Lighting plan

Floor plan

Location

The studio

Reasons for choosing this location
We choose this location because it enables us to use a completely plain environment in which to create the “black out barn” with spot lights. We also choose the studio because we had the option if needed use a green screen to create a barn looking back drop.

Problems with location
The main problem with the studio is space. In one of our ideas for the opening sequence, we have one shot running from one side of the room to the other, and this has to last for about two minutes. Anther problem is the realism; we were worried that it may come across as fake.

How we are going to deal with the problems
We are going to set out the floor plan diagonally so we can use the full length of the room at its longest point.
Also we are not going use the green screen as we thought this might look unrealistic so we are just to have a black back drop and spot lights on the noose and stool.

Prop list

Our opening sequence is very simple in terms of props. This was done because we want the main focus to be on the props we have used. they all have a very strong meaning and visual to them, the diary is what the whole film is based on, the stool is what she stands on to hang herself and the noose is what she kills herself with. Our props list is :

• a white/black stool, this we can borrow from the schools drama department
• Two diary's, these will be sourced and bought by are artistic director.
• A hangman's noose, I am buying appropriate rope from a sail yard near my home, I will then tie the rope into a noose.

Group roles

Each person in our group has different roles in pre, on the day, and post production. We tried to share the job roles out equally but some people finished there jobs more quickly then others so managed to get more done.

Ross Gordon = Producer, helping with folder and compiling the folder, Equipment list, Group roles, Cast list, Treatment, Prop list, helping with organization in post production

Alex Hall = Helping with the folder (costumes, storyboard 2 and some of 1, shooting schedule), helping with organization in post production

TK = Storyboard drawing and artistic elements to the sequence, Editing

Davina = Director and helping with folder (Floor plan, lighting plan, location, production logo, some of storyboard 1), helping with organization in post production, original idea

Production Logo

This is our groups production logo. I created it using two different websites www.dafont.com and www.piknik.com

Cast list

We only have to choose one person for our cast. This is the protaganist character of Elizabeth Carter. Seeing as we decided to base the character of Elizabeth Carter on the girl out of the ring we decided to select someone who with the right makeup and hair, could look like her. We decided that the perfect person for this, would be Petrie Kimber because she is a very strong actress and has the look we wanted.

Target Audiance

For our thriller we have decided to aim our film at the target audiance that would bring in the most profit as it is the largist group of film watchs . We decided that males, aged in their late teens and twentys are the group that spend the most money on films these days, it would be a good idea to aim our thirrer at them. Our film is aimed at very much male orientated audience. This is because it is a gory/slasher thriller, with action constantly happening and a twisted story ending. It will be aimed all social classes except i think it will be viewed more by people of the lower social classes, again due to the gore involved. so it will be shown in cinemas like vue and odeon and not cinemas like the everyman and the electric cinema.

Film Treatment

Treatment: Our idea started off with a girl who had the power to be able to kill people through what she writes in her folder. It involved a character called Elizabeth who was bullied at school and ended up killing the people who bullied her through this mysterious power she has.

Our Opening sequence involves Elizabeth (acted by Petrie) in the build up to her death. At the end of the sequence, we see her commit suicide by hanging herself. The sequence will be filmed in the film studio but is set in a barn / warehouse.

The reason that we decided to shoot in the film studio is because we could set it up to be however we desired, and if we were not happy with the set, we could either change it on the morning of the shoot, or edit it to look different in the post production stage. We decided that we wanted to make it look like a barn because we wanted a location where in real life, someone would be unlikely to be disturbed. The barn also has some significance in the film later on.

Our sequence generates tension through the build up to the climax where she kills herself. The tension is created through the audience not knowing what is going to happen, until it happens. The sound used of the footsteps, and voice, and the suffering is also used to create tension.

We have tried to make the sequence as simple, but effective as possible, so we only need one actress, who is Petrie Kimber playing then role of Elizabeth. We also only need to have four main props. The most important one is the diary, as the whole sequence and movie is centered around this. Then we need the noose and stall as we are shooting a hanging scene and we are also going to need hay, to create the set. We are going to need to use Genie gr12 mechanical crane to be able to achieve all of the high angle shots.

Creating the storyboard

As a group we started putting together a story board for are thriller. To start the process we first wrote out exactly all the shots we wanted in chronological order.
The next thing we did was to make a storyboard. A storyboard visually tells the story of an animation panel by panel, at first glance it looks like a comic book with lots of writing down the side. For our group storyboard every one helped in writing the first working storyboard, TK was drawing in the pictures, afterwards Alex edited the written content to make sure every one's input was correct and had the same general look and concept that we wanted. I think that Storyboarding is an excellent way to have a visual aid to get everyone thinking along the same track, it's also very useful tool for getting the plan and visuals down on paper and to ensure that we do use of a variety of shots and angles.

research into the thriller

When looking into possible ways of portraying "Elizabeth's Diary" we looked into other movies, music videos, and pictures to get ideas. I had her in my mind a little bit like the girl from then ring with long black hair and washed out face.
When it came to looking how we could do the hanging scene i went onto youtube to look at clips from other movies to see what they had done and to see what worked at what did not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRyb9VJNFhQ&NR=1 in this clip i liked how the camera started at her feet and workerd up and kept going back to shots of the stool, but in are scene the girl is hanging herself so there would be no need for the hand ties and gag.

