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. 

Planning Edit

First shot:
Over the shoulder from the kids point of view. This camera angle would help to show the audience the characters emotions towards the photo. Fades in slowly and later than the music. Colour correction makes the scene darker than normal. This would help create the desired look and would help set the scene of our thriller. Cut to the second shot at the end of this first shot. The character name of the mother will appear on this scene with the picture of her.

Second shot:
A close up shot, showing only the characters face. This will show the emotion the characters face and the ordeal he is going through. The lack of objects in the background, just the sky, will show how lost and abandoned he is. There would be a clean quick transition as no fade would be needed.

Third shot:
Long shot/birds eye from the farm with the character in the distance. Showing his weakness as he gets up.  The titles text will appear on this scene. Blur transition to effect the change in range.

Fourth shot:
High angle shot of the mother. This will portray the pain that she has been through. This will be effective as we are able to create a lot of emotion within the opening scene. The transition again will again be a quick clean cut.

Fifth shot:
Close up of the child character.  Quick clean transition.

Sixth shot:
Flashback longshot of the farm. Very short duration. Change in colour correction for this scene. Light flash in and out of this scene.

Seventh shot:
Back to the fifth shot, flash transition into it from the flashback.

Eighth shot:Low mid two shot from side of both characters. The child character walks onto the scene and falls to his knees shows his weakness and lack of motivation.  Crawls hands and knees towards mother who is cramped in the corner. No transition into this scene.

Ninth shot:
Extreme close up of mother speaking into the characters ear.  Clean cut transition.
- Same angle and shot without the mum in the scene.

Tenth shot:
Long shot of the character going mental. Blur or no transition.

Eleventh shot:
Close up of the lock. Pull focus from the lock to the child in the background. Clean cut transition.

Twelfth shot:Point of view shot of the character searching on the floor for an item to break out.

Thirteenth shot:
Panning shot from the floor following the character rising from the ground with the paperclip. The Paperclip would be the object in focus, and the audience would only be able to view the outline of the character.

Fourteenth shot:
Picking the lock, close up. Very little in the shot apart from the lock and chain.

Fifteenth shot:
Long shot of the door opening and the character in frame behind the door.

Sixteenth shot:
Mid shot of the character falling to the ground with happiness and surprise, along with being weak. Pan follows him falling

Seventeenth shot:
Over the shoulder shot as the son lifts his head to view the field in his line of sight.

Eighteenth shot:
Long shot from side on of character running towards the field

Nineteenth shot:Close up of character entering maze field.

Twentieth shot:Character leaving the field and running along road, mid/long shot

Twenty-first shot:Close up of the character in norwich, lost and confused

With thanks to Lee and Tom who typed this up as we were creating the storyboard at the same time therefore I contributed by giving my ideas and amendments to our scenes.

*EDIT* Added extra scene (17th shot) to fit our storyboard as that is what I have created into the storyboard, or else it would not be a very fluid scene.

Storyboard Basis

Compiled Frames to short video

Storyboard Frames

Production of Digital Storyboard (Photoshop and WACOM tablet)

Here, shows the production of our Storyboard on Photoshop using a Wacom tablet to essentially draw up our digital storyboard. This will later come in handy when it comes to producing our animatic storyboard as all we do is import the scenes and record a voice over describing in more through depth locations, camera movement, etc.

In process of producing Storyboard scene no. 17

Wednesday// Thriller Opening Progress update

Today, I began producing the Storyboards for our movie and we have began to finalise our idea, knowing our tasks over the weekend and our location for filming. Currently we hope to finish the storyboard and shot list by tomorrow (Thursday) so we then have that complete to begin to create a digital storyboard on iMovie and hopefully do a voice-over to explain the camera angle and development in that specific scene. Over the weekend Lee is going to take pictures of the farm in Salle where we are going to film the introduction and so we then have a better viewing of lighting and space we have to use. Next week we will begin scouting a potential actor for the Son character and costumes, props and finalisation. We have agreed to film on the 23rd of November if all goes to plan.

Planning for Thriller Opening - 'brainstorming'

To begin with, we organized a potential date to film on, being Saturday the 23rd of November 2013.

