Reason for change of idea/plan

We decided to change our idea for the opening sequence.Firstly because our main actress,my friend Christy , last minuite could not make it and she pulled out.The other idea also would have been too short to film for an opening sequence and I think it would not be so thrilling and intersting.Our new idea was adapted from our previous one and the story line is quite similar but it is definetely clearer and had improved. 

Animatics for Snatched

These are   our storyboards for our idea of filming the nanny and her dailt routine and then when she walks in the room she is going to have a delayed reaction to the girl being kidnapped so the audience are slightly suspicious of her .The story board was useful in decided why and what shot types to use to have an effct on the viewer and make it continious however i think on the day of shooting our shot ideas will change as we get in the creataive zone and when we are in the enviroment in which we ar actually shooting the film. It is useful however in planning our ideas which our in our heads and sharing them with our group.This is our storyboard animatics:

Description and questions we thought about for our idea for the opening sequence

Why you liked it generally ?

Because it creates suspense through out the opening sequence enabling the viewer to understand who will be involved in the kidnapping without giving to much information.

How it feeds into narrative?

The opening sequence will feed into our narrative as it introduces the nanny and what her daily routine is normally like. Tt does not give away too much information about why or how Sophia got kidnapped but it introduces the significant event by leaving us slightly suspicious of the nanny’s involvment. Her delayed reaction to the girl’s dissapearance will make us wonder what her agenda is, and make us want to carry on with the story.

How it might appeal to your audience, target?

As the story is of the thriller genre, it will appeal to a wider range of people, not just a specific type of person. Suspense entices any sort of person to want to know what will happen, however the story of the movie will appeal to a younger audience as we are enticed by the enigma and excitement of the opening sequence.

How will it hook the audience?

The way in which the audience would be hooked is by the enigma, and all the questions one would start to ask themselves, like “Whats the nanny’s agenda?”, or “what’s gonna happen to the young girl?”. The suspense hooks the audience.

Why it will look like a thriller

The enigma is the main element that will allow the film to be of the thriller genre.

Technical ideas (camera shots, mise en scene, sound, editing),

Mise en Scene:

-We want the setting to look as if it is stereotypically a  wealthy looking house

- smart looking nanny  (mid-length skirt, tight shirt, pulled back hair)

- well light house

- could be a rainy day

 We did not carry on with our ideas because we had a slight problem with the actress.We might come up with a new idea because although this one is good,we think it may be too short to film and not as exciting as out new idea. We will probably keep the background story line similar but shoot something else.

My personal Editing /shot ideas for our Thriller opening sequence

My Editing ideas:

These our some of my editing and technical ideas, I think if i share them with the team and we used them it would work quite well. I attempted to come up with continuity editing which was exciting but flowed well.

• First shot needs to be the house (location shot,pannig shot of a massive house)
• second shot of the nanny tidying away toys/books/gadgets...
• Then its a shot of her in kitchen washing up and drying ( a shot from the side with running water) she hears a big thud
• we film a close up of her reaction-she has to look very worried to trick viewer and create suspense because in the next scene we will be suspicious of her...!
• Then we film a mid/long shot of her walking towards the door from behind -at a low angle ,we film her opening the door and shutting it behind her.Then from the otherside we film her pulling the door shot to make the ediditng seem as if it is contiuity editing.(cut to shot ahead of closing door mid way through action,continuity shot)
• We film her walking up the stairs, do shot from above,infront and behinf-cut to be continious,look at whisper olivias hurtwood trailer for reference.
• Film foot steps
• Film her back mid/long shot and we see in the shot in the distance one of those children door signs on the door saying Sophia.Close up shot of the sign to tell the viewers she is enetering a childs bedroom
• Then go back to a mid long shot of her by the door and her reaching for the door handle and turning it 
• Film a close up of her hand twisting the door handle and cut to that to add continuity
• Cut half way open door camera far corner of the room and films women walking in.
• Film a close up of the women turning obviously to the bed ,film her looking at the bed so it is an eyeline match!
• Now do a Shot of an obviously messy bed like someone has been taking and then a close up shot of her teddy lying on the floor.
• Then film a long shot of the nanny from a low angle looking at her watch and then dropping a glass in an obvious way
• Close up of glass smashing
• Copy along came a spider shot of nanny calling for help " help me help emergency emergency . security at the gates do not allow any visitors in or out...sophia is gone and i think she has been kidnapped "
• Cross cut to Sophia in car boot tied up with tape and then film someone slamming the car shut and cut to black.

