Props and costume list for filming

Props and Costume list

The list below is going to be all the things and equipment that we are going to need when we start filming. 

In the garage

• Torturing equipment (Knives, pliers, hammer, tape, rope etc.)
• Duct tape, to make the victim stay quite and makes them unable to scream loudly. 
• Source of light
• Chairs, fairly old fashioned

For the kidnapper 

• Mask/balaclava to symbolise his identity being kept a secret.
• Contact lenses (visible, distinct colour)
• All black outfit
• Black gloves

This is a print screen from our thriller opening, we incorporated the blue eye contact idea along with the mask however instead of keeping to a plain black with no pattern we chose to purchase one with a creepy skull like pattern on the ground , this was also to help with the lighting due to it being really dark when filming , the white made the mask pop , creating an eye-catching and  visible balaclava being worn. 

For the kidnapped teenagers

• Casual outfit (a bit rough and creased to show signs of struggle) The girl could be wearing a loose coloured top with blue jeans and converses. and the boy could be wearing a blue hoodie with a white top because it is easier to get dirty. He can wear jeans of choice as well as trainers.

• Phone
• Keys
• Bracelet

For the other teenagers

• Casual clothes( faded jeans and casual t-shirt)
• Messy hair, preferably tangled.

Operning Titles

Operning Titles To Three Films

In this blog post I will be analysing the opening to three films and impaticually looking at the order that the film titles and names of technical crew appear.

The Talented Mr Ripley Film

The Talented Mr Ripley

The first opening titles I looked at was from 'The talented Mr Rippley' I noticed that the first title which appeared was the film company'
Paramount' there company picture camera up on the screen usually its this order of status which takes place first. then the camera cuts to a panning upwards network buildings, with the production companies name fading into the screen with a pixel gathering theme. You can evidently tell that these companies were involved in the making of the film because the soundtrack and dialog from the film starts to play in the background. the next thing that happened is it cuts into a black screen and one at a time slices of individual parts of the screen start to fade and drop out of the frame to revel the image, they've started to revile the actors face first because the main characters face begins to appear at 0.42 second into the film. The camera work pans  around the actor revealing a couple of the famous stars acting in this film whilst the foreground is still disappearing to reveal the actors surroundings. Once the camera stops panning at 0.54 then the Film title fades in and joins together, one thing that I like about this title is that the word 'talented' doesn't appear automatically, instead the editors have done it so that it flicks through a load of different words associated with the word talented, also the colours change to a variety of red, purples and yellows which creates an interesting effect. Also the font to the word talented is completely different to the rest of the title, it has a red stamp effect and no capitals where as the rest of the title have tall white capital font, this is eye-catching because the white complements the red colour. After the title appears so does the next scene to the film, 2:18 in and we've already seen dialog between some of the characters and more of the celebrity names are shown on screen a yellow /orange transparent box drops down and black text overlays bait of the characters heads. the reason that the director has chose to film a few minutes before they show the rest of the characters is perhaps because the audience have just see them science the first showing of the stars.

One thing that editors sometimes do is list the stars names in alphabetical order, this is so the actors don't get offended or feel less important if they have been put t the bottom, usually put in alphabetical groups of different things such as actors, production and camera crew to make the order less biased or feel like the director has a favourite. However this is usually done at the very end of the film but can also be done at the opening titles.
Compared to how film text is laid out in this generation its a lot more structure, where as in this film 'The Talented Mr Ripley' the text is very random , as if they've chose a quirky foxy style of off Dafont and used it as there opening titles name. Where as in comparison with the film 'Begin Again' which is a roughly newish film for 2015 the text colours and font repeat and stay the same type of theme throughput the opening title and credits. Therefore this is something I take not consideration when choosing the type if text i will be editing into my final opening thriller.

Begin Again

The second opening title I analysed was from 'begin again' to start with I was shown 'exclusive media' and 'the western company' these are two film companies that helped in the making of this movie. The production company then emerged onto the screen showing that 'sycamore' was apart of the  production company. However another film company did pop up a few seconds into the opening picture of the film, but it was the names repeated ,they were placed as an overlay with white text. When white text is used within an overlay of an image you have to make sure that it doesn't blend into the background, and another thing that you don't want to happen is
that your not meant to take away the audiences attention from whats happening on the screen. This is why vibrant colours are not  used for overlaying text instead usually a basic black shade is preferably used. Every company wants there brand to be shown at the beginning of the film, however only the main producers and writers/ companies that were involved in the making are shown at the beginning of a movie, the rest like the camera crew, costume designer, make up and actors legally have to have there name and position in the making shown at the end of the video, this is something that legally has to be done, its to highlight who had import into the production and creating of the movie. Another thing that I noticed that appeared a few minutes into the film was that the 2 main stars that were used in this film, this could be because we where shown dialog between both of the actors therefore would explain why we are being shown there name. by adding well known actors names it draws in the actors fan base, for example it could be the purpose of people watching the film.

