Thriller - Shoot Day

I felt that our shoot day went fairly well, considering the amount of things that didn’t go according to plan. The day started off a little behind schedule, as we couldn’t get up to the room in which we were shooting until about 10 due to the occupant having a lie-in. By the time we had everything set up and didn’t almost burn the light (oops!), it was close to 11 and we began shooting. Or we like to imagine that we did. In reality, we hadn’t actually prepared a shot list, and we spent probably a good half an hour faffing around doing that, and working out from which angle we were going to do each shot. This was because we hadn’t all seen the room at this stage, and it was a different shape to how I had envisioned in the storyboard. Also we hadn't really considered costume at this point, we just told both Rose and Jake to wear their normal clothes. However Courtney decided to take Rose down to her room to find a costume more suitable.

 Once all that was out of the way, we decided to get cracking, and the first few shots went pretty well, it was only when we got to the shot when Ellie (played by Rose) had to throw the ripped monkey at the walls and smash the mirror that our first real mistake occurred. While practicing the shot, Rose actually smashed the mirror, which was OK, because we caught it on film, but it wasn’t a great shot and there is a medley of swearwords at the end. The only thing that annoys me about this shot is the fact that the camera was locked as the mirror fell off the shelf, meaning I couldn't tilt the camera and follow it down. Hopefully it will still have the same effect as we had originally hoped, because it was our only mirror and we’re going to have to use it as it was our only take! (at least the sound was good!) From then on we had to improvise the next few shots to get back onto our original storyboarded plan, which meant we had to try and guess how these cuts were going to match with Matt’s (played by Jake) actions. By this time we had to go for lunch, and we realised it had taken us all this time just to get 6 shots, so while eating, we sat down and planned everything else we needed to do for Ellie’s part and began doing the shot list for Matt.

Back on location after lunch and we got the rest of the shots by 3, including a fantastic one shot by Sophia, where we zoom in on Ellie’s eyes looking down and then they look up slowly and creepily. Also a good effect was the fake blood which she smeared on the photos pinned up on the wall and then goes oddly calm and plucks one off the wall and burns in front of her. 

One of the elements that annoyed me about the first half of the shoot was all the safety rules we had to follow, as Ellie was meant to just break the mirror, but then Adam decided that for safety reasons she should pretend to hit it and then we would film his hand close up breaking it. If we had stuck to the original plan, then the shot would have looked a lot better as I have a feeling Rose is tying not to hit the mirror and might look a bit half hearted. The other thing we had to change was we weren’t allowed to burn the photo in the room and had to go to the studio. I can see why we needed to do this, but we could have put some foil down on the floor and had a fire extinguisher handy in the room.

Next we went to the Turrets (which is an annexe of one of the boarding houses) and things went a lot more smoothly, as we had planned out exactly what we were going to shoot in what order. At this point I took over as director, and let Courtney and Nina take charge of the camera. All of the shots went as planned except for the last one where he had to light a cigarette and fall backwards down onto the bed. What had happened was the cigarettes had snapped in my pocket somehow, and due to this we have a quite bizarre shot of Matt lighting a stub and then burning himself as he tries to light it. The only thing I am concerned about is the lighting in the Turrets, as by the time we finished up there it was close to 5 o'clock and we were rapidly losing light. As the two sequences are meant to be happening simultaneously, we need the light to be the same in both. 

On the whole, I feel the day went well, but we really won't know until we get up into the studio on Monday to see our handywork.

Storyboarding the Thriller - Part 2

Back from the holidays, and the 2nd draft is complete! It feels good to actually have something that looks like a storyboard, although this one only shows every 3rd or 4th shot and is more of a visual reference to Courtney, who is doing the script. As the script is not yet complete, I think I may be doing a few more of these drafts before we get it to look anything like our final version. To the right is a scanned copy of the 4th page, just to give an idea to how it has changed compared to the last one. When they are all finished, I will try and scan all of the complete storyboards into one blog post, to see just how our ideas have progressed and changed.