A brief synopsis of the story line is:
The story we are going to base our introduction on is that of a young boy and his mother being entrapped in an enclosed location. They have both been isolated throughout the years and the boy from a young age being entrapped in a dark farmhouse. The introduction then starts as his mother is suffering from Polio and she is whispering her last words to her son. This then motivates the son to escape from the bounds of entrapment from his father, who put him there in the first place. The Son escapes at an age of 17, oblivious to traditions of society. As he escapes by picking the lock with a paper clip and as he escapes out of the door, the sun blinds him as it contrasts with the dark conditions in the shelter. The shelter is on a farm in the middle of no-where. A time-lapse then occurs and he finds himself in the city (Norwich) and he is confused, this will be filmed from a close up view, using a chest mount. Alike seen in JME's music video.

Primary research - Survey for Thriller

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Research - Conducting audience research from BFI Year Book.

Upon visiting the BFI Website to view the YearBook for 2012's movie releases. The BFI website contains numerous statistics about the previous years films that were released. So although it is named for 2013, the movies that are within the yearbook are from 2012. Including audience reception about genres, classification and distribution. Using this will be able to show me the response that Thrillers received last year.

Genre:

Thriller ranked 9th within the chart of 17 genres which is ranked by gross box office. The top performing title of the thriller genre was the movie Jack Reacher. Thriller only had 41 releases which is little compared with Comedy which had 142 releases in 2012, this left comedy at 2nd place. Thriller was fairly popular in 2012 which shows there was clearly an audience for Thriller movies, showing that there is clearly a gap in the market for Thriller genres and with only 41 releases last year it shows that there is space for new releases and people will view them. Thrillers pulled in a gross box office figure of £29.8 million, this reflects it's popularity despite its few number of releases. In terms of Independent movie releases Thriller came 5th out of 14 genres in terms of the number of releases. This tells me that there is a clear audience for Thriller movies due to the lack of them being released. 

Gender:

In terms of Gender the top 20 list is biased toward men because in 2012 they accounted for 52 per cent of 'cinema-goers' in the UK. As we find on an individual basis we see that Men are most centered around the genres of Action including movies such as Dredd and Wrath of the Titans. Where as Women had a much larger variety including Anna Karenina and StreetDance 2. See the list below to view the audience genre split up:

As you can see, there was no Thriller movie that made it into the Top 20 and so therefore the closest link we can make is The Woman in Black which is a horror movie containing a lot of suspense and Thriller genre techniques. The split was 44 Male / 56 Women. This is a fairly even split with a mere 6 per cent difference in it. The split between Thrillers are often very close, and an example for last years Yearbook (2011 releases) shows that the Thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy only had a split of 52% (Male) with a 48% (Women), partially down to the sub genre of Mystery which often appeals more to Males than it does Women but also due to the plot of the movie having a impact on the gender feedback. However this does tell me that I have a very balanced gender split for my movie and it often depends on the sub-genre and also the story line.

Audiences:

Audiences are extremely varied currently. What I immediately learnt from looking at the graph is that the current age distribution of cinema goers is extremely high toward the ages 55+, accounting for a huge 36 per cent of Cinema goers, taking the largest audience field. This tells me that firstly Thrillers aren't often going to succeed in this age group however the graph also shows that between the ages of 15-24 is still fairly high and the second largest audience base, coming in with 25 per cent however this has decreased since previous years, for example in 2010 this age accounted for 38 per cent of cinema goers. This is the age group that Thrillers are often advertised to, therefore this shows that my audience base has been sharply decreasing since 2010 (see graph, colour Yellow.) Therefore this gives me idea to combine and attempt to satisfy a larger audience including 25-34 year olds. This widens my audience to 15-34 year olds and although it is likely to be tricky to do so, together last year (2012) they accounted for a total of 44 per cent of viewers. 

Again, there was no Thriller in 2012 that ranked very highly therefore I cannot see view Thrillers ranking within age groups in 2012, however alike I compared earlier, we see that The Woman in Black was ranked 5th in the audience range of 15-24, coming with 42 per cent of the audience accounting for this age group, this therefore shows that there is an audience for the closely related Thriller and Horror genres in this audience range. Showing that this is my primary audience and my secondary audience will be 25-34 year olds. 