Borne Identity 

Synopsis Final Ideas

Final Idea

This is a link to the Powerpoint presentation that as group we created, we combined all of our ideas and thoughts into this powerpoint, each giving our own personal ideas and then choosing individual points from each of our synopses. Thus creating our final idea. We chose to combined all our ideas because we came to the conclusion that everyones idea were good but if tweaked and combined it would create and excellent thriller based opening film.
We came to the conclusion of keeping with the flashback idea from Laura's synopsis along with the, kidnapped for ransom idea from David Aluko's with his idea of someone trying to find the victim thats been captured. Also we included the concept of the setting being in a basement with a hospital, toucher kind of atmosphere from my synopsis and then we chose to include David odumosu's idea of
the person wanting money because he's broke and maybe his background history is he's been in prison for the last few years.
This presentation shows everyones first initial synopsis idea and then our final chosen idea.

http://www.slideshare.net/10mclements/synopsis-final-ideas

perliminary task

                          The Interrogation

As a task we had to create a preliminary video, there was a couple of things that we had to include such as the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot reverse shot ,also a clip showing someone walking through a door with a conversation somewhere in-between. the people i worked with was David, however we needed at least three people and because there was only two of us we had to find someone who was able to film with us. This person was Olivia, we asked her because she was also in another media class so would understand the terminology and importance of getting the right camera angle ,which was helpful and meant we could save time.

Its important that we used the 180 degree rule correctly when filming. this rule is when all camera work has been filmed on the same side throughout , either keeping to the left or right side.This is so that the audience don't become confused or disorientated when watching, also keeping to the rule will also help to ensure that the actors are in the frame correctly with matching eye level and are facing the person they are talking to instead of talking to someone supposedly talking to the window when the person they are responding to is sitting in front of them, them, this is the illusion the 180 degree rule can portray is it isn't correctly done. Shot reverse shot is an editing technique that happened after filming, its used during a conversation when the camera shot flicks between each other in order of the contestation response.this type of edit is used to show the the facial expressions of someone and to show that the other one is engaging in the conversation. Match on action it a variety of different shots put together to show one action continuously ,this kind of technique allows the audience to stay interested in at simple action.

This prelim video was a good starting point to relies how long it can take to film a sew seconds of an opening video, and that the editing stage isn't as easy as it looks. The iMovie software on the macs was what me and David used to edit this video task, it was extremely fiddly cutting the clips and using different fading and cutting techniques to create a piece that flowed nicely together. When filing in different rooms we also had to insure that the lighting was ruffly the same otherwise it wouldn't look very realistic ,also if the scene was too dark it would be difficult for the audience to see what the actor is saying or the facial expression they show. Therefore we used natural lighting and made sure there was enough so that the audience cow clearly identify where the actor were.

We decided to do a tracking from behind editing technique because it created tension and the idea of mystery when David was walking slowly up the stairs, we wanted to insinuate to the audience that he  was nervous and was trying to avoid the interrogation. This tracking technique worked well and the quite but heard footsteps was evident and created a tense and acculturating suspense.

The final outcome of the match on action shot work fluently when the clip was put together in editing stage. We didn't use a tripod when filming this section, we had the option to film with a tripod but due to the little corridor space we chose not to, however i think overall we kept the camera steady when filming and it didn't look to jolty. Therefore when we film our thriller opening clips we need to make sure that we don't film in small cramped spaces because this won't allow us to have enough room to set up the tripod and film with a good distance from the camera.  This was a good place to film film out match on action because the natural lighting was easily distributed throughout the windows, also due to the glass windows it implied office meeting rooms or some kind of conference which linked to the impression we wanted to give. 

