Monday, 23 December 2013

Rough Cut - Miss Miller

A rough cut copy is vital in producing a thriller film because feedback is beneficial in order to know what can be done to improve the final cut of the film that is being produced.

Audience feedback is important because you are given an honest and non biased opinion from the audience of your rough cut. Their opinions and views on the rough cut give you an opportunity to improve the thriller film in order to make it pleasing to the target audience.

My group and I created a slideshow presentation  summarising the theme of the thriller film that we produced, we then went through how we produced the he film step by step, the feed back that  we received from our audience was. 

Good use of sounds
Good use of low key lighting
Good variety of sounds used to produce the film.

The feedback we got to improve on was :
The plot was not clear enough
We didn't have enough credits 
Some of the transitions in the film were not relevant to the scenes

To improve our thriller film, we took all of our feedback into consideration and we added music to the transitions that would be more appropriate to what was going on in each scene and also included more credits. To make the plot more clear, we also included an extra scene so that the audience would connect more to the characters and understand what was going on.


Thursday, 12 December 2013

Opening Scenaration - Miss Miller


Using different ideas from our individual narratives, my group and I finally decided on a storyline for our thriller film.
The storyline of our film is based on a young girl who was in a forest walking alone. The girl then begins to have flashbacks of her playing in the forest with her sister and she then realises that she is dead when she touches her forward and blood appears on her fingers.
Through the clip, the audience then discovers that there was an underwater scene between the young girl and her older sibling which was the cause of her death.

The first frame of the film is based in the forest  and it was the young girl walking through the forest. For this frame, we used a long shot in order for the audience to be able to feel as if they are travelling on her journey through the forest with her.
The first frame includes bright lighting to suit the location and the setting which is a morning setting. This scene is the in where the younger sister is introduce.
The sound in this frame is mainly going to be diegetic as these are natural sounds that the audience will expect to see such as: leaves crunching underneath the younger sister's feet as she walks through the forest, the main editing style for this scene is a straight cut.
In this scene the younger sister is walking deep in to the forest which creates an enigma as we do not know why she is doing this.

The second frame uses a long shot which shows the little sister walking deeper into the forest.
Bright lighting is used with shadows of the trees on the ground to make it conventional to the thriller genre.
A jump Cut is also used to speed up the time taken to show the girl walking deeper into the forest and also fasten the pace of the scene.
In this scene the younger sister is walking deep into the forest, which creates a sense of enigma within the audience.

The third frame uses panning to emphasise her walking through the forest, it shows the younger sister walking towards the camera and then away from the camera  before she stops. The sounds in this frame are similar to to the sound in the first frame which is leaves crunching underneath the younger sister's
feet as she continues to walk through the forest.

The fourth frame in the thriller clip uses a mid-shot of the younger sister which turns into a point of view shot of what she is looking at, which is shown in the next frame. This scene is silent and uses non-diegetic sound in order to catch the attention of the audience for them to be engaged with the main character.
The younger sister stops walking in this scene because she notices something that looks familiar to her.
The fifth frame includes a point of view shot of the little sister looking t the tree and the location is still the forest but the camera is now focused  on a specific tree which indicates what the younger sister is concentrating on in this scene.
This object turns out to be the tree that she and her older sister used to play around which is represented in the form a flashback.

The sixth frame uses a full length shot showing the two sisters playing round the tree. high key lighting is used in this scene to show the transition from normality, into it's flashbacks, in this scene the older sister is introduced.
The sound in this scene is dulled out to emphasise the effect of the flashback. Laughing sound effects in this scene portray happiness.
This scene also demonstrates the younger sister having a flashback to herself playing around the tree with her older sister.


The seventh frame uses a fade effect from the last frame , it is located in the forest. The lighting shows the transition from the flashback to normality. The sound is dulled out sound to a loud effect to emphasise the transition.
The editing effect used is a fade into a long shot of the little sister walking away from the camera.
This scene shows that she hadn't thought anything of the flashback and so she carries on walking.

The camera shot used in the eighth scene is a long shot of the little sister walking away from the camera. An eerie soundtrack quietly plays slowly building up and creating a feeling of tension within the audience.
The younger sister has no emotional response to seeing the flashback of her sister.

The ninth-sixteenth scenes show the younger sister walking past the scarf and turning around to look at the scarf, then the younger sister has a flashback of her older sister fixing her scarf before they both walk away and then the blackout appears.

The seventeenth frame uses an over the shoulder high camera shot showing the reflection of the little girl in the river. The location is in the forest. There are elements of low key lighting but still reasonably bright to allow the younger sister's reflection to be seen.
In this scene, the little sister notices that she has blood on her forehead.

The eighteenth frame uses a high angled over the shoulder shot of the reflection of the girl touching the blood on her forehead, the young girl touches the cut to see if it is real or if she is hallucinating. 

The next frame is a close-up into the young girls eyes, after this close-up the girl starts reminiscing her sister strangling her in a river, she then realises that she had been murdered and picks up the rose, after this is were the title "nostalgia" appears on the screen.


