Thursday 29th November

During our meeting today after school we altered our shot list, there are still some gaps but we feel that it would be better to mark out the chase on a path in the woods and then just shoot her running and stumbling from many different angles over and over to fill in the gaps between our main events.

Here is the new shot list:

Shot 1
Slow Pan of forest (1+2+3 panoramic – 360)

Shot 2
Slow pan (diff angle)

Shot 3
Slow pan (another angle)

Shot 4
Blurry POV (moving) of girl (woods)

Shot 5
Another blurry POV (looks from up to down)

Shot 6
Further blurry POV

Shot 7
Establishing shot , she is stumbling ELS

Shot 8
MLS/LS reverse track of her stumbling

Shot 9
Pan R-L, she runs in and out of shot

Shot 10
POV of her running, stumbling

Shot 11
Track of her, then she falls over

Shot 12
LS see her scrambling up

Shot 13
MLS/LS Track of her running, moves to side track, tree in shot

Shot 14
POV from girl, just running

Shot 15
LS-MS runs past camera, she almost stumbles into it

Shot 16
LS / MLS side of her from behind trees (framed by trees)

Shot 17
POV of her running / stumbling (only stumbles, hits knee for example)

Shot 18
Reaction shot – front on MS of girl regaining balance

The following are general shots which we will include when we feel they are appropriate
General1
Tracking her through the trees, LS
2
Reverse track through trees LS
3
Side track or track of his feet
4
Side track or track of her feet
5
High angle from tree, Girl runs in then out of frame, then male runs in then out of frame
He appears
Girl stumbles out of view, male is left in the frame camera moves towards him – to MS

Track of her running and stumbling, she starts to slightly look behind

CU her looking round very scared

POV from her of him striding towards

POV of male of her falling backwards (root etc) (2 cams)

Side track trees in frame of Lara running
He disappears
Reverse track she leans on a tree MS/LS

Reverse to other side of tree (stationary), she turns around a little

POV from her looking for male, he’s not there, shaky whip pans

OTS MS/LS track her walking backwards, stumbling, clearly in shock,
Then she carries on running


He reappears
She is looking to the left, he hand comes out from the right (round a tree). Track MLS

MCU he whispers in her ear ‘‘I knew you’d look lovely in this dress’

CU/BCU chloroform rag over mouth, her eyes flutter shut

Shot of her feet being dragged (side track) then dragged out of shot
Shed
Pan L-R Polaroids, comes to Lara’s he crosses out in red, puts up new photo

Obviously there are some gaps, but as ours is made up of so many short takes we really want to be there and we know we will get inspired while there like we did on the test shoot

Matt, Angelie, Liam, Alix

Inspiration: Shrooms

Although this was a trailer it was very inspirational for our scene. Firstly, the setting is much the same as ours - a forest. There is also a central theme of drugs in each sequence, although in our scene it is forced upon the victim, whereas in Shrooms it is each characters choice. We both wanted to create the effect of blurred or distorted vision, and in this trailer the use of trails and slow motion create this. Disortion of time and space is also created by the use of intentionally jump cuts. One of the most inspirational shots to use is the low level side track of the forest floor. This is almost exactly the same type of shot we wish to shoot as it shows the scene well and in our case we can show the direction the character is running. There is also a good use of fades to black to connote time passing which we will use in the scene and the flashes of white between shots is also very disturbing to the viewer and helps to create suspense. There is also a low level shot of the forest floor, which lingers long enough for a charcters shoe to come into shot and step on the floor. The shot here is extremely close to the foot which almost makes it indistinguishable which is similar to what we hope to ahcieve with some of these shots. This shot will almost act as an insert, allwoing us to cut up the shot types and therefore engage the audience and not let them get bored.

Liam

Wednesday 28th November

We decided that our montage was just not practical so we changed our ending to one of our other initial ideas (we as a group felt that the shed waws not a sucessful location in the opening squence. Also the montage would mean lots of footage of the streets and garden would needed to have been shown-which the whole group felt could ruin the mystery created in teh opening):

As the false heroine is chloroformed there is a slow fade to black. From black there is a fade to a slow track (MCU/CU) of her feet. From this she is dragged out of shot, as another fade to black is used (very slowly). Here we decided could be a good place for the title to appear. This could be seen as an ending, however we have decided to give the viewer more information about the killer's habits/his character by having a fade up to a CU pan (left- right) of Polaroids revealing his habit of killing similarly aged females with similar looks (17yrs, white, brown or blond hair), all tied up in the same white dress (almost like a fetish of his). From this we see just how twisted he is and this is enigmatic as the viewer wants to understand his obsession. Further enigma is created as each Polaroid shown before the victim/false heroine shown in the opening sequence, is crossed through with a red marker. This signifies that he has succeeded in capturing and killing them. As the pan approaches the victim shown in the sequence (Lara), it stops- from here we see the villain's hand come in to shot and cross this picture out. - this signifies he successfully murdered her. The final shot is of the villain pinning up a new Polaroid on the borad/wall- a new victim! (who is obviously the protagonist in the film and more than likely will feature on the DVD cover) This shot will possibly be emphasised due to our editing, e..g the use of a negative flash.

Development of the idea:
We as a group have decided that sound could be used very effectively on the penultimate shot. We think it could be effective to hear a poloroid being taken in the background accompanied by the sound of struggling/mumbling (as the viewer lingers on the picture of Lara). Then the viewer sees the villain pin up this anticipated polariod, and it slowly develops to reveal the next victim. (time consuming- do we have this long?)



