Our plot and starting the story board

We have now started working on our story board, as we know our plot and what we want the filming to be like. Our plot consists of two girls, performing on stage whilst a stalker secretly watches them and takes pictures. In the opening sequence we see our production name 'M.A.S productions' appear on screen, then the title of the film, 'Stage Girls'. The title will appear on a mirror written on in lipstick, we will create this on the computers. Then, suddenly a hand will appear and wipe off the lipstick and the stalker man's face appears on screen grinning and the camera will zoom into his eyes. The camera will then zoom out to another scene of two girls performing on the stage, one singing and one playing the piano, this at first will be an establishing shot followed by panning shots, close ups and mid shots. After this, we will use the camera to zoom in on the singers bright red lips, and then we will use a jump-cut to the room where the man is sticking another picture of the girls on the wall. (Jump cuts are effective in psychological thrillers, they are confusing cuts which do not follow obvious rules of cause and effect, they disrupt the audiences attention in order to create shock, they suggest a main characters unbalanced state of mind.) The jump cuts fit perfectly with our plot as they help portray our stalker man brilliantly. The room he is in will have a eary feel to it and the audience will be able to hear the man heavily breathing. He is sticking another picture to his collection of the girls on his wall. We will then zoom in on the picture and use a camera flash to show a 'flashback' of when the man was taking the photo. We will use and over the shoulder shot of the man taking the photo and then will fade back to the man in the room kissing the picture. The shot will then switch, but we don't know what transition to use yet, back to the girls performing.

Last lesson, we watched the opening of a film in the style of what we want ours to be like. This gave us the confidence to carry our idea on and keep planning.

This is all we have done so far, today we are carrying on working on our storyboards making them more clear and editing them, and also sorting out the timing, as we had issues with this before with shots being to short and therefore not making up to the whole 2 minutes.

Researching film openings - 'Murder By Numbers'

'Murder by Numbers' is a psychological thriller starring Sandra Bullock, Ben Chaplin and Ryan Gosling. Two gifted high school students execute a "perfect" murder - then become engaged in an intellectual contest with a seasoned homicide detective. The film has extremely mysterious elements and so this implies psychological elements are going to be used. This is captured in the opening sequence of the film.

After watching the forst 10 or so minutes of the film we managed to get many ideas into what we want our film opening to be like. The screen graps chosen give a insight into the film and also the elemnts that stood out to our group

Here are the screen grabs and explanations.

The opening of the film starts with ochestral music and an establishing shot, this adds gloom and also a loom into the dark plot and atmosphere.

 

The opening sequence is a bird eye veiw shot. This gives the audience an idea of what is happening and who is invovled.

 

The second screen grap we have shows is focused on a prop, the gun, this tells audiences that there is murder invovled in the plot and the two characters being filmed may be invovled.

 It is in a secluded area around the sea, with a scruffy, old and almost demolished house. This immediately sets a mysterious atmosphere and as audience you know something is going to happen. Either pretty soon or later on in the film.

Our next screen grap is of a dead body. Audiences dont know how the body got there and a medium shot is used to have establishing effect. This makes audiences think back to the gun.

A close up of the dead ladies face gives audiences an insight into the murder and also gives a horror like effect.

Silence of the Lambs - A psychological thriller

The plot of the film is Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee played by Jodie Foster, seeks the advice of the imprisoned serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter, played by Antony Hopkins, to help apprehend another serial killer, known only as "Buffalo Bill".

  This is the DVD cover of 'Silence of the Lambs'. It fits the theme of a psychological thriller as it  shows a cold and chilling picture to draw the audiences in.

 Here is a shot of 'Hannibal Lecter'. He looks quite scary and psychotic in the mask, and so we know that it is going to be an interesting film with a lot of psychological elements.

In order to make our film opening  interesting and gripping, we need to ensure psychotic elements are shown to draw in audiences and make the film exciting and mysterious.

