Our story board

Finally the reason using a storyboard is useful for our group is because it means like the big production teams we can organise ourselves and all get on the right side with our idea. It will come in particularly handy for a less professional team like us in that it will hopefully prevent us from forgetting any shots that could be crucial in our final shoot.

Use of a storyboard and Why people use them

A storyboard is when you draw each shot into a box with a brief description underneath it explaining what is happening in that box. The storyboard allows the directors to see what angle and perspective they need to create, it also prevents people forgetting shots whilst out filming and when you are back in editing it serves as a guide when you’re trying to piece together your shots. 

 Here is an example of a professional storyboard done by Warner Brothers. 

They save time and money as everyone involved in the production and filming team can look at the storyboard and create one great idea that is clear and in a good order giving people a shared vision. In your brief description you want to be including the estimated time of that shot as well as the camera shot required and the action that is taking place you could even be specific  about what type of lighting you plan on using.

Reflection of test shoot

Having filmed our first version of our thriller idea we definitely have a more precise idea of what we need to improve. The genre is easily identifiable and through the use of the bomb and surroundings it should be obvious to the audience it’s an opening to a thriller. We did however find the pace of our opening doesn’t quite work it is currently a bit to slow which is bad as it results in a lack of tension which can often leave the viewer uninterested. As well as this our opening is much to short and is only a minute and 8 seconds when it needs to be much closer to 2 minutes long. 

To give it more tension and add anticipation we need to make it faster by adding a larger variety of shot’s which will help to give us an opening scene in which the climax rises. However even though it lacks in tension at the moment our two characters being the girl strapped to the bomb and the police women storming in are made to be clear so the audience understand the situation and who is involved.  

The camera angles in which we used have some good qualities but we need to develop further and incorporate them which should also help with the pace improving  in our final film adding more tension overall. In filming our test shoot we learnt that in our final shoot we want the police officer who storms into the room at the end to come through a door which is located directly opposite to the girl strapped to the bomb as it will make it more dramatic as we can get some good camera shots such as the over the shoulder shot so we see what it would look like from the victims perspective. The second major thing we discovered through filming our test shoot is that we need to add sound, not only to add the tension but also to help the actor out as it’s much easier if we pre- record it so when it comes to filming we can play it aloud and they themselves can hear the police sirens and the general chaos of the outside sound. Also meaning it is more likely to be realistic then if we just add it in the editing phase which leaves us facing the struggle of matching the sound to the actor. 

I think once we add further shots to the sequence the tension should come with that. The thing that has worked well is the two characters remain clear and it is obvious to the viewer the situation that is unravelling before them. Overall I think we have a good basic idea and with the introduction of sound while filming and more shots we will have the opportunity to build real tension making a good opening scene for a thriller.

Test Shoot Video

Below is my test shoot video that my group and I made using just an iphone to film it. 

Scene outline and Pre-production work.

Scene outline- Bomb in a room:

To begin with we have a man who is tied to a water pipe (the ones you see in a factory) at the beginning of our shoot he is unconscious and he gradually wakes up and comes around, as he does this the camera shows us the bomb which is tied around the man’s body with a timer on it that is counting down from two minutes. Gradually he becomes more and more aware of his surroundings with this the ticking of the bomb increases in volume.

 We then hear the background noise of the factory for instance machinery and muffled foreign voices soon after this comes the gunshots from above him. The man’s mouth is taped shut so that when he tries to scream for help we just hear muffled breathing. The camera pans around the room showing us oil drums, dirt and old pots of paint everywhere. To end with a police officer is banging on the door oblivious to what is on the other side and the man again tries to shout and warn him but he slams open the door and we see him storm in then the camera blacks out leaving the audience unaware as to if the bomb has gone off or not.

 Pre-production paper work: 

The location of our actual thriller opening sequence will be the basement of a factory, and this is the setting of our entire scene. We don’t have an actual location like this to film our test shoot in, but this will be easy to work around because the entire scene just uses a single room. So, we decided to film our test shoot in the common room.

There are only two characters visible on-screen in our opening sequence, and the second only appears in the end briefly. This makes it simpler for us to just use two people from our four-person group as actors, and we still have all the characters that are focused on in our scene.

As it will be difficult to show that the main character has a bomb chained to him in our test shoot, we will instead try to convey this through a replacement prop such as a phone. However, this opening sequence is still relatively simple to film throughout, as most of the action happens off-screen. It also uses minimal props and only one room as the setting, so none of the shoots should be too difficult.

The time bomb is the prop most focused on in our opening sequence, but we cannot use a realistic prop for our test shoot. We will substitute this with a VHS cassette and use an iPhone as the timer. We plan to have chains attaching the time bomb to the main character, and we will imitate this by using a scarf. The oil drums and barrels we will show in our opening sequence can be replaced by wastepaper bins.  