My age bracket that I am aiming to target with my Thriller is young and so therefore they are likely to be the audience who is technology oriented and therefore the more likely bracket of audience who are using the VoD market, using services such as Netflix and LOVEFiLM Instant. This market has increased by 123 per cent since the previous year, from an estimated £55 million (in 2011) to £122 million (in 2012.) Therefore this proves a good basis to publish my Thriller on to, i.e. services such as Vimeo or YouTube for my audience to view upon.

Thriller Ideas

Idea 1:
My first idea is for a setting in which a young girl is left standing in a forrest filled with a mist, the camera tracks into the forrest, moving in to her, the young girl will have her eyes closed as the camera is moving in. This is going to be the middle of the story plot as the girl in the beginning is being born and shows her bringing up with her family. As she grows the bitterness get the better of her and demons take over her and posses her. She remains a missing child through the movie and from the moment when she leaves her family once she has burnt the house down with them asleep in the house. Going back to the movie introduction we turn to an extreme close up when the camera is on the little girls face and she opens her eyes on a heavy drum beat. It then turns to a sudden black screen. This then fades in with a faint piano riff in the background showing previous family photos alike that of The Conjuring (View here) and was effective at building up suspense and worked well at giving an insight into the context of the movie was being set in. These photos will run until the opening when one picture will match cut into film and begin the narrative.

Idea 2:
Another idea would be a setting near dusk when the audience can just about see a corn field maze in the distance from an establishing shot. The camera then turns to a viewpoint from a lower angle near the cornfield, a man can then be seen running into shot, as he runs the camera switches to a mid shot of the man running and panting, the camera then pivots to follow the character running into the opening of the corn-field. The camera then moves to a shot from above the runner head and is almost like you can find on a go-pro type sports camera. This should be effective as it is a close up of the character allowing the audience to view the characters emotions and sincerity in his face, along with the fear he has. Not only this but it also works because it will allow the audience to view the protagonist in a clear light, exposing their gender and age group. The plot behind this story is that the man has been feared by a group of young teenagers who in an attempt to change his life through social media and scare him to get money from him so they confront him in real life by tracking him through his computer use and go to his house and begin to harass him. This is when he begins to run off into the cornfield that is behind his house as the is being chased by the hackers. This has taken inspiration from the movie Disconnect. 

Continuity Errors - Line of Action video ("Fed Wars")

Continuity Errors within our 180 Degree Rule video

Watch the video here:

Throughout most of our ‘Fed-Wars’ video it was fairly continuous however we did encounter a few troubles. This was partially down to the fact that we had planned to film throughout just one day however this ended up having to be two days due to the fire alarm going off in school and this interrupted our filming and on that day we did not manage to finish filming therefore the main character (Myself, the burglar) did not have the same shirt on. We also encountered a larger problem which was that we lost a student from our group due to leaving College therefore we had to use someone else therefore our finale was rushed.

Around 20 seconds there was a large jump between the meeting of the two characters to the exchanging of the parcel, this is due to a lack of length on the exchanging of the parcel, however it is not that noticeable and just about works. Our use of subtitles here is simply because the wind was too loud in our film and the voices could not be heard clearly therefore we substituted the speech for subtitles instead.

Another continuity error can be spotted at 32 seconds where we had left our props in view of the camera, bit of a spoiler to say the least however next time I will scan the area we are going to film for errors alike this one, preventing it from happening again.

The biggest error in our video was when I was entering the main entrance to the college; with thanks to editing we just about corrected this mistake, as I had been carrying the box in different hands from the shot from outside when I entered to when it switches to the inside shot. This is still a slight continuity error because the bin is now on the wrong side, this is because we switched the video around and ‘flopped’ (Final Cut effect for flipped) it to make the box on the correct side to conform to the shot from inside.

Not only once I have entered the college can you see me wearing a slightly different t-shirt but also at 1 minute 17 seconds you can see people hanging around in the corridor when a few seconds back there was no-one, however we were stuck for time so did not get the chance to re-record despite acknowledging the error.

The Fade to Black effect was used at 1 minute 44 seconds so that the transition between the two separate shots would be more sleek because the camera was positioned in two slightly different places when filming.