we will need to be aware of, however, is that the artificial light creates reflection and slight yellow affect.
This was the original soundtrack but after our pitch we were told it may be too upbeat, and although we were trying to create a sense of irony and contrast with the upbeat music and the sinister actions we have looked around and found another song that we will try and either replace this one with or maybe mix them together so each one reflects each side of the main characters life. This second one would be used on the killing scenes whereas the first one would be used over the breakfast/kitchen scenes
We have decided to only film one half of my kitchen, which is the one pictured in the first image, as it is cleaner and looks more organised, reflecting the killers personality
We will have to remove a lot of the excess stuff from the kitchen to make it more minimalist but as you can see it is fairly well lit and white, the image we were going for.
Garage
As you can see from the pictures my garage will also require some things being removed, like the ikea furniture
There is a large work bench in the middle however with some strip industrial lighting over the top, allowing us to create a very dark, low-key lit scene, we will also try and use sheet plastic around the garage to make it more like a 'kill room'
As you can see there is also rows of tools on the wall and another work bench beneath that
Driveway / Road
The first image will be a similar shot to the reveal when the woman opens the empty garage in the final scene
The two long shots on the right side will be used when the car pulls into the driveway and the woman walking up to the garage door
The road on the bottom left will be where the victim is captured and the killer will be behind the wall in the foreground while the victim is walking up by the fence
We decided, the best way to explore a vast range of shots was to create a music video. Also since sam had a broken arm during this project, it was left to Alex to star in it. In the clip we used
High angle shots
Low angle shots
Birds eye view
Pan shots
Tilt shots
Close Ups
Long shots
Establishing shots
We also were able to take some still shots including low angle, high angle, canted angle and handheld cam. POV shot.
We did some research on 'dafont.com' to find our ideal font for both credits and opening title. here is what we found:
We considered using all of these fonts for titles and credits, however our top 3 our '28 days later' 'Action of the Time' and 'crimes times six'
We thought that '28 days later' and 'crimes times six' would work best as credits, where as 'Action of the time' would be best for our final opening title saying 'IDENTITY'
We thought the fonts One Direction and Harabara, whilst being quite blocky, was too casual and curly for the stern image we were trying to portray
New Stencil was not curvy and was blocky, but we thought that it was slightly too stereotypical and looked very 'cheesy'
We may also used the font we talked about in a previous post called 'Bebas' we are waiting for the final piece to made then we will see what font looks best over the action
Some problems were brought up when we made our pitch:
Originally we weren't going to reveal that the murderer was the same person as the 'good guy'. However it was thought that this would not leave enough of a cliff hanger to our story line.
So we decided to change this and the cliff hanger is now going to be that the wife/girlfriend becomes suspicious of the main characters goings on.
We also decided that we need to do some more research into fonts.
Also we found that we needed to create a more dense storyline as we did not believe we would have enough footage.
Finally, we decided that our soundtrack would not be suitable for our storyline and was not sinister enough. It felt like it was to upbeat to fit with the characters emotions and we are now in the process of finding a new soundtrack to use.
We are in the process of storyboarding all of the shots and possible shots we will need.
Alongside this we are adding detail and finishing touches to our storyline, for example we are adjusting the ending of our story from revealing the murderer as the same man as the good guy, to the murderers wife/girlfriend returning home to nearly catch him.
Still to do:
We have to do some location reccie's of:
A modern looking bedroom
A dark, dingy garage
A light, modern kitchen
We need to plan a way to make our murderers 'lair' to look realistc. We have looked into buy polythene plastic roles to hang from ceiling and a wooden work bench to have tools on.
We need to create a call sheet and risk assessment sheet for each location, this should be fairly simple as there are not too many dangers associated with our locations. Also we do not have many external crew members required for many of our shots so this should make organising filming more simple.
A call sheet is usually used in all types of filming or film making to inform cast and crew where to be for shooting and involve a small amount of detail of the filming process. A call sheet also includes contact information for both cast and crew scheduled to be filming, information about shot types (movemtn, framing and angles) and any techincal notes important to the image. Basically a call sheet includes everything the crew and cast need to know about a days shooting arrangements.
