Questionnaire

Questionnaire                                                                                                                               Age:

What expectations do you have of a thriller?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Which of the following settings do you think is most likely to appear in a thriller?

·         Forest

·         Busy City

·         Nightclub

In a thriller, should the main character be a protagonist or an antagonist?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Should the plot be foiled? Antagonists get the better or the protagonists?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...

What area should the story be based around? Crime etc.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Would a double-cross/red-herring be suited to the genre?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………......

Should the main character survive?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

If a crime is the main cause of the thriller, should it be a repeated crime or a one-off?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Should police be involved in the story?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Should the person at fault get caught or someone else get stitched up?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Should the lead character have a ‘sidekick’, and if so, which type of character should it be?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Above is the empty questionnaire, and below is an example of this questionnaire filled in by someone else

Questionnaire                                                                                                                               Age: 16

What expectations do you have of a thriller?

I expect a thriller to have crime, murder and escape, James Bond is the ‘landmark’ for thrillers in my opinion.

Which of the following settings do you think is most likely to appear in a thriller?

·         Forest

·         Busy City

·         Nightclub √

In a thriller, should the main character be a protagonist or an antagonist?

I prefer the main character to be a protagonist fighting against the antagonists.

Should the plot be foiled? Antagonists get the better or the protagonists?

I think that in a decent thriller the protagonist always ‘wins’, but that is always the way so maybe if the antagonist is triumphant it would be a shock to the audience.

What area should the story be based around? Crime etc.

I like crime thrillers, especially things like a bank robbery in a packed city, it creates tension among the viewers.

Would a double-cross/red-herring be suited to the genre?

It depends entirely on the storyline.

Should the main character survive?

The main character survives in every film, its common place, however, I’d quite like to see the protagonist survive.

If a crime is the main cause of the thriller, should it be a repeated crime or a one-off?

I think it depends on who the main character is, because if they seem ‘likely’ to repeat it, they should, whereas if they don’t ‘need’ to, they shouldn’t.

Should police be involved in the story?

Yes, it brings extra tension.

Should the person at fault get caught or someone else get stitched up?

I think  they should escape and nobody else gets the blame for it.

Should the lead character have a ‘sidekick’, and if so, which type of character should it be?

Yes, I think the sidekick should be a very unlikely character, similar to Shorty in Indiana Jones, the eight year old kid that was just like a mini-me of the protagonist.

I have chosen these questions carefully because all together they begin to build a picture of an idealistic thriller. I added the age part at the top because different age groups might find different things desirable in a film, this way we can see precisely what certain age groups want.
By Ben Marshall

Codes and Conventions.

By Natalie Grant.

Moodboard

   
    These images go along with the codes and conventions of a thriller because they are typical things that would be found in a thriller. Fancy cars, casinos, weapons and spooky settings are all used in ways that make the audience think different things, for instance, the car makes the viewer think that the driver of it is important and rich.  Different examples of iconography can influence the audience into thinking things, the art of choosing the correct iconography is like a behaviourial science, knowing what to do for what reason.

By Ben Marshall

Risk Assessment of Filming

Hazard	Who’s exposed	Risk Level	What to do about it
Loose floorboards	Everybody	Medium	Check and avoid loose areas
Broken glass	Everybody	Medium	Avoid it – don’t muck about with it
Alcohol	Everybody	Low	Replace with ‘soft beverages’
Loose nails & screws	Actors mainly	Low	Clear the area of debris
Falling over something	Actors mainly	Medium	Clear the area of obstacles
Forget the tape	Cameraman	Very Low	Avoid humiliation and leave it in the camera
Camera uncharged	Cameraman	Very Low	Avoid humiliation and charge it the night before
Lack of lighting	Everyone	Low	Take torches or film in the day instead of at night
Sophie being stabbed	Sophie	Low	Avoid an ‘actual’ stabbing in the ‘hostage’ scene.

By Ben Marshall

Thriller Plan.

This diagram is a complete plan for our thriller. It's set out using subsections to help keep it more organised and easier to understand. The thriller 'Jennifer's body' inspired our group because the storyline is original and creative. We've decided on loud and quick music for the killing because we think this type of music will give an intense and claustrophobic feeling to the audience.

Spider diagram put together when we were deciding what our thriller would be.
By Natalie Grant.

Year 13 Talk

This post is about the talk the class recieved from year 13 students explaining the do's and don't's of filming.


At the start of the lesson introducing us to the coursework element of the course we were given a talk by year 13 students that have already done the thriller coursework. This talk involved hints and tips about what we need to do for our main video and also the preliminary task, these tips included; make sure you have plenty of footage as some will be edited out and make sure you have several takes of each scene as something might happen in the background of one scene and if a re-take is needed the continuity may be effected due to things like weather or clothing. Everything needs to match well in the 2 minute opening sequence because if the continuity isn't right the whole video will look wrong, for example, if one scene was done in the rain and another during snow the scene would look out of place because the audience think that it is immediately after the previous scene creating confusion amongst the viewers. Another tip was to only include dialogue if it is really necessary because sometimes speech can ruin the suspense, as we were shown a previous year group's video where a man shown in the video as a 'tough guy' speaks and is not a typical 'tough guy' character, this ruined the look of the entire clip.