Thriller synopsis- Elizabeth's Diary

Every one came up with diffrent thriller movies ideas, Elizabeth's Diary was my idea and it got chosen to be used.
The thriller is based on the character Elizabeth Carter, who is a loner and constantly gets bullied by her peers, Davina Thorne, Alex Hall, Ross Gordon and Tinuke Kola-Abiola. Elizabeth Carter is constantly being bullied at school due to her autistic disability. She is an incredibly keen writer and reverts to her black diary for comfort in expressing her feelings about her peers.Suddenly two of the four bullies die, in horrific ways. Elizabeth discovers that the deaths match the way she wanted them to die according to the writing in her diary. Once she discovers this, she turns suicidal and delusional.A few days after the deaths, Elizabeth is announced dead. An investigation is put into her death where they discover she committed suicide.Just when everyone thinks everything is solved, they find a new picture in the diary, and another bully dies. Once again, an investigation is put into this, with the same investigation team. They eventually link all the evidence back to the forth bully, and then the twist that it was her all along, unfolds.Davina, the forth bully is then announced missing, and is nowhere to be found.

The generic identity of Horror

Horror is a genre of fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle and horrify the audience. Historically, the cause of the "horror" experience has often been the intrusion of a disturbing supernatural element into everyday human experience. Any work of fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, or exceptionally suspenseful or frightening theme has come to be called "horror". Horror fiction often overlaps science fiction or fantasy, all three categories of which are sometimes placed under the umbrella classification speculative fiction
Haunting is sometimes used as a plot device in horror fiction and paranormal-based fiction. Legends about haunted houses have long appeared in literature. For example, the Arabian Nights tale of "Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad" revolves around a house haunted by jinns. The influence of the Arabian Nights on modern horror fiction is certainly discernible in some of the work of H. P. Lovecraft.
Today horror is one of the most popular categories of film. Good examples of true horror movies include that of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist and A Nightmare On Elm Street, to name a few well known ones

The generic identity of Thriller

Thriller is a ‘meta-genre' and is presented in literature, film, television, and gaming. Literary devices such as suspense,red herrings and cliffhangersare used extensively
Thriller has many sub genres, the most popular of these are:

• Action -often includes a race against the clock, agaist an ovius bad guy. lots of guns and vilence. e.g. the Bond movies


• Conspiracy -e.g. Mr and Mrs smith


• Crime-suspenseful account of a successful or failed crime or crimes e.g. The Godfather


• Disaster-conflict is due to some sort of natural or artificial disaster e.g. Stormy weather


• Drama- usually slower paced and involves a great deal of character development along with plot twists e.g.The Ilusionist


• Psychological- In which (until the often violent resolution) the conflict between the main characters is mental and emotional, rather than physical. e.g. The Good son.


• Spy -In which the hero is generally a government agent who must take violent action against agents of a rival government or (in recent years) terrorists e.g. The Bourne Identity


• Religious-In which the plot is closely connected to religious objects, institutions and questions. While suspense stories have always shown a significant affinity for religion and philosophical issues e.g. The Da Vinci code

Introduction to final cut pro

Final Cut server is software. In runs on G5 Macs.
It is a non-linear editing package.
At the start of the lesson we learnt the basics about Final Cut Server
It has a System that allows the project you are working on to be checked in and checked back in to the a separate server. This is an the best way to back up your work and to make sure it is not "lost".
After checking out your project you need to log your 'Rushes'.
'Rushes' is the basic tape, straight from the camera. Logging means selecting the best shots that you might want to use and moving them into a 'Logged Bin'. This is done by marking an 'in' point ( with the I button on your keyboard) at the start of the shot and putting 'out' point ( with the O button on your keyboard) at the end of your shot.
Then you place your selected shots chronologically on a timeline and trim and cut them to create the image that it is happening one after the other simultaneously.

