Final Cut- 'What Can't Speak Can't Lie' thriller opening

Evaluation Question 1

Sorry all but I had to post the last slide as a picture as projeqt wouldn't put it on the slideshow even though I kept trying...

Evaluation Question 2

Question 2 for our evaluation was "How does your media
product represent particular social groups?"
Here is how I answered, hope you enjoy...

Created with Padlet

Created with Padlet

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 5

Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Question 7

Here is my thriller opening evaluation question 7...

The question for this was "Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the main task"

Thriller opening evaluation Question 7 from LauraKN

Class feedback on our finished thriller

Hi everyone, here is some feedback from my media class on mine and Tammy's finished thriller opening 'What Can't Speak Can't Lie'.

This will hopefully help us both answer evaluation questions 4 and 5 as we can see what our target audience liked about our opening. 

This should also help us for future filming and will allow us to improve our skills by seeing what we could have done to make our thriller better.

differences between our screenplay and our finished thriller opening

Hi everyone, todays post I will be talking about the screenplay that we wrote before he making of our thriller opening and how it is different to our thriller opening now we have finished it.

First doesn't have as many of the shots that we planned to include in our screenplay. This is because, we thought that if we did this then it might look too much like a trailer or be too long which would bore the audience.

For example, in our screenplay we said that our thriller would open with a shot of the house that

'The girl' was in before going inside to the argument that she is having with her Dad. However, In

our finished thriller opening, we didn't include this as we wanted to get straight to the point and

start out thriller with the dad complaining to the girl. We think that this worked quite well as it

then set a more dramatic setting before the rest of the opening by starting with some conflict.

We also decided not to do the part where the girl picks up a photo of he family and smashes it

on the floor due to a couple of reasons. 1. We didn't want glass on the floor and decided that it was

too hard to put a realistic effect on it. (also the floor was carpet so if we decided we were actually

smashing it then it wouldn't have smashed very well. 2. We also thought that when we would have

added everything into our opening that it would be too long and probably look more like a trailer,

as we decided that we were going to add a montage at the end including the titles.

In scene two (The grandma scene), we also decided not to
 have dialogue with the girl and the grandma inside the
 house and also we didn't have them sitting on the sofa 
together. This is also because we didn't want to make it 
too long as we decided that we were going to do the
 montage at the end which included the titles. We also
 wanted to make it more brief and use something that

showed passage of time well.

Istead of using a long shot of the girls grandma' house in
 scene three (The morning scene), we decided to use 
2 different shots of the sky outside along with diegetic 
sound of birds to show the fact that it is the morning after. 
We blended these 2 pictures (one after the other) to show
 different parts of the sky, and also to show the passage of
 time to the morning.

'What Can't Speak Can't Lie'- Draft feedback

Here is the feedback from our thriller opening draft. I have used two audience members and asked them what they liked about our product, then we asked them what they thought we could do to improve...
 

'What Can't Speak Can't Lie'- Draft

This is a draft for our thriller opening 'What Can't Speak Can't Lie', I will later post some target
audience feedback on what they thought of it and how they think we could have improved it.
This will then let us know what we have to do to make it better...

Past student thriller analysis of 'Excemption'

Hi everyone, today I would like to show you 

a analysis that I did on a past student thriller 

opening. This opening is also one that is not 

from our school and is one that I found that I 

liked on YouTube.

Hope you enjoy...

Production logo update & stylistic influences

Hi, just to let you all know, me and Tammy have decided to change our production logo as we 

decided that our last one did not look professional enough and it was too small to put into our

thriller opening. Here is our new and improved design and we hope that you like it...

Something else that influenced us to do this was some past student thriller logos which we had seen on YouTube.

We thought that these logos were good as they were usually more simple than our first design but 

still had a good effect and looked very professional. Therefore, we decided to make our own logo more simple

but more professional looking.

Propp's characters theory in relation to the Harry Potter films...

Hi everyone, today I will be relating the Propp's character theory (which I have previously talked about) to the Harry Potter movies in order to give a better understanding, hope you enjoy...

The Hero: In the Harry Potter films, oviously Harry Potter is the hero. This is because Harry is the protagonist who is on a quest to ultimatley defeat Voldemort (The villian). 

The Villian: Voldemort ("He who must not be named") is the villian in the Harry Potter films as he is the character who brings danger and chaos to the lives of others. The villian is the one who must be stopped by the hero.

The dispatcher: Dumbledore is the dispatcher in the Harry Potter films as hetells Harry (the hero) what he needs to do to stop the danger and chaos that is brought by Voldemort. For example, this is shown after Dumbledores death when Harry has to find the horcrux's.

Dumbledore is also The Donor as he leaves Ron, Hermione and Harry the Deluminator, The tales of Beedle the Bard and the Golden snitch (The stone of resurrection) which help restore normality.      