We also finalised how our villain was to disappear and then reappear:

Villain Disappears

• Reverse track of girl LS-MLS, tree comes into shot and she rests on it, move into her face – MCU/CU
• Reverse shot – she peeks around tree and looks panicked
• POV from girl, shaky whip pans around
• LS she looks so scared, even more hysterical, stumbles looking around, we move around to a MS
• Jumps to MCU
• Jumps to CU – emphasises her fear
• MLS/LS she realises she need to carry on running and stumbles away

Between disappear and reappear

• Lots of cuts – even more fast paced, heightens her hysteria
• Tracking of her feet + lots of other strange angles etc – general disorientation
• 15-20 seconds of general confusion then he reappears
• During this time there will be no titles – too distracting, detracts from atmosphere

Villain Reappears

• PAN R-L, Girl comes into shot and Villain jumps out from behind tree, she is struggling
• Cut to around 60º to the left, MS girl (Villain’s head is cut out) he is in control – arms round her
• MCU, (pulls hair out of way?) he whispers in her ear ‘you look lovely in this’
• BCU, rag is slowly put across her mouth, eyes flutter shut, she goes limp
• Shot of her feet, she is being dragged

Matt and Alix

Generic Signifiers

In order to make sure the viewer understands that our opening sequence is a thriller, we need to include generic signifiers of this genre.
In our scene we have several of these, for example:

• The setting - the setting of our sequence, a dense forest (Grovelands Park), is very conventional to the thriller genre, but probably even more so to the thriller subgenre of horror and slasher.
• Lighting - although set early - mid morning, the lighting within the wood is still very dark and full of shadows often used in thriller films. Shafts of light are sometimes seen to create tension and a silhouette of the villain is also used. The lack of lighting, and its foreboding connotations are a signifier of the thriller genre.
• The victim - the victim is a young, innocent looking girl, dressed in white to connot her purity. This is commonplace in many thriller films, the helpless victim defenceless against the villain.
• The villain - the villain is a tall, muscly man, dressed in black to connote his evil personality. His whole face is hardly ever seen in shot to suggest his hidden agendas and his menace

Liam

Tuesday 27th November

We watched our footage from our test shoot today, after doing a quick test edit we were quite happy with the results but have still decided on a lot of changes:

• Lara needs to look completely hysterical because during our test shoot it wasn't believable that she had been/is about to be raped, so we decided to make sure that; she runs faster, is a lot more clumsy and stumbley (making it obvious she has been drugged), she has to look a lot more scared, and we are also going to mess up her hair, smudge her nmake-up, and put mud on her legs/arms and dress.
• Nick also needs to be further away from her otherwise it is so unbelievable that he hasn't caught her already, and he also needs to take bigger more confident strides.
• Our framing also needs to be tighter in order to really focus the audience's attention on Lara's emotion.
• We also need to start recording before we say action, and leave it runnign for a little afterwards and have our actors run in and out of the frame to give ourselves more choice when editing
• During the shoot we didn't concentrate on shot logging and using the whiteboard, so this weekend when shooting one person will do the whiteboard, one will shot log, one will film, and the other will direct the actors. And obviously we will switch roles all the time to give everyone a fair chance.
• Our POVs also need more variance - e.g. looking up and down, and we are also not going to unfocus the camera on shoot but afterwards when editing so that we can fully control it.
• We also realised that we don't have enough shots, so we are going to take a lot more of her just running and stumbling to give ourselves more choice in the edit room - almost like filler shots, we also want more shots of her falling over.
• We realise a big problem of ours is continuity - i.e. the background matching up, so next time we are going to carefully choose a path through the forest. Then we will do POV shots all the way along the path, to again give us more choice when editing.
• Lara also got increidbly cold and unconfrotable - particularly between shots when she couldn't put her shoes back on, so this weekend we are going to bring an old towel (or some form of material) for her to stand on, and change on, and sit down if she wishes.
• Our main problem was our initial shotlist was also not very helpful so our main priority before this weekend is to create a perfect one which we can just follow and therefore avoid time wasting. We are going to talk through every single shot and therefore get any disagreements out of the way before hand.

Alix

Final Costume

Since our last post about costumes, we managed to find the perfect white dress for our victim. We felt that this dress was much better than the blue one, since it was a proper signifier of innocence and purity.

Here's a picture of our actress wearing the dress:


And this is a picture of our actor in his costume:

~ Angelie

Test Shoot Weekend

We did some shooting early morning today and yesterday. When shooting, we found that some of the things we planned worked well, whereas others really didn't.

Some of the shots we had planned to do, didn't really work when we tried them out.

• Shot 4: the girl climbing over fence to get into the park
  We didn't even attempt this shot. It seemed too dangerous to even try it, since our actress wasn't wearing any shoes, so could have been injured very easily.
• Shot 12: a shot from the girl's POV as she stumbles over, we see her hands hit the ground
  This ended up being too complicated and really didn't look very effective.

We had also planned to get a high angle shots by having Liam in a tree taking the shot, but this really couldn't work since the trees in the park didn't have stable enough branches (if they even had any branches at all).

On the first day of shooting (Sunday November 25th), we had some weather issues. It was really freezing outside, and because of the actress's costume, she got really cold. So, we ended up rushing a bit, to try and make sure that she didn't get too cold. This ended up meaning that we probably didn't get enough footage as we would have liked to. But, today it was much better, since it wasn't as cold. This meant that we could spend much longer on taking our shots.

We have now realised that we don't have enough shots. We thought we would, but once we put our ideas into practics, we realised that we probably don't have enough shots. So in between now and our actual shoot, we're going to have to add more shots to our shot list. But, while shooting today we did also invent a few extra shots that weren't originally on the shot list.

A few pictures from our shoots:

(that was Liam standing in for Lara as the victim, by the way... oh and Angelie took all these pictures, which is why she's not in any of them)

~ Angelie

Initial Shot List

This is our first shot list for our test shoot

Shot 1
Slow Pan of forest (1+2+3 panoramic – 360)
4/5 secs Fade to

Shot 2
Slow pan (diff angle)
3 /4 secs Fade to

Shot 3
Slow pan (another angle)
4/5 secs Fade to

Shot 4
Girl climbing over fence
2 secs

Shot 5
Girl running into woods
3 secs

Shot 6
Blurry POV (moving) of girl (woods)
1/2 secs fade to

Shot 7
Another blurry POV (looks from up to down)
½ secs fade to

Shot 8
Further blurry POV
½ secs fade to

Shot 9
High angle (from tree) Establishing shot , she is stumbling

Shot 10
MLS/LS reverse track of her stumbling
½ secs

Shot 11
POV of her running, stumbling
2 secs Fade to

Shot 12
POV she falls, see hands hit the ground
2 secs

Shot 13
LS see her scrambling up
2 secs

Shot 14
Side Track MLS/LS of her running – runs out of frame?
2/3 secs

Shot 15
Low angle, about to jump/stumble over log
1/2 secs cut to

Shot 16
Camera on floor, shot of bare feet.
1/2 secs

Shot 17
POV, blurring, focusing in and out
2 secs

Shot 18
Reverse or stationary, girl stumbles out of view, male is left in the frame
3 secs

