New Scene Outline

To begin with we have a man who is tied to a water pipe (the ones you see in a factory) at the beginning of our shoot he is unconscious and he gradually wakes up and comes around, as he does this the camera shows us the bomb which is tied around the man’s body with a timer on it that is counting down from two minutes. Gradually he becomes more and more aware of his surroundings with this the ticking of the bomb increases in volume. We then hear the background noise of the factory for instance machinery and muffled foreign voices, soon after this comes the gunshots from above him. The man’s mouth is taped shut so that when he tries to scream for help we just hear muffled breathing. The camera pans around the room showing us oil drums, dirt and old pots of paint everywhere. To end with a police officer and his backup team (2 or 3 men) are banging on the door oblivious to what is on the other side and the man again tries to shout and warn them but they slam open the door and we see them storm in however being cautious of the trip wire on the floor one police man goes over to the victim to remove the tape covering his mouth, which then unfortunately triggers the bomb and we hear a high pitched ticking sound increasing in speed then a sudden blackout leaving the audience in shock.

Answers to targets:

1. We have decided as a group that we will look up bombs used in movies and how they are wired up and shown on screen.

2. This is shown in our new outline.

3. We have decided to add backup (2/3 men) plus the original policeman.

Feedback on Thriller Idea

As a group we pitched our idea, the feedback we got was that the basis of the idea was good we just needed to work on developing the plot through the mise-en-scene. First of all we need to think about how we will portray the bomb so that is does not look like an 80’s cartoon bomb, so we need to change that so that it is realistic and helps to add tension. As well as this we received feedback about the ending of our scene when the police officer storms inside we need to consider how realistic it is, if he enters alone. We need to decide if it’s better to have him as a bomb diffuser making it more professional or at least that the police officer enters with back up of maybe two or three others, or we could have a mini backup team of about five people.

Target 1: Decide on what type of bomb to use, which will help add tension to our thriller.

Target2: Expand the ending to make it less cliché by having a moment after the “rescuer” enters instead of the scene just going black we see both characters realising their situation.

Target 3: Decide whether we want to use a bomb diffuser, swat team or stick with the policeman but give him back up.

Mood board of our idea

Minute Meetings

Wednesday 18th November: As a group we have two ideas "The dancer" and the "church setting” and we need to choose which we are going to use for our backup plan and which as our main idea. 

Targets

1. Choose our favourite by the end of next lesson.

2. Develop it and think about how it would work as an opening scene.

3. Think about location and practicality.

Thursday 19^th November: We have actually changed the location from the church idea to a deserted factory/warehouse, as it had no relevance to the detail we wanted to put in. We have decided we will proceed forward with this idea and have “The dancer” as our backup plan.

Target

1.We need to think about the scene outline.

                 

Friday 20th November: We have planned for next lesson when we will be shooting our "test shoot".  

Target

1. For next lesson we need to allocate people with what they need to bring. Who is bringing the camera and so on. 

Monday 23rd November: We filmed our test shoot in the common room not focusing on mise-en-scene, but on camera angles. We filmed on a simple camera using actors in our group just to give us an idea of what we will need to work on. 

Targets

1. Finish editing our test shoot for Thursdays lesson. 

2. Discuss in a group how we can improve the tension for example (through camera angles) 

Monday 30^th November: We made a PowerPoint to help us present our final pitch as a group on Thursday. Within that PowerPoint we completed a moon board, which we had been working on, and our test shoot.

Target

1. We need to finalise the pitch and check it over and decide who in our group will present it or if we will all present together.

2. We need to complete our mood board so we can use it as a good visual idea in our pitch.

Tuesday 1^st December: We finished working on our mood board. We then started our next project, which is creating a storyboard for our thriller shoot. We have split our group so the artist in our group draws the pictures clearly, enabling the rest of us to work on what camera angles we need in each section of our shoot and write down what lighting we may need as well as the time period of each shot.

Target

1. We need to carry on working on our storyboard as we are only have half of it done we are aiming to have around 30 boxes with a variety of shots in it by the time we finish.

Wednesday 2^nd December: As a group we continued working on our storyboard’s. We also went over our pitch one last time before our final pitch tomorrow so that we all know what we have to do.

Target

1. Make sure everyone in our group has a copy of the PowerPoint with our pitch on it.

Tuesday 12th January: Today we focused on getting our set and props arranged. After getting more advice on our idea, we decided to use hand grenades instead of a bomb, as this can look more realistic on film. We also went into the studio to look at where we are filming, and we started ordering the grenade props and bulletproof vest costumes online.

Targets

1. Getting everything ordered and organised, planning out our revised scene outline

Test shoot video

Feedback

I think by watching our idea back I can see clearly what the story line is showing as it is simple and basic, you understand the characters situation straight away as soon as we are introduced to him. I believe that the test thriller we made is definitely in a genre of a thriller as it is tense and builds throughout the scene, giving the scene suspense and keeping the audience on edge. We will enhance this further in the real thriller as we will have added music and ambient sounds which creates even more tension.

I didn't think the pace worked at all, it needs to be faster and include more shots to build suspense. By having more shots it gives us a bigger variety to choose from when editing the thriller. I feel like the pace of the thriller should start off slower as the character is waking up and a slower pace will mirror this. Then as the thriller continues and pace of shots increase and become much more frantic.

The camera angles and movements could definitely be developed by using different shots and much more interesting angles. Our group had an idea that we should have a straight angle on the door when it opens to the police.

If we look back on the test shoot I realised for this thriller to be effective we need sound for the characters to react properly and build tension throughout the scene. However we will need to prerecord some of the sounds as they will not be able to be done on site.

So overall I think we need to improve the number of shots of the scene, build as much tension as possible by adding soundtracks and sound effects, also working on pre-recorded sound and make sure we are organised with that before shooting the thriller.

Pre-Production

The location of our actual thriller opening sequence will be the basement of a factory, and this is the setting of our entire scene. We don’t have an actual location like this to film our test shoot in, but this will be easy to work around because the entire scene just uses a single room. So, we decided to film our test shoot in the common room.

There are only two characters visible on-screen in our opening sequence, and the second only appears in the end briefly. This makes it simpler for us to just use two people from our four-person group as actors, and we still have all the characters that are focused on in our scene.

As it will be difficult to show that the main character has a bomb chained to him in our test shoot, we will instead try to convey this through a replacement prop such as a phone. However, this opening sequence is still relatively simple to film throughout, as most of the action happens off-screen. It also uses minimal props and only one room as the setting, so none of the shoots should be too difficult.

The time bomb is the prop most focused on in our opening sequence, but we cannot use a realistic prop for our test shoot. We will substitute this with a VHS cassette and use an iPhone as the timer. We plan to have chains attaching the time bomb to the main character, and we will imitate this by using a scarf. The oil drums and barrels we will show in our opening sequence can be replaced by wastepaper bins.