Locations

Today we spent our time scouting out out locations for our shots,

• outside for the death scene (near a tree)



• the walk to the dark room



• the principles office



• and the dark room
  

We found a great place to film the death, by the hedge with a tree on the right side of the shot, we wanted it to be either dark or rainy-it will be tricky to find a dark day as summer is approaching and the days are getting lighter for longer so we may have to go for just rain, we plan to evaluate this in the end however.
there are some great paths around the school where you can see the trees and yet still get the impression you are in a school, the only problem with this is that the school is having building work done which we would prefer not have in our shot and so we will have to work around that.
We spoke to our head teacher and she kindly agreed to let us film the stealing of the key from her office we are contemplating using her in the actual film.
We also spoke to the head of photography and he said he would set up the dark room to make it more realistic and he would put the blinds and turn up the red lights for us. the difficulty we may face then is that the room will be too dark to film in which means we will have to re-think our lighting in there. for us. the difficulty we mfilm in which means we will have to re-think our lighting in there.

Vlog 1 - location issues...

Opening Title Fonts

Earlier this month we had decided on the opening titles we would use in our opening credits, as when and where they would be positioned on screen, however we still havent chosen what font and colour these credits will be.

Because our films treatment is based upon a teenage girl who keeps a scrapbook, we have decided to focus our font search on text that reminds us of a teenage girls handwriting. We have seen the same technique used in the opening sequence for Seven (analysed previously) and really like the was something simple like text creates a weary atmosphere before the movie even starts. Here are a few fonts that we liked...

Our main character is one with more than one personality, so we have suggested maybe choosing one handwritten text from above and then placing a more spooky and scratch font behind it to show this split personality. Some backing texts we have chosen are below...

Title ideas

'Orphan', 'Se7en', 'The Birds'... the title of a thriller is one of the most important aspects of the movie. By grabbing the audience's attention with a intriguing and thought-provoking title, it entices the audience to want to know more about the movie (and hopefully go and watch the movie to find out more). Stereotypically, thriller titles (like the examples given above) are very vague and quizzical, so we have tried to make out title conventional and also apply these same characteristics.

As a group, we had a range of ideas for the name of our thriller, but couldn't decide on one idea. So, to help us choose, we created a questionnaire with our 3 favourite title ideas, and handed them out to members of the public who fit into our target audience. Here was the feedback we received...

BDD: This title was chosen as it is the initials of our main character - Bethany Daisy Dawson - and her mental illness - Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Overall, there was positive feedback from this title as our audience did say it intrigued them to want to know more about the movie. However, the feedback did tell us that our audience didn't like the title because 'it didn't flow'. They found that the 3 letters were awkward to say straight after each other.

Prom Night: As a group, we all really felt that this was the best title for our movie as it was short and sweet and to the point, but after further research we found that this title was copyrighted. Another movie already had this title, and is in the same sort of movie genre as ours (it is classed as a horror-thriller). Despite this, we still asked our target audience how they felt about the title, but (luckily) they didn't like the title as some of our male audience said they would be relctant to watch it as it sounds 'girly' to them.

A Night At The Dance: Out of all the title ideas, this one had the most positive feedback. Although we felt that the title was quite long, our audience said that it was perfect as it gave them insight to what the movie would be about, but not enough information to stop any curiosity for the movie. Because of this, we chose this as the title of our movie.

Props

On Tuesday we will be shooting the 'dark room' scene for this we will need to prepare over the weekend and make sure we bring in the specific props and costumes we need to do this.

• photographs - to hand on walls and add into the scrapbook
  


• long dark coat with dark makeup



• a prom tiara - perhaps dusty



• a picture of a 'mother' prom queen



• perhaps some sort of weapon- knife or hammer

Casting

We have decided to simply use ourselves as the main cast as this will make our lives alot easier as we wont have to rely on others to turn up and we will be able to do our own make up etc. we also wont have to rely on the availability of our actors.


we will also be using the best looking people in sixth form and taking pictures of them to include in our scrapbook which we will be doing close ups of.

We have recently been working on the storyboarding for our thriller opening, so are researching the conventional titles found at the beginning of a thriller (and the order that they appear). We have found that these 17 come up the most frequently...

01. Distributor
02. Producer
03. Director
04. Cast (main)
05. Title of movie
06. Cast (other)
07. Casting Director
08. Music/Composer
09. Costume Designer
10. Editor
11. Production Designer
12. Cinematography Manager
13. Exectuitive Producer
14. Writer
15. Producer
16. Director

We hope to keep to the same order in our opening titles, however we may make some changes depending on how we choose to edit these titles into our production.

Storyboard

This is our storyboard we have created originally. However some changes have been made as it they didnt seem to work, as it encountered problems with the lighting, weather, timing as we wanted to shoot the outside footage in the dark but the days got longer so we were unfortunatley unable to do this. However from our final product i think the changes we hve made has made our opening more effective and created a tense atmoshphere fitting in with the conventions of the thriller genre.

Thriller Treatment: BDD

From our research, we have established that thrillers are mainly watched by white females aged between 16 - 20, so we decided to attract this audience by basing our story on something that this target are typically interested in...prom night. Below is our treatment for 'BDD':

The movie is set in a schools prom night. Before anything else we see our prom queen lying in the rain with a knife through her stomach the camera backs away and we fade into a shot hours before. We at first see a girl (Belle) walking the opposite way of two girls in fancy prom gowns in a hall way. We then see the girl dressed in black reach for a door with dirty, bloody hands. The girl is then seen develpoing images of dead girls, and then getting ready (putting on a prom dress). She puts on her makeup carelessly as she drops several items, leaving red and black puddles and stains on the floor- these will create the credits by diforming into letters and words.

The film will include flashbacks of Belle's life and how she came to be the way she it but the entire film should be taking place withing the 3 hours of prom. Belle feels ambivalent to her mother, as she has always been a beauty queen, and never accepted that Belle doesnt want to follow in her mothers footsteps. her mothers pushy attitude leaves Belle with bitter memorys of her chilhood and her mother who died when she was 14, the police where never able to work out the cause of death.

As the film continues we are given and insight into emilys past and why she is the way she is but as the audience start attaching to Belle she begins planning her next killing; just when she had it good, she has to kill again, on prom night. Its a girly chick flick turned twisted as we find out all the bitter reasons Belle cant stop killing. The title is a play on words, it is the initials of her name (Belle Darcy Darrington) and also of a ocd condition (Body Dysmorphic Disorder).

Brainstorm ideas

How did you attract/address your audience? on Prezi

Our Priliminary Task

We did this in class and it was a group effort. We decided to focus less on what we included and more on the detail, for example we focused more on cutting by practising shot reverse shot cut. Particularly at the door handle where the main character opened the door in the corridor and the shot changed to her opening the door in the classroom with accurate continuity.

We also used the rule of 180 which is when two characters are having a conversation you have to stay on one side of the line we exercised this at the point when the student and teacher are talking about her attendance.

We used shots like over-the-shoulder shots and close up to show different perspectives. We also included a zoom at the end which despite being unconventional and uncommonly used by most good film makers but we used it to focus on our characters expressions and emotions. This was also put in to lighten the mood and make it more of a funny thing for the audience to watch. this was just the preliminary task and we wont be making our actual one a comedy although it is possible it might have some funny moments in it.

In the end we like our preliminary although the acting is questionable the editing was good and we were pleased with how it turned out. It also gave us a great trial for when we are filming our real because it helped us manage our time and think about all the things that need to be included.