A good opening sequence requires:
-Good use of sound
-Good use of titles
-Costumes
-Perfect lighting/mise en scene
-Perfect props that are relevant
-Different range of shots
-A script written in advance
-Understandable plot
-Shot list and storyboard made beforehand
-Don't make it too predictable e.g. in woods
-Avoid filming in school
-Don't give too much away
Friday, 24 March 2017
Three Point Lighting
This is a method used in films which forms the basis of normal lighting. There are 3 types - Key Light, Fill Light and Back Light.
-If you only have one light, it becomes the key light
-If you have 2 lights, one is the key light and the other is the back light.
-If you only have one light, it becomes the key light
-If you have 2 lights, one is the key light and the other is the back light.
Film Ideas
1. Person wakes up, hears noises. Goes to bathroom, strange things happen. Ends with us seeing a monster in the reflection of the mirror.
2. A girl is lost in a forest, looking for her parents. She can't find them, hears noises. Keeps searching and comes across a monster that is not shown on screen. Ends with screaming.
3. A guy hears a noise. Goes downstairs to see what it is. Searches the house and eventually finds the monster.
2. A girl is lost in a forest, looking for her parents. She can't find them, hears noises. Keeps searching and comes across a monster that is not shown on screen. Ends with screaming.
3. A guy hears a noise. Goes downstairs to see what it is. Searches the house and eventually finds the monster.
Film Idea Feedback
Q:"Where are you going to get the music from?"
A:"We are going to decide whether to do the music ourselves or get it from Youtube or Premier Pro."
Q:"I thought it's a very good idea and has a lot of potential."
Q: "The idea was very original and scary. It can be done very well and it's very clear it's a thriller. However, where are you going to get your actors from?"
A: "We are going to use our family members and friends who have acting experience as they have done A level Drama in the past."
Q: "Are you going to let your actors and actresses wear their own clothes or give them costumes?"
A: "They will be wearing their own casual clothes as it's set in a home and they will use their own make up as they have suitable make up for the film."
In summary, we have learnt from this feedback that we have a very good idea, however it is very complicated to complete. Therefore, we will need a lighting kit to help us with making shadows. We need to work hard on the camera angles and research the music we need to use to make it scary. We have also come up with a back up plan if it doesn't go to plan.
Task 3 - Who would distribute my thriller?
Distribution is the way in which a film is made available to the
audience. This includes marketing, in order to make the audience aware that the
film exists. The distribution platforms for a film include cinema, selling film
rights to television networks, DVD sales, Sky video on demand, Netflix, Amazon
Prime, Google play, Xbox live, Itunes, Spotify and YouTube. Cinema is where
films make most of their money however 9/10 films do not make it into the
cinema so most have to find an audience other ways. For a low budget filmmaker,
it is essential to go to film festivals as this is a way to find a distributor
to buy your film. Film festivals take place in London, Sheffield, Brighton, New
York, Berlin etc... Film festivals act as a meeting point for people to
have an opportunity to invest in films they like and think will make money.
When a distribution company buys a film, it'll be marketed, advertised, they'd create a social media campaign, get your film a certificate to be rated, and handle some press interviews. The film will then be pitched to independent cinema chains like Curzon. It is important to make the right deal with a distribution company, to maximise their profit. Distribution companies will take money off for advertising, digital platform fees and cinema. Therefore getting the best deal is important and low budget film makers need to decide if they want to sell all their rights to the distributor and make a small profit or cut a deal with them.
A big Hollywood company would like our film as it is a good thriller idea based upon a popular genre. A film that achieved success that is in the same genre is Scream, in which our film is very similar to.
It is unlikely that an American conglomerate would buy/distribute our film as it was made with an extremely small budget. Therefore, all aspects of the film would not be professional enough for people to pay any money to see
The actors in our film are unknown, meaning it won't encourage anyone to come and see it. For example, The Wolf of Wall Street was exceedingly successful mainly due to the fact that the main actor was Leonardo Di Caprio who is very famous and would attract people to see the film before they had even heard about the storyline. Also, this is our first film and we don't have any experience in this industry, therefore it is even more unlikely our film will be good enough for them to be interested in distributing it. As well as this, the unprofessional/ordinary location of our film being in an actual house and not in a studio makes it unlikely to be bought and distributed. Lastly,the camera and lighting equipment is semi professional as well as the costume being very normal and unprofessional. So, these factors all lead to the film not being good enough to become successful.
When we eventually post our film on social media and if it goes viral and gets picked up by a UK distribution company, we would definitely invest a little bit of money in promoting it nationally as well as adding a pre sold element to attract people to the film. A similar film where this happened is made by Vertigo and is called 'This Is Evil'. This film is very similar to ours because it is based around fear with little violence, and this film was promoted and distributed due to this concept. which is similar to ours.
