All Killer. No Thriller.

Today we have been editing our piece. We each worked on a different area, editing, titles and the soundtrack. We have been trying to upload our soundtrack onto the picture to see how well it fits and see if t needs to be changed at all. We have considered changes in our titles because it looks a little ammeture and that style of font is rarley used in the cinema. It does however mean that we are breaking the rules and is therefore different so we may well choose to keep it. Parts of the soundtrack have gone a bit distorted as the pitch has gone funny, this will sound wrong especially along with the picture and we will need to change it.

Cut Rough!

Constructive criticism-
> Need to make the storyline easier to understand. We hope that the storyline will be cleared up once we have edited the piece further.

Things that worked out well.
>Lighting
>The abstract shots
>The party scenes
>Camera work

Today is the greatest, day I've ever known.

Today, we worked on editing our current footage and shooting the shots that wasn't good enough from our first film. We tried to capture the shot of the killer again but it was difficult to shoot through a window and make it look like a house, not a college. We also experimented with other ideas such as not actually seeing the killer, but seeing someone the killer in a cupboard and his hand reach out. We decided to stop filming and help finish the editing ready for the rough cut, so we will film some more on Thursday.

Cast n' Crew

For the opening credits to our film we needed to create a list of names in which to add in during the opening sequence. We decided not to use our own names as they would be repeated over again. To make up these names we went onto the internet movie database (IMDB) and used a mixture of surnames and first names that would then be used in the opening credits.

Matthew Hamilton
Emma Conner
Kevin Anderson
Ruby Lane
Victoria Gerson
Sarah Mason
Ryan Brooks
Jason Wilson

Filmin' Footage

Over the half term we shot all of our footage in Barrington just outside Cambridge. It was decided that this was a good location because of the large house available for us to film in, the house in question belonging to a friend of the group. We spent several hours filming and tried to capture several artistic and abstract shots, such as the pool balls being hit into the table. Looking back at the footage, we have about 7 minutes filmed from through out the night, meaning that we should have enough footage to use and complete our opening sequence. There was one shot however that we might re-shoot, this being the shot where the serial killer is walking in front of the window. This shot looks too unproffesional and chiche, not the look in which we were looking for. We may not have enough time to reshoot it, however if we did re-shoot we would have to be on a different, closer location- probably in college grounds.

List of Shot

1. Establising shot of party scene shot from head height, people dancing + drinking.

2. Close-up of people playing pool from opposite end of pool table.

3. Pan shot moving from table upwards as person playing gets up, mid-shot.

4. Pan Shot moving from table upwards as person playing gets up, mid-shot.

5. Mid-shot of talking + drinking around table.

6. Mid-shot of people dancing with creepy man at window.

7. Pan-shot, close up, moves from left to right of everyone's faces with creep in background.

8. Same as 2.

9. Long-shot of person laying on sofa + someones feet being dragged away.

10. Mid-shot, zooms into close up of person on sofa as thedy sit up.

11. Shot as if through person on sofa's eyes, long, mid, close as they get nearer to phone.

12. Close up of them dialing phone.

13. Turn on tv.

14. Static effect.

15. Go into kitchen, check radio.

16. Run for the door.

17. Mid shot looking outside.

18. POV shot being hit round the head.

19. Static

Planning to film

We have chosen on a location for our shoot, the majority of it will be shot in a large house in Barrington, outside Cambridge. This gives us lots of space to film in and will create a good atmosphere that we require. Also, becuase we need alot of extras, we will be organising and providing a get together and film it, this means that it should look realistic.

Fonts

During last lessson we looked on various websites where we were able to download fonts that would be useful for our thriller piece. The catorgories we searched included distorted and typewriter. We downloaded the fonts and then did examples in photoshop using white writing with a black background. Here are some examples:

TITLES

We have already established the content of our opening sequence, but we still need to consider where the actual text will go. The most common techniques that you find in films to do this are when the opening sequence cuts to altetnative shots and when the writing is shown on sequence. If we went for the first approach it would help to create a thrilling sequence as we could make the titles flash and be put against any chosen background of our choice. We have chposen to try out layering the text over the sequence. An example of this is whilst the feet are being dragged, some text will appear in the space behind. We will also experimnt with negative flashings. We saw this technique being used in "Surface", a project by students in college and thought it was very effective.