On our call sheet we have included:
The general location of shoot
The shot number on storyboard
The type of shot (ECU, CU, establishing shot etc.)
Who from the cast is going to be involved, in our case we only had ourselves as cast members.
We also had a list of any props that would be needed
Crew needed for the shoot would be listed
Contact details.
Risk Assessment
In filming the director(s) have to consider any possible risks that could occur at any of the location shoot and must outline or find someone to reduce this risk or to prevent it all together to prevent harm to cast, to crew, or to any expensive filming equipment.
Our risk assessment sheet includes:
The location or description of the shoot
What the actual hazard is (however insignificant it seems) eg. slippery muddy ground
Who or what is likely to receive harm and why
possible steps to minimise the risk, eg. provide some suitable footwear when not filming.
It is important to have a risk assessment to ensure that know crew members or cast are brought to any harm, because if they are unable to film due to injury it will delay the rest of filming and may cause a delay to the finishing of the film etc.
Also any filming equipment that is damaged is likely to be expensive and will cut into the budget of the making of the film if anything needs to be replaced.
We set up our suvey on surveymonkey.com and I e-mailed it to all of my e-mail contacts to try and gain a vast range of different demographics for our research. The response was overwhelming, after only expecting 25 or 30 responses, we checked after an hour and had 130 responses, we left it for a few days and had 413 by the end. We now had a large sample to use for research, unfortunatly with the website we used would only allow us to view results for the first 100 people who took the survey unless we were to pay a memebership fee for the site, we however decided that 100 would be sufficient enough for our research.
Question 1 and 2:
For our first 2 questions we wanted to establish the general people we were going to be analysing to make sure they were not all crammed into one demographic. As you can see we did actually recieve 7 more women answering our survey than men and the age shows that the majority of people (87%) were between 15 and 34 years old, which is an ideal target audience age for our film.
Question 3 :
From question 3 we wanted to find out how much violence we should show in the opening, we didnt want to turn people off the film by being over violent, however without it we were worried we might turn our audience off by making it boring and not conveying the intended genre correctly. From this we see the 'Mild' and 'Pyschological' forms of violence would be acceptable in keeping the interest of our interest.
Question 4 :
We had originally intended to use a garage as the location for the 'killing room', however from this survey we have decided if it will appease our audience, we will try and use a basement as a lair, this may involve however filming the scenes in a garage, but filming the entrances and exits to it in a separate location so that it gives the illusion it is set in a basement.
Question 5 :
Here we wished to find out what diagetic sounds to include in our opening. The top 3 answers we hope to include all off : Screaming, dragging of metal and metallic whirring. These should be easy to create a 'sound match' with the breakfast routine in our other line of action.
Question 6 :
This was the only question that we included where the respondant could select multiple responses, as you can see it is hard to draw a conclusion from this. However, the most popular reponses from the 'Image of a serial killer' question were : disturbed, organised and mentally unstable, all of these will try to be conveyed from our character to make it very clear in the opening that he is a killer. Organisational skills will be present in both the breakfast routine and the killing scene.
Question 7
With this question we debated maybe showing some of the film from a different perspective, for example a victim or detective. The purpose of our film is to give the killer more of a 'human' side, and from these results, with 77% of people responding 'Yes' or 'Maybe', we believe we can make people sympathize with the killer more than a normal detective crime thriller.
Question 8
What we were trying to acheive with question 8 was firstly what colour to make the credit / title text, aswell as what tint or colour wash to put over the killing scenes. Red, black and dark red all came out on top, which are the three colours we will try and give a prominent role to in the opening credits.
Conclusion
Overall, we think the research we gained from this has changed some ideas we previously had and just because we thought they were good ideas, does not mean that our target audience would, so now we can tweak our film to fit the expectations and demands of our audience
The film will be shot in two lines of action, one of a murdering stabbing / disposing of a body and another one of the same man (this is not revealed until the end of the clip) waking up and making his morning breakfast. The killing will be taking place at night and the breakfast obviously, in the morning.
