Friday 26 February 2010


i like the look of the house just at how isolated it is. i also think the tree adds a lot of character. if we had more money or could of found a better location then i would of loved our house to be something like that. it would of been a convention of a thriller/horror.


i didnt want the house to look really old and ruined because i wanted it to look like a place where someone quite young would actually live. the fact the only house we could use was one on the main street meant it was hard to show isolation without revealing it was an attached house.

i wanted our house in the piece to look this isolated. ive added a few images of isolated houses to try and show what we were trying to show. it was just difficult to find an isolated house in a modern village.

sound ideas

for the beginning scene we wanted to the house to look really isolated and wanted the sound to show that so we wanted eerie silence or the crickets noise when they make that really empty sound when there legs scratch together ive tried to recreate this on the establishing shot in the first few seconds of the piece using sounds of crickets we found in garage band. we turned the sound down low enough so it can still be heard but not obviously loud so you can tell its fake. we think it doesnt blend as well as we liked but it still adds a lonely effect to the video.

more films our thirller opening is similar to.


the main thriller our film is similar to is scream. the opening scene of scream was a big inspiration for us and because its well known it was easy to get ideas from it. the editing in this scene is pretty long and we seem to have made our editing faster towards the end. at the beginning its long as we have the killer exploring the house which is different to scream where the victim is wandering and exploring her house showing us all the exits. we switched this around so its role reversal.

list of shot types needed in our opening

the list of shot types we needed/ should have in our piece are:
-establishing shot of the house
-close up
-match on action
-point of view shot
-tracking shot
-mid shot

i think thats about it for now although i may of missed off a few shots.

checklist of things left to do with our piece

This is a list of things we need to do to complete our piece:
1) add music and sounds into the film
2) add the writing to the ident
3)put the credits into the piece
4) put the ident into the piece
5)think of a title for our piece
6)finish editing
7)double check that we got every shot we needed

issues

although we seem to be going on the right track at the moment with out piece there are still a few things we are behind on. we have all the footage we need and managed to get all the shots that we had on the shot list but we still havent finished creating our ident or figuring out the music for our piece. we also still need to add titles to the project and finish making the editing quicker to help build the tension.

Soundtrack Suggestions

Some names of some sounds in GarageBand i think that are suitable and could possibly use are:
Borealis
Most of the sounds that are under the "Textures" category, especially Mystery Accents 04
Modern Rock Guitar 12 and 13 also stand out
Rock Guitar Riff 01 and 02

I think that during the parts where the girl is picking up the letter and walking upstairs should just be sound effects and have either very quiet and subtle music or no music at all. The music should come in whenever we have any activity with the intruder, building the suspense and making it more suspicious. It would also make it clear which parts are of the intruder and which is of the girl.

In the very end scene the music should slowly build as the intruder is opening the door and perhaps then have a dramatic spike as the girl spins round just before it goes dark, then we hear the gasp as it goes black.

Sound

The sound with our footage is not suitable to use in our soundtrack which means we will have to edit in sound effects as well as music. The music needs to be very deep and suspenseful to give our footage the full effect of a thriller. If the sound does not go well with our footage it will make a huge difference to how the film will be interpreted and could ruin the film completely. I do not think the music should be loud and prominent in the film I think it will be best if it as quite quiet which i think will make it seem a bit more creepy.

Tuesday 23 February 2010

filming

We did our filming and all in all it went quite well. we spent 3 hours doing the filming in total and although after watching we realised there were a few issues with the props and continuity it turned out alright and we managed to get most of the shots we needed and extra. this means we have a lot to work with in editing and should be able to produce a good piece.

Friday 5 February 2010

filming

we are planning on filming most of the parts of our thriller tonight. weve gotten the help of one of beki's friends to help us film and if neccessary act. we have a house to film in and were going to film in the evening to use actual darkness instead of adding it in after.
were hoping there wont be to many difficulties. the shots weve decided on might not work

Casting

We only have 2 characters in our thriller opening. Ej is going to play the girl victim and i will be the killer. The killer is supposed to be male but this will not matter as you never see a clear shot of the killers face. I will also be wearing an all black outfit and i can wear a black hoodie with the hood up so you cannot see my long hair.

Ident Snapshot

This is a snapshot of the mexican man we are using in our ident. We have animated it on final cut so his hands move and shake his maracas.
We will then have the words "Tash Tash Man Productions" appear above and underneath him. I think that it would look effective if the words zoomed in while he shakes his maracas.
This is the font we have chosen to use:


I think this is a good font to use as it gives a positive feeling which goes well with the mexican man. The font is called "Musicals" from the website www.dafont.com

Wednesday 3 February 2010

ident

we worked on our ident today for the whole lesson. we made our ident as a a little mexican man with maracas in each hand. our ident shakes the maracas before the words tash tash man productions comes up. we have a noise like beans shaking for the noise of the maracas.

first draft script

We get an establishing shot of a house. its dark and we can tell its night time because the road is empty and the street lights are on. we can see some lighting in the house. a dark figure moves towards the house holding something white in his hand. the dark figure is in complte black. we get a close up as the hand delivers a letter into the door. a match on action shot shows the letter landing inside the house. we see a female charcter walk to the letter and pick it up. the girl moves to the letter box and puts her eye to it looking through it. we have a point of view shot showing the girl character looking out onto the street. we see that the street is empty.

the female character now moves up the steps

issues with filming

because there are only 2 of us in the group there may be some issues with filming our piece. we only have the option of having one person acting while the other is filming. this might not work well because we both can't see if were getting the shots we want. were going to have to get other people to help us film if we want it to be any good.

some of the lessons there is only one of us there from the group so we havent been able to work out some kinks because we havent had time together to deal with it.

we are hoping to film this friday night when we have a free house its just getting all the people to the location to film.

shot types

in our piece we want to include as many different shot types that we can without losing the tension in our thriller. At the moment we are using:

-an establishing shot
at the beggining to show that it is late at night and an odd time for a letter to be delivered. if we filmed it in the day the letter being delivered wouldnt be suspicious because you would just assume it is the post man.
-close up
we have alot of close ups in our piece because its how we are showing the killers actions without giving away who the killer is. we have a close up of the killer opening a door,posting a letter, etc

-match on action
we are having match on action of when the letter is posted from the outside and being delivered on the inside

-point of view shot
we have a few point of view shots like when the girl looks out the letter box to see if any one is there and when the killer looks through a crack in a door watching the girl reading

-tracking shot
we may have a tracking shot when the killer is walking up the stairs

Tuesday 2 February 2010

Mise-en-scene

here is a list of the mise-en scene we are planning on using in our thriller opening

Costume:
Female character- innocent clothing casual hair tied back maybe a long top like you would sleep in or just jeans and a long top.

killer character- black glove all black outfit

other props:
-knife
-newspaper article
-letter

Films with similar themes

Jagged Edge
Funny Games
Scream
Strangers
Panic Room