                                                                     

  

The helpers: In the Harry Potter films, Hermione and Ron are the helpers for Harry and they go on the quest with him to help defeat Voldemort. 

'The Princess':  In the chamber of secrets, Ginny plays this character as she is put into danger by the Voldemort/Tom Riddle (the villian) and needs the help of Harry (the hero) to save her.

The false hero: In the Goblet of fire, Professor Moody is the false her are people think that he is professor moody when in reality it is Bartemius Crouch Jr. is disguise.

'DrIvE' previous student thriller analysis

Hi everyone, today I would like to share a analysis that i did of a previous AS students thriller opening named 'DrIvE'.

Although this student was not from our school, I thougt that it would be a good opening to analyse as it got full marks, hope you enjoy...

Click on the link below to get to the full powerpoint.

https://www.canva.com/design/DABvckyOce4/AV9OpA5WOuGEyZWEg__HZw/view?&utm_content=DABvckyOce4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton

Thriller camera shots -Sneak Peeks

Hi everyone, here are some sneak peeks of short clips in our thriller film that we are editing at the moment. These short clips are techniques that we are using and I have explained why we are using them. Stay in touch for more updates...

Here is a close-up that we used
of the girl grabbing her 'War
Hero' Grandads picture off of
the shelf. We wanted to use a
close-up as we wanted our
audience to clearly see what the
photo is of (as this is the same
one used on the document that
she finds at the end).

Here is an example of another
one of the short shots we used in
our thriller of the girl grabbing
her coat before heading our of
the door. Short clips have been
added in places to help tell the
story better so as our audience
understand what is going on more.

Here is an example of a shot
reverse shot that we are using at
the begining of our thriller
opening. This is a simple but effective 
techique for conversations
between characters.
  

I hope that you enjoyed these short spoilers and we can't wait for you all to see our finished product :)

How Barthes Narrative codes changed our planning decisions

Hi everyone, Today I just thought that I would talk about Barthes Narrative codes which is something that I have previously talked about on my blog. I will be talking about how these codes changed some of our planning when it came to filming our thriller opening.

These codes were we think easy to add into our thriller opening and some we didn't realise that we already added. However putting some in did not change the story of our thriller opening and didn't overtake what we were trying to show the audience. 

We tried to add as many of these codes that we could to bring our opening together more and to try and make sure it made sense to the audience.

For example, a code that we think we used best was the semic code, mystery code and the code of opposition.

As you will already know from my previous blog post, we used clips of black and white war planes and graveyards to portray that this film has an aspect of the past to it. This also shows the audience that war and death are a big part of what our film is about as well.

We used the mystery code by leaving our thriller opening on a 'cliff hanger' and starting the title montage straight after this. The 'cliff hanger' ends with the girl finding an old war document about her Grandads past which we believe will make the audience carry on watching to see further of what this means and what it brings.

The code of opposition we think we used very well in our thriller opening although at first we didn't realise that we had put it in. We think that we used this well as our opening titles contain clips from the past and the present which refers to old v new, telling the audience that our film is a mix of both.

Barthes Narrative codes

click the play button to load the clip below

personal roles

 

• To play a part in my production so far  I have been the main actor in the film while Tammy has been in charge of the camera.

• Both me and Tammy have made the props that we used together.
• Tammy has done most of the editing on our thriller opening, however I have helped her find resources and give her ideas. (We have also always made sure that we agree on something before adding it to our film).

• I have been in charge of the blog posts that have been shared between me and Tammy. These include a Target audience mind map, a film poster, explaining the narrative of our thriller and location and costume ideas etc..

• I think that both me and Tammy have 'pulled our weight' in helping to create our thriller opening as we have both took roles in which we think we can work best on. (By this I mean that we know what our strengths and weaknesses are and have took on the roles that we think we can do best) However we have also helped each other with our roles so as we both had a say in what was being done.

During the making of our thriller opening, we also both agreed on important things such as settings as in our film we use quite a vary of different settings so as the viewer doesn't get bored.

 

I think that by working in this way with specific roles we have found it easier to manage everything that we needed to include in our film and the research and planning that goes towards it. This was an advantage as me and Tammy are in different media groups meaning that we had different lesson times, therefore by giving ourselves specific roles we knew what we had to do when we went to our lessons.

 

Although we have not been working together in lessons, me and tammy have been using lunch times and after schools to work more on our editing and to see whether we both agree on things such as effects applied to our film.

Titles in our thriller opening

Just an update...

I just thought that I should let you guys know about the titles that we are using in our thriller opening.

First of all, me and Tammy have looked at other thriller openings including past student ones and 

decided that we were going to use a simple font with a simple effect on it. We have been doing that 

as we thought that they looked better in the thriller openings that we had seen and also we thought

that these titles looked more professional than others we had seen. Here are a couple of examples from

our thriller opening thatshow the type of titles that we are using...