There will be little dialogue in the clip and the rest of the osund will be a mix of diagetic sound from the events taking place when we think it necessary and then a non-diagetic soundtrack underneath this.
The location for the night time scene will probably be a garage or shed workshop type area with very low-key lighting, whereas the breakfast scene will be in a very high-key lit kitchen to show the vast difference in the two events bringing more shock when it is revealed to be the same person.
Audience Positioning
The audience will be positioned with the murderer throughout the film to allow them to see both sides of him, allowing them to sympathise and empathise with him more. He will be shot from close ups most of the time in the opening sequence so that you do not see his face thus adding to the tension and mystery created.
As a group, we needed to decide on the type of font we wanted to use for our opening sequence and what connotations that would reflect onto our film.
American Pyscho
In the opening credits for American Pyscho, the font is very simplistic and plain, all in capital letters with large kerning between each letter. The surname of the people are also in bold, which is very simple but an effective way of making people notice the credits when they may usually be ignored.
Breaking Bad
The credits in Breaking Bad are usually overlayed on top of the action. The teact once again is very simple, with normal kerning and all in bold. However one of the show's main foci is chemistry and chemical symbols in the persons name are usually made bolder and in green font to make them stand out. For example Thomas Schnuaz has 'Sc' in green the chemical symbol for Scandium.
Dexter
Dexter is written in a very tall, slender red font which bears both strong conotations with blood but also with lust and love, again showing both sides of the killer's life. I think we will use a red font for some of ours in the high-key lighting parts, however I worry it will not show up under the low-key lighting meaning we may have to use a white font to make it stand out on that background. After a few minutes research, I have discovered a very similar font called 'Bebas' that would be good to use for our project as it is very simple and plain, both of us think that if we choose a too complicated font it may be hard to read considering it will be overlayed ontop of the action. A sample for the font is seen below.
To research our soundtrack we looked at several film openings and the music from particular films/tv shows which we enjoy or are similiar to our target genre.
American Pyscho
This is the opening soundtrack to the film American Pyscho, also paired with a voiceover from the main character. This non-diegetic sound is quite eerie and mysterious while also being very serious and classy. There is no vocals in this clip it is merely one instrument which sounds good when it has a narrator over the top however for our clip I think we may need something with a bit more depth as we will probably not be using a voiceover.
Fight Club
This song sounds very 'metallic' and unlike the previous example is quite loud, brash and has multiple layers of sound. This song is much like the opening track to another of David Fincher's films 'Se7en'. There is no narration over this track in the movie and I do not think that it is creepy or mysterious enough for our project.
Dexter
Dexter is a TV show very similar to the premise of ours, with a serial killer who acts in a normal way. Me or Sam had never seen the show and were surprised at how light and cheerful the opening track was, we thought it played well upon the audience with it reflecting the 'happy' or 'cheerier' side of the serial killers life. Since we will be showing both sides of the main character we are looking for something like this but a little bit slower making it both creepy and slightly cheerful.
Breaking Bad
Again this is another TV show rather than a film, we both however think the soundtrack is very reflective of the ideologies and mood we are trying to convey, the only downside is it does not seem to 'flow' very well, we think it is very jumpy and in-consistent, this could however be of an advantage as it reflects the unstable mood of our main character.
Breaking Bad - Soundtrack
After looking into the related videos section of youtube for our recent video, we have stumbled across this song, used in season 3 of Breaking Bad, the show who's title sequence both me and sam enjoyed. We beleive the opening 3 minutes of this song is the perfect mix between Dexter, Breaking Bad and American Pyscho, reflecting the methodical and precise nature of the killer aswell as the madness and scariness of his attitude. We are fairly certain the first few minutes of this song will play a large part in our opening sequence.
The film will be a psychological crime thriller, following the actions of a normal business man who moonlights as a serial killer.