Preliminary task Evaluation

We filmed in the old media room above the theater studio. This room is plain, a little ruff looking as things have clearly been pulled off the wall. This fit well with the way we wanted the story to seem; a little mysteries and some where they weren't meant to be. My role was to do continuity, to make sure everything was the same in each shot. I watched for small things like which hand the actor used to pick up the suitcase and how many steps she took, so that it would be easier when it came round to editing.
We had the room light; we used two lights. We did this to try and make it so there was no shadow but we did not have sufficient space to make it completely without shadow. We wanted to have it bright in the actors faces in an high intensity interview type fashion. I do not think it was that effective because we did not have all proper stands and could not the the angle exactly right.
Alex was operating the camera in are group. She set up the camera and then both me and Tk checked after to make sure it was correct. After each time we moved the tripod and camera we made sure it was rebubbled. I made sure that in each frame you could not see the lighting equipment or our shadows. We used all the angles that were given to us on the story board, and when we added our own we made sure that they added to the story and we not completely random.
When filming we did it all in a specific order e.g. shooting all wide shots first, then all over the sholdershots and not in chronological order. Each time we shot from each angle we did the whole scene. At no point did we cross the 180 degree line, we made sure we did not so that the image would not appear flipped to the viewer.
Tk was the director, at the start of each shot she would stay "stand by" we would then respond "standing by" to let her know we were ready. After that she calls "roll camera", Alex would then reply "camera rolling" when the camera was ready. To start the scene Tk "Action".

Account of all my practical experiences thus far

Introduction to blogs

We are keeping a blog to show all are media work, what we have learnt and what we are doing. This helps to show how we are finding it, what we are enjoying and also how well we understand what we are covering. So far I have written:
• An introduction
• Analysed three different photo’s of me.
• Introductions to Photoshop, camera and tripod and studio.

Account of all my practical experiences thus far

Introduction to studio
So far we have only really gone into the studio to film interviews. I was helping with the lighting. I learnt that to have good lighting for the interview was have a good balance of light in front and behind/ above and below. Not to create shadows on the other persons face and also not to blind them or the camera. A blue light looks more like natural light and a man-made light tends to have more of an orange glow. We haven’t used it yet but on another tour of the studio we looked at a basic set and a blue screen. Using a blue screen allows you to use insert any type of background or setting e.g. putting people on the moon.

Account of all my practical experiences thus far

Introduction to Camera and tripod
In our first proper session with the PD170 camera we learnt first how to set up the cartoni delta tripod. To make sure that the bright yellow bubble thing was facing us before we put on the pan handle, this could be on the left or right side depending on preference. The next thing we learnt was how to attach the camera to the tripod. This was reasonable easy but something that must be done right or the camera could fall off and break.
After attaching the camera, we learnt how to “bubble” the camera; this is done so that the camera is level on top of the tripod. Then looking into the more technical side of the camera, we looked into what should be on the screen of the viewer before we start to film; so that we can get the best possible material e.g. there are no decibels “0db”. Also to make sure when we start recording for the first thirty seconds to record colour bars; if the camera is going to mess up its most likely to happen in the first 30 seconds.

Account of all my practical experiences thus far

Introduction to Photoshop
In our first session on Photoshop with Matt we learnt how to use the basics on the tool bar; first we learnt to use the lasso tool. This is useful for copying parts of images from one photo to another or moving it around the same photo e.g. moving the head of one person and putting it onto another. We then learnt how to use the dodge and burn tool, dodge makes the selected section lighter and burn makes it darker, I learnt that it looks more realist and effective to use it in small amounts then build up. I enjoyed using the clone stamp tool, this enables you to clone one area and make an exact copy of it to anther place. A lot of the tools on the tool bar are self explanatory e.g. move tool, brush tool and eraser tool.

work pic

This is a photo of me outside of my work. This as taken after my first day working there, i do not usually walk out with all my work make-up on. I am a live actor; which basically means I jump out and scare people, perform lines or a small show and then operate rides/set off mechanical shows.
This photo is a wide mid-shot, taken at eye-level. It was clearly taken outside with no man-made lights. It is a personal picture which would not be used for advertising, the advertising shots I have done were in a studio with full make-up and costume

Intro

Hey
I'm Davina and I am taking media at Hurtwood house. I am taking it because i would like to go on to study media at uni then have a career around media. I am loving it so far, finding it challenging but a lot of fun.
My favorite film would have to be a toss up between team America and Pirates of the Caribbean, Johny Depp is just to funny.
I don't really have a favorite type of music, if you saw my ipod you would believe me. I have everything from classical to screamo. At the moment I am listening a lot to pitbull and Young Joc. I like music that I can dance to as another one one my passions is dance.

Hello

This picture was taken at a photo shoot I did when putting together a portfolio. I love this picture because it shows my dancing side and its fun. The photo was taken inside a well lit studio. It is a long-shot taken from a flat-on angle. Its like a magazine pack shot. It is also an action shot because it is capturing the movment of my hair flicking round.

Munich pic with friends

Hey people,

this is a photo of me and my friends Nick and Damin outside a beerhall in munich. Munich is my fav place in the world. It was taken at night but there were many man-made lights outside.

This photo is a mid-close up shot. Its a taken at eye-level because the person who took the photo is at the same level we are. It is a uncomposed shot. Even though I am in the center of the shot, acording to the rule of thirds Nicks head is in the top hotspot and Damins in the second.