Explaining Ideas On Editing

Outcast Productions
 We chose to call our cooperation Outcast Productions because we thought it would relate to the story of our thriller. The main character in our Thriller feels an outcast himself and is shown to live a lonely life style believing in the work of God. By showing this within our credits it hints to the audience the features of the character. It fits in with the dark mysterious atmosphere which we are trying to create throughout our thriller opening. We felt that it would look a lot better to make everything relevant to our storyline to ensure we fully capture the maximum attention span of the audience throughout.

Voice Over
  To begin with, 2 pieces of music from garage band which was founded on garage band were linked together to try and create dramatic tension thrououghout our thriller opening. After reviewing the track, we discussed the effects which it has on the thriller and decided it sounded unprofessional and common, due to many existant openings have the same tracks, just merged in different ways. We wanted a track which was shocking and new to the audience, enrapturing their attention and giving the overall piece a freaky feel. 

The piece of music needed to be very atmospheric. It needed to sound relevant to the story line and so we looked online at copyright free tracks which people had made and chose two different tracks, both sounding very traumatic with lots of low notes to show the power in our thriller. After merging these tracks together, we thought it would sound a lot better to add a feature off of "Imovie" to highlight the main traumatic parts of the opening. I.e. the moment Henry puts the syringe into my neck, and the moment he walks out of the barn, leaving me for dead. These two moments are very symbolic of his unpredictable nature. After watching the almost finished thriller opening, we discussed adding the voice over. After discussion we decided that it would make the opening become too much, leaving the audience feeling overwhelmed and making it sound harsh on the ears.

Speed
During editing, we decided that the speed of the clips would help make the opening look effective by changing the pace. This will shock the audience and keep them entertained by having an unpredictable clip pace. When the girl regains consciousness we set the clip to much a much faster rate than it originally was. I thought that this would make the clip look traumatic and show the struggle the girl has gone through to escape. We also made the clip of Henry closing the door slow motion to make it much more dramatic as Henry locks the girl away to never be found. By changing the pace it makes the film look much more professional and keeps the audience's interest. 

How Our Shooting Went

 To begin with, we designed our credits in a different way to which we had researched into. We discussed the colours we could use and decided that big bold RED text would look effective against a white background. It is the colour associated with danger and illustrates the bloodshed which will occur during the opening of our thriller. We chose to hand write the credits to make it symbolise the chaotic atmosphere the opening displays but still use the idea of  the psycho characters hands flicking through the bible showing the credits of "OUTCAST PRODUCTIONS" with out names and candidate numbers. However, when we looked back at the credits, it didn't reflect upon the atmospheric idea we wanted to create, but looked messy and unprofessional. Realising this, we knew that we would need to redo our credits at a later date to determine a more professional look. This will be done with the ideas we first thought of using bold BLACK text against a white background with the religious illustrations occurring in the bible throughout the flashes of credits.

 We managed to stick to our plan and do each scene at a fast rate and finish the filming within one day. We had two breaks through out the day, one break was in the morning as the bitterly cold weather was becoming too much to stand outside in for hours. We went inside Henry's, looked over everything we had already filmed and discovered some of the footage was unsatisfactory and so after a warm drink we filmed some of our footage again as we were by this time much more familiar with the camera settings.

 On the night before filming, I sat and looked at You tube clips to fully understand each camera shot and how they work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laU2MI6X48I&feature=related

 When editing our thriller opening, we discovered that our storyline included too much footage. When adding all of the blackouts and detail which the opening needed to ensure it made sense properly whilst still looking effective, the time of the opening was well over 3 and a half minutes. The task set for us was to make an opening, being 2 minutes approx. This made us have to cut down the editing by almost half. We decided that our story line was too complicated and took a long time to get across to the audience causing the editing to be less conventional and have no techniques.We wanted too include one shot repetitively, to show the main focus of the opening and left us feeling unhappy with it. I said to the group it would work better if the religious man, innocent girl, and drug dealer were completely unconnected. This meant taking out the argument scene between Kingston and I and the relationship scene where Henry lingered in the background watching and planning his new move to kidnap me. By reducing this right down and showing Kingston and I to not know each other, also put much more focus on the main character and the reasons as to why he is so obsessed with the girl. It also allowed us to show lots of the bible, which would be very important to the character, demanding the audience to see just how religious he is.