Minute Meetings

Wednesday 18th November: As a group we have two ideas "The dancer" and the "church setting"and we need to choose which we are going to use for our backup plan and which as our main idea. 

Targets - 1. Choose our favourite by the end of next lesson.
                2. Develop it and think about how it would work as an opening scene.
                3. Think about location and practicality.

Thursday 19^th November: We have actually changed the location from the church idea to a deserted factory/warehouse as it had no relevance to the detail we wanted to put in. We have decided we will proceed forward with this idea and have “The dancer” as our backup plan.

Targets- 1.We need to think about the scene outline.

                 

Friday 20th November: We have planned for next lesson when we will be shooting our "test shoot".  

Target 1: For next lesson we need to allocate people with what they need to bring. Who is bringing the camera and so on.

Monday 23rd November: We filmed our test shoot in the common room not focusing on mise-en-scene, but on camera angles. We filmed on a simple camera using actors in our group just to give us an idea of what we will need to work on.

Target 1:Finish editing our test shoot for Thursdays lesson.
Target 2: Discuss in a group how we can improve the tension for example (through camera angles) 

Tuesday 24th November:Today we focused on editing the footage from our test shoot and answering pre-production questions. Two of us answered pre-production questions about things such as the props and locations we can use for our test shoot, the other two edited the footage together. We experienced some difficulty editing the footage, as we realised that the variety and length of our shots weren't enough to create tension. We spent some time at the end of class to make some points for our reflection write-up.

Target 1: For Thursday, we need to finish typing up our pre-production questions and our reflections and post them on our blogs, and we also need to post the final edit of our test shoot on our blogs.

Monday 30^th November: We made a PowerPoint to help us present our final pitch as a group on Thursday. Within that PowerPoint we completed a moon board which we had been working on and our test shoot.

Target 1: We need to finalise the pitch and check it over and decide who in our group will present it or if we will all present together.

Target 2: We need to complete our moon board so we can use it as a good visual idea in our pitch.

Tuesday 1^st December: We finished working on our moon board. We then started our next project which is creating a storyboard for our thriller shoot. We have split our group so the artist in our group draws the pictures clearly, enabling the rest of us to work on what camera angles we need in each section of our shoot  and write down what lighting we may need as well as the time period of each shot.

Target 1: We need to carry on working on our storyboard as we are only have half of it done we are aiming to have around 30 boxes with a variety of shots in it by the time we finish.

Wednesday 2^nd December: As a group we continued working on our storyboard’s. We also went over our pitch one last time before our final pitch tomorrow so that we all know what we have to do.

Target 1: Make sure everyone in our group has a copy of the PowerPoint with our pitch on it. 

Thursday 3rd December: Our group pitched our final idea and got positive feedback on how to improve what we already had, by taking on a few extra pointers. 

Target 1: Take on feedback given and add/change bits of our original idea accordingly.

Friday 4th December: As a group we started thinking about the details of what we should change and why. We discussed and all agreed on what needed to be changed.

Target 1: Meet next time to type up our final scene outline with the bits we have altered to improve it.

Monday 7th December: We typed up our final scene outline changing bits particularly our ending to build more tension in our scene and this meant we managed to move away from the "cliche" ending that we had beforehand. 

Target 1:We organised to meet as a group on Wednesday to complete our storyboard so that we can finish that but we need to make sure by the end of the week we have that completed and uploaded onto our blogs. 

Wednesday 9^th December: In our group we discussed casting and who we want in an ideal world to act in our opening scene we discussed why and also chose a backup plan in case the person we want is unable to do it due to other commitments.

Target 1: Take pictures of our potential actors

Target 2: Complete storyboards for Friday 

What makes a good thriller?

Genre – The method of categorising based on similarities in their narrative from which the films are constructed.  For instance a type of genre is comedy.

Sub-genre- A identifiable sub-class within the larger film genre, with their own distinctive subject matter, style and formula. For instance a romantic comedy.

Hybrid Genre – Hybrid means a mixture/fusion, so a Hybrid in film means three or more genres  or mixtures of sub-genres.

List of Sub-genres of thrillers:

Action Thriller – Focusing on the thriller, most common in movies with lots of visual effects such as explosions and violence. For example American Heist

Crime Thriller- Focusing on crime, often from the criminals point of view. Contains classic crime scenes often the police force and is all about gathering evidence. For instance the film No country for Old men. 

Mystery Thriller- Subgenre of both mysteries and thrillers, it is much more fast paced then your regular mystery often the protagonist is on the run whilst other smaller crimes are taking place adding tension. For example Gone girl

Supernatural Thriller- The plot line matches that of a classic thriller but contains characters with psychic abilities and other supernatural elements. For instance the movie Miracles.

Disaster Thriller -  Usually a natural disaster is taking place, the protagonist is often trying to prevent this or help rescue others before it is too late. For instance Into the storms.