Opening sequence idea selection

Our group came up with some different ideas for the begining of the opening sequence, after discussing them we then chose our favourite idea. we kept in mind the conventions of the thriller genre and some of the feedback and results from the questionaires about what people liked about thrillers

1. Our first idea was that we started the opening sequence with the girl sophia in captivity but we felt that this would leave the audience feeling as if they knew what was to come and that it lacked suspense and excitement.
2. Our next idea was that we have a shot of the nanny and the uncle (the audience dont understand  who this man is when they first see the shot) on the phone and the nanny could say something like "its time to do what we have been waiting for, do it now " . I think this also lacks thrill and excitement and feel that this would not be correct for the beginning of  a thriller.
3. I came up with the idea of  filming the daughter in the house all alone and scared, we film her as if she knows someone or something is in the house so she searches the house and grabs a knife, she then locks herself in her bedroom and tried to call for the body guard but they dont reply. Then she tries to call the nanny with one of those phones which are on the wall and you press a button to speak to the nanny but she doesnt reply or the nanny sets her up and replys saying " someone is in the house and they are coming for me, lock yourself in your room  and wait for help, i will get you help" and then Sophia gets kidnapped (as planned by the nanny all along). I think this idea is a good idea but perhaps a bit too dramatic for the begining of the film.
4. The next idea was all our favourite:

The opening sequence will feature the nanny doing her daily routine ,sweeping the floor , tidying up sophias toys and doing the dishes it is her routine and consists of her going into the daughters room to wake her up to prepare her for her school day. She goes into the room, sees the daughter is not there, looks at her watch, waits a few moments which seems strange, she then drops a glass of water ( to create the illusion that she was scared when she doesnt see the daughter ), and she calls security on her special microphone ( that security people have ) and says "emergency emergency security at the gates do not allow any visitors in or out...sophia is gone and i think she has been kidnapped " Similar to the shot below!

• We will probably name it "Snatched" i thought the name would be a bit of a giveaway but i got outvoted by my group. 

Important charts -which i used to compare my online questionaire results

Important charts -which i used to compare questionaire results

My Online Questionaire(about and my results SO FAR )

I decided to go home and make a questionaire because I think it is much more useful, unbiased and easy to compare online. Instead of asking only people from my school i shared it using social media like facebook. I am so happy that i decided to do this, it was very hard work to do on my own  but i cant wait to show my group as I think they will be happy with the feedback and it will be useful to us because we can use it to find out what age group like thrillers and what they like. 

I found a good website online but you had only 10 days and then you had to pay, so i thought it was worth a try and I sent a nice email to them. They said i could use the questionaire site till the begining of August for free and upgraded me.

I wanted to find out what age people were so i could see the proportion of how many people liked thrillers and the average age of people answering the questions. This will be useful in finding out how many people prefer thrillers, what they expect from them and then I did an open question which interpretevists would favour. It will be useful in finding out "what attracts you (people) the most to thrillers" . 

We can then find out what attracts people to thrillers and use their feedback to help us when we shoot and make our thriller opening sequence. We can use many thriller conventions in our own opening sequence thriller and this is important to help attract people to our thriller

I think my online questionaire is useful, even though it isnt perfect and there are a few mistakes. I love how you can make pie charts and easily compare live  results and the results keep changing and getting bigger and bigger. 

Here is the link to my questionaire which i emailed and posted to facebook and twitter asking people to fill it out for me: http://freeonlinesurveys.com/app/rendersurvey.asp?sid=rgu526z0t7ae51p476261&refer=www.freeonlinesurveys.com

Results:

Currently as I am writing about my results I have 59 people who have already already filled out my questionaire and for what we want to find out , this is more than enough people. 

Below are the questions I asked:

• Above , you can see that mostly girls answered the questionaire but still a lot of boys did too.Over half of the people who took part ,were female.
• 72.4% of the people who took part were 15-21 and this is very useful to us  because this is our target age for when we make our opening sequence to a thriller.

One person wrote a rude work above, apologies for this and this person was just being silly .I will treat it as an anomylous result(odd one out) .Most of the people that took part were in the Uk,this is also a mistake above because if people didnt live in the Uk they could press wither no or if not what counrty do you live in. From my live results which only i can log into , i also found that 2 other  people answered from outside the Uk who do not state where they come from, it tells me as it can see peoples location that 2 people from Holland took part in the questionaire. This is most likely my dutch family. I think it is useful how we have a few people from outside the Uk because we would wnat as many people as possible to watch our thriller if it was made into a movie 

Most people watch movies according to my questionaire via their computer (downlaoding or streaming ) 

These results above our very useful because i found out that the majority of people who answered were teenagers and that their overall favourite Genre was Thriller and that they expected most before watching a thriller that it would be tense,that they create tension. The second most popular answe was mystery which they try to solve. 

