Account of possible thriller ideas

Each student had to present the opening of a thriller film outlining the brief idea of our film using a power-point presentation. The location of our idea had to be achievable, preferably only a few locations, and too present how our thriller would generate tension. The general outline of my thriller was to have a 20year old unshaven man, lying asleep in his bed of a clock of flats. The audience is playing a voyeuristic role of watching him sleep, and then the camera tilts up to the ceiling and the camera slows down real time as we watch a water droplet form. The camera follows this droplet from the ceiling onto his face, and the water droplet splashes on his face and ruins down his right cheek. Another droplet forms and the droplet again splashes on his face, he stirs a little as if to wake up. Yet the third droplet that falls is blood. The camera slows down real time and spreads across his face. The camera then flashes to a image of him, lying in the room above, but his body has been butchered. This is a prophetic image, and builds tension as the audience want to know what has happened to him. The camera then cuts back to him asleep, and he awakes as the enhanced diegetic sound of the alarm clock wakes him up.

What is a thiller?

Our lesson today focused on the concept of the thriller genre, exploring its key conventions and techniques. Thrillers are difficult to define, due to the many emotions that are a part of the whole experience. Thrillers rely on the fear, apprehension and suspense in the audience, playing on our basic worries, in which the audience raises enigma codes in their minds. However, the audience enjoys the pain that the characters are experiencing and observes them with a voyeuristic pleasure. Most thrillers make use of universal themes of love, death money and place us as a spectator. Thrillers also play upon a sense of delay and when something does happen, the audience feel a sense of relief. However, throughout the thriller the audience have grown to know the characters and feel a sense of ambivalence, feeling sympathetic towards their vulnerability.
Thriller also employs key generic conventions. These include: a intricacy of plot and a complex narrative which unravels throughout the thriller.

Account of editing preliminary task

We shot our premliniary task in one lesson and after all our our footage had been digitalised onto fire wire hard drives we could edit them. We discarded our bad shots in which a mistake was made in which, an actor forget her line, poor construction-out of focus shots, no continuiety between the shots and the 180 line broken. However, our best shots were dragged onto the timeline and were edited together. We didn’t face any major issues in this process. We included a ‘fade up from black’ at the start and a fade down to black as at the end.

Account of shooting our Preliminary task

Our preliminary task consisted of filming conversation between two characters. Our objective from the task was to film a simple sequence following a storyboard, understanding the camera and movement of the camera. However, filming our preliminary task was made simple as we all worked very well as a team. There were the obvious and natural occasional slips when the actors got the giggles, and were unable to deliver a serious “Do it” whilst smiling. However, I believe that our approach to this task was successful, we were able to productively capture the shots on our storyboard, and even whilst shooting captured other shots that we believed may be interesting to use during the editing process. We believed that we could use this for continuity editing to create a flow from shot to shot to give the idea of a constant sequence. Before we began, we had to establish where our 180º line was; this is an invisible line between the camera and the subject, which must not be crossed. This is because the audience’s perspective will have changed and this will confuse the audience. We next had to set up our props and actors ensuring that all movement was in the same direction and props were set up in the same place, guaranteeing continuity. Also, before we even started recording, 30 seconds of colour bars were put on the beginning of the tape, so the tape when it’s rewound continuously, our footage will not be damaged. Gregory was our main cameraman and ensured that before shooting the camera was in manual focus and the most important subject for the scene, and making sure that the foreground or background or both were in focus. From the beginning Greg had already “mastered” the camera and we had already captured the shots from the storyboard so it allowed us to be experimental and get shots from different. We too carefully choreographed the movement of each character, where they were planning to walk to, so in the shot of the frame the camera would be aware of where that character is, otherwise if the frame doesn’t show where the character has gone, the audience are left confused. Similarly Gregory had to ensure that the framing and composition was perfect, certifying there was enough headspace, between the actor and the top of the frame, whether this was too much or too little. However, we didn’t use any camera tilts or pans or p.o.v’s we conveyed that our low status ‘victim’ through facial expressions and gestures. It may had been more interesting to use a p.o.v, yet we did use film the same character several times at different heights and levels, close-up of victim at eye level, close-up of victim sitting down, level with table. We used the close-up of the victim sitting down because when the ‘victim’ suddenly stands up and pushes the chair behind her with some force, we felt that this was important to the scene because it captured the essence of desperation and that she couldn’t help the antagonist. We also had to take the camera off the tripod and place it on the floor, to capture the same level as the wheels of a chair. We filmed the chair being forced from left to right out of frame. We focused onto the wheels as they spun, to convey the force with which the chair was pushed back. We used diegetic sound, which was recorded along with the footage. The diegetic sound was recorded onto a camera mix in which before filming the microphone levels on the camera were set to avoid the sound being distorted. We tried to use strong sound effects from the antagonist, for example, when she hits the table with her bare hands. The sound as she hits the table portrays her force and anger for someone to not comply with her wishes. Too when she exits the frame, the door slams behind her with a bang, this sound symbolises her anger and annoyance at the victim. We too portrayed the emotions of the characters through their tone and pitch of voice the antagonist using a strong and powerful tone, whereas the victim uses a frail tone of voice. We followed a storyboard of each shot to ensure that we firstly didn’t break the 180-degree line, so each actor was on the same side of the frame throughout the scene. Also it certified that there was continuity throughout the scene, and the actor appeared similarly when we changed the angle and level of the shot. We successfully achieved this, because before we even began filming, we set specific marks for both actors to use to make sure we stood and moved similarly to previous shots. However, it is impossible to get every shot exactly the same as the previous, I believe that we tried as best as we could and our footage shows this. Nevertheless, if there are any mistakes in continuity, during the editing process we can conceal any inconsistencies, to make the footage appear to flow. In conclusion, I believe that we worked very well together as a team, and were able to capture exactly what our storyboard wished for us to achieve, too on set we saw perfect shots, which would create more interesting footage and too give variety to the scene. However, looking back on the task now, I feel that the actors, me included, could have rehearsed their lines before the filming, so less time could be wasted on mistakes and more time on extra footage.

Introduction into using Final Cut Pro

After shooting our preliminary tasks we used final cut pro run on G5 Macs to edit them. Our footage of the task was first digitalised from tape onto fire wire HD before we could edit them. We then had to log out best shots and discarded the takes in which mistakes were made. After rejecting theses shoots, our best shots were then dropped onto the timeline which is very flexible and allows us to easily modify and adjust our shots. In this process we can also add sound, diegetic or non-diegetic, however we did not do this. Next we trimmed, adjusted to create a narrative from a selection of shots into a consistent sequence to give the impression of a continuous movement.

Introduction into a video camera

We used the Song PDR 170’s camera in order to learn how to operate, focus, depth of field on a photograph, framing and composition, allowing us to ensure that there is no too much/little headspace and also learning about the rule of thirds. When there is not enough light, by using gain, 0DB you neutralise the balance of light, you can also do this by using artifical light. We also leant about the DV format on the camera, learning of the time codes on the screen of the camera. However, we first learnt how to certify that the camera was steady using a tripod, and learnt how to ‘bubble up’ the tripod, this ensured that the camera was safe and secure.