Shot 18
(same one) either we are stationary or forward track he is striding
2 secs

Shot 19
Track of her running and stumbling, she starts to slightly look behind
2 secs

Shot 20
CU her looking round very scared
1.5 secs

Shot 21
POV from her of him striding towards
1/2 secs

Shot 22
POV of male of her falling backwards (root etc)
2 secs

Shot 23
Side track trees in frame of Lara running
2 secs

Shot 24
High angle from tree, Girl runs in then out of frame, then male runs in then out of frame

Shot 25
Reverse track she stops behind a tree panting MCU to CU
3 secs

Shot 26
Reverse to other side of tree (stationary), half tree she peeks around
1/2 secs

Shot 27
POV from her looking for male, he’s not there, shaky whip pans
3/4 secs

Shot 28
LS girl screams
3 secs


These next shots are later on, but we haven't quite figured out the details in between and we want to test shoot them.

He reappears - scenario 1
LS track She is running through the trees, then he is behind one, she doesn’t notice and he grabs her.

CU, he whispers in her ear as he chloroforms her ‘I knew you’d look lovely in this dress’

He reappears - scenario 2
She is looking to the left, as his hand comes out from the right (round a tree). Track MLS


MCU he whispers in her ear ‘‘I knew you’d look lovely in this dress’


CU/BCU chloroform rag over mouth, her eyes flutter shut

He reappears - scenario 3
Whip pan left, she sees figure

Whip pan right, she sees another figure

Whip pan from right to centre he’s right there

Matt, Angelie, Alix, Liam

Friday November 23rd

We had group meetings before and after school to create a shot list for our shoots.

We also had a meeting in our Media lesson, in which we created a list of key possible problems that we might face as a group. Since we've already blogged a few possible problems in our 'Tuesday November 20th' blog, this is just a list of the ones that we didn't have before.

• Lighting
  Weather conditions will probably have an effect on our lighting, and as we're shooting over different weekends, we may have some problems with continuity as well as shot quality. If it seems like our shots will be too dark, we'll have to try and use artificial lighting to improve the light quality


• Continuity problems
  Since our actress would be wearing a white dress, as she runs and stumbles through the forest, her dress will probably get quite muddy. So, we'd have to make sure that the mud/dirt looks the same throughout. In order to do this, and avoid other continuity problems, we should probably take still shots of our actress to make sure she looks the same from week to week.


• Being thrown out of the park
  Since we don't really have permission to shoot in the park, we could be thrown out quite easily


• Full reccie
  Some of the group haven't actually been to the area we're shooting in. But we can avoid this problem by getting to our test shoot early to go and look around the park.


• Not sharing tasks
  We could possibly have some problems with not splitting the tasks equally between us.

~ Angelie

Test Shoot

For our test shoot we are meeting at 6:15am at Alix's house and going to the park before the actors get there so we can set up, we are then meeting Nick and Lara at 7am. We are going to shoot till latest 10/11am.

Props to Take

Matt

• Hot Ribena, Rope, Extension Lead, Camera 1, 'Chloroform' rag
  

Alix

• Dress, Food, Tripods, Bag, Sound Kit, Digicam, Black Scarf, Make-up

Angelie

• Extension Lead, Digicam, White board, Marker Pen, Group Folder etc, Lighting Kit

Liam

• Camera 4, Camera Booklet, Food, Umbrella(s)

Alix

Opening Sequence

Our final idea is made of up of 4 sections:

1.) In the first, the woods are established in about 10-15 seconds with slow pans etc, then the girl appears and the audience realise she is on drugs or has been drugged and is obviously running from something or someone.

2.) The second is when the audience first sees the male and it is made obvious that she is running from him (i.e. from shots of her looking round and is generally panicked). At the end of this section he disppears from view - which makes her even more hysterical.

3.) The next section is when he reappears - the details of this are undecided but it will be in a way tat makes the audience jump and will build up suspense - and then chloroforms her

4.) Just after he chloroforms her it almost immediatley starts going backwards, very fast, in a montage style. It goes back to before the sequence starting - i.e. as she enters the park and escapes from his house - the final shot will be of her tied up in his shed (it will be very dark then as the hwole thing is shot as the sun comes up). Then the title will flash up.

Alix

Actor Contracts

Here is in an example of the actor contracts we will make our actors sign to make sure they turn up to the shoot, ready and on time. In the event that they are not able to attend the shoot, we have indicated they must contact us with reasonable notice so that we can set up a suitable replacement.

"Media Group 1C

Actor Contract-Group 1C
I agree to attend all shooting sessions including re-shoots over the following dates: Sunday 25th & Monday 26th November, Saturday 1st & Sunday 2nd December. I will also attend the re-shoot dates Saturday 8th & Sunday 9th if I am required (all actors will be informed of this by a member of the group). The meeting point and time will be given to me by a member of the group nearer to the actual date, and I will be prompt and prepared. In the event that I am unable to attend, I will inform the group with reasonable notice (at least 24hours).
Print Name __________________________________
Signed ­__________________________________

Thank you"

Liam

Actors

These are our final actors:
This is Lara who is shown below in an earlier post, we finally decided to go with her because she was really good for the part and was willing to do it, despite her beign very unconfortable (cold etc).


This is Nick who will be playing the villain, we chose him because he is tall and broad, and has a confident stride.

Alix

Costume

We decided we wanted our costumes, and the colours of them, to be very conventional and obvious generic signifiers. We wanted white for our female but couldn't find the perfect dress, but the blue one is just as fitting, and black for our villain.

