Thriller Title Sequence 2010 Group 2: March 2010

Monday, 29 March 2010

Rough Cut Analysis

We knew our rough cut wasn't as good as we wanted it to be but we knew the mistakes we made so it didn't matter. These are the things that we have decided to change for the final.

The dialogue sequence we shot was very amateur and didn’t do much for the film. It was unnecessary as an exchange of looks showed more about what was happening than the dialogue that was said. This is why we decided to cut it out, however our clips were short and we did not have enough time to go back and film so we just cut some and kept the most minimal dialogue possible.

Our teacher also said that the storyline was unclear and that we should put in some information about what was going on. This is why we decided to add a newspaper shot and a shot of the G20 summit to show the political side to our thriller.

At the end of our draft we noticed that the tracking shot wasn’t very clear, so we’ve decided to cut it and do a zoom in. We also edit out the footsteps as they sounded fake and out of sync.

The biggest problem we realised was the phone scene; the audience would get introduced to a character that they did not know and to fix this we had to cut very short scenes and edit them to make them look more even.

Definition of Suspense.

Thriller And Suspense Films are types of films known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. Thriller and suspense films are virtually synonymous and interchangeable categorizations, with similar characteristics and features.

Suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not exclusive to fiction, though. Suspense may operate in any situation where there is a lead up to a big event or dramatic moment, with tension being a primary emotion felt as part of the situation. In the kind of suspense described by film director Alfred Hitchcock, an audience experiences suspense when they expect something bad to happen and have (or believe they have) a superior perspective on events in the drama's hierarchy of knowledge, yet they are powerless to intervene to prevent it from happening. In broader definitions of suspense, this emotion arises when someone is aware of his lack of knowledge about the development of a meaningful event; thus, suspense is a combination of anticipation and uncertainty dealing with the obscurity of the future. In terms of narrative expectations, it may be contrasted with mystery or curiosity and surprise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspense

Skills Audit LiveType

Learn the steps to successfully exporting your movies from Final Cut Pro to LiveType and SoundTrack with markers.
Creating dynamic titles and killer music scores.

Using LiveType is an easy , simple task.

1. In the timeline, You place 2 markers. The first marker I am going to use as a "sync" marker for timing purposes in LiveType. The second marker I am going to use as an event marker for a music change in SoundTrack.
You press "I" to mark in, on the keyboard. and letter "O" to mark out.

2. To add a marker that LiveType can read, you navigate to the appropriate marker and then press "m" to open the edit marker window. After naming the marker click the "Add Chapter Marker" button

3. To add a marker that SoundTrack can read, navigate to the appropriate marker then repeat step 1, only this time, click the "Add Scoring Marker" button.

4. From the File Menu Choose>Export. At this stage you can choose to export either a SoundTrack movie or a LiveType movie. Since the markers I created are specific to the apps that will read them, I will need to export out two separate movies - one for SoundTrack and one for LiveType. Let's start with SoundTrack first.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wIcd2pjRYt8/0.jpg

Location shots

We have taken some location shots of where we are filming and have filmed. Originally, we had intended to film at:

The Brunswick Centre/Kings Place

Starbucks/College

The Canal.

However, Starbucks required planning permission, and it took longer to gain it, therefore, it was the issue of time and how much we had, and we didn't have a lot of it. So we

settled on using my house, which my parents didn't mind; it was for one scene, so they had no problem with it.

We then decided that The Brunswick Centre, wouldn't be the best place to film as it's always busy, so we settled for King's Place (A new building opened up in the King's Cross area. The Building ,manager, Ana Castro, had no problem with filming in the Building, as long as we specified how long we would be there for, what equipment we would use and that we completed a Risk assessment. For these location shots, we were only allowed to take pictures outside, as Ana said we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the building.

News And Current Affairs

A massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake has struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti.

Haiti's worst quake in two centuries hit south of the capital Port-au-Prince. Wrecking the presidential palace, UN HQ and other buildings.

The disaster was described as a "catastrophe"

it was said the damage could run into millions.

Official's say up to 230'000 died and more than 1 million were left homeless.

People lost their lives, homes, friends and family.

A number of nations helped over come some problems. Paramedics, shelter, food, medicine were all desperately needed.

The earthquake was so unexpected. it leaves us thinking will this happen again? should we prepare for a bigger hit next time?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8455629.stm

BDR Changes.

In our rough cut, Mary asked us to edit the dialogue out of the opening, however, it was not possible as the shots we have aren't long enough and there aren't enough of them to be able to edit them into the clip and remove the dialogue. Also, we were asked to put a scene of me on the phone to tamara. We have edited this in and we are now continuing with sound.

Sunday, 28 March 2010

Skills audit; creation of soundtrack

We wanted to create suspense when our character's are doing several things;

Walking up to the building,

Looking at the computer

During the bag tracking scene

We got the inspiration for parts of sound from films such as Collateral & Panic Room. Our other inspirations include music from Theme Park Soundtracks like Thorpe Park.

We first opened soundtrack pro and stated to browse through all the music types. After searching for some music we imported our clip into Soundtrack Pro.

As our first scene is an establishing shot which shows a building and traffic, we picked a "Traffic" noise, which indicated the sound outside.

We then looked at the next scene which shows a woman walking, we put in footsteps and a droning sound "Drone Dark Suspense 01" to make the scene look a little eerie.

The next scene which shows the agent, we wanted to build suspense and ease into an action packed sound, so we added "Drum Machine Reverb 01" beat to build this effect. We left this sound on as the woman continued to walk up the stairs which gave a metal like effect to the way she was walking.