The film begins by introducing the character, before explaining why he kills particular people (he kills young fathers who reject their children as he never grew up with a father himself).
In his job as an investment banker in London, his co-worker begins to suspect him of his illicit activities due to being be a lonely outsider and hardly ever leaving his large house.
The killer is very careful about his work, disposing of the bodies by decompsing them in hydrofluoric acid, before poring the melted remains down the drain, this will be shown in our opening sequence.Thus police reports are only ever filed as missing person cases.
The killer see's the man is getting close to discovering his sins and, trapped in a corner, is forced to kill him. The mans wife, a close friend of the killers, refuses to accept that her husband would just abandon her and confesses to being not able to sleep in days and she pursues an investigation herself.
She discovers the killers identity and kills him in his own 'lair' disposing him in the same manner he did with multiple other bodies. The film closes with the woman going home and laying in bed, falling asleep.
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The intention of setting the entire film from the perspective of the murderer is to play on the audiences emotions, despite him being a bad person who commits illicit crimes, the audience will empathise and be sad when he is finally killed as they were the only people who knew both sides of him.
The first image is one I would like to incorporate into our opening sequence, where the camera is placed in a bag and shots the main character opening the bag as if an object from within the bag.
The second image (top right) is a simple extreme close up of the characters eye, however if used effectively it will help to portray that charcaters feelings, in the case we would be attempting to show the character as concentrating extremely hard.
The third, bottom left, picture would be an over-the-shoulder shot of the less sinister character in our sequence performing the innocent task of preparing food, this would then be juxtaposed however with the murderer holding the knife in a less innocent manner.
The final image is a close up of a map with annotations on it made by the evil character a small pan on the newspaper would reveal further annotations which show a possible plan the murderer has.
Title: In order to come to a decision for the title of our film we researched the following words which describe the plot of the film and the characteristics of the murderer:
Skitzophrenia
Psycho(path)
Double identity/life
Murder
Disturbed
Sinister
Capture
Guilty
Mysterious
Lonely
Outsider
Obsessed
Isolation
Delusional
Idenity
At the moment our favourite for the title is Identity as it does not reveal too much about the film but does connote some mystery
Here is a brief analysis of some of the event we want to produce in our final project :
Characters:
Main character who is shown as both a murderer and as a normal person is called Jake Nolan. He is and investment banker in a large London bank, owning a large house with quaint possessions, he lives on his own and many people around him begin to become suspicious of his goings on.
Secondary characters include murder vitcims, who are shown only briefly and mainly by CU's of body parts as the murder(s) take place.
Locations:
A high key lit kitchen where (insert character name) lives with birght colours depicting a normal life
A low key lit 'dungeon' where his murders take place, includes toolboxes with various tools that could be used as weapons.
A dimly lit street with dark alleys and nothing going on around it, where an abduction takes place by Jake Nolan.
START :
Man waking up for work and getting dressed, no face is shown
Cut to man dressing in long sleeved top, jacket and generally dark clothes, finish with balaclava over face.
Dressed man begins to start his daily routine, killer is following someone in the street
MIDDLE :
Series of action match shots, one will be making breakfast / getting ready will be juxtaposed with man at night killing of / disposing of a body. Examples of ones we might do listed below :
Map with different locations being drawn // matched with to do list on fridge
Putting tools into a bag // papers in a work bag
Stabbing of a victim // putting a knife in a knife block
Throwing body onto table // slapping bacon in pan
Wrapping a body to a table in cling film // wrapping sanwiches with cling film
Blood dripping on the floor// a leaky faucet
Two tables one of murder weapons one of kitchen utensils
Fastening cable tie // tieing shoe laces/tie
Bringing knife down over limbs // cutting food
Opening a freezer to put a body in // Opening fridge to get food out
Pouring acid/body remains // pouring liquid into a mug
Screaming // kettle boiling
All actions have credits overlayed throughout in a dark/plain area of the screen
END :
Man in suit pulls up cup of tea to reveal his face as he lets out a satisfied 'ahh', camera zooms out.