Thriller teaser poster

Here is a teaser poster for our thriller opening 'What Can't Speak Can't lie'...

As you can see, I have overlapped two pictures, one being a photo of 'The Girl' who is a main character in our thriller, and the other being a picute of some war planes. 

This has been done to show that our thriller film is based both in the past and present and also that the key theme of it is war and the negative effects that it has on people, particually the 'War Hero' Grandad in our film. 

To give the impression of the past being a big part of our thriller, I have also made our poster in black and white to reflect something old such as photos which in the time of war were black and white.

After I had the main picture that we used for our background on this poster, I added the writing and decoration using https://www.fotor.com/ 

This is a way in which our thriller film is going to be promoted in order to try and aim at a larger target audience.

Thriller soundtrack

The website that we used to get our sound and music from for our thriller opening was... https://www.freesound.org/  , which is a website that allows you to download music and sounds for free without the issue of copyright.

We used around three different tracks and sound off of this website to make up the sound and music that we need for our whole opening.

A little extra filming..

Hi everyone, just thought that I should give 

you an update. Sadly, because Mr Welch decided

that he didn't like the argument that we shot between

me and my Dad i had to go home and film more,

tragic. ;)

This Day of filming wasn't that exciting so I don't really have 

much to say apart from thanks for reading :)

Props

During the making of our thriller opening the props that were used were either items that we already owned or what me and Tammy made. 

Here of some of the significant props that were used...

The article

Here is the fake article that we made for when the girl finds it in the attic of her Grandmas house. This is the last part that is shown in the opening scene before the titles so as the audience have to wait until after the titles to see what happens in the rest of the film.

The Photo Frame

For this we used the same old looking photo shown on the fake article above and put it in an old looking frame which had dull colours (We already owned this frame). 

This is the photo which the girl takes to her Grandmas when leaving her own house. 

The old box

This is the box which was used as the one filled with the girls granddad's old belongings. As you will later get to see in our film, we filled it with old looking things such as books and coins to give the impression that these belongings are from an older generation (Her granddad's).

Being the examiner

Hi everyone, in todays blog post I will be talking about a lesson we did a few weeks ago when we looked at some other schools AS Media thriller openings.

This got us more familiar with the way that the marking scheme works so we know what we are doing when we film and edit our own thriller opening.

This helped by us watching the openings and having a class discussion on what we thought the grade of it might have been. We were then told what the thriller opening got out of 50marks and then talked more about why it got the particular mark which helped us understand what needed to be included for a successfull thriller opening.

This first example got a mark of 47 out of a possible 60, meaning that it achived a level 3.

Although i prediced that this film would be more in the level 2 range, I then got to see why it achived the mark that it did and how the people used different techniques to get the mark that they did.

This helped me to understand the mark scheme better as it heleped me understand what we need to include in our own opening in order to get the mark that we want to achieve.

I predidced that this film would get a mark far above the others that we watched, however it got only one more mark than the last piece making it have 48 out of 60 and therefore placing it just in the level 4 area. Overall, i found this the best opening as it used many effects on vedio and aslo sound such as a voiceover throughout the clip. Also the camera shots were steady and looked prefessional and the continuity meant that the whole clip flowed and looked real to me as an audience member. To achive a better mark, this needed to show a bigger variety of things such as locations and camera shots/angles.

This last film that we watched got the highest out of the 3 openings as it was given a 56 out of 60 for a mark placing it in the level 4 section. (I also prediced this to be in more of the range as the first clip i talked about). This made me understand what we had to include as although overall I belivied that it didn't look as professional as the last one, it still achived a better mark. This showed us that things such as our acting in the film is not so important, as long as it is clear and uses different technuiqes that are on the mark scheme it can achive an outstanding mark.

Issues around representation

Filming, day 3!

Day 3 of filming!

Hi everyone, yesterday was our last 

schedueled day of filing and I thought

that I should let you all know how it went!

Today was a fun day as me and Tammy went 

to the graveyard as we thought that it would be 

a good idea to film some pieces for our titles part

in our opening. When we were there we mainly

shot clips of me walking through the graveyard

and some of me running, including some different 

types of angles. We shot quite a lot of footage at

the graveyard as we needed to make sure we had 

enough, otherwise it would mean the trouble of 

walking there again ;).

On this day we also mannaged to film the scene when 

the girl goes to her Grandmas house, however this did

turn out differently than we planned on our storyboard 

as we didn't want out opening to drag on for too long or

seem more like a trailer... find out how it changed later in

our finished production!

Thank you for reading!!

Filming, day 2!

Day 2 of filming!