When we create our opening sequence to a thriller i will try include with my group conventions of a thriller genre and these things which i found out , 

People loved the "mystery" and "the build up of tension throughout the story" ,"the suspense" and "original plots", "twists.." and mant of these things above are what  59 different people like the most about thrillers. If we use a few of these different things in our opening sequence to  a thriller i am sure it will be successful.

I am very proud of my questionaire and look forward to sharing it with  the group. 

*update* now on the 8.05.14 there are many more responses to the questionaire around 82 people have answered it  but results havent changed too much , this just means it is even more reliable now!!Very happy because my results are more represntative as loads of people have answered my questionaire.

Our Film Questionaire

Our Group did a questionaire and altogether of 25 people in Collingham, my school. We wanted to find out maily what our target audience was ,what peoples favourite genre was and also what people people expected from watching a thriller .My group all thought that this information was useful into helping us create our thriller because we can now target our audience at teenagers. However I  think this questionaire is fairly limited as the age of the people do not relate to what genre they like, although we did mostly ask young ,teenagers. I also think 25 people isnt enough,we should survey at least 50 people and the fact that they all go to our school i think is slightly bias.

Main idea for a thriller , the final story line

Main idea for thriller,the final story line.

I came up with this idea at home because our group was quite stuck on final  ideas and it was taking ages for us to come up with one we all liked  and thought it would be exciting to film a mysterious kidnapping film and the unexpected nanny could actually be the antagonist.I came up with this base of an idea so that my group would not mind changing idea because often once your heart is set on an idea ,it is tricky to move on. I think we worked really well as a group and my group were keen to listen to my new idea.

It is the story of a young girl, Sophia, from a wealthy rich russian familly being kindapped, whos father Ilya Brodski, is known for his notorious buisness work. The daughter’s father Ilya already came from a wealthy ,large family, lives a luxourious lifestyle.

The father Ilya , had a wife with whom they have a daughter round the age of 11, and he has a brother, Dimitri Brodski, who is now non-existent to the family as there was a falling out between him and his brother that resulted in Ilya  banning Dimitri from seeing his realtives ever again.

Leaving Dimitri disowned and with not much money at all. The falling out with the brothers Ilya and Dimitri  was originally to do with the murder of their own father, as only Ilya knew that Dimitri had killed their father in order to receive the money he thought he was owed from the father’s will and Dimitri always felt as the least favourite child. Little did Dimitri know, that is own father would sink so low and leave the entire will  to his popular  brother to Ilya Brodski, which left Dimitri  with nothing.
No father , no money and now his brother wanted nothing to do with him.

In the household, we encouter a couple of maids, and cooks,bodyguardss  however the young daughter has one main nanny, Patricia whos been looking after her for the past 10 years and since has built trust within the family. She knows how the family functions, knows information about the fathers work, but most importantly knows the long lost uncle that Sophia has no knowledge of. Patrica and Dimitri Brodski first met 4 years ago in a bar, yet this wasn’t any coincidence, Dimitri had planned to meet her there. This was the uncle’s way of getting involved with the family and using Patricia as bait.

After having met a couple times after the first encouter, Dimitri informs Patricia of his plan to receive what he thought was owed to him. He manages to manipulate Patrica into believing that the family she works for is bad. After convincing her of the wrongs of the family, he informs her that he wants to kidnapp the daughter in order to receive the ransom, and that he’ll give her some of the ransom money and she agreess and that they can run away with eachother with the money!!!

At the end of the story, Patricia and Dimitri succesfully reiceive the ransom money and return the daughter back to the family. When Patricia demands her share, Dimitri kills her, leaves a note next to her body signed by Dimitri.

This idea of mine if just a base  idea and I am more than happy and excited about sharing  it with the group and happy  to adapt,change the plot according to what the rest of the group wants to do. It isnt a perfect idea but i really like the idea of using a russian family and someone who know Sophia to help kidnap her. 

I was inspired by the movie Along Came A Spider where someone who knows the girl who gets kidnapped , is the kidnapper ( the teacher) in our story Patricia is in on the kidnapping. I also have been inspired by its style of editing , and the mise-en-scene in Along Came A Spider. The style of Jezze in Along came A Spider ,would be suitable for our nanny Patricia . The little girl who gets kidnapped in Along Came A Spider, her look would be perfect for Sophia in our opening sequence thriller.