Female

• Silk white nightdress - innocence/purity
• Bare feet: seems almost childlike innocence

Male

• Black knee length trench coat - mystery/villainous
• Black scarf
• Black trousers

Alix

Inspiration: I Know What You Did Last Summer

We found the chase scene in I Know What You Did Last Summer (blogged in 'Chase Sequences' by Angelie) to be quite inspirational for our opening sequence, since it contained some similar themes to ours.

Clip (the actual chase starts about 45 seconds in):

Shot types
A fairly wide variety of shot types were used throughout the chase sequence.

• Different levels were used. For example, a floor level shot when Helen climbs out of the car window and a low level shot when tracking the killer (and his hook)
• Different distances were also used, varying from extreme long shots to close-ups
• Different types of movement were used. This includes tracking the killer, reverse tracking as Helen runs (towards the camera) and panning as Helen runs past the camera
• There was also one handheld shot which appears to be from Helen's point of view
• A high angle shot was also used when tracking the killer and his hook.
• There is a steadicam/tracking shot from the killer's POV (the camera gets closer and closer to Helen)
• An extreme high angle/bird's eye view of the killer approaching the shop
  

Iconography
The chase sequence appears to take place in some sort of small town, which links to the idea of isolation. The victim character, Helen, is wearing a strappy, fairly short dress and high heels, which connotes femininity but also adds to her vulnerability, since both items of clothing would be very impractical when trying to run away from a serial killer. The chase taking place at night is quite typical of a thriller film. The killer is dressed all in black, which connotes evil/evil characters. The lighting appears to be ambient lighting, since the scene takes place at night. Some artificial lighting may have been used though, to make sure that the shots aren't too dark.

Themes
Murder, Serial Killings, Masked/disguised villains, Isolation, Slasher

Sound
Both diegetic and non-diegetic sound are used in the chase sequence. The music used adds to the tension of the scene. Some of the diegetic sound (for example, footsteps) is used for realism. Other diegetic sound (e.g. panting, gasping, a bit of dialogue at the end when Helen is shouting Elsa's name) is used to make the scene more tense and scary.

~ Angelie

Prop List

On Screen

• White floaty or silky dress
• Black Trenchcoat
• Black scarf/trousers/shoes
• Make-up

On Set

• Umbrellas
• Digital Camera
• Warm things for Lara - Hot Ribena/Coat/Blanket
• Wheel barrow
• Cling Film (vaseline)

All

Tuesday 20th November

At this meeting we brainstormed problems with shooting on set, and organised what equipment we will need for our text shoot on Saturday. We have also finalised our idea and ending.

Potential Problems and Solutions

• Weather - inconsistent conditions: We have no problem with rain, in fact it could look quite effective as it would make her seem more uncomfortable as she would be wet as well, but if it rains one day and not the other, or one weekend and then not the other we would be in trouble. If this does occur, then we would have no choice but to either: 1.) re-shoot all shots on the second day/weekend or 2.) see if dusk looked similar to dawn as far as lighting goes and try to shoot after school. Although these solutions are problematic in themselves, there is physically no way around this.
• Sun Rise - too fast: We are going to have to be very organised because each day we are going to have one hour at most to shoot, so we are going to need an exact shot list with a tight schedule. On top of this, if the sun comes up even faster we are going to have to convince our actors to shoot on some more mornings.
• Actors don't turn up: This is very unlikely as we only have 2 and the female is quite a good friend to some of the group so would only not be able to do it in an emergency. If she can't make it on the test shoot the Alix would stand in, and on the real thing we have a possible understudy of Ciara. For the test shoot Liam or Matt can stand in for the male and either would also be fine on the real day if our actor can't make it - particularly as you might never see his face.
• Distractions - people/animals in the park: In this case, for example - dog walkers, we would ask them politely if they wouldn't mind taking another route round the park for their walk - which most people wouldn't mind doing.

Equipment

• Obvious ones: Camera, Tripod, Small Whiteboard + marker
• Digital Camera: To take quick stills of our shots for a more detailed/clear storyboard
• Dolly?: We are going to try out different methods for tracking shots.
• Sound Kit: We are going to record some sounds (without visuals which we would use) like bumps, thumps, breathing etc to go over the top of our piece, we will also experiment with a little dialogue from our male lead.
  

Final Idea

• Opening shot (10-15 seconds) calm woods
• Blurry POV shots - disorientating
• One establishing shot to show her stumbling/drugged up
• Man appears from behind her, striding confidently after her - obvious it's a chase
• More stumbling etc
• He disappears from her view
• Then from our view for a little
• Appears possibly in front of her - makes audience jump
• He captures he, chloroforms her - whisper things in her ear, particularly something about 'you look lovely today' to make it obvious he dressed her.
• Montage-style sequence, very fast, going back in time, goes back to before she is in the park, to when she escapes from his house, final shot: she is tied up in a shed.
• Title flashes up almost instantly
• Then possibly her dress ripped and muddy left in the stream - obviously something awful has happened - rape/murder etc
  

Targets Set

• Draw up contracts for actors
• Go to Marks and Spencers to buy dress
  
  

Alix

Monday 19th November

Just a short meeting today in our Media lesson (Period 1)

Another idea for the ending of our opening sequence has been developed, so most of the meeting was spent discussing this idea, since it was slightly confusing.

The new ending
The female victim would be caught and chloroformed, as previously established. Then the scene would backtrack in a montage style, and the audience would see a few shots they had already seen (but in reverse order) and they would also see some takes which they haven't seen before (i.e. the girl running into the park). Then the opening would end with the girl being tied up in the villain's shed and then the title screen. This then sets up the location for the rest of the villain's kidnappings/killings that will take place during the rest of the film.

Targets from last meeting
Everyone was to search for chase sequences in thrillers (on foot) so that we can see how they did it, and to get ideas for different shot types. (All of these are blogged below)

No targets were set at the end of this meeting

~ Angelie

Chase Sequences

Our target from the last meeting was to find and analyse a chase sequence from a film for inspiration.