By Ben Marshall

Ben & Alex's Preliminary Task

This is the preliminary task that I filmed with Alex. Because two members of our group of four are in another set for Media Studies we had to film it seperately and due to this we needed an extra actor because otherwise it would always be one person in the scene and one behind the camera. For this we recruited somebody in our set to help us out and act a part in the preliminary. We made a few mistakes in our preliminary, mainly due to inexperience, we had the same part of conversation twice but as two different camera angles. Things like this are where mistakes help us make our main thriller video better.

By Ben Marshall

Sophie and Natalie's Preliminary Task.

For our preliminary task we wanted to do something original. So instead of filming on the school premises we filmed it at one of our houses.
Instead of doing the obvious story line like an interview or regular conversation we decided to make it more like the start of a film or television soap.

We got people to view our preliminary task and tell us any drawbacks that we could change if we had the chance. These were the tripod in the shot by the car, the unsteady camera shot at the beggining and that the camera should pan with the character when she is stumbling towards the house.
By Sophie Tinkler and Natalie Grant

Ben & Alex's Preliminary Task Log

Preliminary Task Log

Pre-Production

The pre-production side of the preliminary task is what happened before we made it. An example of this would be the storyboarding of the prelim which we had to do twice because we lost the original storyboard which was nearly complete.

The storyboard we did first of all was not the same as the one we did the second time round but Alex & I decided that the second one was better anyway so we weren’t feeling too bad about losing the first one. To be honest, the video isn’t exactly the same as what the storyboard illustrated but overall we think that the video is still good. The pre-production process was quite tricky because we had to think amongst ourselves what would make a good prelim and things that differ from the video itself and the storyboard are;

·         The stair scene (lost on camera)

·         The ‘rage’ scene (unscheduled improvisation that made the clip better)

·         The pupils from the class we filmed in coming back to the class during filming (you can see them at the door at the end)

The scene at the end which was completely unplanned was a necessity because without it we would have had no ending because that was our last chance to shoot and ending as the camera had less than 1 minute of battery life remaining. If we had obeyed our storyboard our preliminary task would have failed because it would not have had a climatic ending whereas the one that Alex & I actually filmed has an ending that makes people laugh.

In the first week of the clip being on youtube it got over 200 views, showing that something must appeal to people as the other prelim in our group got nearly 40, maybe the rage scene appealed to people when looking around on youtube.

Our preliminary task was originally going to consist of a character walking down some stairs with a match-on-action shot from behind the stairs illustrating and putting an emphasis on the character. This is what went missing on the camera and we had to improvise in the editing room with how to start the clip because all we had to start it with was the main character walking off of the bottom stair.

Overall I think that the preliminary task fulfilled its purpose because although it wasn’t as good as it was meant to be, it has given us an idea of what not to do for our main thriller project.

By Ben Marshall

Ben & Alex's Preliminary Task Log

Production

The production part of the preliminary task was filming the prelim, in this we had to decide what to film, where to film, how many takes of each shot to do and different angles of shots. We had to film about three minutes worth of footage as we knew some would have to be edited has it would not be suitable for the clip.

We decided to film a character coming off of the stairs and walking through double doors, then going down the corridor to show that the character had a purpose of where he was going. We filmed a close up of a character going through the door as this showed that the character knew where he was going and then when he went into the room the audience knew that he was going specifically to see someone. We then used a shot reverse shot and over the shoulder shots to illustrate the conversation which worked well as it made the conversation flow and easy to watch.

In the conversation we filmed the same piece of dialogue in two different shots, this is because we did not plan the filming well enough, when editing we put both the shots into the clip as we were not thinking about the dialogue as we needed to.  Also we did not get permission to use that classroom we saw it was empty and went in there, this was a bad thing as at the end you see a lot of lower school girls walk and wait outside the class. The characters also did not stick to the script at the end as the angry scene was made up on the spot and did not look very professional.

Filming the clip took a lot longer than expected and this is because we had not planned out what we were doing to the thorough extent that was needed, therefore we made many mistakes which involved a lot of talking between scenes and lots of re-filming.

In doing this task myself and Ben learnt that we will have to draw the story board in much more detail than we did, as this will save time in the long run and will make the clip look a lot more professional. We also need to follow the story board and follow the script as in the Preliminary Task we went off of the story and the clip had no real meaning or point.

If we had to do the Preliminary Task again I think we would create the story board very deep detail and also follow the story line and script to make the filing time less, as this will make the clip much more professional and the audience will be able to tell that much thought has gone into it.

