How my research has informed my planning.

How my research has informed my planning?

The research we did looking into thriller conventions and traditions, thus allowed me to view previous works from directors and studios producing thriller, ranging from the classic Hitchcock's Physcho to Henry Rubin's latest thriller, Disconnect. The thriller ideas have been transferred from my research to the ideas that I and my group have put forward in our thriller opening. Ideas such as the slow motion scene have been transferred from the slow motion scene as seen below:

Then below you can see a rough copy of a response to this Slow Motion scene where I got the idea from to include in the storyboard. This Slow Motion effect was made possible by shooting at 50 fps (frame per second) rather than the standard 24/25 fps. 

That scene is an example of how my research into thriller conventions and actions has helped to the production of my thriller opening. Looking at my survey that I too asked my audience ask my research, one question I asked was as follows

"Do you prefer a male lead or female lead actor in Thrillers?"

In our thriller we used Tom as our actor, showing that we acknowledged that from our research there the audience would prefer a male actor and so therefore we removed the only female from the story in order to suit our conventions but also to please our audience. 

Lighting was also a part of discussion because we wanted to keep to thriller conventions however we failed to be able to keep to the conventional pitch black conditions because the camera we were shooting with was not capable of being able to capture something in dark conditions without producing a grainy film (see here) and unfortunately this is what we found the first time around whilst shooting however when it came to shooting for the second time, we revised our storyboard, adding in a light this time though, this began to move away from the traditional torture scene that would be found in Thrillers however we believe it still worked because it did not illuminate the whole area that we were shooting in. 

Another question that was outlined in my survey was what certificate of movie my audience preferred, this allowed me to view what was acceptable to include, most Thrillers are often classified as a 15 certificate as they do not contain gore alike Horrors do. The certificate that was most popular was a 15 and thus I aimed to keep to Thriller conventions whilst building up my storyboard and I did so by the use of tension in the opening but mainly through the more adult and mature themes of torture and being tied up, see below for a snippet from the final storyboard: 

Primary Research Analysis

Above you can see the questionnaire that I asked various people of different ages and a large audience base to complete. I managed to collect a total of 34 responses which is a fairly wide amount of responses.

The first question that I asked in my questionnaire was of their gender, this was to see whether gender effects their opinion of Thriller movies. I managed to collect a more biased result toward males (see chart - Males are Blue) with 58% leaning toward Males where are only 42% are responses from Females. In order to have improved this survey I should have got more responses from Females because then it would have made it a more balanced study.

This question was followed by a question of the respondents name, clearly again I have collected a large amount of responses that are biased within the 16-24 bracket. I have not even managed to collect any data from someone who is of the age of 65 or older. The data that has been collected shows me that I am likely to receive genre responses that are more aimed that the young adult category, such as Action/Adventure and Thriller, possibly Horror.  

The question that was next asked was 'What is your favourite genre of movie?' I received a very high amount of responses that were for Thriller and Action/Adventure, both coming in with a total of 7 responses each. Other high responses were also Drama with 6 and Comedy with 5. This helps me with my research as it shows that their is a field for Thrillers to be released, in particular within the age bracket of 15-24, showing that I can include relevant themes to them for that appropriate age group. I can also incorporate Thriller and the other top genre of movie which was Action-Adventure. In fact there was a comment on my survey saying: Somewhere between Action and Thriller with some conspiracy stuff thrown in - a sort of 'Thraction''

This proves that I can incorporate these two genres together and this is what I hope to do with my Thriller opening, this response shows that there is an audience for this type of movie. Along with this, in my Thriller I hope to incorporate Drama genre into it too to give it a larger audience appeal. Giving my Thriller a potential 57% appeal rate (Drama (17%) + Action (20%) + Thriller (20%)). Other genres such as Comedy, I see that they have a base for an audience however I do not feel that I can incorporate this genre into the Thriller genre as well as they do not really go with one another.

The fourth question on the questionnaire was 'How often do you watch movies?',  the answers are fairly varied however the one with the most responses was 'Moderately often', this shows that half (50%) of my respondents only watch movies once every two weeks. This tells me that half of the respondents are not 'movie fanatics' however it still tells me that there are those (14% of the respondents) who watch movies more than 2 times a week, those are likely to be those within the 15-24 and the 25-34 age brackets and they are the audience who I am going to be targeting. 

