Main Task

Main Task

Task: Our task was to create the opening to a thriller, including match on action, shot reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Sub-genre:

The sub-genre that we all wanted to do was psychological. This was due to our inspirations and the challenge that this sub-genre brought. Psychological thrillers are quite ambitious to portray on screen as the break down of the mind can be quite tricky to show to the audience.

Initial Idea:

Our first idea came from our inspirations. We liked the dream-like opening on Inception so we began to come up with ideas. Our initial idea was to have two dreams within the opening sequence so that the audience would be confused. From this, we needed to know what the dreams consisted of. Iain came up with the idea that we should have a chase scene; a generic feature of thrillers. When Iain said this, an idea popped into my head.

My Idea:

Since we liked the characters in sucker punch, I came up with an idea of a chase scene with similar characters. I liked the idea of having a mad-man, who is obsessed with animals and their sixth sense, to do tests on a young girl to give her a new sense. After this, I wanted the girl to escape and run away from the home, where she was kept, only to find the man following her. On her journey, she meets a ghost who she exchanges dialogue with to represent the sixth sense that she has gained. At the end of the chase, the girl wakes up in her bedroom so that the audience would be left confused.

Working on the idea:

Iain and Daniel really liked my idea so we began to progress with it. Iain suggested that we have a dream sequence/montage, that mentions all the senses, before the chase scene. I was very keen on this idea as it added two dreams to the narrative to cause confusion.

We questioned how the girl could see the paranormal so I suggested that she has a genetic change with animals. Daniel wasn't keen on this idea so he suggested that she had an eye transplant (dead people's eyes were switched with her own.) Iain liked Daniel's idea better so I agreed with them.

Once we talked more about this idea, this is what what we came up with:

Montage Sequence:

The six senses would be shown each with their own clip and a voice over stating the senses.

1. Touch- a hand would brush past a tree

2. Taste- The girl would bite into an apple

3. Smell- The girl would smell a rose

4. Sight- Hand held shots of a forest

5. Sound- Birds tweeting in background

Here is small mini montage that we considered to use for footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRM9_ewN0tY

Chase:

The girl will wake up in a bed, suggesting that the montage was a dream. The girl will get out of bed and flee out of the house. As she runs down the corridor, down the stairs and out of the door, a dog barking would be heard. The young girl sprints towards a forest and flashlights and dogs could be seen/heard as they follow her. The girl falls and the man grabs her leg. The girl then escapes and runs towards a tunnel. At this point, a flash of white occurs and the girl then wakes up in her bedroom again. A close-up of her eye would be used to see the colour change of them (to show the transplant has been done.) The man enters the room, sits on the bed and says, "So what were you dreaming about?" Then, the opening ends and the title is shown.

Further development:

The more we pursued with our idea, the less Daniel became sure of it. After watching more thriller openings, he insisted that our idea wasn't hitting the aspects of the thriller genre. Me and Iain listened to Daniel's concern and began to understand. We all agreed that our idea lacked thriller codes and conventions and we all feared that it was a little too ambitious. Therefore, we started to plan again...

Second idea:

We felt as if the senses montage wasn't working so we got rid of this to allow us to give more time to our other scenes. Daniel felt as if there was too much happening within the opening idea so we all decided to narrow our ideas down to what we liked best.

We liked:

1. The dream
2. The girl and the older male figure
3. The chase

From this, we decided to have the first dream as a chase; a young girl running from someone.
After this, we wanted her to wake up in a bedroom. A friend of ours suggested that a breakfast scene should then follow to create a false sense of security. We loved this idea so began to expand on it.

Location ideas:

 Iain found a tunnel that he really liked the look of. He had a vision that this would be the last place the girl would run to before waking up as it represented 'the light at the end of the tunnel'. Me and Daniel both liked the location but we came across a major issue. The tunnel was dangerous to run through so we decided that we shouldn't use it.

 We all decided that we wanted the chase to be in a forest. We all thought that the forest could look never ending, so that the girl feels trapped within the same dream. I came across a forest that I thought would work well. As you can see from the photos, on the left, the forest had a good running space surrounded by odd looking trees. We thought that this would work well.