                                                                                                                                                                            

Tuesday, 3 December 2013

Production Roles - Miss Miller


Production Roles:
 
People need to be allocated specific roles when creating a film because individuals have different skills that are suited to different roles.
The main roles necessary for the production of a successful film are:Actors, the production company, directors, title, casting, music, costumes, sound technicians, editors, production and camera operator.




  • Company Name: Dark Productions
  • Actresses: Ayesha Bhatti and Yasmin Bhatti
  • Directors: Deanna Mathers and Lilian Amaning
  • Casting:Deanna Mathers, Ayesha Bhatti and Lilian Amaning
  • Music:Lilian Amaning
  • Costumes:Deanna Mathers
  • Hair and Makeup:Ayesha Bhatti
  • Editors: Ayesha Bhatti, Deanna Mathers and Lilian Amaning
  • Production: Lilian Amaning, Ayesha Bhatti, Deanna Mathers
  • Director of photography: Lilian Amaning
  • Director of photography (underwater): Deanna Mathers

Company name: Our company name is "Dark productions", conventional to the thriller genre because dark connotes evil and negativity. Our company name appearing on the scrren before the thriller is shown, immediately gives the audience an idea of the genre of the thriller film that they are watching.

Actresses:
Actors/actresses study and practice a new script for each audition. They confer with the producer to learn about the role to be portrayed and the style of speech and body language desired.
Actors/actresses interpret a new part or role in order to develop the character's personality as desired by the author and producer. They rehearse with co-actors to smooth out the acting interactions. Actors/actresses read and analyze supplementary background information about the character portrayed in sources such as history books, the archives or earlier works by the author.
The two main actresses in this thriller clip are Ayesha and Yasmin Bhatti who will play siblings that have have a very close relationship.
The fact that they are sisters in reality, will make easier for is when filming because they already have that natural bond with each other.

Directors: Directors may write the film's script or commission it to be written; or they may be hired after an early draft of the script is complete. Directors must then develop a vision for the finished film, and define a practical route for achieving it. During pre-production, Directors make crucial decisions, such as selecting the right cast, crew and locations for the film. They then direct rehearsals, and the performances of the actors once the film is in production. Directors also manage the technical aspects of filming, including the camera, sound, lighting, design and special effects departments.    It is the role of the directors  to  direct the actresses to delever each scene to the highest possible standard. We decided to share the director's role between both Deanna and I so that we can use different perspective's to convey the same message in our thriller, the job of the director's is to tell the actresses what they need to achieve in each scene.

Music:
Background music is used to add emotion and rhythm to a film. Usually not meant to be noticeable, it often provides a tone or an emotional attitude toward the story and/or the characters epicted. In addition, background music often foreshadows a change in mood. For example, dissonant music may be used in film to indicate an approaching (but not yet visible) menace or disaster. Background music may aid viewer understanding by linking scenes. For example, a particular musical theme associated with an individual character or situation may be repeated at various points in a film in order to remind the audience of motives or ideas. 
The music in our thriller clip will be provided by myself, the music will be both diegetic and nonn-diegetic and the sounds that I will use will be based on the thriller clip in order to enhance what is going on in the thriller film.


Costumes:
 
Costume design is one of the most important factors in the filmmaking industry. Along with the script, actors and music, the clothing and various costumes worn throughout a film have a very important role to fulfill. They can make the characters interesting and believable, sad or funny, good or evil, and they can greatly influence-sometimes at a subconscious level-how the audience sees the characters that wear them.

Films focused on the current time period in a realistic way don't usually impress through costume design, because they show familiar clothing being worn in familiar settings. What should be given a closer look are films that step aside from common convention and create characters whose images are deeply shaped by what they wear.The person that is in charge of the costumes for the thriller film will be Deanna who was given this responsibility because of her ability to use her creativity to send a message to the audience through the visyual appearance of the characters in the film. Deanna is responsible for choosing and co-oordinating items of clothing for the characters in the film that would be suitable to the theme of eaqch scene.

Hair and Makeup:Makeup artists that work in television and film help to communicate the personality of the characters to the viewers. They use makeup as a way to improve, enhance or alter the appearance of the actors and the actresses to ensure that they are suitable for the scene they are about to play out. The person responsible for hair and makeup for the thriller is Ayesha as she is very experienced whith hair and makeup. Ayesha will be responsible for making theappearance of the characters suit the mood of the scene due to the use of hair and makeup.

Editors & Production:
Some say that editing is the most important part of the film making process. It certainly is what allowed film to move from simple visual records of events to complex story telling.
Because of the importance of editing, the editor’s role may equal that of the director. Regardless of the footage shot for a film, it will be worthless unless care and creativity is invested in deciding which shots will appear; in what order; and how long they will remain on the screen. Ayesha, Deanna and I are each responsible for the editing of the thriller film, we came to this decision because each of us have unique idea that when merged together, can be very beneficial in the production and editing of our thriller film.


Director of Photography: This will also be my role as I have a create perseption for where different types of camaera angles should fit into each scene at the appropriate time in order to get the reaction that we expect to get from the audience that is watching our thriller film.

Director of photography (Underwater): Deanna is responsible for theis role because she had a clear vision of what the underwater scenes of our movie should look like and the way the camera angles used will impact the scene eefectively in order for the audience to feel sympathy for the character that is in the water.