Alix - The Shining
The best chase scene in the shining is right at the end through the hotel's eerie maze, and it is the father (Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance) chasing his son on a murderous rampage.

Camerawork
The camera spends nearly the whole time tracking, either reverse or forward as the 2 characters run through the maze, and it does it so smoothly it seems almost graceful and elegant and it seems to slow the time down and dramatize it further. The smooth movements also make it seems very disorientating as the large snowy bushes just become a blur. The camera spends most of it's time on a low level but not on a low angle which makes the maze walls seem even bigger and more menacing.

Mise-en-Scene
The Mise-en-Scene in this is brilliant, as it's very early morning around 3/4am it is very dark and there is an eerie mist hovering quite high above the ground 1 or 2 feet, which creates a very creepy atmosphere. The high maze walls also make it seem very sinister and isolated, there is also snow on the ground which is very white and i think it symbolises the little boy's innocence, it also increases suspense as the audience worries that the father is just following the boy's foot prints - so he won't be able to hide.

Editing
It is not quite cross-cutting as they aren't in 2 different spaces but the father and son are never in the same shot. I think this heightens to suspense as you don't really know how far apart they are. I think the sequence may have also been slowed down a little as all the movements seem very graceful and dramatic (and generally just slower) - although this is mainly due to the camera work. They are all straight cuts, and mainly long takes - i.e. they show the father for a while and then the little boy for a while which increases suspense again by the mystery of how far apart they really are.

Sound
There is a lot of diegetic sound mainly panting and footsteps which increase suspense, at the end as well, over the top of a show of Jack Nicholson falling over from blood loss you can here the engine starting of the truck in which his son and wife escape in - so it is incredibly important as it sets the viewers midn to rest.
The non-diegtic changes with the movement of the characters, when they are still (with the camera) the music is mainly horns and trumpets - possibly to symbolises tiredness from their running. When they are running though suspense is further heightened by scratchy/shreiky strings - this is also the films motif and is used through and also quite famous.

Matt - Halloween (2007 film)

Plot summary:

The Devil's Rejects director Rob Zombie resurrects one of the most notorious slashers in screen history with this re-imagining of the 1978 John Carpenter classic that spawned numerous sequels and countless imitators. As a child, young Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) committed one of the most unspeakable crimes imaginable. Subsequently locked in an asylum and placed under the care of Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), the hollow-eyed boy grew into an emotionless man determined to escape back to his hometown of Haddonfield and complete the murderous mission that he began so many years back. These days, the long-abandoned Myers house sits decrepit and overgrown on a peaceful suburban street, its boarded windows and rotting wood a silent testament to the slaughter that has haunted Haddonfield for decades. Now Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) is back, and as the children of this typical Midwestern town fill the sidewalks for a fun-filled night of tricks and treats, Haddonfield is about to find out that there is no escape from pure evil.

http://www.starpulse.com/

Camera work:

• Use of tilted angles to show disorientation
• Whip pans to show immediacy
• Shaky movement when more involved as if audience is experiencing the event.
• Steady camera work when onlooker so we can take the action codes in
• A big range from big close ups to very long shots, showing close emotions to the surrounding environment
• Victims eye level to show enormity of villain
• Some shots use a stationary camera to restrict the audiences flow in their involvement, making it more enigmatic as they want to be there to help the victim escape.
  

Mise-en-scene:

• Mask hides the identity of the villain and makes him seem supernatural and excluded from society
• Villain wears dark clothes to hide identity and is a signifier of evil
• Rural street implies a greater sense of isolation, i.e. victim is more on her own and implies this is out of the ordinary rural life
• Domestic setting involves the audience when expressing fears on society so is more suspenseful and plausible
• Night time and low level lighting gives a sense of creepiness, and is typical of thriller chases
• The struggle through doors and windows shows entrapment and heightens suspense. Is she going to get inside in time?
  

Editing:

• Fast pace editing and fast shots are used in places to show that this is actually a chase- it maintains realism and audience’s pace
• Slow paced editing and longer shots are purposefully used to hold the audience in suspense and this lingering puts the audience on the edge of their seats- e.g. ‘quickly, get in the house!!’
• Slight blue colouring connotes a theme of isolation
• Straight cuts maintain pace of the chase
  

Sound:

• Use of diegetic sound such as screaming, crying, grabbing, smashing of objects, smashing glass, banging on the door, locking the door, smashing the door down. Brings chase to life.
• Non-diegetic sounds such as ...a piano drone, heightens suspense and enigma.

Angelie - I Know What You Did Last Summer
This chase sequence is the chase leading up to Helen (played by Sarah Michelle Geller)'s death. It starts with Helen in the police car with the policeman who is meant to be protecting her. He then goes to try and see why there is a car parked in the middle of the road. The policeman is then murdered by the villain in all black who uses a hook as his/her weapon, while Helen is locked in the car.

Camera work
The chase sequence starts with her kicking the window and smashing it. There is then a floor level shot of her climbing out of the window. Then there's a long shot of her climbing out of the window, giving the audience an overview of what's happening around her. then it goes back to the floor level shot, she gets up from the ground and starts to run away. The audience can only see her feet, then her feet run out of frame and the audience can see the killer's feet walking behind her. Then there's an very/extreme long shot with silhouettes of trees acting as frames within a frame, then Helen's silhouette runs from behind one of the trees and runs towards the camera. Then she runs out of frame and the killer's silhouette walks into frame, following the same path that Helen took. Then comes a medium shot of Helen running and as she passes the camera, the camera pans to follow her. Then there's a long shot which then goes to medium close up of a shop that Helen appears to be running towards. We see Helen run past the camera again and the camera pans as she runs past. Then there's a shot from inside the shop, of a woman putting some sort of plastic sheeting over a mannequin. Then there's a tracking shot of the villain, which is a close up low level shot of the killer holding a hook. Then there's a reverse track close up of Helen as she runs. Then there's a shaky (probably handheld), point of view shot of the shop she's running towards. Then it goes back to tracking the killer, but this time with a medium long shot. Then back to the reverse track close up of Helen running. Then there is a long shot of the shop, and Helen runs into frame and towards the shop. Then there's a shot from inside the shop (through the window in the shop door) which zooms in as Helen gets closer and closer to the door. Helen bangs on the window to get the character in the shop's attention.
[That's basically the end of the actual chase sequence and afterwards Helen gets into the shop]

Editing
The takes of Helen are generally quite short, to convey her panic. The takes of the killer are usually longer, to show how slowly he's coming after her, but this also shows that he's really in control of the situation. Some cross-cutting takes place between Helen and the killer, and the female character in the shop. There also appears to be some parallel editing, since there are some shots of a girl, researching a murder, on the computer. But, this may instead be cross cutting because their paths may cross later on, but at the moment we can't really tell whether or not that will happen. Straight cuts are used throughout to creat a sense of urgency.

