Planning - Our idea change.

After discussing with our teacher what we are planning on doing as our plot for our opening we discovered how it can be seen as very cliché and whilst we want to keep up the thriller conventions as well as the horror conventions throughout our opening we decided that we wanted to do this in a way which is less cliché as there has already been things like this which have been done. 


Our new idea is still going to be a young girl however we have now decided to go along with the idea of a wedding day. We are yet to complete the story board and understand fully what it is we wish to do exactly however so far we know that we are going to have the young girl dead and in different parts with her body kept in different places around the house. We decided that we are also going to keep the main character a male, we decided that we would stick with the usual idea of a male killer and a young girl, this has been done many times before however we decided that if we are wanting to do something which is less cliché we still have to keep up out conventions of a thriller in different aspects and I believe it is probably expected from the audience for the male to be killer as this is what they are use to seeing. 


We understand that it may be hard to shows only parts of the body around different areas of the house but this is something which we are going to tackle when it comes to shooting and we will start deciding how to hide different body parts whilst we create our story board for our new idea.

Planning - Our tasks:

Each member of our group has had tasks designated for them so that we each have an equal amount to do and we can each focus on something and this way our tasks will all get done sooner.


I am doing the story board for our group and that will be put up soon so that we can see how our opening will flow that will be done by the 10th of decemeber we have decided.


I believe that I will finish before then but once we have done that and are happy with the story board we are going to start with the animatic so that we can actually watch our opening; the good thing about the animatic is it will give us a good oppotunity to decide if anything needs changing within our story board as we will be able to watch how it goes.


I have also got the role of costumes and so I have to choose what to dress the characters in, I am finding this a challenge as we have yet to fully decide on how the male and female characters are going to be presented but I will dress them accordingly making sure they fit with the image we are trying to portay of the characters.

Planning - Our ideas:

We are going to go with the horror thrillier genre of film; we decided that we would go with this as we can fit the typical thriller conventions but also put in elements of horror so that we can add gore into the opening to make it seem scary as well as thrilling.


Our idea is to start with a typical opening of a thrillier with pictures of a girl all over a wall - we decided that we would go with this as the starting frame as it is expected of a thrillier to have a stalker/a phyco kind of character.
We then decided that to fit in with the horror genre the majority of our opening will go to a girl lying dead on the floor simply showing different parts of her body this will keep the opening ery and will leave the audience wanting to know what happened to her. Even though there will not be more to the film it will be a good opening and will leave the audience geussing and also by keeping an opening like this we wont have to have much of a story line which I believe works best within a thriller opening because it leaves room for anticipation and suspence.


We have decided on the setting of our opening: we are going to use a kitchen as the setting for our opening, by using a setting like a kitchen it will hopefully add a little to the suspence as a kitchen is not somehwere were you usally expect murder to take place. We have also decided on the gender of the murder and the victim, we have decided to stick to the original style of have the male as the stronger character whilst the female is the weaker character. We decided on have this as we believe that this will fit the conventions of both a thriller and a horror. We may however change the idea about gender and the way in which we represent the characters depending on how we wish to portry them.

Evaluating other groups continuity task.

When marking the other groups continuity task we had to use the brief we were first given with the directions for the task which informed us of the different things we needed to include as well as using the marking criteria.


For
Heather, Laura, Brogan and Sam: We gave them a level three. We thought that they were to good to be a high level two and therefore should be in the threes. There use of different shots and angles was good and they varied them throughout. They also followed the brief and did everything asked of them. There audio was also very clear and easy to understand. http://heathercaseymediacoursework.blogspot.com/2010/11/continuity-task_3657.html


Luke, Jess, Serenna and Hannah: For this group we gave them a low level two. This was mainly because there footage wasn't finished and therefore they had not even completed what they were told to. The audio was okay on there piece and they tired to use a different variety of camera angles within there shots which takes them off a level one.
http://imsocoolibakecakes.blogspot.com/2010/11/continuity-task-end-product.html


Callum, Tom and Ellie: For this we gave them a level two-three. This was because they did what they were told to do and followed the instructions. They also used different camera angles and the audio was good I thought on this piece.
http://elliebiddle.blogspot.com/2010/11/continuity-editing-task_15.html

Continuity task.

We were given the task of creating a continuity task which focused on producing a short clip of one minute which showed the ability to use the camera along with a range of different angles.

We were given a short of list of things which we would need to include like having a person walk in to a room through a door and exit from the same door, as well as having two people having a conversation. 

My group found it hard at first to think of an idea which would be easy to shoot in the day we were given to use the equipment provided. After some discussions about who would be needed to act in the task the ideas came to us and we were able to think of a simple idea which was able to include all the things asked from us. 

When filming our task we found it okay as we had the tri-pod to keep the camera still and we were able to develop techniques when using the camera which I believe will be very useful when filming our main coursework.  