To create a sense of "what is going to happen next?" we added an "Electric Bass Alternative Rock" beat to create more tension and suspense, we also left out the drone as it couldn't be heard. This was throughout the scene where two agents talk on the phone

We then faded the Drum beat out and left the Bass, as the woman enters the building.

To make the inside of the building seem eerie we then faded out the Bass and added back in the Drone as she sits down. The drone continues on even when the two exchange words, this is to create suspense.

As the woman gets out a book/documents from her bag the drone can still be heard, when the shot switches to the man getting something out of his pocket "Highlight Reel Long" was used as a action sound to make the audience think "What is he getting out?" and to symbolise that what he is getting out of his pocket is more important then what the woman is.

We then see the exchange of objects and the "Hightlight Reel Long" is still playing to create tension within the audience's mind. This is then faded out and the Drone once again is back in.

Once the woman is outside and puts her glasses on, then starts to walk again "Highlight Reel Long" starts again as a man bumps into her. This music is then left as the Title appears and fades.

We then had to export this out of Soundtrack Pro, without the sounds from the film, into Final Cut Pro.

Skills Audit creation of titles

We wanted a spy like font as our titles and tried to make our titles appear as if they had been typed, but we couldn't find this type of effect. Instead we based out titles around the titles in the show 'Spooks' trying to get the same effect as they had used.

We started off by having a clear screen and browsing through different font types to see which one would suit our title sequence.

We then decided on having 'Courier' as our font as we thought this was closest to a font Intelligent services would use.

After this we looked through effects that would resemble the same effect to 'Spooks' so we found 'Martian' in the 'Fantasy' category.

We added this effect then started to play around with the effect.
To make the font stand out when on a screen, we went on 'style' and outlined the font in black. But as it was going on a black screen we outlined it in white.

We then started to play around with the size of the font and the positioning of it. And chose to have the "Produced by" in the top hand corner and the name in the bottom hand corner.

Thursday, 25 March 2010

Rough Cut Of BDR

Sunday, 21 March 2010

Skills Audit:Editing

This took the longest to do as we had to keep cutting our clips and rearranging them.

We followed our storyboard accordingly, but as we had discovered some of our clips had disappeared which caused chaos and augments amongst the group as some of our best shots seemed to have vanished. We then discovered that the order of our storyboard had to be changed as we had filmed some of the shots in reverse order. For example the woman is meant to be walking down stairs, instead she walks up them. This meant that we had to change the whole walking sequence to fit the shots that we had.

First we imported in all our clips. And looked through them, one by one. We then sorted them all out and dragged them onto the timeline. After this we started to cut and rearrange where needed. We then had to film another scene which matched me on the phone. For some clips we faded them in and out because it gave the film a smooth effect and this covered up some of our shots that weren't perfect. We jump cut the scene where the woman is under the bridge to save time on our film as she also walks a lot.

Saturday, 20 March 2010

Soundtrack and Livetype

Using these programs, we can effectively create both titles (livetype) and sounds and music (soundtrack). We have learnt how to make sounds and how to drag & import them into final cut pro and how to make each sound fit the style of film we are shooting. Furthermore, we have learnt how to make titles in live type, how to import titles into final cut pro, and how to make the titles look good for the film we are making. Hopefully, by mixing a range of good sounds, shots and titles, we get more marks for using the skills we have learnt from our teachers.

Also, using these programmes we have began to create our film and using the skills and errors we made in our preliminary match cut excercise, we have learnt how to make good use of our locations and camera angles for our final edit of our film.

Thursday, 18 March 2010

Camera Tutorial.

In This Tutorial We learnt how to operate the cameras properly. We were shown JVC video cameras. In this, We learnt:

How to slot our memory cards into the camera,

How to focus the camera,

How to turn the cameras on and off,

How to open the tripod and level it,

How to review footage you've shot on the camera,

How to zoom in and out, and using that effectively,

How to attach the camera to the tripod ands how to take it off,

How to insert the batteries.

This has helped me because i can now use the camera affectively, which helps me to gain a good grade in AS media.

Saturday, 13 March 2010

Pictures Of Cast

Below are pictures of our cast used. There are also character descriptions below each picture.

Julia Blunt - New agent/member of Eagle Strike

Taylor Knightly - MI6 Tracking agent

Alex Rothman – Senior member who is on the executive board of Eagle Strike

Chris Jenkins – MI6 Field agent

Skills Audit:Filming

We had several days of filming due to timing and backup shoots.

1st day of filming

The first day we went filming was on February 4th we had one hour and forty minutes this including travelling time. This meant that our filming span was very tight. The scenes that we decided to shoot was of the agent tracking scenes, where the agent is looking at ac computer, looking at the G20 summit article on computer/newspaper/document form. and then looking at the computer with a “tracking screen” up.

We decided to save time by getting the camera first thing and then head off once we told our teacher. We had to wait 15 mins for our other group members who informed our teacher of what we were doing. We wanted our character to look a certain way and the character had to be a guy. So I asked my friend Jack to help us out.

When we got to our location, we set everything and got the computer ready, we then got a news paper article on the government. I then had to direct the actor an tell him what I wanted him to do. We were able to get going and filming, but we were able to get all of our shots.

Our second day of filming involved us going to kings place with another set of actors to film at 8.30. We eventually got our actors to the location and took them through the run down of he plot. This was a lot easier to film as there were more time.

We then had to film the woman walking again as we had missed some shots. This shooting was easy as we ad lots of time to finish everything.

We had to film another scene which matched me on the phone. This was to reveal to the audience who I was on the phone for and why they were in it, later on. This had to be shot in college as it was raining that day, meaning we couldn't go outside near a building.