Mise-en-scene
The chase takes place at night, which is typical of a thriller film. The area of the chase also seems to be quite deserted, which is also typical of a thriller film. Helen is wearing a dress and high heels, which make her more vulnerable since neither item of clothing is particularly practical when trying to escape from a murderer. The villain is wearing all black which is a signifier of evil/evil characters. The audience can't tell who the villain is, since his/her face is covered. This creates enigma. The villain is using a hook as his/her weapon, which is perhaps an indication of who the killer really is.

Sound
Both diegetic and non-diegetic sound are used in the chase sequence. The music used adds to the tension of the scene. Some of the diegetic sound (for example, footsteps) is used for realism. Other diegetic sound (e.g. panting, gasping, a bit of dialogue at the end when Helen is shouting Elsa's name) is used to make the scene more tense and scary.

Liam -

Different Endings

Some different endings to the scene that we discussed in our previous meeting:

• Fade to title of film, then fade up to long shot of white dress floating down river - connotes killer has raped and murdered victim
• Fade to black, hear victim scream or killer laugh, with title of film
• After he reappears it fades to black and then it fades up to him in his shed (links both our ideas together), and it pans across poloroids of girls which have been crossed out with red marker, and then he crosses off the photo with our main actress in.
• Have the sequence already shown in reverse, only showing specific shots (e.g. stumbles over to reveal killer), then cut to victim in shed tied to chair - shows where the victim has come from, and connotes she has escaped from this place
• Shot of couple walking dfog in forest - stumbling across dress or body (difficult due to the fact it involves other characters)

Liam

Friday 16th November

Our meeting on 16th november

We discussed the problems that were beginning to show:

• we decided that the opening sequence could become too short or just become a little boring if there was just a contant chase throughout the whole opening 2mins. We decided to have many shot types and other events within this chase, e.g stumbling, hiding behind trees etc, as this will prodive more enigmatic content to the opening. Also we are going to brainstorm a few more events which could take place, to add further exciting content.

The targets we have set for the next meetng is to individually look at a chase scene (preferably a foot chase) and talk about at least one technical aspect within the sequence.

Angelie: 'I know what you did last summer'

liam: '28 weeks later'

Alix: 'The Shining'

Matt: 'Halloween' (2007)

Progress with targets from last meetings
Liam - The potential actor (Nick), has agreed to be the mian character in our thriller opening.

Matt - Due to the potential actor agreeing, the search for other male actors was not as vital however there is an ongoing search a backup actor and actrss just incase.

Angelie - had some problems finding relevant music, only found one really good song

Alix - could not find a white dress in Oxfam, and so we have decided to buy a white night dress from Marks and Spencer.

Matt

Inspiration: The Blair Witch Project

Shot Types
Within the film's storyline there were 2 handheld camera's and the entire movie is seen through these 2 camera's. One is black and white and one is colour - at the end this helps us to distinguish who's POV we are looking at. So the camera shows pretty much all distances and angles and is always very shakey.

Iconography
Mise-en-Scene - The majority of the film is set in a large forest which is quite creepy and it's autumn so most of the trees are bare, predominant colours are brown and orange. The dress codes are just old jeans and flannel shirts as they are spending the weekend camping. The lighting is all totally ambient i believe because the film was supposed to look amateur and was very low budget (another reason why it is inspiring), it is shot half in daylight and half at night time - sometimes the screen is completely black for a few minutes.
Particular images associated with the film are the figure shapes make with twigs which are hung from the trees, and piles of rocks, bundles of twigs and tiny hand prints all over the walls in the final house.

Sound
There is no music as the film was set up to be real, the diegetic sound is one of the things which makes it so scary. There is screaming, heavy breathing, footsteps, twigs beneath feet and a strange noise which awakens them in the night almost like stones being thrown together.

Themes
Exploration, Supernatural, Kidnapping, Murder/Torture, Being Lost, Isolation, Decline of Sanity, Legends/Stories, The Truth, Seeking of the Truth, Naivety

We found The Blair Witch Project as a whole quite inspirational as it's camerwork, iconography and diegetic sound are all incredibly similiar to ours, but it's opening sequence is quite boring as it just establishes background to the story (i.e. nothing interesting happens).

Alix

Thursday 15th November

We had a group meeting in our Media lesson today (Period 6). It was just a short meeting, but we had some discussion about possible songs and also potential actors for the male character in our opening.

Targets set for next meeting
Alix - try to find costumes
Angelie - try to find more possible songs
Liam - find out if one of our possible actors would be interested
Matt - try to shortlist other possible male characaters

Update of targets from last meeting
Songs we thought would be appropriate:

• Alix
- Comfortably Numb, Scissor Sisters
- Somewhere I Belong, Linkin Park
- Spitfire, The Prodigy

• Angelie
- Distort and Merge, Glasgow Coma Score (see, this is one that no-one will have heard of, ever. But I think it might just work...) . You can listen to it here: http://www.myspace.com/glasgowcomascore or here:


• Matt
-Angel, Massive Attack
-Insomnia, Faithless
-Insomnia vs. Funky S**t, Faithless & The Prodigy
-Glasgow love theme, Craig Armstrong
-Blinded by the lights, The streets

• Liam
- Theme from 28 days later

Wednesday 14th November

During this meeting we decided definitely on our Grovelands idea being our final and that we would each go away and think of songs we could use and any other details/solutions for our problems.

