Planning for actual film opening sequence

The plot of our opening sequence is to have the victim in a small space secluded from the outside world,being tortured or harmed in some way. The sequence is to end with the victim being killed in a horrific mannor.
We have confirmed the location where we are going to film and this is Ellies garage.we chose to use her garage as this is a small compact place that we are able to portray as being a warehouse, or just a place unknown to the victim. In the garage we are going to have various iconography of weapons which will create enigmas for the audience based on which weapon the victim is going to be hurt or killed with. This also will increase the sense of danger in the scene.
We are considering having contrasting music to the event, similar to in "Resevoir Dogs" where the protagonanist is harming his victim while dancing to joyful music. We are thinking of doing this as it is an effective technique as the audience are left confused, which may increase the horror in the scene as they see the protagonist as not caring about what he is doing.

'Feed the Fish' Feeeeeeedback... :)

Generally, we recieved good feedback from our preliminary task, but there were a few areas we could improve on to make it better.
The first thing we could improve, was in the first shot of the sequence. The shot of the 'C.I. Tower' was a pan up but did not show the whole of the building. A pan up would suggest that our character would be at the top of the stairs, not at the bottom. We now know, that we should of panned down the building instead.

The sequence which included the tracking shot up the stairs, recieved positive feedback because it was a steady shot that kept the character in the frame all the time. This stood out from other groups.

Another thing we could have improved, was the pan of Justin walking down the corridor. It is a very long and boring scene, and we should have made it shorter. Unfortnately Justin doesn't exit the frame at any point, which meant we couldn't cut it as there wasnt an appropriate point to.

Lastly, we were given encouraging comments about the lighting in the shot/reverse shot sequence of Justin and Jeffrey. Jeffrey was sitting in front of a window, which meant his features were almost in complete darkness. as Justin was opposite him, we could see the his face clearly, which made Jeffrey appear more mysterious.

Even though we could make improvements, overall we are happy with our task.

'Feed the Fish'

What we have discovered from our questionnaires.....

We discovered...

• That our target audience is between 15-24, however there will be wide spread interest from all adults ranging in ages.
• People really enjoy violence and suspense. Especially if they are paying to see a thriller.
• People also enjoyed the feeling of suspense throughout, with a justified or cliff hanger ending.
• The most common answer for the antagonist/villian to be unknown at beginning and become more apparant as the movie continues.
• The villian should appear in human form and the story line should flow real events eg, day to day events.

All these points tend to follow the generic conventions of a thriller movie, though we take this views and opinions into consideration, we want to make our thriller stand out and challenge the normal conventions.

Pre-lim Task...

Today we made some final adjustments to our Preliminary Task and we also managed to upload it to the teachers archive.

Preliminary Task - Evaluation..

Even though we were happy with our Preliminary Task, our teacher helped us evaluate the 0verall project so we could make some improvements. At the beginning of the sequence we panned up the building, then cut to the scene of charcter A walking up stairs. To make this sequence flow better, we should of panned down the building instead. The next improvement we could have made, was the close up of the sign on the door. The close up was quite long so we had to make several cuts throughout the sequence to make it flow better. At some points during the sequence there were lighting issues as well, and it was sometimes too dark to see the caharacters faces but we thought this gave it a slightly more sinister feeling.

Thursday 4th February

Today we completed our Preliminary task. We used a variety of different editing techniques. We are happy with this piece of work. It has given us an indication on how filming our final piece will be as well as how we work as a team. We feel we worked really well as a team and considered every one's point of view and everyone got involved.

We also gave our questionnaires out to varying groups of people. We will collect back the results and analyse what we have found. After this we will plan our opening sequence taking into consideration things we have discovered from our questionnaires. Will when then go on to storyboard and then film our opening sequence.

OVER AND OUT

Questionnaire.......

So we can make a successful thriller and gain valuable knowledge to what audiences desire, we have created a questionnaire. The questionnaire has questions relating to our movie genre. It has both open and closed questions, and allows us to gain a greater understanding and establish our target audience.