Production Phase 1

This lesson we began filming our thriller film. The first location for filming was an office located on the college premise. It was necessary that I did the majority of the filming as both of my group members were required to take acting roles.

I made a conscious effort to do multiple angle shots so that when editing my group and I would have an array of shots to choose from.

One problem that my group and I encountered was during break time, as existing students at the college kept walking into a shot that we had finally been able to perfect.Another difficulty I faced was filming shots in and around the lift. This was problematic as from some angles were difficult to film from.

In addition to this filming inside of the lift was hard, as the doors would shut every now and again.Despite this, my colleagues and I were able to complete all filming for our thriller within our pre scheduled three-hour lesson.

Planning our Thriller

We had an original idea which contained a stalker/serial killer we was going to follow some one and strangle them to death. However this idea was too simple and had been done many times it was to repetetive. so we had to spend tuesday lesson adding new ideas and creating our storyboard through using pictures. Also our new idea is an idea that has never been done before. Also here we were able to use our old ideas and develope them into better ideas for example the stalker chnged in to a bully, which we felt could appeal to many people as bullying may go unoticed in many schools and shows awearness to people who watch our film.

Pre Production Phase 2 (Storyboarding)

We changed our idea slightly this lesson. We decided to evolve our thriller around an interview situation. An interviewee is in waiting room where he is seen acting nervously and agitated whilst waiting to be called. We decided that we would portray this by filming behaviours associated with nervousness, e.g. perspiration on his brow, sipping water, tapping foot etc.

Then the door to the room is opened by another man, this man turns out to be someone that bullied him when he was at school. There is going to be a close up of the interviewee's face as he has seen the ex-bully.

After which there is a montage of flashbacks of the interviewee being bullied when he was at school.

The interviewee hastily exits the room, followed by the ex-bully at some distance. Interviewee anxiously waits for a lift, he gets inside and as the doors are just about to shut the ex-bully manages to stop them form doing so.

This concept was approved by our teacher, so my colleagues and I were able to storyboard our idea. After storyboarding, we left a sufficient amount of time to discuss props, casting, and attire and production schedule.

Pre Production Phase 1 (Pitch)

At the beginning of the lesson, all groups were given the opportunity to organise the pitches that we had to produce before being given the 'ok' to execute our ideas.

Primarily my group and I decided that the theme for our thriller would be revenge. The storyline behind this theme was about a boy that used to be bullied when he was at school. The ex-victim would then see the boy that had previously bullied him on 'Induction Day' at college. We would then show the ex-victim being bullied at school through the use of flashbacks at various intervals in the film. Eventually the ex-victim would feel the desire to get revenge on the bully.

Two out of the three teachers we pitched our idea to thought it was a good concept. However, one of the teachers did not think it was that plausible, when taking into consideration the amount of time provided to complete the thriller and the duration of the thriller.

Having seen the rest of the classes pitches and with the criticisms we received, through conferring with my colleagues it became evident that we may have been somewhat over ambitious, as it may not be possible to fit this information into the space of two minutes in a clear and concise way.For the rest of the lesson we brainstormed ideas on how we could improve our initial idea and various camera angles and techniques.

Match Cut Execrise (Editing)

In this period, we had to begin and complete all of editing for the match cut exercise, unfortunately we unable to finish editing all of our footage to a high degree. Yet we were able to incorporate at least two match cuts into our Short footage.

It has become apparent that my group members and I will have to sacrifice some hours outside of lesson time to produce a quality thriller film/sequence to the best of our ability. Communication between group members is also crucial; I took it upon myself to swap details with my colleagues.

thriller practical

The secound practical film went much smoother than the first. As i was calm and i did not muck about in the lesson, i was serious as i acted and this enabled us to get better shots and gave us more time for editing. As the first practical we did not get the clips we wanted, yet this time we were able work in a room which enabled us to get better shots. In this practical i learned how to understand hw we can get good shots e.g when to zoom or rotate to get the best clip in that scene. We used the zoom to show my facial expression after the clip were cris done the sign with his fingers to show my reacton. Moreover i learnt how to cut clips to make the film run more smoothly, and how to work with my group and collabrate our ideas to get the best clip we could.

preliminary match cut task