Targets for next time
For everyone: brainstorm ideas for backing music

(This post is short as everything else is shown below, we only just realised we have to blog meetings)

Alix

Possible Actress

We might use Lara for our female victim because she's petite, pretty, has quite an innocent look about her, and she's brunette which strays from typical convention of a blonde. She is also taking AS drama so our opening would look more realistic as she is experienced

Alix

Problems

At our meeting today we came across a few problems with our idea.

• The female actress wouldn't be hard to find as it can easily be someone who looks/is young, so therefore someone in our year, the main problem is the male. We want him to be tall, quite hench and generally look older (bit of stubble etc), and this inevitably causes problems as we don't know many men in late 20s early 30s
  
  
• We really liked the idea of shooting early morning (6am-ish) because it strays from the conventions of night time and we could get really good effects with breath and mist, but this would mean we'd have only approximately 30-45 minutes in which to shoot. For this problem we do have a solution though: we would need to have everything perfectly storyboarded and organised so that we could shoot efficiently.
  
  
• Different weather conditions could also cause problems, not only just rain but for example sunshine and then not (coming through the trees). Although this is a problem everyone doing this project (and anyone ever shooting) faces.
  
  
• The costume for the female is hopefully going to be a white floaty dress - to connote innocence/purity and to make her stand out, and probably bare feet, but as we are shooting in December and early morning our actress would get very very cold. Although this could be minimised if we shot very efficiently (as said above) and if we brought like a big warm dressing gown for her to put on between shots.
  
  
• Our final problem is slightly smaller but we quite like 'Post Blue' by Placebo for our back ground song, except that this was used last year and we didn't realise.

Alix

Rough Final Idea

These are all the definite factors which we want our opening sequence to contain:

• Grovelands woods


• Early morning


• Innocent young(ish) girl


• Drugged up - blurry POV shots


• Stumbling, falling


• Chased by hench, tall, all in black older guy


• White, floaty dress - torn and muddy


• Final shot: title of the film flashes up, then fades to her dress left on the floor (poss half in the stream)

Our main starting point is our fantastic location as the Mise-en-Scene of grovelands (and attached idea) is brilliant.

Here is a rough first storyboard

It's quite bad quality because the pencil is drawn lightly

Alix

Initial Ideas: Grovelands

We all took the idea of a girl being chased through the woods and expanded it again:



Liam
I like the idea of a conventional female victime - innocent looking, short girl which is emphasised by the white dress she will be wearing. I also think that an establishing shot, possibly a pan at the beginning of the scene would work realyl well in setting up the scene and creating enigma, for example, why is a girl runnin thorugh the woods. I think stalling the first appearance of the stalker works really well as this will also create enigma as we have no idea who the girl is running from until this point. We decided that we should not see his face, by casting it in shadow or by simply never having a Medium Close up or Close Up of his face, again to raise quesitons in the audience's mind. We would show the stalker with Extreme Long and Long shots to connote the isolation of the scene. We would also use close ups of the stalker feet and tracking shots from behind him, aswell as his POV as he chases after the victim. POV and handhed shots would be the majority of the camerawork to create realism and suspense, although we do need to use some static camerawork aswell as a range of distances and framing to keep the action hear-thumping and not let the audience get bored. The closing stages of the scene would see the stalker catching up with the victim and drugging her, followed possdibly by a fade to black and then a shot of the white dress floating down the river, to connote he has raped and killed her.

Alix
I really like the idea of having a very innocent looking girl, particularly in a white floaty dress to connote purity and to make her stand out in the woods. The opening shot would be a very blurry POV shot of her running so the audience is disorientated (possibly because she was drugged) and then an establishing shot of sorts is shown and it becomes clear she is running from something/someone. After 20/30 secs a man all in black far away from her would appear, very calmly striding towards her (obvioulsy chasing her). Then at somepoint she looks behind her and she is gone, which obviously even scarier and builds up further suspense. It turns out he somehow got in front of her in the woods and the shot where he appears (not finalised idea) makes the audience jump a lot. The final thing we are shown (possiby after the title comes up) is her dress torn and dirty left on the floor, so it is obvious she has been raped or killed etc.

Angelie
I think having a chase scene through the park would be very interesting for an opening sequence. The chase sequence we discussed in our meeting is quite similar to one of the chase scenes in 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'. There would be a girl in a dress running away from a irrecognisable man who is just walking to try and catch up with her. Him walking rather than running shows his confidence and how he is in control of the situation. I like the idea of the girl wearing a white dress to connote purity and innocence (as Alix said above). As she's running away from the man, she could fall a few times, causing her dress her dress to become more and more muddy/dirty, which could symbolise the gradual corruption of innocence and perhaps foreshadow what will happen later on (i.e. her being raped - corrupted innocence). I think using a few jump cuts could be very disorienting for the audience, which would link to the idea of her being drugged and then trying to escape.

Matt
I definately agree that a small, young white lady runnning through the woods can be a really sucessful opening to our thriller. I also love the fact that the villain has a hidden identity throughout the chase.

I like the idea of her being drugged as this means that her action codes are much slower and less coordinated - a stark contrast to that of the villain's actions. The aim of this is to really agitate and cause tension among the audience as they really want to help the victim and react to her wrong decision making (events that hinder her own getaway.)

I think the victim's POV shots could possibly be more successful if, when editing, we take out a few frames from these shots and slow the shots down, as this will be highly reflective of her state. However this is ONLY a suggestion at this point and we will experiment when editing the footage.