When shooting our thriller opening, we found it challenging to act in such cold conditions for a long period of time. During the longest scene, I needed to act unconscious leaving Henry to drag me to the car and put me in. This took a long time to film as it was hard to drag me for that amount of time without me slipping and when filming something as serious as this scene with people you know it was hard to remain in character and not breaking out into laughter. When Henry put me into the car, we experienced a minor injury by him hitting my head on the door frame. Due to the cold weather making the pain much more intense, I took a five minute break to apply pressure onto it to try to reduce the pain. After this it was very hard to play a character who needed to remain lifeless due to the challenge of disconnecting my body from my brain to stop myself from worsening the injury. However, it was of great importance to try to remain as much in character as possible to keep our thriller opening looking realistic.

Proof of shooting day

This is the Deer head we decided to use in our Thriller.

  We layed it down on a floor which looked unhygenic and layered with moss to express the feeling of neglect, unhumanity and uncleanliness. This will be shown to display the freakiness of the religious character we are putting in. The audience should be made to feel uncomfortable and get a glimpse of the cruel background of the religious character. It will cause the audience to feel a slight hint of anxiety and give them the sitting on the "edge of their seat" feel which thrillers are known to portray.

 This is a shot of Kingston (drug dealer) walking down the road to meet the religious man. No background information will be shown to the audience about Kingston, making him a character they know nothing about. This will keep them focused on him. By seeing his whole body and not having his face shown as a close up goes against the idea of him being bad. Baddies are normally shows close up in a very intense way however we wanted to keep the audience guessing who he is right untill the end of the scene, where the drug/money swap is shown in the middle of the street. We thought this would be a good way to take the audience by suprise leaving a shocked atmosphere displaying the unpredictable plot of our thriller.

  This is location one. Henry's gouse. The picture shows his abattoir. Metal trays, hooks to hang meat upon and hanging metal chains show Henry's characters barbaric personality. By filming these freaky objects in an extreme close up shot, we thought it would be another thing to get the audiences jaws dropping. As well as this being a useful tactic to shock and leave the audience feeling nervous... It also gives them a little insight into Henry's character they should have the feeling that Henry is unhumane by killing and skinning helpless animals, leading to the kay question of... What else is he capeable of doing?

 

 This photo is the showing of Kingston and myself being in
love. It is the main focus of this scene showing good and evil through a helpless innocent girl being in a relationship with a boy who breaks the law selling drugs to people who need them to keep them sane. The audience should see this scene and start to predict what the outcome will be. They should think that Kingston himself could end up being hurt by the religious man for ruining the life of the girl, causing them to be wrong right untill the end when the girl is shown being tied up and murdered.

 This shot captures how we wanted to make Henry look crazy. By him standing and not walking on the pavement, just staring at Kingston and myself in the distance shows that he has some very strange charactertistics and isn't normal at all. His stance of crossed arms should suggest to the audience that he is not best pleased and that he is stood intensely staring and thinking of what he could do to stop the relationship between Kingston and I. This shot is poweful in the fact that so much information is put over to the audience by one shot of Henry.

  As a group, we had decided that we would prefer to include a voice over, rather than having to produce a script and getting speach to run through our opening. Remembering this, we needed to display an argument between Kingston and I in a place where the audience wouldn't hear it if they were stood in the position of the camera. Henry had a car on his drive which we had access to and so parked it on his drive. Kingston and I got into the car placing the camera on the drivers side, where I was sat. We needed to put both characters on film to display conflict occuring between the two characters, this was difficult as the window pillar of the car reduced visability causing this shot to take severale attempts.