 These photos were used as we thought that this may be a good place to do an establishing shot.
We liked the frame of the shot as the house was very central.

This was the room we wanted the girl to wake up in. It looked rather clinical and the colours symbolised innocence.

Other images we used for inspiration:

Casting:
We knew that we only needed two people for the whole opening; a dominant male and a young female. Daniel and Iain decided to choose me to play the role of the girl as I have blonde hair which represents innocence. They also thought that my small height could symbolise weakness in comparison to the dominant male. As for the male, I suggested that my 6ft 3 cousin (Alex) could play the role. We knew that we didn't want the male's face to be shown (hidden identity) so my cousin's height worked well. After asking my cousin, he agreed to help out so then we began to storyboard.

This is the storyboard that we all drew and worked on together.

We wanted the first shot to be our logo as other openings have their logo first.

Shot No.2 was our establishing shot. We considered shooting a variety of shots to have as our opening shots to set the scene. We wanted to have the shot of the woods and a house to show the audience where the opening was set. We also wanted our institution titles to show on this shot as it allows the audience to know who has created it straight away.


Shot No.3 was used so that we could have the aspect of hidden identity. A foot stamping on the ground doesn't show who is running, keeping the audience engaged. We also wanted my name to enter the screen as I am the first actress that enters the opening.

We wanted shot No. 4 to be a point of view/hand held shot. This was so that the audience could hear the heavy breathing from the female and also see her fear when running. This was to hint that she was being chased.

Shot No.5 was planned to be a low angled shot. This was to keep the females face hidden.

We wanted shot No.6 to be a tracking shot. This was to show the trees within the forest and to see the speed of the girl running.

Shot No.7 was a hand held shot like shot No.4. We wanted a point of view shot from the chaser's point of view so that the heavy breathing could suggest a male figure. We also wanted the second title to be on screen at this point.

Shot No.8 shows the female's thinking. As it is a point of view shot, the audience can see that the girl is looking for a place to hide.

Shot No. 9 was the female running into the hiding place. This was to show a different perspective rather than from the female's point of view.

 Shot No. 10 was going to be a high angled shot to represent the female's vulnerability.

Shot No.11  was the first time you see the female's face. A pan wold be used to do this. We thought that the executive producer should be mentioned at this point.

 We decided that shot No. 12 should be an extreme close-up of the girl's lips. We wanted to show her shivering and focus on the heavy breathing to represent fear.

Shot No. 13 was a medium close-up of the girl peeping out to see if the person following her was there. We wanted the producer titles to appear on screen at this point.

Shot No.14 was planned to be a reverse dolly zoom. This was to show the strange sense of the dream and what the female was seeing.

Shot No. 15 was the female standing up ready to run.
We wanted the titles of the assistant director to appear at this point.

 Shot No. 16  was the final shot in the dream sequence. We wanted the girl to turn round and find the male right in front of her. This was to represent fear.

 Shot No. 17 was the female awakening from the dream. An extreme close-up would be used to see this.

Shot No. 18 was going to show the female sitting up to show fear. We also wanted the director's name to be shown at this point.

 Shot No. 19 was going to be a quick montage of someone preparing a breakfast. This would create an uneasy safe tone.


                                                                                          Shot No. 20 was the door opening.

 Shot No. 21 keeps the male's identity hidden as he walks into the bedroom with the breakfast. This was to keep the audience questioning who the male is.

In shot No. 22,we added the 180 degree rule of the male sitting on the bed. This was so we could show both characters together.

 Shot No. 23 was planned to be an over the shoulder shot. This was for the dialogue.

 Shot No. 24 carried on the dialogue and used a shot reverse shot. This was to keep the dialogue smooth.

 Shot No. 25 was a close-up of the knife falling on the floor. This was to hint at violence as a knife can symbolise this.

 Shot No. 26 was a close-up of the knife in the hand to focus on the violence that it could represent. It also had the man saying, "Oh I'm so clumsy! I'll go get you another knife for your bacon."

