Thriller Complete!!

After a long and hard 2 months, making an opening of a thriller has come to an end!!

Today, the group gathered round perfected every shot, and added our own sountrack to it. The soundtrack itself is great. We made the sounds go according to the scenario and added effects which helps emphasise the idea of it being a thriller. It was a very time consuming task but we managed to pull it off. We had fun using and experimenting with the different sounds. As a group, we made a decision of the sounds and today's effort and groupwork really paid off and made our thrillers look professional.

We decided to use a very dramatic soft sound at the beginning and dominated the film's soundtrack with the bassline. At the end of the sequence (which was a present tense scene) we used classical music. It may seem ironic that we have included classical and dramatic music together, but this helps bring out the irony and show the characters perverted characteristic.

We were able to adjust the music by making it fade in and out and get louder and softer at points. This is much better rather than just including a new sound into the soundtrack. It would have sounded too chunky and organised whereas, we blended in the music which makes not only the storyline flow, but the actual film itself.

It was interesting to see different work of others because, it's good to see what others perceive a thriller as. All the other thrillers I have seen by other people, were very interesting and there was a lot of thriller conventions in them.

Overall, making a thriller is quite stressful (even though it was only for 2 minutes!!) but also fun experimenting and being able to create footage and sounds of your own.

Thriller Nearly Complete 2

Today's progress was great. The group noticed that we needed a match cut to put into a shot as it was too long and would bore the audience- therefore today we filmed the necessary shot and included it in our sequence. We filmed the same shot but from a different point of view. This way, it would make the shots looks shorter and more interesting.

Afterwards, we logged and captured the needed footage and included it into our sequence. We also made sure that we added colour to it (as this was part of the flashback) and it looked like tighter shots.

We also fixed up the titles and decided to put the TITLE of the thriller which is 'Victim No.6' at the end of the whole sequence. We made the 6 bigger and put the words 'Victim No.' on top of the 6 and faded in a big 6. It looks very effective with its red shadow.

The main colours of which the thriller consisted of is very dark, grey cold colours. By putting the flashback as a blue colour it makes it more effective than black and white. It also emphasises the cold/dangerous/mysterious situation of the thriller.

As previously mentioned, our final aim is the music. The soundtrack needs to be fast and possibly help build up tension. Most importantly we don't want to scare the audience but we want to use a soundtrack that will alert them, that something is wrong is happening.

Thriller Nearly Complete

Today, myself and Eman both edited our current sequence. We were shown how to put on effects and things that a conventional thriller would have. I have noticed that by editing, a sequence can make so much more sense-and look very effective.

Today, we asked Mickey to show us how to put on the effects of the previously mentioned:
-Flashbacks
-Record sign (flashing in the actual sequence)
and finally,
-Title sequences
-A soft dissolve into another shot.

So far in our thriller titles, we have included a director, co-director, editor, co- editor and co-assistant.

Today was a success as we have completed all the necessary editing. Further editing (if any needed) will be taken into consideration this whole week.

Our final aim is to include the music of our thriller. The type of music needed has not yet been discussed with the group but tomorrow, we will be thinking of ideas and hopefully get on with starting to compose the music.

Thriller Sequence Complete

Today I completed the logging and capturing, and putting the sequence in order.

The group will now work hard after next week to try and edit everything to perfection and make the thriller amazing! The thriller itself so far is about 1minute 48 seconds. Respectably, not forgetting the title sequence and once it has been edited, it will be a good 2 minute sequence.

The sort of effects that we need is:
-black and white
- slow motion
-edit an occuring scene to make it look like a camcorder recoriding something. (This will be needed for the villian filming the hostage. It also increases the realism in it, as it show us a scene from the villain's point of view. Also, after watching the current sequence- the thriller seems to have some conventions of a real thriller. Most importantly, it raises questions about the situation which is just what we wanted to achieve.

Personally I felt that constructing this thriller was quite difficult- but I think that editing it will be even harder as that (the editing), is what perfects it to be a thriller.

The process of filming has been very long, and I feel we should have spent less time filming so that we have more valuable time in editing. After the half term, each of the group members will be editing on Wednesday and Friday- and we will try to organise our selves to edit throughout the week everyday.

Final Day of Filming

Today, myself and the group have now completed the filming part of the project! Hopefully - we will not be in need of any more shots.
Our shots ranged from CU's to ECU's and medium shots. We did another match cut today- although this wasn't planned however worked well with the moment. We filmed the missing shots, and the computer shots (of which the villain was uploading a video of the hostage).

I have logged and captured some of the footage today- and will complete that by tomorrow.

Further Editing

Today I fixed up some shots in the sequence. I have arranged it so it becomes a flashback event, which when it has been edited, it will be black and white or a sepia colour to indicate its moment in time. 

The group have already about 1 minute+ of footage and when the final shots of uploading the 'hostage' onto the computer, which will hopefully be about 40+ seconds more of footage. Taking into consideration the titles- this will all successfully become 2 minutes of footage. 

First Day Of Editing

Today, our group started the most important part of the project, editing. It was very interesting to see the shots together even at this starting point. It shows you just how much editing can manipulate and make something seem very interesting.

We noticed that when editing, we could do with some more shots. This is to make the sequence make some sense.

We included match cuts in our sequence which made it look very effective - and we have about 2 main match cuts.

Our aim for next week is to completely finish filming for the thriller and to mainly focus on the editing so that it can be perfect.

Re-filming of Shots

Today, we re-filmed the shots that had come out too dark. We made sure we used the lighting accordingly to match the mood and to emphasise the scary/isolated situation.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to re shoot Michael (our villain) because of the different outfit he had on today. To represent continuity, we will refilm him on Friday to make it look more realistic with more suitable lighting.

In the editing suite we noticed that we have to now start thinking about ordering the shots in a effective way.

Final Touches

It is essential that our group stops filming by this week Friday. (06/02/09) This is because I want to make sure that our group has enough time for editing and can be able to perfect the whole sequence, so that it can look realistic and effective.

Furthermore, I have been encouraging my group to blog because - they have good ideas but it must be evident on the blogs.