  This is location 3. The warehouse which Henry owns. The big worn down metal doors show how difficult it would be to escape out of due to the solid look of the building. This will give the impression that the girl is doomed to the audience watching. The size of the door and height of the ceilings in the warehouse show it to be superior to the vulnerable girl who has been kidnapped. The rough stone wall interior of the warehouse showz that the warehouse is old and has stood for years giving the idea of it being solid and very hard to break through. As soon as the lights are turned off and the door shut the warehouse would be pitch black due to the solid doors letting in no light. This stands for the girl being in eternal darkness.

 This shows the girl who has been kidnapped to be tied up deep inside the warehouse. However when I looked back at this scene, a mistake we had made was that we hadn't cleared out the room successfully. In the background you would be able to notice packaging and things of Henry's which I thought stopped the mise-en-scene from being accurate to the thriller. I thought it would take away the attention of the audience and cause the opening to look unrealistic in the last scene of the opening, ruining our work over all. I told the group what I thought about this scene and we were all in agreement that we wanted it to look as realistic as it could and so chose to take this scene out of the opening. By only showing Henry walking into the warehouse holding the unconcious girl and then seeing him lock her in, it lead alot more to the imagination and by not seeing the torterous things Henry would have done to me, the audience will make their own assumptions which are normally worse that the actual recorded footage.

This shot is Henry locking me in the warehouse. In our plan, we thought by Henry leaving the girl alive it would work well giving the impression that he will torture her in days to come. After close consideration, by taking out the scene when tieing my character up, we thought it would work better to leave my safety unknown. His carefree attitude shows him to be ruthless and insincere to the choice he just made to harm, if not kill an innocent girl. He then turns around and walks out of the warehouse without a care in the world ensuring he securely locks the place up, leaving the girl alone with her safety unknown to the audience. We thought of this to be a dramatic end to the thriller opening due to audience not knowing whether the girl is alive or dead or able to escape. This would allow the thriller to continue showing it to only be a mysterious opening and not a full story.

Story Board And Other Planning Evidence

 We made a lot of changes from our first plan to our finishing product. We sat and thought about what it was that we were intending to do, and soon realise the scene occuring with the car would have been very hard to film effectively with the limited equipment which we will have. Shot angles would need to change a lot in order to capture everything to the best of its capability and it would be hard to edit effectively later on due to the amount of contiunuity errors which could potentially occur from stopping every few seconds and changing the camera position so both characters can be seen by the audience at all time. This would be very challenging to do as our first propper piece of media work and we wanted to simplify the narrative as sometimes, less is more.

Opening Proposal

 To make the ideas for our opening really come to life, we need to plan in great detail including as many features relating to the Thriller genre as possible. Mystery, suspense, differences in characters etc. A strong plan will make our filming day successful and will ensure our final piece will make perfect sense by including all of the necessary shots to make our story line reachable. I strongly believe in our thriller opening plan and can see great potential into making it look both realistic and well rehearsed. Although we have thought about things such as the storyline, costumes the characters should wear, and the mise-en-scene to keep our piece believable, I feel we may have one key element which will exceedingly hard to control. Lighting, because we are using the natural world with no artificial light we will need to think of many things to ensure it looks as well as it can giving no reasons to be marked down upon. A main concern of lighting difficulties is that each clip we have filmed needs to be analysed. It would look extremely unprofessional if any of the following occurred:

Shadows of the filming crew appearing on a recorded piece

No filming directly into the path of the sun

 Light beams hitting the camera distorting the clip

 Light beams appearing all over the camera off reflections: windows, puddle, shops... 

I propose the filming to be finished after one day of absence from school. To support this proposal, we, as a team need to ensure that all preparation is finished and ready for use before we arrive at our filming destination. This included credits, all props, costumes, filming equipment etc.

