Evaluation Question 1

First day of filming

First day of filming 

The first day of filming our thriller opening was exceptionally good with us almost getting everything done within the first day alone the only reason why we had to go back to Sams house to continue shooting the next time we could was simply because it had gotten too late and far too dark for us to be bale to do the outdoor scenes so we had to wait until it had gotten light again. 

On the first day however we sat down and talked about what we were going to film and and we changed a couple of things such as the  order it was going to be filmed in and the rooms of the house it was going to be done in but we did get on with it and got everything almost done even the scene where Sam was tied to the chair however we did have to go back later on to re film as there was stuff that had to be redone and could be done better as well.

Treatment

Treatment 

Group roles:

Cinematography: *James 

Mise-en-scene: Destiny, Sam 

Sound: *Azimul

Editing: Jack, Destiny 

Title of movie:

Patience 

Movie synopsis:

The main back story of this short film opening is a young male has been kidnapped and is being held ransom by a criminal who is looking to make some quick cash, the criminal waits for the call from one of the boys friends about how much money they are able to get together for him only to find out that it is not enough, the criminal then goes out to the shed to let the boy know they could not get the correct amount of money and the boy will have to find out the consequences of failure later on. 

Genres:

Thriller, Drama, Crime 

Initial ideas

Initial ideas:

For our media film which we produces we initially had a few ideas which we played around with until we finally settled on one idea indefinitely and went with that one.

One of the original ideas which we had consisted of a boy walking along the street and then being kidnapped by a mysterious assassin in a car and being forced in, where he would be held at gun/knife-point and questioned about drugs it would have then ended with a hand flopped outside of the car trunk and then a cut to black, although this was a pretty good idea to begin with we decided that it would be better to not go with it as it would be pretty hard to get someone to drive a car that we knew as all of our fathers would be working at the time of the recording and our mothers either looking after siblings or working as well. so we decided not to go with this idea and decided to rethink and come up with others, also the other main reason as to why we didn't decide to do this as it would be awkward to do the whole knife/gun-point without possibly getting into some kind of trouble.

The second idea which we had had come up with was an idea where a group of people would meet up within a park or a back alley and would be there for a deal of some kind with another group of people only for it to go wrong where someone would be killed by a gun or weapon of some kind and both groups would have to try and escape for their live, the main problem for this one was simply the lack of people to do it and we in no way had enough people to do this kind of project and we also had no idea how we would be able to do the murder scene either as we had no idea how we could make it a believable shock for both the groups of people. 

Eventually we gave up with both of these ideas and decided to settle on one which would go on to become our actual film and would consist of a kidnapping and a ransom  gone wrong. 

Introducing our group

Introducing our group

Above is the group that i am going to working with for media, it consists of me (middle), Sam Dell (right) and Destiny Ogbeide (left), originally we were part of a bigger group with two more people that are not shown in the picture and we are going to still be working with and helping them with their film however we do have to focus on our own and get ours done as well and it is us three that are going to be working together throughout the coursework.

How to film a thriller

How to film a thriller:

Thrillers have many aspects of cinematography,sound and other devices which make it a thriller and make it easily identifiable to be a thriller, these aspects are known as "thriller conventions" and the majority of them are all outlined within the film clip below. When we talk about filming a thriller and the key aspects which make up one we normally talk about a couple a couple of main features, we normally discuss the shot types, sound, mise en scene and editing as thrillers have a particular way of going about these features and i am going to be observing and talking about all of them within the thriller scene below.

Editing

During not even the first minute of this short movie there is some editing immediately thrown into it, we begin with a fade which is a classic thriller editing techniques used to show the passage of time and is mostly used during a longer driving/walking scene and is used to speed things up, throughout the film there are also many consecutive straight cuts which are mainly used to speed up the video as well and are the simplest but also arguably the most effective way of using transitions mainly due to the fact that  the cuts are "invisible", this means that we do no really point them out or dwell on them too much and that we just continue watching the movie as if it is just one continuous recording which is great for any film maker as this allows them to do multiple shots without bothering the audience too much, this type of transition is especially useful when it comes to thriller movies as there are so many shots that these types of movies use the best way to get between all of them is through straight cuts. 

Cinematography

 The cinematography for this clip is very good as it accurately portrays any and basically every thriller movie as the majority of them will have at least one of the shots which are present within this miniature film, the most obvious shot which is in the clip is the close up as many of them are used to prtray the main characters feelings at the time and to show that he feels he is in trouble without actually saying anything or doing anything outright the close up on the facial expression is more than enough to convey to the audience the feelings of the character and the fact that he feels as if he is in danger. The other shot which also conveys to us this sense of danger is the medium shot of the passageway which gives us this sense of somebody watching the man and what he is doing and making it very ominous, the final shot worth noting in my opinion is the steady-cam shot at the end of the film which is used in many other thriller films when following the main character as it makes you feel as if you are actually following them yourself and part of the action and great escape yourself.

Sound
Sound is also a major role within any thriller film and this short one portrays the correct use of it very effectively, at the beginning before any danger or worry is present there is just the happy sound of birds chirping and the outdoors however once the man enters the seemingly abandoned ruins all of this happy and upbeat audio immediately stops and is instead replaced by ominous diegetic sounds such as water dripping and footsteps and really gives off this sense of danger and worry which really works together well with the creepy surroundings. Once the man leaves the ruins again and his heavy breathing has slowed down it goes back to the happy sounds and the sounds of the birds again to show that everything has gone back to normal. 

3rd production meeting

Our third production meeting was very productive as this was the one where we had to decide what we actually wanted to re-shoot and what we thought could stay in the film so this was the one where we had to actually go over what was good throughout the whole film and what was bad and we also had to go over what editing was good or bad as well so we had to decide during this meeting what was going to be the whole outcome of the film and what was staying/going. 

So this meeting had taken place after the first draft had been completed and uploaded and was basically us reviewing everything and going back over it, we decided that in the end we had to reshoot the scenes outside, the scenes with Azimul and had to redo the scenes where Destiny was at the table taking the phone call and we had also decided that we would wait and do it a little bit earlier due to the fact that a lot of the footage was unseeable and had to be redone during daylight. 

^ This had to be redone as this was basically all we could se for half of the film.