Teams Thriller idea:

Our groups Thriller ideas:

A rough idea-A new/odd  boy at their school/quite geeky likes science etc  peruades some kids to come to the forest for a party ….and to take some drug he has ..they only go because its free drugs .He is secretly a physcopath. (Geek will be our antagonist)

They all take the drugs , he gets one plastic bag out and sniffs it first and  then the others take some and one of the kids later goes off to pea and comes across a shed and sees pictures of all of them ,info ,tests etc like someone has been spying one them.(it turns out that the new boy,the geek ) gives them a new type of  drug and a team of evil medics  are all testing this  new drug to sell illegally.The drug makes them hallucinate, bad things happen …etc….and they are filming it to make a reality programme but its extremely and frame the kids to  make it look like its their own fault…..!


Simplified Idea adapted  in class:

-new kid at school likes science and he`s geeky

- hes a pshyco and targets a group of people at school who likes drugs 

-he targets them because hes has a unknown chemical he made in his room 

-hes been enrolled as a 17 year old at the school
-he approaches them at school gets talking then offers them this drug
-hey plan to do it in a secure area (the geek suggests in a forest near his house)
-the group of kids who likes drugs agrees to this and to do it on a Friday after school
-that day comes and they are all excited
-the geek tells them it’s a new drug that’s spread across germany and that he got hold of it and its popular and has had no bad effect on people
-hes got the drugs in a baggie but one of them is a placebo for him
-he takes them to this forest near his house in a secluded area
-the boy opens his hands with 5 baggies with the powder, and hand each of them a baggie.
-they talk some more about this drug, and ask the new boy to take it before they do it in order to make sure he isnt playing them
-the new boy takes a dab and snorts it, while the others observe.
-Now that hes taken it, they feel more assured and then all together, the rest take what they think is the LSD
-They feel the drug take over take body
-These affects were sudden and not expected
-The drug hit hard and quick
-One of them goes off to pee
-He see’s a shed (turns out they are on the geeks private land)
-The shed contains pictures of each of the people who took the drug
-The pictures are quit disturbing and stalker like and pictures of dead people
-Runs back to the rest of them
-The rest are also pretty distoriented and confused and seeing stuff
-The guy who went for a piss comes back and tells the rest
-The geek denies everything and tells him he is seeing stuff and they rest agree
-The guy who went for a pee is confused and tries to take them back to the  shed

I personally do not like this idea but i got out voted because my group wanted to do something on drugs. I think it could be done well and it is a good idea, however for our thriller i think it will be extremely hard to act and our storyline is far too complicated.

I was  inspired by the horror film Truth or Dare:



This film helped me contribute well into our idea because i was paticularly inspired by the idea of the contrast of popular and unpopular kids and having a physcopath get revenge on the popular kids or even just wanting them to suffer due to jealousy. I also think our idea are quite similar due to them both being set in the woods.

• We have now decided to not go with this idea because it would just take too long to shoot and we cant think of full good story line which we are completely satsified with,i persoanlly think our idea is way  too confusing and i think our idea was good but i think it is quite unoriginal. I am very happy that my group finally agreed with me that we should change our overall idea.I thought that a good way of persuading them would be to go home and come up with an idea which was good,simple,including thriller conventions and that wasnt too tricky to shoot.

The preliminary task post

Preliminary Task Brief:

" Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door,
crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then
exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action,
shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. "

Below is my preliminary video, we had to shoot the same scene a couple of times ,each exactly the same but with different shots. It was interesting to learn how to edit and i think the scene`s editing was continuous and worked well.However i think when we make our thriller, we will have to think a lot more about making an interesting thriller and include many conventions of a thriller genre which we have learnt about. The acting could be a lot better in this scene, especially my acting.It is overall quite a boring scene and i hope that when we make our thriller we will include many more conventions of a thriller.The mise-en-scene also looks very school like and boring. I also think at the time of when we shot the pre-lim we didnt have our main thriller idea therefore this idea was more to help learn about the editing and different shot types and i really enjoyed learning these things, I have definitely been inspired and cant wait to make our thriller after this pre -lim!!

Depth of field

Depth of field refers to the focal length.

Deep Focus 

Deep focus is when the frame shows you everything in focus or sharp this is called Deep focus.It  requires a small aperture and lots of light , this means that the foreground, middleground and background of the frame remain in focus.

Shallow Focus

Shallow focus is a function of a narrow depth of field and it implies that only one plane of the frame will remain sharp and clear, the rest of it is blurred  (usually the foreground).

Camera Angles

Camera angles is the  position of the camera in relation to the subject of a shot. High and low angle shots can be used by a filmmaker in order  to convey a meaning, A filmmaker may also uses an angle which is called a canted angle (sometimes known as a Dutch angle) .