 To ensure that each shot is filmed to the best of its ability, a tripod should be altered accordingly. This will give us the correct height and shot type keeping a still resulting shoot. This will stop clips from being shaky and will capture the intensity of the characters expressions and actions keeping their features clear. By attaching the camera to the top of the tripod, the handle on the equipment allows easy movement for doing shots such as panning, high and low angle shots to ensure that each shot looks interesting from the audiences view and abides the rule of thirds. It would be easy when filming to become tired by the end of the day due to the demanding concentration and amount of clips which we will be taking. However, the team will go into the filming day with the attitude of filming to the best of our ability. We will be making no compromises on our filming day and each clip will be viewed on the camera after shooting to make sure that it looks as effective as we discussed in class. We will look through for any mistakes or continuity errors and add another or reshoot a clip to keep success.

 To certify that our story line is within our reach, we made a step-by-step list and story board planning each shot we will take and writing all of the scenes we need to include. We noted in chronological order to ensure that on our filming day it was easier to know where we needed to be and at what time we needed to do a certain amount of things by. We have decided on 3 main locations for our filming all within 3 miles of each other. Our first location will be Henry’s house. This is because of his shooting hobbies and his ability to get a Deer’s head in his abattoir to give us a freaky close up shot. As well as this, his houses consists of antlers hanging on the wall and hooks to hang up dead animals, we thought this would give our opening the mysterious and uncomfortable vibe which we were aiming for. Our second location was around the village of Kirkby Underwood (Henry’s village.) We decided upon this as it was outside of our everyday town (Bourne) and is full of pathways connecting up to each other, which would look effective in a scene where Henry is following Kingston and I due to his obsession with me. Our last location is the village next to Kirkby Underwood because there is a county lane which is shown to be a public footpath but is always empty, giving a ghost like feeling to the filming. As well as the path, this village also contained an empty building which Henry’s family own. It has a big pad lock on the front of the sliding doors and we thought this would be a good ending to the thriller by slamming the door shut.

 We hope to each dress on the day according to the weather for filming and sticking to the costume list we decided upon together. This demonstrates the idea of keeping filming fast paced as when we are acting, we are likely to become cold quickly. Usually past years have to stay wearing sensible footwear and coats due to December usually snowing however we are relying on the ground having no ice upon it due to the weather forecast saying it will be dry on filming day.

Further ideas

IDEAS FOR CREDITS.

We came up with the idea to add our names, candidate numbers and the Title of our film into the bible. This would make them alot more interesting to watch from the audience's point of view as many film openings let themselves down on using standard scrolling credits leaving the audience bored.

 By adding them in this way, it till keep the audience entertained, gives them a hint on the main topic of our thriller opening and allows them to look at black and white illustrations whilst also seeing who created and starred in the thriller.

By keeping the text black and white, it connotates the idea of good and evil, which is shown throughout our thriller opening through the actions and personalities of individual characters and replicates the Christian beliefs of heaven and hell.

 The black and white text also keeps the credits looking older than the actions of the characters, showing the age of the bible and Christianity in the days of Jesus against our modern day society.

Fonts

It is important to ensure that the font we are going to chose matches with the style of writing in the bible. After our first attempt of filming the credits using red pen and drawing it free hand, we discovered that it would look alot more professional to do the text on a computer as similar as possible to the real text in bibles.

 By adjusting this key element it will give our thriller opening a much more professional look and not look rushed like our first attempt at the credits.

OTHER THINGS WE'D NEED FOR OUR FILMING

The pot of pills are for the exchange between Henry and Kingston to show the sort of people they both are withint the first 30 seconds of the opening. The audience by this time will already have bad vibes off of them both and understand that they are both corrupt.
 The Rosary Beads are for Henry to wear throughout the opening to ensure the audience know that he is a character who is extremely religious.
 The Syringe and Map are what Henry uses to get the girl to come close to him. He pretends he is lost and will ask for directions where he will then inject her with a medicine sending her to sleep temporarily before tying her up and killing her. To ensure that this makes sense the audience will need to see Henry making the syringe, hiding it, asking for directions and then putting the syringe in me. This will become a very tense scene and it is vital all of our props will be remembered for the best possible outcome.