Thriller Questionnaire

As a group we decided to ask the following questions to get inspiration and feedback for our thriller opening.

1) What things would you have in a thriller opening? 

2) What stands out to you when watching thriller openings?

3) What would be the plot in your thriller film? 

4) What type of lighting would you use? 

5) What props and costume would you use? 

This also allows us to gain information on our target audience but we could ask further questions to lead us to more direct answers on our target audience.

Location analysis

Filming for our thriller has allowed us to use a variety of outside locations. The first place we used to start our filming was Kelsey Park, the issue we found with Kelsey Park was that it had very restricted lighting, because it is surrounded by trees but that is what we wanted, so we faced a major issue straight away. The good thing about using Kelsey Park one of the locations is we can use the facilities they have in our thriller opening. The bridge used in one shot was filmed in Kelsey Park, and we also managed to get enough light to shine on the trees around, which allowed us to create the perfect shot.

The other location we have used is Crystal Palace Park; we found that there is a remote area which resembles a woodland area.  As a group we thought that this would be good location to use, because it makes it look mysterious and empathises way would she go in there. We thought that this could link to her naïve behaviour thinking she is superior to everyone else.  The hardest part about filming in Crystal Palace Park was the filming inside the woodland area, which made it difficult for the tripod to stand, leaving us with shot that weren’t focussed.

As a group we wanted our thriller to be based outside because, it would be quite different to stereotypical thrillers that are usually set in the city.  However we couldn’t film in the countryside so we wanted our location to represent the countryside, to have a different take on thrillers. The best part about filming outside is we can create shadows from the lighting, so it looks like more than one person. However the lighting is the hardest part for us to cater to because there are limited times that we can film in, before it becomes too dark.

Shot list

A variety of shots have been used, to create mystery and tension within the opening and the narrative being performed.

Rough Cut Feedback questionnaire

Props

Props

These balloons will be used to portray
her innocence and the colour red will
portray danger and death.

The pink headband is being used as
a costume and as a prop because it will be the clue they find.

    

The blue glove has been used so it can
represent a police officier looking for this
young girl.










 

Shoot Schedule

This is our second lot of filming for our thriller film, as we had trouble with the footage.

12th November 2014
We all met and will film for 2 hours to get the footage for the bridge and walking. However we filmed for longer than 2 hours and got a variety of shots that we wont be able to use in the thriller.

22nd December 2014
Me and Kirsty will meet to film all of the night shots, for the search party and will hopefully be able to film for 1hr and 30 mins. We actually filmed all of the night shots in an hour and recorded some sound effects we liked to encorpourate into our thriller opening.

4th January 2015
Myself, Oliver and Kirsty met and filmed the last remaining shots we needed after we started some of our editing.

4th January 2015 onwards
 We finally finished all of our filming and now completing the editing whiles working on our music.

Changing our thriller music

As a group we knew that our music wasn't quite right but we didn't know what. When we received various feedback sheets we found that people thought it sounded like three different pieces of music, rather than one piece, in the end we found the track of the well known song "You're the one that I want" that was slowed down by an artist named Lo Fang. We thought the literal words of wanting someone would symbolise the male characters voice as we only see him twice in the whole opening. This was successful because it was linking the male character with the female protagonist. The section where she is running we decided to take out the overlaying track to make it seem action like out because it have the audience the wrong impression the new music has an almost angelic feel, this is to play on the idea that the young girl is innocent and naive. Overall the reason the music changed was because it wasn't giving the audience the right impression and didn't link to any of the characters we have, these were two things we spoke about when deciding how we wanted the music to sound.

Feedback from Rough Cut Viewing

Rough Cut of Hidden

This is rough cut of our thriller, as you can see the music doesn't fit the whole piece at the moment, we decided to post it like this because we want to gain feedback like this before we finally finish it and then be told that people don't like this about it! Hopefully from posting this people will tell us what they like and dislike about what we have so far and the ways in which we can improve it.

Using Garage Band

This is how Garage band looks, you have a choice of the instrument you use and the tone in which you can play the instrument. I found using garage band quite difficult at the start as I didn't understand how to change the tempo, pace and rhythm. 

This is another image of garage band and how it works this image specifically looks at how we can change the pace of each note through looking at each bar of music.

These are the specific instruments we are using in our thriller opening. The piano sounds make the music seem eerie and using connotes to a young child playing/learning how the play the instrument.

In this image of GarageBand you can see how we have spilt up the drum beat which make the individual sounds that are meant to resemble running, the put another track over it to make the thriller seem more action like, however this was later changed as people didn't think it resembled a thriller at all and made it seem as if it was two different pieces of music. 

Overall using Garage Band has been successful, in total was spent about 2-3 weeks perfecting our music to really fit and sound that it was one piece of music not three by fade certain parts of the tracks or to cross them together. 

Lighting Analysis of Location

As we filmed outside for our entire thriller film, it became very difficult to have the right lighting and we relied on the weather being perfect to film otherwise it would be too dark to film. We were lucky in the sense that the weather was clear but it did then have an issue with it being too bright.
The way we overcame this in Location 1( Crystal Palace Park) was to surround ourselves by trees and that blocked out most unwanted light, the other way was by then adding effects on Final Cut just to make it less bright and more of the light that we wanted. 
In the second location(Kelsey Park) it was harder to disguise the light because we relied on the lighting for the bridge, we tried it being quite dark and we decided that this wasn't they way we wanted it, so we tried it with all light being displayed but drew the attention of the audience to a plant and that managed to work, so there wasn't too much light on the character in the scene then.