Storyboarding the Thriller - Part 1

For our thriller, I was charged with creating the storyboard and piecing together all of the matched shots that we had thought up in the lesson previous to this, such as the burning photo/cigarette,and the cut from one photo to the same one in a different room. At the moment i think we hae 5 unique matched cuts, with a few repeats on objects. (mainly photos.) The image to the left is a section of the original sketched storyboard in which I used 2 sheets of A3 paper,(one for each room) and planned the shot like that. This was the most challenging part of storyboarding, as I had to actually visualise the shots in my head, and the effect we wanted the audience to get from each shot. 

Final Ideas Pitch

In this session, we got the whole group together and narrowed down our ideas to one each.

• My idea: was to set it in Peaslake, one of the boarding houses, and show how a seemingly harmless evening at a boarding house ends up with all the students dead the next morning, all killed in mysterious ways.

• Nina's idea: was about a teenage serial killer, who kills out of jealousy and is very methodical and messed up in the head.

• Sopia's idea: was to set the film in a police station, with a suspect being interviewed. The viewer would be partly watching on a CCTV camera, and see things that only the camera could detect.

• Courtney's idea: was about a girl who breaks down on a fairly deserted road, near a seemingly abandoned warehouse. The girl then goes inside and gets murdered. 

Once we had all presented our final ideas, we decided to vote on an idea, and we couldn't vote for our own. Nina's idea won it, but when we presented the idea to Matt and Luke, they said we needed to change a lot of it as our idea was unbelievable. So we changed the scenario to include matched cuts of her planning a kill to shots of her victim. Again we were told to scrap the idea, and we decided to change the story from a girl planning a murder to a couple that have had a violent break-up, and the scene is a foreshadow of events to come, i.e. the guy's murder.
Our new plot was much more popular and we felt that more of our audience would identify with it, as most people have gone through a break-up where they have felt either like Ellie, (violent, destructive, distraught) or like Matt, (doesn't really give a damn, little remorse).

Using the Video Cameras

As I wasn't here for this session, I had to pick everything up as we were shooting our preliminary task. Most of it was fairly straightforward for anyone that has ever used an electronic device before: On switch, battery remaining indicator, things like that. Next was the time code, which is in the corner of the screen and is broken down into 4 number readings.

From left to right they are: HH:MM:SS:FF, the last being frames per second. Usually on the cameras we use, there are 25 fps.
Next I was shown how to use the zoom and focus, and was instructed to zoom all the way in and then out again, to make sure the subject is in focus.


 Next I got a quick briefing on exposure, shutter speed and colour temperature, which wasn't too difficult as it is the same as in photography. Exposure is shown in F stops, ranging from 1 to 22, which measure the amount of light in the shot. By raising the shutter speed, you increase the clarity of the shot and by lowering it, you can blur it. With colour temperature, you first need to set the white balance, by focusing on a white flat surface in the general location of your shoot.

Thriller Ideas

Last week we began discussing ideas for our thriller opening scenes, but as half of my group were away on a business trip, we only had input from the 2 of us that day. However we did get some good ideas floating around, some of which were

• Possesed child,
• Mysterious deaths in boarding house
• Terrorist siege/attack
• Ghostly CCTV images in police station

We also had a few more imaginative ideas, but we passed those off because they were either too complicated or too long.

Storyboarding - What is it?

Storyboarding is the visual idea of what a movie will look like, and is basically a comic book of the film before it is put into production. To the left is an example of a storyboard in its early stages. A detailed storyboard is essential for any film, as it means that shooting can go ahead if there is a last minute change of crew, or if something goes wrong on the day.
A good storyboard provides the director with an outline of what needs to be shot, as although he may have an idea of what he wants to shoot, he won't have thought of every single shot that is required. Storyboards are there as a sort of guideline, and often on the shoot day, directors will change elements in the shoot or alter the shot order if, on camera things don't look quite right.