The question that followed was 'About how often do you go to the cinema?', this question was a contextual study to as whether my audience still goes to the cinema with the amount of different services around that allow you to stream movies directly to your TV, often for the price of 1 admission to the cinema, for example I have both NOW TV films subscription along with a LOVEFiLM Instant subscription and this has stopped me from going to the cinema as much because I simply have movies streamed to my house instantly. In recent years the cinema industry has been declining rapidly along with the physical music industry (i.e CD and Vinyl) because these advances in Technology. From this study I can see that my audience has likely been affected by these advancements too as 50% of my respondents states once every 3 months, this shows the decline in the cinema industry. 26% of my respondents stated they only went once every 6 months. This shows that for new modern films being released it is often easier and better to release it onto streaming services.

The above question was 'Where or How do you watch movies?', clearly the two most popular responses are Cinema and DVD/Blu-Ray with 28 (82%) responses, this shows that physical movies are still the most popular option to view films. Secondly, as predicted, it shows a large rise in people watching films via online streaming services such as Netflix, the response had a 61% return rate on the choice, this shows that no matter what genre of movie, it will be almost as successful as sales on DVD or a release in the Cinema. For the Thriller genre therefore I believe that a release on either Platform would work.

The above question was to get a glimpse of what I can include in my specific Thriller and to what extent. Therefore I asked 'What certificate of movie do you prefer?' and this allowed me to view that 73% of my audience research preferred the certificate of 15, this lets me work on my thriller using traditional Thriller techniques as they are often 15 and contain moments of disturbing areas but not often contain gore (as that would be a 18, likely to be a horror.) From these results, I will attempt to stick to conformities of a certificate 15 thriller film.

I asked 'What makes you enjoy watching a movie?' simply because it will show what to my audience is most important to view in a Thriller and what areas should I focus most upon. The strongest answer was Storyline (85%), therefore I am going put a lot of effort to produce a gripping opening sequence so that the audience begins to see the Storyline fold out. Next was actors with 61%, this shows that my audience is looking for good acting within movies as their second priority therefore I am going to attempt to source out actors who will play the role in my opening sequence well. One that surprised me was the score because it only had 3 votes, to me however I feel it is a very important part of any movie as it adds and builds tension at moments and even gives the character their thoughts through the director's use of Soundtrack, a technique often used in comedies.

 The question that I followed up with as ' What is your favourite Thriller film?', this question was more for a basis of plot and where I could use a film idea from or popular sub genres within Thrillers, mostly the answers consisted of Pulp Fiction, Pyscho or Dark Knight. The list went as follows:

 

• Secret Window                               
• Pulp fiction                               
• Psycho, The Dark Knight, Heat and Sev7n                               
• The Birds                               
• unusual suspects                               
• Memento                               
• Wanted                               
• What lies beneath                               
• The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo                               
• Blue Velvet                               
• Shutter island                               
• Taken 2                               
• Elysium                               
• Inception                               
• None                               
• Shutter island                               
• Shutter island                               
• Dark Knight                               
• Not aure                               
• kill bill                               
• I don't really watch thrillers.                               
• Taken                               
• Death Proof                               
• The dark night                               
• da Vinci Code / Angles and Demons                               
• Donnie Darko                               
• Seven                               
• Pulp Fiction                               
• James Bond skyfall                               
• Dont know                               
• I don't have one...                               
• Pulp Fiction                              
• Pyscho

The responses shows me that my audience is into a varied sub genre of Thrillers, i.e. Donnie Darko is a sci-fi thriller where as Inception is an Action Thriller.

Finally, I asked which gender lead my audience preffered to act in Thrillers, the highest one was Male with 85% therefore I am going to use a male as my main character role in my opening sequence.

 

 

 

 

Second Planning Edit NEW

Planning of the edit is still mostly the same as before, just changes in plot, some transitions and camera angles. Majority of the transitions will be quick cut to cut transitions with a few blur or opacity fades to make some of the darker scenes flow smoother. These transitions may not be noticeable depending on how light the scenes are. The transitions of clips vary on the soundtrack we decide to use, making the scenes and soundtrack flow well together. All scenes and angles can be viewed on Cesco's storyboard. Many of the effects and transitions will change when we begin editing the footage to see what works and what doesn't. Overall we don't plan on using many effects, apart from colour correction to adjust our footage to make certain objects darker and different colours more vibrant. This is the main effect we will use throughout the intro, the other effects we are likely to use are a variation of blurs. Most of the editing will be syncing the footage with the soundtrack.

Tom Seago has written up this second planning edit, we discussed and I helped put ideas forward that he then typed up into this post.

Schedule/Planning

We now plan to film on Monday 9th December due to our previous footage being too dark and grainy. The schedule for our rough cut has also been moved to after the Christmas half-term.