High angle

“A high-angle shot occurs when the camera is placed above a subject with the lens pointing down. This makes the subject appear small and vulnerable” – Jennifer van Sijll, Cinematic Storytelling

These two shots are good examples of high angle shots,the characters looks isolated and weak. High angle shots are camera angles thag looks down upon a subject or object.Often it is used to make the subject look vulnerable or appear small. The  high-angle is not only used to make subjects look small and vulnerable, high-angles can be used to portray a sense of surveillance,suggesting that the character is entering a secure facility and that she is being watched. The protagonist often becomes vulnerable, making it easier for her to be caught, heightening the anticipation of the scene. The surveillance camera also becomes a manipulation of reality in that it is very disjointed when tracking someone because it is only located in critical positions within the location/facility.

Low Angles

A low-angle shot occurs when the camera is placed below the subject and the lens is pointing up. This causes the subject to appear larger-than-life” – Jennifer van Sijll, Cinematic Storytelling
These shots  make the subjects look powerful and dominant.The first picture of the man looks as if he has won a fight and that nothing is going to get in his way. The photo below makes the boys look powerful  and brave rather than using a high angles which would show the train tracks below and it would make them look foolish and vulnerable.

Canted angle ( Dutch angle) 

Canted angles means the camera is not angled straight towards the subject but deliberately slanted to one side. There is a sense of being out the ordinary, it can be used to show a dream sequence, or something out of the ordinary e.g. being drugged or drunk or fast action and disorientatio.

Editing Techniques

Editing in film is the process of cutting and selecting film footage to create a finished product.

 The three types of editing are:
 -Transition
-Shot duration
-Continuity

Transition

There are 3 main types of transitions.

• Fade to black:The shot fades into black and the following shot appears.

E.g.At the begining of my sisters A level media clip they used a fade to black.They used it as a transition of the location shot to the man in bed.

• Dissolve or cross fade:The shot merges into the following shot resulting in the two shots (momentarily generally) being superimposed.

E.g. In this clip at the begining you can see an example of a cross fade.

• Wipe basically is where one shot is replaced bu another by travelling from one side of the frame to another or with a specialist shape.If the wipe proceeds from the two opposie edges of the screen towards the centre or the other way round its knows as a "barn door wipe".

E.g. This clip shows many examples of Wipe transitions used in Star wars.

Shot Duration

• The duration of a shot will usually reflect the narrative context and will be either a short shot or long shot duration.

A long take/long shot duration : is an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace of the film.Lots of the time  lasting several minutes. It can be used for dramatic effect  if done well and in moving shots is often accomplished through the use of a dolly,handeheld  or Steadicam. Long shot duration allows us to focus on facial expression,for instance in a long intense converstaion which is important to the narrative.

Short take/short shot duration: It usually conveys action and urgency, like in a chase  scene, or intense  fight scene.It is used to create tense dramatic feel sometimes making the viewer feel uneasy in a fight scene.

• You can also have slow motion and fast(accelerated)  motion.

Slow motion:Is when action  takes place on the screen at a slower rate than the rate at which the action took place before the camera. This is used:  to make a fast action visible or to make a familiar action strange or could be used  to emphasise a dramatic moment.

E.g. For dramatic effect in a fight.

E.g.For comedy:

Fast/accelerated motion: Used to made very slow action seem visible ,e.g. a setting over a long period of time changing  or appear as funny or to increase the thrill of speed.

E.g

Continuity 

Editing is done to purposely make the film seem continous.Here are some of the "rules":

The 180 degree "rule" : This rule helps to maintian continuity by ensuring that the action of the scene takes place in front of an imaginary 180 degree line and if the line is crossed it wil change the perspective and can confuse the audience below.

I found this short clip useful in understanding the rule:

30 Degree rule: Is a basic guideline which sates that the camera should move at least 30 degrees between shots of the same subject.  If this rule isn't followed a jump cut can occur and there is a risk that the audience starts focusing on the filming technique instead of the story that is being narrated.It wont be "invisible editing" and invisible editing is important.

This may soften the effect of changing shot distance, such as changing from a medium shot to an extreme close-up.


Eye-line match: common convention to maintain continuity, makes the cut seem natural. A character will look at something and the next  shot will show what they are looking at.

Match on action: This is similar to an eyeline match , but the two shots are linked with action. For example:

Shot reverse shot: Where the camera cuts from one subject to another , back an forth, for instance following dialogue in a conversation. For example at 2 min 15 in this scene shot reverse shot is used.

Other continuity devices:

• Split screen: Here the frame is split into sections so that we can see different events occuring at the same time.For example:

• Crosscutting: is a device used to convey the idea that two or more events are happening at the same time. This involves cutting back and forth between different locations.