the final soundtrack

i think its really obvious that our soundtrack was rushed. i made in about the last 30 minutes of one of the lessons so although it sounded ok with our piece it still had alot of issues with it that needed sorting. like we needed to make it quieter so that you could hear the heartbeat and the subtle little effects like footsteps. without them it didnt sound as natural and just sounded to fake. i really hated having the soundtrack and loved our piece when it was really simple. i enjoy having simple projects for our media studies because you can still show your abilities by making a simple piece and evaluating, planning it and drafting it well.

Final Version

This is our final and finished version.

last lesson

on the last lesson i added in the final soundtrack to our piece but because it was rushed i still need to work out the kinks with the sound and make parts of it quiter and parts of it louder.

rough cut video

last minute things to fix

the only thing left to do was to add the end credits in because im not to sure what were supposed to put them right now. i dont know wether they would work better in the start of the clip or the end of the clip. today ive finished clearing up the mistakes with the sound effects and added a few more in, ive also added music to the introduction and changed the music in the ident. i also moved around some bits of the video clips because they had changed order.

typical conventions of a thriller our piece includes.

our piece has a few typical conventions of a thriller.
1)the first is our piece doesnt give to much away you only see close ups of our killer's body parts. it keeps you guessing and intices you to watch on to find out whats just happened.
2) our piece is set in an area that is relevant to everyone and that is what helps to make it a psychological thriller because its someone invading your home while your there which even if we dont voice is playing on a fear everyone tends to have.

todays lesson

we completed most of the tasks in the last lesson. i added some credits to the begging and helped beki finish the ident by adding the words and shortening it down because it was really long and dragging. we really just do need to add the credits in because i think our piece works really well with just the common sound effects. in scream you dont get music running in it. its silent and thats what helps build the tension in that film. it has you on the edge of your seat because your not expecting much to happen. thats what i want i think music will really distract the audience but i hope group feedback will really help us work it out. we seemed to be on target really in todays lesson because we only had to add the title to our film which were still struggling to decide upon.

plan for the next two lessons

the rough cut deadline for us is tomorrow and ive decided to plan the next two lessons so that our piece is pratically finished.

todays lesson:
1) add the ident into our piece adding the writing into it and timing
2) add the title of the film into it
3) add some more sound effects to the beggining

tomorrows lesson:
1) add some credits into the end
2)add a music soundtrack to the end shots
3)speed up some of the editing to create tension (right now the editing at the end is to slow and nothing like what i had imagined.)

knife effect edited

ive decided the best way to show what i wanted for our knife effect was to find some images that showed it. i really wanted the blade to glisten and to look menicing and dangerous and i dont think we got that effect using a hand held view. i really wanted it to be a still shot and maybe use an arial shot but my partner beki thought hand held worked best. i still think it looks sort of lame and immature a still shot would of really created the menicing image and would of just been much more effective. the fact we couldnt use a really sharp knife due to safety issues also didnt help to make the point look sharper.

this is my favourite image and is really the sort of image i wanted in our piece. its got some form of elegance to it but is still dangerous. i also think it would of helped to build tension.

the knife effect

i didnt really like the knife effect in our piece when its being dragged up the stairs because it looks really fake and like an obvious student film. i dont think that hand held worked for that shot. we should of probably done a tracking shot to a close up.

sound track

were still having alot of problems with our soundtrack. we dont really have a set idea for what kind of soundtrack we want so its been hard to try and create one that fits with our piece because of the limited sounds avaliable on garage band. i think i want a piano soundtrack that is subtle and grows as the tension builds in our piece. i think it would be easier to make on an actual piano soundtrack with a real keyboard not the computer keyboard.

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.

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.

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

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.