When a distribution company buys a film, it'll be marketed, advertised, they'd create a social media campaign, get your film a certificate to be rated, and handle some press interviews. The film will then be pitched to independent cinema chains like Curzon. It is important to make the right deal with a distribution company, to maximise their profit. Distribution companies will take money off for advertising, digital platform fees and cinema. Therefore getting the best deal is important and low budget film makers need to decide if they want to sell all their rights to the distributor and make a small profit or cut a deal with them.
A big Hollywood company would like our film as it is a good thriller idea based upon a popular genre. A film that achieved success that is in the same genre is Scream, in which our film is very similar to.
It is unlikely that an American conglomerate would buy/distribute our film as it was made with an extremely small budget. Therefore, all aspects of the film would not be professional enough for people to pay any money to see
The actors in our film are unknown, meaning it won't encourage anyone to come and see it. For example, The Wolf of Wall Street was exceedingly successful mainly due to the fact that the main actor was Leonardo Di Caprio who is very famous and would attract people to see the film before they had even heard about the storyline. Also, this is our first film and we don't have any experience in this industry, therefore it is even more unlikely our film will be good enough for them to be interested in distributing it. As well as this, the unprofessional/ordinary location of our film being in an actual house and not in a studio makes it unlikely to be bought and distributed. Lastly,the camera and lighting equipment is semi professional as well as the costume being very normal and unprofessional. So, these factors all lead to the film not being good enough to become successful.
When we eventually post our film on social media and if it goes viral and gets picked up by a UK distribution company, we would definitely invest a little bit of money in promoting it nationally as well as adding a pre sold element to attract people to the film. A similar film where this happened is made by Vertigo and is called 'This Is Evil'. This film is very similar to ours because it is based around fear with little violence, and this film was promoted and distributed due to this concept. which is similar to ours.
Mood Board
Tuesday, 21 March 2017
Editing
1. I discarded several shots. One of which was a couple of close ups - I did this due to the fact that we already had many close ups and it would've been repetitive if I kept it in. Another shot I deleted was the scene where our actor searched the lounge. I deleted this as there was an error - our torch stopped working and you could see the iPhone that we were using as a replacement. We also discarded many shots as we had several shots for each scene, meaning we were only using one and some had to be deleted;we used the most relevant shot.
2. It was quite easy to make our storyline make sense, as we had a very simple one. Our narrative was used similarly for many films, including scream. Our story is just a noise heard downstairs, and a guy goes to find out what the noise was. Therefore, this is scary and relevant but still simple enough for most age groups to understand.
3. We used a website called 'freesound'. This website gives us a range of noises and music, so it was relatively easy to find the ones we need. The non-diegetic music was relatively hard to find as the whole group had to decide on one thing. This music gave the film suspense and made it seem like more of a thriller.
4. There was no dialogue
5. Once we finished editing, we found some lighting errors. We therefore had to either cut out the light or do some editing to try edit out the light. Other than that, there was not much we changed.
6. Our titles were easy to put in - we started when he got out of bed when the non-diegetic music begun. This was slow pace, which allowed people to see the titles. We chose a normal titles, like other thrillers,
7. I was the one who found out/figured out how to do something that we couldn't do. We all contributed to the editing equally.
8. We worked very well as a group. We all agreed on decisions although sometimes it took a while to agree.
9.We should've filmed it all at night time - even though the light was edited, it would've helped to film in the night.
2. It was quite easy to make our storyline make sense, as we had a very simple one. Our narrative was used similarly for many films, including scream. Our story is just a noise heard downstairs, and a guy goes to find out what the noise was. Therefore, this is scary and relevant but still simple enough for most age groups to understand.
3. We used a website called 'freesound'. This website gives us a range of noises and music, so it was relatively easy to find the ones we need. The non-diegetic music was relatively hard to find as the whole group had to decide on one thing. This music gave the film suspense and made it seem like more of a thriller.
4. There was no dialogue
5. Once we finished editing, we found some lighting errors. We therefore had to either cut out the light or do some editing to try edit out the light. Other than that, there was not much we changed.
6. Our titles were easy to put in - we started when he got out of bed when the non-diegetic music begun. This was slow pace, which allowed people to see the titles. We chose a normal titles, like other thrillers,
7. I was the one who found out/figured out how to do something that we couldn't do. We all contributed to the editing equally.
8. We worked very well as a group. We all agreed on decisions although sometimes it took a while to agree.
9.We should've filmed it all at night time - even though the light was edited, it would've helped to film in the night.