Shot No. 27  was the man leaving.

                                           

Shot No. 28 is an over the shoulder shot of the male leaving the room so the female is left alone.

Shot No. 29 is a long shot of the girl moving out of bed. This was to make the audience wonder where she is going as the male figure could return at any moment.

 Shot No. 30 was a mid-shot becoming a long shot. This was to show the girl leaving the room.

 Shot No. 31 was planned to be a mid-shot of the girl opening the door and leaving the room.

 Shot No. 32 was the girl walking out of the other side of the door to show match on action.

 Shot No. 33 was the girl walking to fixed camera. This was to show her movement and her facial expressions.

 Shot No. 34 was the girl walking but on the opposite side of the camera. The shows where she is heading to.

 Shot No. 35 was a pan of the girl walking towards the sink in the bathroom. This keeps the pace of the film going.

 We wanted shot No. 36 to be a close-up of the tap being turned on. We also wanted the sound of the water to be very dramatic.

 Shot No. 37 was going to be a mid-shot of the girl splashing water on her face. This was to show her panic and portray her feelings.

 Shot No. 38 was showing the girl's face look up. The man would be stood in the background so the girl would see him in the mirror. This would bring about many questions for the audience.

Shot No. 39 would be a mid-shot/close-up of the girl's face. This was to show emotions and fear.

After this, shot No. 40 would flick to a black screen with the title. This would be a good way to end the opening scene.

 Here is extra details about certain shots:

Costumes/Props:

Female's clothing (Lizzie)- We decided that I should wear a nightie as the scenes take place during sleep. A nightie represents vulnerability as I would be running bare foot through the forest. The colour nightie we wanted was white as this colour has connotations of innocence and purity.
This is the nightie we bought on 9th March 2013:

We be bought this one as we thought that is looked as if it belonged in a hospital. Since our genre was a psychological thriller, this nightie worked perfectly to represent a mental institution/hospital.

Male's clothing (Alex)- We wanted the male to represent a figure that could have scary connotations. We decided that we wanted the male to dress as a doctor so that he could appear strange within the dream and a man with a good occupation in reality. The doctor's coat also symbolises power, suggesting dominance We looked on several sites for the doctor's coat. . These were some of the ones we looked at:


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctors-Coat-Mask-adult-size/dp/B0060KEMPI/ref=sr_1_3?s=clothing&ie=UTF8&qid=1367344611&sr=1-3&keywords=doctors+coat

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adult-Costume-Doctors-White-Coat/dp/B001OD2ICA/ref=sr_1_4?s=clothing&ie=UTF8&qid=1367344611&sr=1-4&keywords=doctors+coat

http://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Coat-Chest-Size-108cm/dp/B004Q9EX8Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=clothing&ie=UTF8&qid=1367344611&sr=1-1&keywords=doctors+coat

We decided to all split the money and buy the bottom one as it looked the best. Daniel already had a doctor's mask so we didn't need to buy one.

This was what the coat and mask looked like:

Dates and problems:

The date we decided to film was 30th March 2013. This was because it was on a weekend so we would have plenty of time to film. We all decided that this would be a good day for us all. We also planned to film the indoor scenes in the early afternoon and the outdoors scenes in the late evening.

A week before the film date, I became ill. This caused us to cancel filming and change the dates to 6th April 2013. Luckily, this date worked out.

We also hoped to edit our film on April 1st 2013 but when filming changed, we decided we should edit on the same day as filming (6th April 2013). 

When it came to the day of filming, we realised that we didn't have enough time to edit on the day. Also, Daniel's laptop software wouldn't work properly so we had to wait till we arrived back at college.

The final dates that we edited were 15th April to the 1st May 2013.


Filming:

Indoor: The indoor scenes took the longest to film as we decided to experiment with

shots and frames. The breakfast scene needed a lot of attention as we had to wait for the kettle to boil and the toaster to pop. Since you can see reflections in my toaster, we all had to avoid being seen. We also had to make sure that Alex's hands were framed correctly when cooking.