This was our over the shoulder shot reverse shot camera angle it was used to show a conversation between the different characters. This type of camera shot was to create a divide between the characters and show there different importance within the interrogation. However some improvements for this part of the clip would be to work on the framing, when filming a shot reverse shot the person speaking has to be eye level and centre of the camera framing.This is somethin that in the future we need to take into account because there is a lot of unnecessary foreground that distracts the viewer from focusing in on the character speaking. Also anything that could have been changed in this scene would be the volume of the dialogue, to improve this we could have positioned the camera closer to the person speaking, however this would have been difficult because we still wanted to capture an over the shoulder shot. But this is defiantly something me and David need to consider when filming the thriller opening. Anther way the volume of the dialog could have been louder is to increase the speak capacity when in the editing stage, using iMovie.

During this interrogation conversation we had to stick with the 180 degree rule, this was so the audience didn't get confused about the positioning of the filming scene. We chose to stick to davids left and olives right side of the room because we felt that this would fit into our filming best.

This is the last frame to our prelim video, we came up with the idea to do a close up of David who was being interrogated opening the door. The reaching for the handle and letting the door slowly close behind him once David left, implied to the audience that the interrogation had finished .It only then seemed right to add the film credits then instead because when analysing movies with the film credits coming up at the end they usually have an image still taking place in the foreground of the frame.  When in the editing stage me a David decided to made the edits ride up the screen. Credits are added at the end of any film clip because it is to show who was involved in the film production and editing.

The Black Swan

The black Swan 4 scene analysis

For this blog post I will be analysing and talking about the camera , sound, mise en scene and editing within 4 scenes from the Black Swan. this movie is a thriller about a committed dance who wins the lead role in a production of Tchalkovsky's 'Swan Lake' only to find herself struggling to maintain her sanity.

Scene 1

The first scene I chose to analysis was when she returned home after finding out she had just received the role of the black swan. When Nina Sayers arrived at her door she takes a long pause, fixes a very nervous smile onto her face, before taking a deep breath ad jolting the door open. Her body language implies she is petrified of what is waiting for her behind the door. When she walks down the long hallway numerous mirrors are hanging from the wall, this gives the illusion her mum likes to constantly look at herself in the mirror, this could emphasise that this movie contains a mystery of not everything prevuing what is seems and there being two sides to people. Another thing that stood out for me was when Nina was looking into a room full of paintings and photographs of her, this gives the indication that the mum is obsessed with her daughter and her dancing, it could imply that the mother is living her dream and passion for dancing through her daughter.
Within this scene it shows the first change in Ninas personality, we see her look into the mirror and find blood dripping from her back. The music changes and starts sound like a swan hissing, this is the first clue that nina is turing into the back swan ,the blood signifies that the black swan is trying to emerge from inside her body and break free.
The camera uses a close up camera angle of the mother cutting a celebration cake for her daughter you can see the passion and excitement this mum has on knowing that her daughter is going to be the Black swan in the show, the director has position the framing to allow the audience to also see Nina in the reflection of the mirror ,to see her reaction when the mum cuts her a slice of cake. The shot reverse shot camera technique is used to show conversation between the characters, usually this type of camera shot is used to separate the two characters, this therefor represents that they aren't on the same page and are very different within there personality and behaviour. When the daguter sees the massive slice of cake her mother is trying to give her she replies with 'my stomach is still in knots' an over the shoulder shot is used to show the mothers facial expression, from this we can see that the mother has very harsh angular facial features and also in this particular framing the director had only aloud us to see one half of the mothers face, this could emphasise that she has two different sides to her. The non -digetic sound that is convayed in this scene has a ticking beat, this could portray that the director is building up the tension and implying to us through the music that the mum is going to snap at any moment. Almost as if she is a ticking time bomb. When the mum carries the frosting cake over to the bin she stays there and hovers over the bin for a few seconds, a mid shot /over the shoulder is used to show this. The daughter stands at the opposite end of the kitchen ,she starts to hesitate and stumbles on a few words this shows that the daughter is at this point within the scene become quite afraid of the mother, as she doesn't want to disappoint or make her mum angry because she's unsure of the reaction she will have, therefore creates a sense of mystery and tension as the daughter has to think about what she is about to say.