Friday, 3 March 2017
Shoot Day
Our shoot day was on a Friday after school. We picked up the cameras and bought them to our location. The footage in our film differs slightly to our storyboard and to what we were originally going to do. This is because when we were filming, more/better ideas came to mind. One thing we changed was the fact that our character was a child instead of the dad. This was because we couldn't find an adult actor in time as no one was willing to do it, but we always had the idea of using a child. Secondly, there was no ball hitting the characters foot. This is because we had the better idea of using fake blood and making the character find the blood after he leaves the room. This also extended the length of the sequence. Thirdly, the evil character was not how we pictured it, and was in fact just a character with a mask with their hood up. This happened because we wanted the character to be a normal person with a mask, which would later on in the film (if it was made) get discovered as a real person and a serial killer.
In my film, the clothing was just normal. We did this to show that this happened to normal people, and we tried to make it realistic. The lighting was mainly dark - this represented the fact that it was night time as this is the scariest time of the day due to the mystery and suspense of the darkness. However, most of this darkness was edited in due to the fact that the light we were given was faulty and had to use the light of an iPhone. The actors weren't anyone special as once again, we wanted to show that it could happen to anyone. We used a little bit of fake blood on the floor to make the sequence more scary. However, we didn't use any make up on the actors as we felt we didn't need to. The props were mainly used to create danger - for example a hammer, which is a dangerous item. We also used a torch which unfortunately stopped working in the middle, so we used an iPhone light instead and we are currently in the process of editing it out to make it look like it's the torch. We also had knives on a table to represent danger even more. The film was set in a house, showing that it happens to an innocent family.
We used many shots throughout the sequence, one of which was a tracking shot. This was used to create the idea that the evil character may have been behind him, following him. This creates suspense and tension. We also used close ups which represented the fact that he was scared due to the fact that he is only a teen. We also had a high angle shot on the innocent character, showing if he were to be faced with this evil guy, he'd be helpless. This is because this shot represents his little power. There were also a couple of wide shots, to show the area and the surrounding of the character. Overall, we used all of the shots shown on the storyboard, as well as added extra ones when they were needed, which benefited our film a lot.
In our film, there will be non-diegetic music playing when the teen is searching the house. This creates even more suspense for the film and builds up tension. Many other films have this too, so it does in fact relate to other thrillers.
My role was the camera work. I was overall quite pleased with what I did, even though it took time at some points to perfect the shots. My role was extremely important as the camera is how we film!
We worked together very well - I did the camera whilst Ollie held the light and Louis acted. We all listened to each others ideas and when one of us told the other to do something, we would do it. Ollie would make one scene extra dark to create even more suspension, and would be lighter for more important shots, such as close ups to see the characters confusion etc.
Overall, I'm very happy with how it went. Although there were a few problems, we overcame them/will overcome them with the editing, and it will seem as if nothing's wrong. However, I would've filmed the whole thing at night time if I were to change anything, as there was a lot of editing to do due to this.
In my film, the clothing was just normal. We did this to show that this happened to normal people, and we tried to make it realistic. The lighting was mainly dark - this represented the fact that it was night time as this is the scariest time of the day due to the mystery and suspense of the darkness. However, most of this darkness was edited in due to the fact that the light we were given was faulty and had to use the light of an iPhone. The actors weren't anyone special as once again, we wanted to show that it could happen to anyone. We used a little bit of fake blood on the floor to make the sequence more scary. However, we didn't use any make up on the actors as we felt we didn't need to. The props were mainly used to create danger - for example a hammer, which is a dangerous item. We also used a torch which unfortunately stopped working in the middle, so we used an iPhone light instead and we are currently in the process of editing it out to make it look like it's the torch. We also had knives on a table to represent danger even more. The film was set in a house, showing that it happens to an innocent family.
We used many shots throughout the sequence, one of which was a tracking shot. This was used to create the idea that the evil character may have been behind him, following him. This creates suspense and tension. We also used close ups which represented the fact that he was scared due to the fact that he is only a teen. We also had a high angle shot on the innocent character, showing if he were to be faced with this evil guy, he'd be helpless. This is because this shot represents his little power. There were also a couple of wide shots, to show the area and the surrounding of the character. Overall, we used all of the shots shown on the storyboard, as well as added extra ones when they were needed, which benefited our film a lot.
In our film, there will be non-diegetic music playing when the teen is searching the house. This creates even more suspense for the film and builds up tension. Many other films have this too, so it does in fact relate to other thrillers.
My role was the camera work. I was overall quite pleased with what I did, even though it took time at some points to perfect the shots. My role was extremely important as the camera is how we film!
We worked together very well - I did the camera whilst Ollie held the light and Louis acted. We all listened to each others ideas and when one of us told the other to do something, we would do it. Ollie would make one scene extra dark to create even more suspension, and would be lighter for more important shots, such as close ups to see the characters confusion etc.
Overall, I'm very happy with how it went. Although there were a few problems, we overcame them/will overcome them with the editing, and it will seem as if nothing's wrong. However, I would've filmed the whole thing at night time if I were to change anything, as there was a lot of editing to do due to this.
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