The shots in the bedroom had the most outakes as I and Alex couldn't help but laugh. As we laughed, so did Daniel and Iain. After many takes and laughs, we finally got the scene filmed.

The bathroom scene went pretty quickly as I barely laughed and there wasn't much to film.

Outdoor:

The outdoor scenes were a push for time as the sun was setting very quickly. The temperature was very cold so I had to bring a huge parker, wellies and tracksuit bottoms to wear in between takes.

Running was the worst part as the ground was freezing and hard under my feet but I still gave it my best shot. 

There was barely any laughing throughout the outdoor filming as the tone was very serious due to the time and cold.

Whenever I wasn't on screen, I tried to help as much as possible with framing and filming. I think that we didn't give oursleves enough time to film as we struggled for time.


Changes:
During filming we made a few changes. These were:

• We decided only to shoot one establishing shot and use a zoom to focus on the forest as we thought it worked better.
• We didn't film shot No.6 due to the lighting as it was too bright. Then, once it became darker, we had already filmed other shots so the continuity wouldn't have worked if we had filmed it.
• We didn't film shot No. 9 as we felt it wasn't necessary as we had the point of view shot before-hand. 
• We changed shot No. 14 to be a point of view shot as well as a reverse dolly zoom. This was so the camera was shaky to show the fear of the female as she looked down the path for the male.

The Title:
We wanted our title to be really catchy and something that everyone would remember. We each came up with a name.

Our names:
Lizzie- Parallel
Iain- The Imagining
Daniel- The Witching Hour

I came up with Parallel as it was a one word title. Hitchcock's film Psycho influenced my title idea as his too was a one word catchy title. I felt that Parallel resembled the dream and reality corresponding as they never meet but both have similar themes. By using the name to reflect upon the narrative, I felt as if it would keep the audience engaged and wanting to watch more (if we made the rest of the film.)

I really liked Iain's idea of The Imagining as it resembled the dream and what the imagination could create with fear. I liked how it was only two words so it was easy on the tongue.

Daniel's idea of The Witching Hour was clever as it refers to midnight and the time in which creatures such as vampires and witches appear. This resembled the scary figures that the female was experiencing during the dream.

When we showed each other our ideas, we couldn't decide which we liked best. Therefore  we decided to do a questionnaire to find out what our demographic (teenagers) would like best.
This was the results:

As you can see, Parallel was the most popular and The Witching Hour was the least. Our questionnaire went well so we decided to go with the most popular title.


Music
Iain found a few different tracks to use within our dream sequence. After me and Daniel listened to them, we finally found the one we wanted so we began to edit the whole thing using the track...

Editing:
Our editing took some time. We decided to add a filter onto the dream sequence so that it was a lot more blue in colour. This was so it didn't appear real and it almost seemed confusing like a dream would be. This colour also has connotations of sadness, depression and fear. This was used to reflect upon the emotions of the female. We also used this filter as our sub-genre was psychological. Since the filter creates a confusing, unusual effect, the audience gets an insight into the mind of the female character.
The music that we added over the top of the dream was used very carefully. We planned it so that on each  bang on the drum, within the song, a title would pop on screen or a cut would be strategically placed.
Cuts were used throughout as the whole opening was fast paced. The cuts built up the tension and kept the whole film flowing.
Throughout the editing, we also changed certain parts of the dream sequence around. This was to space out certain shots, of me running, as we didn't film shot No. 6. The change from the storyboard worked really well and made the dream stay at a good fast pace.
As for sound, most of the shots we had taken came with great sound effects. However, there were certain point where we had to mute, remove and add voice-overs to make it work.
Finally, we added a title at the end that says, 'Parallel'. We added a line above and below the title to represent the word on screen. We used a black background and a white font as it is simple but very dramatic.

Here is some bloopers, un-edited footage and false-takes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKZGx1aYozc

Overall:Overall, I really liked the outcome of our film. I think that we should have given ourselves more time to film as it was a push for time on the day. I am very pleased with how our pre-production, production and post production went as it was well thought out and planned. I think that the thought behind our ideas really shows through the thriller opening we have produced.