Practice Thriller
When we were given task for our practice filming session we had to create a thriller using certain props. the props used in our thriller were game cards and two fake pistol gun.I was fairly happy with the camera works and i feel that the shots that were the most successful was when we took a 10 second big close up of Elif with the pistol gun behind her.

This i felt worked well with the thriller genre because it had create a lot of tension and suspense. we try to create a long shot scene but it did not work well with the setting because it did not give a sense of thrill. the was mainly because the setting used was inside the college building and the atmosphere was not exactly working well.

Thriller Plans
Me and Eman have come up with some ideas for the actual thriller. We were thinking more of a spy thriller rather than a scary one. We haven't finalized our plot yet- but we a have anidea of what type of characters we would like to include in the thriller. We had discussed there being two spy's and one villan.

The villan will be doing something and spy's will follow the villan. Thriller plans (spy thriller plans) (elif eman discuss plan with the rest of the group and take on their views and etc.

Setting for the thriller

For the hostage and villan scene, we were thinking an low roof basment- totally empty and character is left hostage there. Outside at night-spy's being followed by an unidentified character [this creates mystery and raises questions]. Shots from inside a building. Governments office- dark computer room.

Extra planning for the thriller

In today's lesson, my group and I discussed further plans for our media thriller. Firstly we have decided that there will be that we cannot make te story line too complicated because its unessary hassle.We though are plan were good But our teacher advised us to come up with another plot .Because the current plot was too complicated for a thriller opening.

we presented our ideas to the class and our teacher Annabell. However our teacher Anabell believed that our idea wouldn't work so well. After trying to discuss what we could improve, we didn't come up with a solid plan. We thought that our plot should involve:2 Spy's and one hostage who had links with the 'government'The villan was meant to keep this person hostage until they had got what they wanted from the government.We noticed that our idea was too complicated therefore did not go ahead with what we had planned.For advice Mickey then came along. He suggested that we should have a less complicated idea and that we can do something that could stick with our hostage idea.

Finalised plans

the actually thriller is going to be about a girl is being held hostage and the villain is filming his hostage. She is frightened and does not know what will happen to her. The villain then goes on to a computer and uploads his video of the hostage onto a website
Which means their is going to be two character : villan and hostage. And the thriller is going to be set in the college basement to give the thriller its dark edge.

These are the notes taken in class with my group on how and what types of shots that we might what in the thriller.

Location of the hostage being kept there tied to a chair or sitting on the ground.

2. FAST OCCURING SHOTS of hostage looking around, hostage feeling isolated, hostage struggling- trying to escape.

3. Hostage then stops looks frightened.

4. Shot of villains back walking towards the hostage. (Match cut) of villain walking.

5. Picks up a video camera.

6. Hostage looks confused/unaware of situation.

7. Presses the record button.

8. Hostage is being filmed by the villain- hostage becomes even more scared.

9. Goes into flashback of: the villain tying her up, kicking her, shouting at her, hostage crying and also screaming. (sepia or black and white)

10. Villain walks to a computer

11. Goes onto a website

12. Uploads video.

13. Shows upload complete sign (final shot)The group will start filming as soon as a ideal location is found.

First Day of filming

We had started filming for our thriller today with the whole group. We had used the college basment as the location of our thriller as with the setting being so dark were were able tp stacked away and rerange the room which made the mise en scene look like an isolated place.

It could have been more effective if things weren't in the basement but it is impossible to be able to remove them just to film.

Today we did interesting panning shots of the villain and close up and lots of shots of the hostage. Elif and myself hadtaken the camerawork role as, Jen and Michael are acting.The most interesting type of shot which was suggested by Jen was to have her in the frame but make it in and out of focus. By doing this, I can already see its creativity and will look really good once editted. We had made a ECU' shot of Jen's feet hands that went right upto her face close up of her face.

We now need to get many more shots in and we need to include a 'flashback' of when the villan actually kidnapps the hostage.We have used the props of a gun, a chair and a chain of loose metal to put around the hostage's feet.I am quite pleased with what we filmed today and I'm sure things will progress by Friday.

Second Session of filming the Thriller
We filmed the final part to the thriller. It was successful as we did many shots including close ups, over shoulder shots, extra close ups and other various shots. This process took very long and the basement was very cold which meant the group had to co operate with the situation. Even it had literallly drained me and my group out i feel happy that we had acomplished our tasks for the day.

The short part we filmed on Wednesday was not as successful as today. This is because, we didn't have enough time and the lighting wasn't very good. However on camera, the lighting seemed fine but when uploaded onto the computer- it was too dark to see. We then had to repeat the shot ata different angle so we could retrieve a lighter shot so which could actually see what was going on.

The shot that had taken great effort type of shot to put together is the 'match cut' shot. The match-cut shots took up great aamounts of time and we kept having to shoot effortless amounts of time which i felt got kinda of boring. But i knew that it was worth it at the end as match cut shot tend to look great once finsh. This was shown in a previous lesson we had with mike.

This is because you have to get the actors repeat the same thing many times (depending on the match cut you want) and it may make the actor feel bored or less enthusiastic. I can now understand that in real life it is very difficult and time consuming to put together such things and that I now appreciate the amount of effort and time that goes into filming and producing.

Today has been successful as elif had managed to put our current shots on the hard drive and save it for now and this is where I saw other shots which weren't so successful. i feel the need to credit Elif for her hard work as her magament skills were great and she helped push the group to work hard today.

But even thought we've finshed filming for the second day we had so much more to do. Now our group's aim is to now re-shoot the shots to actually complete the filming process of the thriller. Next lesson we will carry on filming the last of the thriller.

More filming

We used a website called www.vimeo.com and this is for the villain uploading the video onto the computer scene. which is a real blogging website. This will make it seem more thrilling and raise more questions without making it very obvious. We are further planning to edit the shot by putting it in black and white- with a record sign to make it look from the hostages point of view. Also, this will seem very effective and raise even more questions- which is one of the main conventions of a thriller.

Re-filming of shots
Today we were filming in the basement of the College City and Islington College. We made sure that Jen was wearing the same clothing, as she was the last filming date. this help show continuity. We also made sure that we had brought in lighting for the shoots because in a previous shoot the lighting was very dim. We made sure that we brought an extra camcorder for prop.
For the props, we brought in a gun, camcorder and lights. We feel that we have finished filming but will start editing to check if there was any shot that we could include to make our work to its perfection.

First Day Of Editing our thriller film

Our group had started editing our thriller.This was a very interesting to see the shots together even at this starting point. 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 effectiveand we have about 2 main match cuts. One of our next aim for next week is to completely finish filming for the thriller to mainly focus on the editing so that we can make our thriller to the best of our ablities.