Filming our recky shoot

Today we went out of the lesson to film our first shoot. We used Ollie's iphone to record all of the shots that we have put into our storyboards. We brought the storyboard with us and went through all of the shots one by one, trying to get them how we want them to be. Me and Kingsley did the acting, the task took us about half an hour, however the shots aren't perfect, just a rough idea of what we want. The task also helped us see if there was anything wrong with the shots that we want to use and see if any changes needed to be made. It took us about half an hour to film all our shots. We used the art path, media classroom and the canteen for our locations.

What is a thriller?

A thriller is a genre of film, it involves a lot of suspense and tension. Thrillers revolve around anticipation and suspense. The aim for Thrillers is to keep the audience alert and on the edge of their seats

There's also many types of thriller films, other wise known as sub genres, such as:

• Action thriller- will often have continuous motion and action including physical stunts, chases, fights, battles, and races.
• Crime thriller- usually centers on a serial killer, murderer, robbery, or manhunt.
• Film-noir- is characterized by a black-and-white style with stark lighting effects. The main character is usually a cynical hero
• Sci-fi thriller- will explore the “future-gone-bad” theme, including plots that revolve around alien invasions, extra terrestrial scenarios, and super-diseases.
• Psychological thriller-  is a fictional thriller story which emphasizes the psychology of its characters and their unstable emotional states.
• Religious thriller- include supernatural experiences not pertaining to a certain religion. Exorcisms, demon possession, and church cover-ups are typical themes

 Thrillers usually involve a sudden plot twist which is one of the features that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats, they also generally have a typical use of red herrings which keeps people watching. 

Some specific examples of some thrillers I like are The Devil Inside, The Purge and Frozen.

The Devil inside is a religious thriller and is primarily based on the aspect of demonic posession.

The purge is more of an action/ crime thriller, i like it because the story line is really interesting and the whole concept of the film makes me think.

Finally frozen is more of a psychological thriller, the film is built on tension, its slow placed but the film itself is really good.

Thriller research- more props

As we developed our story board, we now have introduced the shot with two policemen chasing the man through the forest. As they are policemen we need to make it clear, therefore we are going to need two police officers uniforms for our sequence as well. I thought we would go for an authentic look to create the best effect.

Actual coursework task defined

Video

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

Character development and actor possibilities

Due to our opening title sequence involving a hard drive, my self and Ollie discussed what type of character that we would like. For example, is he a thug or an IT worker?- both of these could fit into our sequence we just need to decide on which one would be best and then someone who fitted that character profile way.

If we were going to have an actor who could play the thug then we would want someone big, maybe bearded and imposing. We then had the idea of using Ted Jackson.Ted would also be an ideal character as he has tattoos which would add to his thuggishness.

Character list

In terms of mine, Kingsley and Ollie's character list we require only one or two different characters. At the moment, the only person we want in our Thriller is a man aged between 30 and 40, which is a very easy age range to find. We have a choice of plenty of teachers at Hurtwood House.

The three of us also contemplated using two policeman to arrive in the drive way of our location, but we feel that we can create more suspense and cause the audience to ask more questions by simply putting in the sound of the policeman knocking on the door, instead of showing the audience who is doing the knocking.

This picture shows two armed British policeman

Thoughts on location

We have decided to use a location rather than a set as we feel that it will fit our sequence a lot better. In our sequence we need both an upstairs and a downstairs of the house, therefore it is a lot easier and less time consuming if we use a location rather then a set. It gives us more time to focus on filming and editing of the final piece. Furthermore our sequence requires a Forrest and there is a natural one at Peaslake so that would be prime to use for us, also there is Adams house at Peaslake, he is the housemaster of peaslake and also our media techer so we could consider using that as the house. There is no point in using the set for a Forrest when we already have one. For the forest we want it to look like the one below, so all the leaves and twigs will make snapping and crunching sounds which will help build tension and create effect in our opening title sequence. So far we think that Peaslake is the prime location to film at as it provides everything that we need. Peaslake is a boarding house, in the surrey hills, its a boarding house of the school Hurtwood house. It will provide us with all the forms of location that we need in our sequence.