Our chosen genre and Psychological thrillers

We have chosen to go with the genre of a psychological thriller. Our ideas consist of two targets and a psycho stalker with an obsession to show girls. By looking more into psychological thrillers we have learnt that  psychological elements in a film are related to the mind or processes of the mind. They are mental rather than physical in nature. Sometimes the suspense comes from within one solitary character where characters must resolve conflicts with their own minds, this would come from our character of the stalker who has an obsession with show girls, and obviously has a mental illness. Usually, this conflict is an effort to understand something that has happened to them. These conflicts are made more vivid with physical expressions of the conflict in the means of either physical manifestations, or physical torsions of the characters at play. -(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_thriller)

So, in our film we need to make the stalker mysterious but interesting. He needs to attatch audiences and bring a sense of wonder, making them ask questions such as, why is he like this? To which they would only discover by watching the rest fo he film. Because the sequence is only 2 minutes we need to ensure the audience is gripped and want to watch he rest of the film, so we can't give too much away in the opening sequence or audiences wont need or want to watch the whole film.

Here is a picture from a DVD cover of the psychological thriller 'Never Lost'. We can see the man looking mysterious and that he maybe a danger to the two girls behind. He is on control, not them as he is stood infront of them and so looks bigger and more dominant . Because the cover doesn't give too much away, it will make the audience want to know the full story of the film and excited to watch it.

Thriller film research

According to 'Wikipedia' Thriller films use suspense, tension and excitement, and the primary sub-genre is usually 'psychological thrillers'. We have chosen to go for a Psychological thriller genre, in these there is usually elements of mind games, psychological themes, stalking, death traps, horror-of-personality and obsession. Thriller movies aim to create a suspense atmosphere to cause feeling of dread and tension to audiences.
Sound and editing are extrememly important elements of a Thriller film, eg quick cuts and camera angle changes, music that gives tension and is passy when appropriate. It can be to do with lighting, especially the use of shadow. Mirrors and stairs are also great conventions that contribute to thriller movies.

Here is a mood board of Thriller conventions I found on google:

Having looked at this mood board, I noticed the types of words and phrases used such as 'psychotic', 'blood' and 'criminals'. This inspires me to incorporate some of these elements in my film.

Shots from Preliminary activity

This is the establishing shot at the beginning of the sequence, along

with our Production Title.

This is a close-up shot of character 1 opening the door.

This is a Match on action shot, which cuts from one shot to another

which matches the action and pace of the previous shot.

This is the two characters in conversation, character 1

looking off screen to where character 2 is.

Here is the second shot-reverse shot, where the

character 2 is now facing off screen while character 1 replys.

Research and planning

So far we have come up with three ideas for plots for our opening sequence. The first is a talent audition where people come on stage singing, dancing and playing the piano. This would then lead to a story of someone who didn't get through the audition and there tough journey to find fame.
The second was girls singing on stage being followed and stalked by a ma, the man only beng shown in shadow form, the plot would then lead to the stalker finding and killing the girls.
Now we have come up with an old fashioned thriller in black and white. It will consist of two young women performing on stage singing and playing the piano. Then, cuts will be made to a man in a dark room looking at photos of stage girls and show the two girls performing. This will then lead to a plot of the man stalkign the girls and eventually killing them.

Starting out my AS Media Studies Coursework

I am now starting on my work for AS Foundation Production. The brief I am working to is to create the opening sequence of a fictional film.
Before we start filming we have to complete an initial exercise in continuity editing. We have to film a sequence involving a character walking into a room and exchanging some lines of dialogue. This has to demonstrate continuity editing, especially match on action and shot reverse-shot techniques.
We shot this footage 2 days ago, getting to grips with mini-DV camcorders and tripods. Today we are having a go at digital video editing and using Adobe Premier Pro.
I found the process to be quite stressful at the start, but once we got the hang of using the mini-DV camcorder it got easier and we were able to create our sequence well.

Preliminary activity

This is a video made by me and my group. It is our first experience with a DV-camcorder and we shot basic shots like long shots, mid shots, shot reverse-shot and close ups. This was our third attempt at shooting the sequence, as we couldn't get the hang of using the camcorder at first but as we got used to it this is what we came up with!.....