Camera continues zooming out and cuts to CU to MS of a murderer who is revealed to be the same man
Cut to black with title card over the top, sound climaxes to silence.
Soundtrack
the soundtrack will include both diegetic and non-diegetic sound. There will be mysterious sounding music, including strings and wind/brass insturments, with not too much sound so that there are silent moments in the soundtrack. At times of intense action eg. killing, the sound mix will be altered so that the music becomes dramatic and loud. Other non-diegetic sound may include some sort of screeching, heart beat.
2 seconds - Black Screen with text setting the time and place of the events of the film 'BOSTON Some years ago'
7 seconds - MS High angle - Handheld camera footage of a street fight - Grainy look with urban attitudes reflected by this - Male narrators voice 'I dont want to be a product of my environment...'
5 seconds - LS Eye level - More handheld camera footage of school buses being driven out of a school guarded by police men in uniform - Typical American yellow buses, blue police officer uniform - Voiceover continues '...I want my environment to be a product of me', conveys characters ideologies and beliefs, audience also getting idea the film may involve police / criminality from fights and police officers
3 Seconds - MS High angle - More handheld street fighting footage, people shouting in the background - Connoted unorganised chaos - Clothing suggests poor / lower class people involved in the fights
1 Second - ECU High angle - The word 'NO' printed onto a black mettalic cannister ECU - People want an end to the violence seen in the previous clips
3 seconds - MS Low angle - Black school children waving off a bus as if they are going on a school trip, not just anormal day - Voiceover continues 'Years ago we had the church...', man is obviously old/wise/experienced and has recollections of the past.
3 seconds - MS Low Angle - Same bus is seen, this time a black child is exposed through a smashed glass window, still handheld camera videos, shows children may be exposed to this violence -Voiceover : '...That was only a way of saying we had eachother' - Towards the end of the shot 'Gimmie Shelter' by The Rolling Stones begins to fade in
2 seconds - LS Flat angle pan - Crowd of protesters shouting at a line of riot police, shows unrest and unhappiness of the people
4 seconds - MCU Eye Level - Interview with black male, still all handheld camera footage saying 'they put hate in your heart' close up shot of his face
8 seconds - ELS establishing - low quality establishing shot of Boston, zooming in on a particular area, used to show the location of the film
20 seconds - Low angle tracking shot - long slow tracking shot from the side, showing silhouette of main villain expressing his belief about 'niggers' and if you want something you have to 'take it' showing his ideologies and beliefs, showing the man in the shadows shows his criminal / underground nature.
21 seconds - Tracking shot Low angle - The camera moves from a long shot of a cafe, bringing the audience into the cafe and then into an over the shoulder the shot of a man at the counter. The Rolling Stones still plays
2 seconds - CU High angle close up of cafe owner handing the man cash over the counter, shows the man is powerful to take money from shopkeepers without forcefully taking it
5 seconds - MLS Eye level - Man is revealed to be 'Mr C' the same man from the shadowing scene earlier, and says 'don't make me have to come down for this again' this threatens the shopkeeper showing there may be some blackmail or criminal activity going on involving corruption in local businesses.
3 seconds - MS Low Angle - Mr C comments on the mans daughter working behind the counter, we also see children in the cafe now, re-enforcing that children are exposed to the criminal activity
1 seconds - MS Low Angle -Mr C beckons the woman over with a flick of his wrist in a mid-long shot of his body, enforcing his power and status over the woman
6 seconds - MS Eye Level - The woman timidly walks over as Mr C begins counting money out into his hand
1 second - MS Eye Level - Mid shot of the child in the shop, looking directly at Mr C now doing his business
5 seconds - MS Low Angle - Mr C hand the money to the woman, the mise-en-scene of the shot shows him darkened by shadows around him as he remarks 'you get your period yet Carmen?'