Here is our schedule which will take us through until the Christmas half-term.

4/12/13	Finalised planning
9/12/13	Film in our lessons
11/12/13	Get footage off camera. Import into final cut
16/12/13	Review footage and begin editing rough draft and create soundtrack
18/12/13	Continue editing and finish soundtrack.

NEW Prop List

Zippo Lighter is required for our opening because it is a prop we need to shoot with as it is featured in our storyboard as the way the son character manages to escape from the captivity of his Father. See shot 14 for use in Storyboard.
 

The other Prop we will also require is some rope in order to tie the Son character to the chair and not allow him to escape until he burns through the rope and escapes. See shot 10 for use in Story board - Showed to the right.

We also require a Chair to sit the Character on as it is where he will wake up and be tied up on to by the rope.  See shot 4 on the Storyboard for use of the Chair.
 

NEW Characters Costume

Grey Hoodie

Black Tattered jeans

Trainers


The above is the costume that the character of the son (played by Tom Seago), the reason for the clothing is because he will then fit into the young teen bracket but also because he will look fairly uncared for (we will make the hoodie look more worn and tattered). This will hopefully blend the character well into the background of the location.

NEW Actor

This is Tom Seago he is going to be playing the son character in our Thriller because we all felt he would play the role better because he fits into the characteristics better. We removed the Mother character as we found that when we filmed on Saturday it did not work well at all and over complicated the scene.

Updated: 12/12/13;

With Tom as the actor it allows us to get the outcome we want more fluidly because he of course is very familiar with the storyboard and the plot but also he suits the role well because of his age and appearance of a young guy, he was one of the only actors we found that was willing to do it for us too therefore we had little choice about who to choose. In his chosen outfit (see here) it will work well in creating the abandoned look and as if he's been left there and this is what we were looking for to create in our Plot. In terms of thriller traditions we are looking to create a psychological thriller and an example of which would be Momento which was just featured with adult actors and most psychological thrillers are this way however there were a few that featured teenagers such as Donnie Darko and Disconnect.

Equipment List

Updated equipment list:
This was the equipment we used on Saturday to film.
We will be using the same equipment on Wednesday, along with an external light, rope and lighter as two extra props. We wont be using a photo, padlock or paperclip from the original prop list.

I helped to add to this because I included the extra props in my storyboard and so they therefore incorporated this into this updated equipment list.

Poor Footage shown and analysed

Here is screenshot of the footage which we filmed on Saturday. The footage itself turned out too dark and grainy. Also the images were not crisp and they were not up to the quality of which we wanted and expected. These are the reasons for us choosing to film on Wednesday and possibly Saturday. Due to there being no lighting in the filming and only using the natural light which is minimal in this location the final footage turned out dark and grainy. We will overcome this issue by using some sort of stage lighting which Francesco will supply. We also feel this will create more of an atmosphere within the thriller itself.

With thanks to Lee and Tom whilst I was creating the storyboard they showed how poor the quality of the filming came out because of the grain in the shot and poor lighting. I helped them express this.

Change of Plans

Due to our first footage being to dark and grainy and the shots being harder to complete than we first expected,  we decided to go back to film later in the week and change the storyboard to suit our location better. Our first storyboard didn't go to plan and the story didn't portray how we wanted it to. Because of this we changed the storyboard to an idea that we can complete and do more successfully. We're using the same location for the new idea, but this time we're going prepared with lighting and with longer daylight.

As Lee and Tom have outlined in the above, we discussed that we should have a change of plans because of the way that the film turned out which was awful. Our change of plans has lead to re shooting the whole thing and so I therefore in this lesson have created a new storyboard and from this storyboard we are going to go back and film within the coming days. I will update the plot too as we have now removed the mother character from the opening as it made things too complicated and ruined the opening.

UPDATED Storyboard

Voices for Soundtrack - Logic Software

Yesterday, I finalised the voices that will be used in the soundtrack on the final opening and I thought that it sounded really good and spooky, creating the effect that I wanted to the voices, by adding the echo and adjusting the EQ I could create exactly what I wanted. This is a fairly long clip and I don't think we will end up using the whole 1 minute 10 seconds in our soundtrack.

27/11 - update on planning and soundtrack

In today's lesson as a group it has been really productive. We have recorded voices for our soundtrack and we have started using Logic and creating our final soundtrack. Also we have made sure our blogs are up to date with the correct labels. We have also finalized our location planning and the date at which we wish to film. We are nearly half way through our soundtrack which we hope to finish and fine tune to our final edited footage. See below for the screen shot of the logic software we have been using to put together our soundtrack using a mix of loops and also our own instruments (i.e. vocals)

My personal input into todays lesson was that I spent time compiling together ideas for our soundtrack and also began to create our thriller opening soundtrack using a creepy feel to making spooky voices. Along with tidying my blog and finalising planning.