Hi everyone, today i would like to 

talk about yesterdays filming and how 

it went. Yesterday we mannaged to get a 

lot more of the filming done which 

included the argument that the girl has 

with her Dad, the girl walking up the stairs,

grabbing her coat and bag, and walking 

outside in the dark to her Grandmas house,

although we didnt shoot the scene with the 

Grandma in today as we planned to do it the

next. However we shot the scene again when

the girl finds the old article of her Grandad.

filming, Day 1!

The 17th of Febuary- Filming Day Number 1!

Hi everyone, today I will be talking about the first day that we 

spent filming for our thriller and what we did on this day. I will

post these the day after each filming day to keep you all updated!

On the first day of filming we didn't actually do as much filming as the other

days that we had planned. This is because on the first day, me and Tammy 

decided that it would be the best choice to get on with making the props and 

asking some of the people me needed (My Grandma and Dad) when they 

were exactly able to film, therefore it was easier as we could plan ahead which 

gave us more time to do other important things.

We started off our "filming day" by getting out props together with began with 

making the fake article that the girl finds in the attic whilst at her Grandmas 

house. 

This prop actually took a long time

to make as it took a while to dry after

we had made it, however while we 

were waiting we discussed scenes that

we were not fully sure on and some of 

them in the final product were changed

 a bit.

We then got an old looking photo from 

Google of a young man dressed in a 

Military uniform which we used for the 

picture in the frame which the girl carries

with her in the opening of our thriller. 

(We then put this in a old looking frame 

and so as it was ready for us we put it 

where it is placed for when we were 

filming).

Although we didn't use this on the fist day

of out filming, we decided to put a box 

together to use as the box filled with the

girls Grandads old belongings. To do this 

we just put the fake article in the bottom

and some old looking books and random 

items that we could find.

Filming: Like i already said, on the fist day we 

didn't do too much filming as we were preparing 

everything we needed first. 

When it came to filming, we did the scenes without 

the Dad or Grandma needed as they were more avalible

on other days. 

Some parts that we managed to get filmed on this day was 

the part when the girl is packing her bag, when she finds 

the old article, when she picks up the photo of her Grandad,

although we didn't have my Dad we were able to film the 

girl walking out of the door after the argument with her Dad 

and then we filmed a few whots of the location in case needed!

I hope that you enjoyed this blog post and I will Keep you up to date on the other filming days, thankyou!

Practice shots/lighting

Hi everyone, here are some practice still shots that me and Tammy have taken in preperation for the rest of our filming. This will therefore let us see what ever shot is going to look like when we put it together and we will be able to change anythig we want to at any point if we think that we can make it look better. 
Some of these may later be used in our finished film.

Here are some location shots of a graveyard that me and Tammy are planning to use in the opening of  our thriller. As you can see we have used natural light to create shadows and highlightes on certain areas (as on the first photo we have used the sun behind the object we were photographing to create a shiloette effect).

Here is a shot that we took of when 'The girl' is walking to her Grandmas house. The one below this would be of when the girl is knocking on the front door of her Grandmas house before she answers and lets her in.

Here is an example of the shot reverse shot that we will be using at the begining of our thriller opening.

Short scnene practice...

Hi everyone,

here is a very quick practice scene that we did for the begining of our thriller opening before we started filming of when the Dad is angry with the girl, hope you enjoy :)

Now here is the practice that went not so well ;)

Film Contribution Release Forms

Production tips

• Plan locations and what the weather is going to be like- This ensures that there are no errors around continuity and helps with the overall pace of the process.
• Remembering the 180 degree rule- This also ensures that continuity is up to standard and makes the overall clip more realistic.
• Shooting more then needed is a good idea as it is always better to have too much than not enough!
• Risk assessment is important to have done (I have previously posted this). This is also important to have with you so as you know what you are looking out for and how to prevent injury from happening to yourself and others around you.
• Planning the days and times you are shooting is very important as people have their own priorities and time needs to be made so as you all can get doing what needs to be done!
• Making a list of props needed comes in very helpful as it makes sure that nothing is lost or left out! remember these props will need to be there for when you have planned filming or they will be no use!
• plenty of shots of the settings should be taken as they can be fitted in places to make the overall clip more pleasing to the viewers.

Equipment we will require for the filming of our thriller

Checklist:

• DSLR Camera- For general filming.
• Tripod- To keep shots that we want steady as steady as possible. This should also come in handy when doing pans to keep the camera at the same level.
• Shoulder mount- To keep moving/tracking shots as steady as we can, for example when the girl is walking to her grandmas house we don't want the camera to be really jumpy.
• GoPro- We decided that we might try this out to get some shots form the characters point of view (maybe some running shots to create tension for our audience).

We decided that we are probably going to do our filming over a period of 3 days to make sure that we have enough time to move to our different locations and make our props. Any extra time used for filming will be updated on my blog to let you know...

Strauss theory/Propp's theory

Here is a slideshow about Strauss' binary opposites theory and Propp's character theory and how they both apply to my thriller opening...

Propp’s and strauss theories from LauraKN