1 second - MS Eye Level - Mid shot of the cafe owner / father witnessing this event and being to scared to say anything again emphasizing his power
2 seconds - MS Eye Level - The woman hands the money back to Mr C
2 seconds - MCU High Angle - Same mid shot of the young boy watching the transaction, he wears a worried expression
9 seconds - MS Low Angle - Mr C whispers something un-audible to the girl, then steps back into the shadows and smiles at the young child
There are some techniques we wish to replicate in our film opening which we have seen in other movies of a similar 'crime thriller' genre. I have compiled a list of techniques we wish to re-create if possible to fit them into our movie.
In the opening to Layer Cake there is a transition where a womans hair is blended into a man in the next frames beard, this transition could easily be replicated for our piece of work I believe perhaps using a different subject as the transition however.
We were also very excited to be able to create a bird eye view shot when we were filming, below are two scenes from American Beauty where a birds eye view/crane shot is used.
Here are some examples of shots from TV show Breaking Bad which we may also attempt to replicate if possible
In this action match shot, we see a man filling up his drink at a fast food restaurant and then as the audience expects water to flow out, we see a man filling up a bucket with water in another shot, this would be an easy transition to create if we could think of a subject to do it with
Finally, in these two shots we see the camera behind glass sheets, used in place of solid objects, in the first one the character is writing on a whiteboard, but the camera has been placed behind a sheet of glass to give the audience a different perspective, the second shot would be more easy to replicate, it is simply a camera under a glass table shooting the action, but when the shot pulls away we see the character is simply working on a plain wooden desk. Another simple, effective and creative shot technique
We have chosen to do a thriller film over a horror film as we believe that horror films are very cheesy and often times serious effects can look comedic, when we would like more of a serious tone to our work.
We both also enjoy both criminal and psychological thriller films such as 'Seven' (Fincher,1995) and 'Silence of the Lambs' (Demme, 1991). We will take influence from these films when creating our narrative as we want the villain to play a key role in our opening, to the point where he is the main subject of it, much like John Doe in 'Seven' or Hannibal in 'Silence of the Lambs'.
1.Continuity editing: vary distances and angles, pans, steadicam, handicam, cutaways (motivated cut to cu).
2.180’ rule: ensures correct perspective, shot reverse shot, over the shoulder shot. When could you break this rule and stop the audience becoming disorientated?
3.Two lines of dialogue: consider diegetic sound. Conventional of genre? Enigmatic? Part of narrative?
4.Opening door: framing, close ups etc
This is the original planning sheet we did for our preliminary project, as you can see we originally wanted to have a gambling scene with cards and on a table we could flip over in slow motion.
After some thought we realized that we didn't have any playing cards and neither of us wanted to damage a table or lose any money by flipping one, as an alternative we decided to grab the money off the table and have a game of paper, scissors, stone, giving the film more of a 'spoof' feel to it.
Most of the shots we kept in the final production, we kept the ECU of Sam's head dripping with sweat, we kept a shot of the table showing both me and Sam, and we got an over the shoulder shot.
We did not manage an over the shoulder shot as the room we were in had a very low ceiling and we didn't want to risk injury to ourselves or the filming equipment. Overall our preliminary project went well and has given us a good feel for the equipment we will be using when we create our real film.
The conventions of a thriller film that are present in this clip is firstly the use of a protagonist who is not accustomed to danger or violence ( 'Phonebooth' , 'Memento'). Furthermore it is set in a distant, remote island away from civilization and creates tension through the use of non diegetic sounds (also seen in 'Jurassic Park' ). The clip is very desaturated and washed of colour, reflecting the vacant feelings of the protagonist. The narrative is also conventional of thrillers, Di Caprio's mental issues are touched on when the hallucinations of his wife and child appear in front of the exploding car.
In our project I think it would be very reminiscent of a true thriller film if we were too wash / desaturate the film so that it looked more gloomy and could reflect the mood of the character, we will also try, as much as we can, to make the weather reflect the characters mood and feelings, as seen in this clip the weather is very stormy, reflecting his confused and unstable mind set.