Scene 2
The second scene is when Nina is in the bathroom just after being crowned the black swan. We see her become very agitated and begins to panic about someone knocking on the door. There is a contrast in the music used in this scene, a piano theme type beat is used. The editing is very elegant which links to the piano music and the idea of a ballerina dancing. When she begins to constantly scrub her hands a close up camera angle is used, to build up tension the director has made the backing music playing to increase in volume. They want the audience watching to be on the edge of there seats thats why theres a drastic speed and volume increase when nina starts to be intruded by a knock at the door she replies which 'just a second' her voice signifies that she's ajitated and by the soft tone it highlights thats she's just going to break down and burst into ears uncontrollably. Therefore is shows that already 34 minutes into the film we start to see a change in Nina personality.
An extreme close up is used to show you that she starts to peel of the sink to her nail, cosmetics are used which creates an unsettling and gory atmosphere. It creates tension between the audience because they feel obliged to look away. However this idea of her ripping off layers of her skin portrays that she's starting to become the back swan, its implying that her skin is starting to shred as the black swan part of Nina start to emerge. The editing use in this section is constantly cutting to face to finger then to face which created tension ,also when she begins to tare off the skin the cuts start to get faster and lose there elegance. However the important part is the close up used after she looks away then back at her nail, it shows that Nina was hallucinating and imagining herself pulling off the skin on her finger and that actually this didn't really happen it was just all in her head.

Scene 3
The third scene takes place in a hospital room, Nina comes to return earrings  and cosmetics that she had stolen from the old swan queen, it represents her trying to clear her guilt. She try's to lay down the objects very slowly and elegantly emphasising her light-footed and quite hand movements when dancing. An over the shoulder camera angle takes places as she places the objects back onto her table as she notices that the lady is asleep in the hospital arm chair. The sound goes very quite , no dialog is used and the only digectic sound used is the fast breathing that Nina is doing as she gets evidently closer to the lady. The director has then used a fast cut to show he lady grabbing Nina's had before she had chance to leave the room. It cuts to a close up of the lady, this is done to show the anger and change in her personality, she questions why Nina took her stuff. Nina panics and starts to become very flustered, an over the shoulder shot reverse who camera angle is used between the two character is represent there different personalities and lifestyle, by using this type of angle it shows a separation in the characters.  The music becomes very loud and when the lady grabs Nina's hand a loud dramatic sound has be added to make the audience jump and be on the endue of there seat in anticipation. Also cosmetics have been used in this scene to createa horrific scene when the lady grabs a pen and starts to stab herself in the cheek, a point of view shot i used to show through the eyes of Nina, this is an effective angle to use because the director hs then showed how metal unstable and how much her character is changing when she starts to hallucinate and see herself has the lady in the arm chair who is stabbing herself. the camera zooms out as she starts to quickly walk backwards toads the door. then the camera pans behind her as she makes a quick escape to the evaluator.

Scene 4
The forth scene I analysed was when Nina had just entered her dressing room to get changed for her last performance. this scene shows that she has no longer got any control over the black swan. She starts to doubt herself by thinking she isn't good enough and that Lily is going to steal her queen swan performance. Theres is a confrontation in this scene when Nina walks into her dressing room with lily preparing to go on stage portending to be the queen swan, a shot reverse shot closeup is used to show the fear of panic on minas face, she starts to stumble on words and become extremely angry. Then the director has used a low camera angle when the two girls have got into a fist fight and Nina seems to be on top about to stab lily with a piece of smashed mirror, she protects herself by wrapping her hands around Nina's throat. This type of camera angle has been used to reprint the queen swans importance in the whole show and that she's in control. When Lily wraps her hands around Nina's neck we start to hear a cracking sound, this emphasises that her obsession with the swan performance is making her form into a swan. The director has added editing within this section to show minas neck extending ,just like a swans neck, this implies that her black swan self is trying to escape from her body. This is a tense atmosphere for the audience because it starts to revival that this character is mental unstable as she starts to see her reflection in lily who is the black swan, her pupils become a red tone with very defended makeup, this shows a contract between what she was at the start of the film and now it reflects on the pressure she has been put under to become an amazing dancer. Evidently proves that  Nina can't control her actions.