 By Alex Parker

Ben & Alex's Preliminary Task Log

Post-Production

The post-production side of the preliminary task was the editing of the video and the audience feedback. After shooting the video we had around 3 minutes of footage but most of the clips we wanted to keep in the final video so it ended up as a 1 minute video whereas most others are around 30 seconds. The individual clips that we filmed consisted of a scene at the stairs which was lost on the camera so we weren’t able to include it in our final video, a scene of the main character opening the main double doors, which was shortened from its original length to keep the video more flowing from one clip to another.

In the editing we used a fade from one ‘walking’ scene to another to give the impression that a small amount of time has passed between the two clips because a cut is used from the start of the corridor to halfway down otherwise the shot would go on forever. After this there was a conversation scene with the 2 main characters asking eachother how their weekend was when a ‘tender’ subject gets brought up by Alex. This provokes a reaction of RAGE from James who takes his anger out on anything he can get his hands on. Editing this scene was tough and on one part it is visible that it hasn’t worked because there is a slight pause between two different takes. This pause is between the first chair being pushed and the second one being thrown and it may only last for a split second but it still disrupts the flow of the anger. If I could change the way this scene flowed during filming I would have made it one long take instead of two shorter ones to compensate for the change of camera angle, whereas if it was in one take the transition would be seamless as there wouldn’t be two scenes to try and fit together like a jigsaw.

Overall I think that the editing of our prelim went well even though we didn’t have long to do it. The editing from start to finish took us about 10 minutes and it may have been a bit rushed but I think that the finished product was near enough what we wanted it to be.

The improvisation in the last scene was what we needed because the battery on the camera was about to run flat so without the last minute thinking by James we would not have had an ending to our preliminary task.

By Ben Marshall

Natalie and Sophie's Preliminary Task Log.

Pre-Production Preliminary Task - MESS.

Pre-production refers to what was being done before the the filming stage. The first stage of pre-production is thinking on the initial idea behind it all, then putting it into action and creating a storyboard.

We didn't want to do the obvious, we wanted something original. Our initial idea was too original so we came up with a whole new idea and with permission decided to shoot off school grounds. Thinking up ideas is tricky at first because we aren't use to being able to use our own ideas.

We also had to choose costumes. We had under an hour to walk to the destination, choose the costumes, put the costume on, put the required make up on, film the prelim, remove the make up and costume, then walk back to school to return the cameras. this was a lot to do in so little time.

Overall I think the pre-production was a success as we stuck to the storyboard and had no problems with costumes or storyboarding.

By Natalie Grant

Natalie and Sophie's Preliminary Task Log.

Production of Preliminary Task. - MESS

Pros and Cons:

If we could shoot our preliminary task again we would've paid more attention to the surroundings as we didn't realise the tripod was in the background of two shots. We would've also got other people to act for us as it would've made filming a lot easier because there was only two of us shooting and acting for the task. Overall, I think our prelim went well. We were constantly changing effects and transitions as we couldn't decide. I think we would've done a lot better if we'd had more time to maybe reshoot and with more reliable editing software.

Experiences while filming:

We struggled with the fact that it was just the two of us filming, but we over come this by using the tripod effectively and filming the shot reverse shot of eachother, instead of attempting an over the shoulder shot which wouldn't have worked as well.

Location:

The location for our preliminary was filmed at Natalie's house which is extremely near to the school so it was simple to get to and had all 'props' and things that we needed already there. This meant we were able to finish filming quickly and if we needed to go back to refilm it was possible.

By Sophie Tinkler

Natalie and Sophie's Preliminary Task Log.

Preliminary Task - Post-Production.

The post-production side of a preliminary task is the editing of the video and the audience feedback. After shooting the video we took our camera to the editing suit and loaded all the footage onto the compuer. We had 3 minutes of footage, a lot of clips we didnt want to keep. In the final cut we had 36 seconds. In the editing we used a cut from the girl walking to the house and then trying to unlock the front door and then another when she drops her keys. We used cuts to create the shot reverse shot effect when the girl and her mother are talking. To close the sequence and show the title we used a box close. 

We used a variety of different shots to show our understanding of filming with cameras. Within the first few seconds we use an establishing shot (ES) and a long shot (LS). We use the 'ES' to show the auidence the setting of the task. The 'LS' was used to introduce the character to the audidence and let them decide what time of character she might be. The next shot we use is an extreme close up (ECU) of the girls hand as she goes to unlock the door, we used this because it was suitable to use within the match on action. The 'ECU' then changed into a point of view (POV), this helps the audience feel a conection with the character. The close up (CU) of her mother is used as it shows her emotion and how she feels about the situation. Then there is a mid shot (MS) of the girl, we felt this shot was suitable as it shows that she is distant from her mother. This was suitable as she is still drunk from the night before.

By Natalie Grant

Preliminary Storyboard & Task

by Natalie Grant

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