My opening sequence

At the start of our opening I think an establishing shot would be good to show the location of the deserted top level of a car park. There is one car parked in the middle that looks slightly suspitious, with the couple inside. There could be over the shoulder shots while there is dialogue between the couple, and a point of view shot as the woman looks over to where the mysterious man is hiding. There could also be point of view shots from his perspective aswell, watching the couple making him look like the villian.

Changing our idea

The main criticism we got were:

· There was no guarantee the weather would be good enough to film the whole opening in a drive in.

· There would need to be a bigger punch line at the end as something needs to happen, otherwise there would be an anti-climax.

· A big projection of a 1950's film would be difficult to recreate and to make it look like an American drive in.

· We were advised to take our main strengths of the idea and update them into a more realistic stetting.

Our new idea:

We wanted to keep the three characters, the couple and the villain; we thought this was our main strength as we could still create binary opposite atmospheres in each car. The couple drive to a car park and have a conversation; the woman is sweet and flirty towards the man. The mysterious man spy’s on the couple, and sends a text to someone. The woman checks her phone but we cannot see the screen, the couple carry on talking, and the woman types 'now' on her phone and goes in to kiss the man as she presses send. A gun target goes over the couple as she leans in, she looks straight at the camera and gives a subtle signal. Suddenly the mysterious man shoots the man in the back of the head, and the woman calmly gets out the car and walks towards the other man smiling.

The Pitch

When we presented our pitch to Matt and Simon telling them our possible ideas and thoughts as well as the storyline, props, sound, lighting etc. Matt was worried that as it would be set in the 50's it would be hard to get the correct props and for it to be set in an american drive in would be difficult. Therefore we felt we should reconsider our idea, keeping the best bits of the idea but updating the idea so it is more realistic. 

Group Idea

Our group decided to go with the idea set in the 50’s, of a couple on their way to an American drive in. There is also another man in a car on his way to the same place; there will be fast cuts between the two cars with contrasting atmospheres. We decided to use this idea as we could create tension and contrast the two cars and characters well. I thought this was a good idea however we worried how realistic the idea was, as we were aware it would be difficult to recreate the drive in and get old fashion cars. 

What is a thriller

A thriller is a genre of film that is exciting and tense  building a high level of anticipation and anxiety.Thrillers are synonymous and interchangeable categorizations, and they have similar characteristics and features. There is often a lot of action and fast passed cuts with complex storyline.

A genuine thriller is a film that relentlessly pursues a single-minded goal, providing thrills and cliff-hangers, building up to a climax. Often the main characters are placed in an evil situation or mystery or an escape or dangerous mission that seems impossible. 

There are a lot of varieties of thrillers as they are often hybrids; thrillers combined with another genre. For example  action/adventure thrillers, sci-fi thrillers, crime thrillers, western-thrillers, film-noir thrillers or even romantic comedy-thrillers. Horror is a closely related genre as it also builds tension and suspense, taking the audience through agony and fear. Again there are many different types of thrillers; such as, murder mysteries, private eye, chase thrillers, women in danger films, courtroom and legal thrillers, erotic thrillers, surreal cult-film soap operas, and atmospheric, plot-twisting psychodramas.

The type of characters in thrillers include criminals, assassins, convicts, stalkers, terrorists, innocent victims, prison inmates, characters hiding something often their dark past, cops, couple and more. The genre of thriller often include terrorism, political conspiracy or romantic triangles leading to a murder. 

 

Editing my prelim task

I learnt how to use Final cut server and Final cut pro to edit our prelim task. We learnt how to check in and out, before and after editing. We made two 'bins' a log bin and a rush bin; we put all of our shots into the log bin and then dragged the ones we wanted to use we put into the rush bin. When editing each clip we learnt how to drag them onto the timeline and place them in the correct order. We also learned how to cut the clip to the length we wanted it. Becuase our actor was very quite in the filming so we learned how to edit the level of the sound, making the dialoge loader and clearer.

I really enjoyed editing because we had control over how to portray the narrative just by editing clips. Having more shots of the woman's facial exspresions gives her more screen time and the audience therefor take her side.

The thing I found most challenging was adding subtitles to our clips. As we filmed most of the skript in Russian, we decided to add text showing what they were saying. I found this difficult because it was quite a complicated proeses, we had to find the exact place we wanted the text, then add text, write the words, change the size of the font, then render the text to it would show up, and then we had to change where the text was placed on the screen. This was a long process and took a long time, therefor we learnt to copy a previous text and paste it where we wanted new text, then all we had to do was change the words to what we wanted and render it.

I found it challenging to find the correct shot that followed on from the dialoge in the previous clip but that was from a different angle. For example finding an over the shoulder shot from behind the woman and then change to a over the shoulder shot from behind the man but making their converation continue. The extra shots we filmed helped the script make more sence, with close ups of expresions and different angles.

If we were to film it again I would make sure both actors said their lines clearly and loader, this would make the narrative eaiser to understand and save us time having to enhance the sound. I think we should have filmed more shots so we had a wide choice to chose from. I would have also liked to film more extra shots of extreme close ups of their reactions. I would have liked to add a soundtrack to increase excitment and tention in the scene. Prefribaly we would filme in a more exciting location with better props and a more thrilling skript.