Analysis of previous as media

State of Mind 

Straight away when this clip is played the dark bad lighting with effects the quality of the opening, the lack of lighting makes the facial expression on the character hard to be seen.  Therefore  in future references they shouldn't relay on natural lighting, this is something that needs to be looked at if the film was to be done again. The mise en scene that is used with the setting and costumes design could have been though out more, it comes across as the boy has just randomly chose to film in his sitters bedroom without thinking about the small detail which is vital to ensuring a good opening thriller movie. Stereotypical teenage boy wouldn't be waking up in a girlish decorated  room with floral pink curtains,when he openers the curtains is subverts the idea of a thriller because the setting isn't very realistic and because nothing has happened to lil to to the genre of a thriller, in my opinion it looks more like a romantic comedy due to the decoration and body language of whats taking place in the scene. Maybe next time they need to take into consideration where they are filming. Also there is an unrealistic and over execrated alarm that has been added in the editing stage, the loud beeping sound isn't typically what sound people set there alarm sound to. As the boy looks out the window he notices a suspicious boy stalking him, he doesn't appear to be dressed in the attire of a stalker and therefore my first initiative is that he has over slept and therefore the friend he supposedly was meant to be seeing has turned up angry due to him not being ready on time.

The denim  jeans and hoody doesn't signify a stalker ,maybe if he has his hoody up and face covered then it would be more dramatic and realistic. However the music and sound imported in this opening when editing has created the unsteady atmosphere the over the shoulder camera angle has been used because it shows the perspective of what the actor is looking at. To create a more thriller themed view they could have done a point of view shot this would have given a more mystery spin to the clip because you wouldn't of exactly known who was actually immediately known who was looking at the man outside, thus  creating an unsettling atmosphere for the viewer. The continuity  in this any very good , the opening hits 1 minute 32 and theres nothing yet that could link this film to a thriller genre.All that sense to be going on is him getting up and walking out side of his house fully dress, this indicates we've skipped time but we haven't yet seen any indication of this film resembling a thriller. Its evident that this is the main character because we've had an insight into his daily routine, although we've seen a boy outside nothing has been said about where he lives or why he's following the other boy.

When the camera pans around to the boy who looks very formula to who was standing outside the house the camera decides to do an over the shoulder pan, this technique shows continuity and its a clear way to use a long camera angle. The director has used the boys body to block out the two boys changing position which has work extremely well. This scene portrays how anxious and confused this boy is as he keeps imagining the boy following him.

To create tension and a dramatic atmosphere the last few second cuts speed up , the non digetic music start to increase with a high pitched sound and when editing a cash edit has been used.This was in my opinion the only time that portrayed a thriller and a mystery and the character finally remembers where he saw the boys and that in actually fact he was always following him. Because the clip was triller based it showed that all the pecs to the puzzle were finally making sense ,highlighting the mystery aspect of the thriller genre.

Inner Evil 

This 2 minute thriller opening has a well thought out storyline and the film title which inks to the clip, this is because the film is about someone having flashback or reminders about something thats taken place in there life. Throughout the opening the camerawork didn't become unnatural, the chosen close ups and two person shot was effective and provided the clip with good continuity. When the girl wakes up the shocking gasp sound she makes creates tension, implies she's just experienced some kind of nightmare, this symbolises that the film is a thriller as its already getting the audience on the edge of there seats, it keeps the audience engaged and intrigued into what just happened. When the girl looks at her reflection in the mirror an over the shoulder shot has been used. During this frame the important titles start to appear ,the positioning of the title overlaps her face ,which creates a frame where her facial expression isn't visible. Therefore this could have been adapted and positioned differently. 

Also another thing that I picked up on was the lighting when she left the house, she opened the door which significantly  exposed the house to a lot of light then when she left the light began to disappear. and left the hallway with very little lighting. It was a continuos edit and therefore could've been cut or the lighting could have been adapted in the post film editing stage. The slow motion special effects edit that takes place when she gets dragged around the corner creates an unsettling atmosphere. The frantic body movements emphasises she's begging to panic and become very frustrated and flustered as she tries to escape.Thus creating a feel of mystery with why and who is holding her back, overall linking the opening to a thriller themed  clip. The non-digetic music that is evident in the background of the clip is very satiable . When she starts to have visions and flashbacks the music starts to become overlapped with loud heartbeats , this signifies that she very anxious and scarred due to her constantly turning around and questioning what she just saw.

When she's being followed down the pathway the women dressed in all black is betrayed as someone who is following her. The last few seconds of the clip shows the music drop as the girls footsteps becoming more vividly heard to resemble she's getting closer. Right at the end of the 2 minutes the title pops up again after we cut from the girl walking down the path. By doing this it has created a sense of a trailer being shown instead of a next scenic of straight cut, where as when a title appears 2 minutes in its usually used within a trailer so that the viewers don't forget what the film is called.    The camera is tracking behind the two characters.