Characters, Props and Descriptions

Characters
Child
- Young, 15/16
- Male
- Past experiences of his mother treating him badly, being locked away and being diagnosed with a mental illness. He was taken to a mental institution at the age of 11. 

Mother
- Middle-aged
- Female
- Her husband has turned into a pyscho and mistreated both his son and his wife (the mother) and this has led to them being held in extremely poor conditions, not feeding them for days at a time. She is also now diagnosed with polio and slowly and painfully dying. She's a very poor women and her husband is not allowing her to get the treatment she needs to live on and so she evidently dies in the opening scenes. 


Costumes
- Dirty, old, unwashed shirt for the boy. With a pair of colour faded muddy jeans or ripped trackies. (straight jacket?)

- For the mother, an old dirty dress or a tattered top/shirt and dirty trousers. A thin and small cardigan to keep her warm but with no effect.

Both costumes would need to be dirty and unkept to represent the location. The Farm would be very muddy and dusty, and because of the lack of money and the poverty they're in. A stereotype of these two characters would be to be unkept and dressed messily and not smart.



Props
Mum - Walking stick to aid with the idea that she's very weak and struggles to live.
Padlock and chain - to use to lock the door, old and rusty preferably.

This was taken from Tom's blog where he has added this, however I have edited it and changed it slightly to fit our current themes and more required props. 

Soundtrack Ideas

These Soundtrack ideas came from Tom and Lee's research, they would play these to me as well to get my opinion on them as I was making the storyboard at the time. I contributed to the discussions and ideas posted below:

I was researching Ideas for our thriller opening soundtrack. I liked the calm piano opening and the tempo of the song. It being slow and calm and slowly building up, the build up taking 40 seconds. The stop at 40 seconds would fit in nicely with a scene within our opening and thats something I would want to re create in our soundtrack. As a group we decided we didn't want any vocals to the backing music. Listen here.

The intro of this song is very calm and suspicious, it would suit the intro to our Thriller. But since the intro is so small something like this would be difficult to use without repeating it which may not sound as good. Listen Here.

Casting in our Introduction

The casting will be fairly simple:

Son:
Actor - Andre Francesco Santos - Allan (me)
Description: The reason why I am going to play the role is because I am 16 myself therefore I fit the profile to play the Son character too. We managed to also fail to get anyone else to fill our placement so therefore I chose to play the character.

Mother:
Actor- Amy Clarke
Description: We could not find anyone to fit the Mother character who was of a more mature age so therefore we asked Amy to fill the role despite her age of 16, we feel she may be able to effectively fill the role and play the character, with the use of poor lighting and costumes we will hope to not reveal her age but hopefully this will not be a problem, the problem we may encounter is showing she has Polio, however at no point do we directly mention she has Polio therefore it leaves vagueness to the audience wondering, effective at keeping the audience wanting to carry on and gripped.

Script for Opening

There is very little speaking in our introduction however at the scene between the Son speaking to his mother and her disappearing away there will be speech between them two, the mother saying her goodbye.

Mother: Son, please come here, I have to tell you something.

Son: -Walks over and falls to his knees-



The son moves in, putting his ear closer to his Mothers mouth as she begins to speak.

Mother: I am really sorry, son. I never foresaw him to be like this.

Son: It's okay.

Mother: Afraid my time is running short.

Son: Mother?

At this point the mother will fade out, using a ghosting effect. 

Location of Filming - Older

The location of the filming

The location on which we are going to film the opening scenes is going to be at Salle in a farm just outside of the village.

A) This is the first farm 

B) this is the second farm 

The first farm that is pinned on the map shows the first farm we have access to and can film on (Lee's Granddads farm) and we may film on this farm if something goes wrong however it is only going to be used as a contingency plan. The Second farm is placed on the map with the 'B' and this farm shows Lee's uncles farm, we plan to use this farm because it has more land and outbuildings to film on along with the corn field we need for our introduction. This will be the location for the majority of our filming however we will also film in Norwich for the final scenes. 

Above you can see the location for our filming in Norwich, it is shown by the green marker, we chose this street because it is often fairly busy and will go along with the confusion he is meant to be portraying in this scene at the end. 