Editing the film wasn't as hard as I had first anticipated and actually once you are able to learn the basics, editing the short piece is simple.
I think that for my group the role that we took when making the continuity task worked for us and we were able to get the task completed a few days before it was due which left us with more time to make sure it was the best we could make it with the footage we had taken.

I believe after studying the marking criteria and focusing on the video section that I would give our group a high level 2 to a low level 3 as I think we managed to do what fell under the level.
As for the audio this is something my group struggled with when having it on the mac. This was because of the sound of the music which we had chosen to accompany the sense, as I nor anyone else in the group was sure how to make one sound louder than an other and save it there so it wouldn't change the next time it was viewed and this was something that I think my group should of worked on. Because of the loudness of the music in some senses it was hard to hear what was being said. For this I would give our group a level 1 as I personally didn't think it was as clear as it should have been.
Overall I think our video probably scored a level two from the teacher.


From doing this task my group were able to under how the camera and mac worked and the different ways of using them. We also learnt the different things that need to be done when editing a piece of film. There are still things that need to be learnt but I believe that from what we have already learnt it will help us in our main production  of our film. We have also been able to learn the different strengths within the group and this therefore will help us in deciding who will do what when doing our final AS piece so we can be organised.

Research - What have I learnt from all of my research?

By researching different ways in which thrillers and presented and the different opinions and options there are when it comes to making a thriller I have been able to understand what makes a good thriller and the kind of things I will need to include in my thriller in order to make it the best it can be. I have learnt these things through gaining an understanding of codes and conventions, camera, sound, editing and mise-en-scene and then applying that in order to analyse not only real thriller films in order to understand how these things are used on a greater scale but also through analysing other students work I was able to understand how it is possible for students to apply these elements to the openings of their films and the different ways in which my group can do this too. 


Along with all of the good things I have learnt I have equally learnt how to avoid doing things which loose you marks when producing your final opening; for example the steadiness of the camera, the quality of sound, the use of mise-en-scene and the pace and style of editing. Because I have been able to learn both positive and negative points of openings I can make sure that the rest of my group also understands what we should be doing and then later apply this to our opening. 


Overall my research on a whole has allowed me to understand the importance of the different aspects of film and from gaining peoples opinions I now know what people expect from this genre of a film and through analysing others have started to gain knowledge on how to address these areas. Now my group needs to go and start brainstorming different ideas starting with genre and decide what type of film we are going to choose - hybrid or sub-genre - and then decide on the story line and then move on to taking into consideration everything that we have learnt through past students work and real thrillers and bring all of our knowledge together in order to try and come up with the best opening we can possibly produce.   

Research - Analysing past students work.

We were asked to evaluate past students work in order to gain an understand of what we should and should not be including in our openings. We also learnt how the work was judged and how certain aspects of camera, editing and sound gave the opening different levels and meant that overall the group achieved a good grade or not. By evaluating past students work you also gain an understanding of how something such as camera can effect the overall outcome of your opening; for example if the camera is shaky during a tilt when the camera should be still and simply scanning up and down.

We watched six different openings to get a different idea of what level we would give them. To do so we were given the mark scheme telling us the levels and what would need to be achieved in order to gain the highest level. At first the majority of the past openings that we watched seemed good and the errors went unnoticed. One we watched it once we were made to re-watch it but this time we were told to focus on a certain area of the filming; camera, editing, sounds and mise-en-scene. After about the third time of watching it the opinion which was made on the first viewing was usually changed quite drastically after noticing the mistakes that were made. Many of the openings consisted of many of the things which were needed however it was obvious that certain things like the smoothness of the camera or the pace of the editing was letting them down.  

Root cause was an example we watched that achieved a high grade unlike many of the other openings we saw and this was down to the use to skills they implied in their work and the evidence there was to suggest that the group had thought for a very long time how to position the camera, add a story line to the opening already and the ways in which they chose to edit there footage to a high level. This particular opening was a film noir and was set in the 1920's with the gangster genre evidently influencing their work

. They ensured that the music and mise-en-scene represented this time period and it was clear to see in their piece that it was well thought out. 

The common fault amongst many of the openings was the attempts of trying to look like a real thriller and however this is good to stick to the code and conventions some groups were trying to achieve things which weren't possible for an as-level piece of work and they shouldn't of tried anything to hard but still of come up with an original idea.  All of the ideas were good however some of them has flaws due to the lack of experience that they had and the way they tried to do things.

From analysing the work of past students it has helped me to understand the limitations which needs to be set on ideas so that my group can make the best opening with originality that it can rather than trying to be to complex and not being able to get good marks because the ideas were to hard to follow through. I have also learnt from the good things that certain groups did as well as the bad and have learnt how to perhaps co-operate different types of ideas into our brainstorms and hopefully come up with something better by working with the guide that past students have set from their work.