I think we all worked really well together, as every decision we agreed on everyone had to like before we went forward with it. When someone had an idea we all added to it and cooperated very well and fairly. My role was to direct so I made sure everyone was ready to start rolling before we started shooting. I made sure that each time we filmed the scene again everything was the same.

Reservoir Dogs opening sequence

The opening of Reservoir Dogs relates to the thriller genre in many ways, making us know it is a thriller from the very beginning. 
The mise-en-scene shows us straight away this is a thriller as all the men who are sitting at the table are wearing suits, have slicked back jelled hair, sunglasses and signet rings; this is the typical stereotype image of a Italian American gangster. It also signifies their wealth and pride as they look very presentable and smart, however also wanting to keep a low profile hiding their identities in their sunglasses, suggesting they have to be this way because of their jobs; typical of a thriller as they are shady and all in a group. Even though it is the morning and they are having breakfast they are smoking and drinking bear showing it is their culture to get together and do this. Shortly after it cuts to a new scene where a man is screaming in pain, lying on the back seats of a car. He has been shot and there is blood everywhere; this shows the film is a thriller as he is in a lot of pain and close to death. 
There is non-diegetic sound as the gang walk from the cafe; making them look cool and upbeat. However there is a sound bridge, leading into the diegetic sound of the man who has been shot screaming. This sound is enhanced to emphasise the man's pain; the sound is unpleasant and suits the thriller genre. 
The editing has made each gangster have equal screen time showing they are a gang and work together. After the actor's names have appeared the words 'are reservoir dogs' appears showing all these men are a gang, which is typical of a thriller as they are intimidating and powerful. This is also enhanced by them walking being in slow motion making them look cool and in control. 
There is a tracking shot in the camera work which introduces each character around the table, uniting them all as a group. The older man of the group has a low angle shot which gives him higher status than the rest of the group; this is typical of a thriller as it establishes a leader who intimidates the rest of the group and has control and authority other them. There is a high angle shot of the man in the back of the car which makes him look weak and and helpless making the audience sympathise for him as it does not look like he will survive. 

Thriller Idea

My first idea for an opening sequence of a thriller is of a girl walking alone in the dark; suddenly she is ambushed by a group of foreign men and is tied and put in the boot of the gang’s car. In the car journey we could have shots of items in the car hinting to why these men want this girl; shots of medical information could suggest something to do with organ selling. We are still not sure why the girl has been abducted but we could start to get an idea from their convocation, discussing how much they will all be paid for ‘the job’ and what their boss has demanded. As they arrive at a deserted garage, there would be shots of the location and inside the garage; showing medical equipment and a chair set up with a camera set up in front, suggesting the girl is about to be interrogated and then operated on. It would end on a cliff hanger to tempt the audience to continue watching to find out what will happen to her, but has given some information already away to also give them a clue of what the film will be about. 

Prelim task

Our group went into the editing suit and decided to use a live cutter machine as the main prop. Our two actors were Russian speakers, so we decided to make the dialogue culturally diverse by doing it in Russian and English. I really enjoyed working as a team as everyone had good ideas that we incorporated into our film. I was given the task of director which I also enjoyed as I learnt how to organise and make sure everyone was ready before filming, by saying phrases like ‘stand by’, ‘rolling’ and ‘action’. I also was aware of the job of continuity; so made sure that every time we started filming again everything would match up, eg making sure the man sat down on the right side of the chair every time so we could cut them together and they would flow and look like they were all filmed at once. 

While filming it gave us an idea of just how long it takes to film even just a few minutes of a clip. Before doing this task I thought that you filmed each shot just once, however when doing this task I learnt that you film the whole scene in each angle. This made the process quite long as we had to film the whole sequence every time we changed the angle of the shot.

I highly enjoyed the filming experience however I did not like having to spend a long time having to sort out technical problems, such as bubbling the tri-pod as much as the actual filming.

Everyone worked very well in the group and contributed equally. Before taking action on any ideas we made sure everyone agreed with the decision. I think I took an equal part in creating the film as I directed where the camera went making sure we followed the 180 degrease rule.

When choosing our location we thought we should not over complicate things too much so decided on the editing suit where there were some good props. Using the technical equipment we created a story line; our actress wore headphones and used the props to show she was trying to work the machinery and achieve a task, whereas our actor was clearly in charge, ordering her what to do. 

If we could do it again I would like to do more unique shots of details, eg a close up of the girl working the machine. However we did get to film some additional shots; we filmed a low angle shot of the man to make him look more powerful and in control. We also did a close up of him walking in so you can only see his feet. However this shot was not very good as we manually panned the camera to follow his feet, which made it a bit unsteady and shaky. In the future if I want to achieve a shot like this I might try filming it with no tri-pod and place the camera on the floor. 

All in all I really enjoyed the experience and it was good practise to see how to use the camera and gave us an idea of how long the process of filming is. 

 

Our story board

 

 

Prelim video