As a contingency in case we do not have enough time to finish filming or do not reach filming in Norwich, we will then film in Reepham town centre because it will too be effective and easy to reach, as seen from the directions in the photo (Point 'A' is the College and point 'B' is the town centre.)

This is the alley way where I feel would work to film in because it creates the feeling of claustrophobia and would be very effective to show crowdedness if a lot of people were seen in the scene walking down this alleyway, creating the effect we want. 

I updated this on my own, see here.

Animatic Story Board

Script for animatic storyboard

First shot: So from this shot we see an over the shoulder shot showing the kid holding the picture of his mother and himself, this begins to show his emotions flow and the audience is supposed to see this. The focus will go in and out of focus as the camera moves around him. In terms of editing the fades into the opening will be slow and the music will begin before the visuals. This helps us create the desired dark shot we want. On this picture the name of both the characters will be seen, as this is easier for the audience to understand. The lighting in this shot will be moderate however in post productions we will make it look darker; this goes for all scenes within the hut. Cut to second shot.

Second Shot: This shot is a close up of the sons face, showing little background. The audience will feel a close connection to the character (hopefully), feeling sympathy toward him. The shot will be taken from around about where the photo was being held by the son. No transition just a cut.

Third Shot: This will be a long shot from the upper of the building if possible showing the characters on the floor. As the son gets up it will show his weakness. We will probably place the title text here, ‘Eye for an Eye’. The character, the son, will walk over to his mother.

Fourth Shot:  This shot will be a high angle shot of the mother and this will portray the pain that she has been through and it will hopefully be effective at creating a lot of emotion and begin to reveal a little bit of the plot. Cut to fifth shot.

Fifth shot: This will be where the son moves towards to his mother and this is close up again of him, but it turns into a flashback and the son moves slightly.

Sixth shot: This flashback will be a millisecond view of a farm, possibility in change of the colour correction for this scene. Light flashes in and out of the scene.

Seventh shot: This is essentially the same shot as the fifth shot however the expression on the sons face will be very confused. However he will continue to move into his Mum.

Eighth shot: This is a low mid shot from the side, which will show both characters. The son character will walk onto the shot and he will then fall to his knees in weakness and lack of motivation. He then crawls towards the Mother character who is cramped in the corner. Cut to 9^th shot. Speech in this shot between Mother and Son, this is going to be the Mothers last words to her Son as she dies of Polio from paralysed respiratory system and failure to breathe and she did not receive the vaccine due to being locked away.

Tenth shot: This is a long shot of the character, Son, having a panic attack and he is attempting to punch walls to escape as his Mother has just passed away from Polio. Potentially to use a blur as a transition however likely to just use no transition and just cut to eleventh shot.

Eleventh Shot: This shot is going to be a close up of the lock, it’s going to be a pull focus from the lock to the Son in background as he notices the lock and recognises an escape route.

Twelfth shot: This is going to be a Point of View shot where the character is searching for an item on the floor to break out with and pick the lock. The characters hands will be in the shot to back up the POV feeling. As he finds the paper clip, he clams his actions as he has found a hope to escape. Cut to 13^th shot.

Thirteenth shot: This shot pans up from the floor, following the key as it lifts up in his hand. The camera will be facing him however the focus will be on the paper clip and the audience will just see a blurred background. Cut to next shot.

Fourteenth shot: Close up of lock picking, there will very little in view or focus other than the lock. Should be a short clip. Can incorporate a POV shot into this. Cuts to next shot

Fifteenth shot: This shot will be a long shot of the door opening and the characters silhouette in the arch way. Cuts to next scene.

Sixteenth shot: Pan following the character falling to the ground, shows his relief and happiness to have escaped out of his evil fathers hands. As he walks out of the door and falls to his knees the camera will crab or pan and follow him. Cut to next scene.

Seventeenth shot: This shot is over the sons shoulder and it shows him raise his head and view the field that he will eventually escape to. Cut to next scene.

Eighteenth shot: This shot is going to be a side on shot that will pan, showing the character running toward the field to escape. Cut to next scene.

Nineteenth shot: This then turns to a close up of the characters face running toward the field showing his hope. Fade or cut.

TIME LAPSE

Twentieth shot: This shows the character now leaving the field that is by the road. However we are not sure if this will be entirely possible due to locations and wether we can find one a location that falls within our requirements. If we do not find somewhere then we will just skip this shot. If we do however we will fade transition into next shot.

Twenty-first shot : This shot will have a close up of the son character who is lost and confused in Norwich and this will hopefully be using a rig mount upon the chest to stabilise the image as seen in JME's music video.