When Liam and I discussed the idea away from the whole group, we came up with a really thrilling and enigmatic ending, which we think is really unique and could slove any problems we had with the content being too 'repetitive' (i.e. the whole opening being a chase throught the woods and then he finally catches her). We came up with the idea that once the victim has been caught and chloroformed by the villain (to knock her unconscious), we then go back in time at a fast speed to give more information to the audience. For this reversal of time we suggested that a montage type effect is used of only some shots that had just been seen by the audience. e.g. If in the chase we see her stumbling, looking over her shoulder etc... we may see this again. However after one of the beginning shots has been replayed we keep reversing the footage- therefore the audience see extra footage of where the victim has escaped from and why she is running. The only issue with this idea is that we would have to make it really obvious that we are just reversing what has just been seen (and more) very quickly, rather than a continuation from the last shot (likely to be the 'chloroforming' of the victim). Otherwise the audience may think that she[the victim] has escaped the villain when trying to chloroform her. On the whole, i really like this idea and will be brought up in the next group meeting.

Location: Grovelands Park

Grovelands park is so close to all of us and we all think it's a good location because it has a really great forest style part which has a stream running through it - which could be a very good opportunity to be creative.

Alix

Initial Ideas: Shed

We all took the shed as the main location for a thriller and expanded a little on ideas for an opening sequence.

Alix
The opening is a shot of a normal, middle-aged (early 30s) man in his house (study) organising/arranging/cleaning surgical tools, and sometimes there is maybe a photograph of him and his wife shown. Then the phone rings and he answers it and you see him pick up one of the photographs, smile (slyly) and say 'I'm sorry she's not here at the moment can i take a message', then he snaps on rubber surgical gloves.It's late (around duskish, or else it would be too dark to shoot) and he goes into his garden and starts to walk up his garden path towards the very overgrown part at the back of his garden towards his shed (with his surgical tools). He scrapes the door open and there tied up is the women in his photos - i.e. his wife.I think the title should be something like 'the ultimate betrayal' - or possibly something a little more warped. I think this idea is good because it leaps straight into the action and because it taps into audience fears - someone close abusing your trust/something twisted going on right in front of you.

Matt

In the group meeting we all decided that the shed location could provide a really enigmatic opening to our group thriller. The initial storyline of this opening sequence that we thought of together as a group is shown below in Angelie's section. Adding to this however, i liked the idea of there being a sudden twist at the end of the sequence. This twist is as follows:(leading on from a shot of the villain's hand opening the shed door and after a fade to black with the film title). The villain would then be seen with his wife/gf tied to a stool with her crying-him standing behind pulling her hair back and confidently saying in a low voice "I told you not to come down to my shed" (or something along those lines). The reason i like this idea is because it is much more enigmatic. If we just hear a scream the audience already knows that she [the wife] is being attacked, whereas if we just see her tied up, it shows that time has passed and we as an audience really do not know what is going to happen next! - e.g. is she going to escape? is he going to kill her? is he going to keep her hostage? is he going to emotionally blackmail her? etc. Although i like this idea, along with the rest of my group, we believe trying to cram all of this narrative into an opening 2minutes would be really confusing for teh audience.

Angelie
I quite liked the shed idea we discussed in our first group meeting. The two main characters in this opening were a young couple. The woman wakes up one morning and discovers that the man has already got out of bed. There would then be some cross-cutting between the man locking the shed and the woman looking for the man. Then the two of them would meet in the living room, and it would be established that the couple have only been together for a short while. Then the man would leave for work. The woman would then look at the shed suspiciously, and then go to investigate it. While she's investigating the shed, there would be some cross cutting between her investigation and a character (the man from earlier on, but that wouldn't necessarily be apparent to the audience) coming towards the shed. There would be close ups and over the shoulder shots of the character coming towards the shed, but none of them would reveal too much about the character. There would also be lots of close ups and reaction shots of the woman investigating the shed, but none of these would really show what's so disturbing in the shed. Then there would probably be a shot of a hand opening the shed door, then name of the film would appear on a black screen (though, we couldn't think of a name for the film) and a scream would be heard, implying that the woman had been attacked. The main problem with this idea was that there was far too much going on to fit into 2 minutes of film.

Liam
I didn't realy like the 'shed' idea mainly because i thought some of the narrative elements and the actual setting weren't very plausable. Although I agreed that the basic mise-en-scene of the shed and the environment it was in was very enigmatic and conventional to a thriller, I thought that it would look unprofessional, especially in with the artificial lighting we would use. I also thought that the audience would be confused at the relationship between the man and the woman, and i thought they would not think some aspects of the narrative were realistic. For example, it would be hard to convey the shed as a negative or sinister place in the opening 2 minutes. To achieve this there would have to be speech from both characters, and i thought that possible lines such as "what's in your shed" were improbable and would seem 'stupid' to the audience. Another possible problem was the actors for thise. Although we agreed that a younger actress from either year 12 or year 13 could easily be made to look around 20-25, we thought we needed a male actor actually this age. However, most of the male 20 year olds we knew were at uni, and therefore their availibilty was limited. We also wanted to get the look and aura of the character just right - we wanted a tall, quite muscly, man with dark hair to connote his evil nature. We found this quite hard, and i think this was the main reason we decided not to go with this idea.

All

Location: Shed

The shed at the end of Alix's garden is a really good location for a thriller because it's really quite eerie, we think it would be perfect as it has a creepy atmosphere and would be ideal for a storyline surrounding stalking or serial killers.

Matt's reccie also consists of a shed location and alleyways....

We thought this shed could work as an effective thriller location as it looks very isolated and secretive, which would be ideal for a serial killer's hide away. Also the size of the location would mean that action codes inside the shed are not restricted and would probably make filming much esier. On the other hand we as a group decided not to use this location as it looks to cultivated and colourful, whereas we feel if we did use a shed it would need to be dark, dingy and creepy.

As a group we liked this alleyway as it connnoted a really reckless and eerie atmosphere (a feeling of unknown). We also liked how narrow this was as it provides a sense of claustrophobia. We have now decided on a better location and so at present will not take this any further.

As a group we diecided that this alleyway could potentially provide a really enigmatic opening shot to our thriller. We had an idea that we would slowly reverse track the serial killer (villain) in our thriller and gradually tilt up to reveal more of him (more enigma codes, his gesture and dress code). Therefore we thought that this really narrow alleyway would make the audience more intimidated by him, whilst the gravel would produce a really enigmatic diegetic sound effect. We have more recently however, decided on using another location which fits our idea more appropriately.

Matt + Alix