Thriller Opening Planning

Thriller shooting schedule

Date                         Time                  Location             Actors                  Props                 Object
16th January             4:30 pm             Forum and          Connor                 My Ring            Tom's Knife

 Thursday                                           alleyway             (Michael)                                                                                                                                                      Tom (Mason)

                                                                                     Jess

18th January              12:00pm            Long Stratton     Connor                 My Ring          Tom's Knife

saturday                                                                       (Micheal)                                          Shovel                                                                                                  Tom (Mason)

                                                                                     Jess

19th January              1:00 pm              Long Stratton/    Connor                 My Ring          Tom's Knife   Sunday                                                Norwich            (Micheal)                                          Shovel 

                                                                                     Tom (Mason)

                                                                                      Jess
Friday 24th January   5:00 pm       "The Pit" Hetherset   Connor (Michael)   My Ring      Tom's Knife
                                                                                          Tom (Mason)                               Shovel
                                                                                           Jess                                              Bed sheet
                                                                                           

                  

A tilt shot of Chapel field gardens  

A tilt low angle shot of the Forum

                                               A zoom shot on the pathway through the graveyard

                                                      A tilt shot of the entranceway of the alley

                                                           A zoom tilt shot of the alleyway

    A shot of the new burial scene 

We had to chose a new burial location because with a previous version it did not have any scare factor and did not look very good so we stopped using that footage because we thought it was not very good and that we could do better so we went to the area in the photo called the pit in Hethersett and re-filmed the cliff hanger to make it more scary and try to make it so when people see it they are wanting more and sitting on the edge of there seat.     

Character List:

I play a character called Michael who is jealous of Mason and Jess and plots his revenge whilst stalking the pair.

Tom plays a Character called Mason who is meeting up with his "long=term" girlfriend un-aware of what's going to happen next so the audience can relate to this character

Jess plays a character called Jess and she is the girlfriend of Mason she is un-aware of what is going ahead and that Michael is flowing her and Mason closely

Costumes:

The Costumes in our film is high street fashion, we decided to do this to give a more modern feel with a mix of generic thriller aspects, we are going to wear such items as modern coats and jeans which are shown  in the two pictures below

There is a link that you could make between the costume of me in the second picture and Harry Lime in The Third man which my character is based off because it is mysterious as it covers a majority of my body and reveals very little of my face so the audience have no way of knowing anything about Mason. 

As a part of Masons costume he wears a silver ring with a band of blue which allows the audience recognise Mason in the flashbacks and the modern sequences

There is another link we can make between Mason and  Louis from Jackie brown because they murder their victims in similar ways because both murders happen in broad daylight and both murders happen near area's with high levels of human activity, with Louise's murder happening in a car park near a mall and Masons Murder happening in a small alley way near a busy main road. The reason i chose to have it in an alleyway rather than a wide open space is because i feel that an alleyway fits into the thriller convention more because of the confined space over an open area space.

Music

The Music we chose is called The Eternal Forest by Brunuhville, we chose this particular soundtrack because we felt it went really well with the footage we had edited and the rest of the footage we had left, it also goes really well with what we wanted from are film to be like  

Other soundtracks we considered was Creeping in the woods, we thought this soundtrack fitted with our film as well and also fitted with how we wanted our film to come out but we feel that it was not as beneficial to our film as the previous soundtrack and did not add as much power to film to make us use it over The Eternal Forest

There is footage we decided not to use in our film for multiple reasons, for example: we originally planned to have a clip of blood running down jess's hand but when we went to edit this clip we could easily tell that it was fake and we knew that it would not work, also we had a clip of me pulling out a knife and releasing it so the blade quickly came out, we also shined a light on the blade to give it an effect, like the knife scene from Wild at Heart 

also the scene from Witness, Murder in the Toilets scene

Another Clip we chose not to use was our original cliff hanger, we did not use this clip because it did not have a scary effect to it and did not work with the rest of our film, we also felt that it didn't give a feeling of suspense so we decided to film a different cliff hanger which was a lot better.

The final clips we did not use was some digging footage, we decided not to use them because we already had a lot of digging footage and we felt like we did not need any more or it was going to be boring, another reason we did not use them is because some contained mistakes for example one clip i went to put the shovel in the ground hit a tree root and dropped the shovel because the shock went into my hand, wrist and arm.  

Evaluation of Rough cut:
Overall I think the rough cut is coming along very well but there are still things I need to improve such as: some of the transitions need to be re-done because they do not flow into each other and are a bit jumpy, so the audience can see where the cuts are so some transition effects needs to be added here. also the titles need to be changed because some are too big and others are in the wrong location, also with the title that has the actors names on need to be changed so they are on different scenes and not all together so there is less for the audience to look at all at once.

Lighting
Due to Budget and time we are using ambient lighting, this is because we would not be able to buy specialist lighting to do Chiaroscuro lighting or noir lighting so instead we are planning on using black and white editing effects to stimulate Chiaroscuro lighting.

Props
We are using not many props because we do not want the props to take away the attention from the audience and the props we have planned to use are simplistic but give a huge effect on the audience. We have planned to use a switchback knife like the one seen in wild at heart just before the fight scene on the stairs, we decided to use this style of knife because it is small in size but is still deadly so our main character Michael can easily conceal its so no attention is brought to him, also it can do quite a lot of damage so he can easily kill his target and dispose of the evidence quickly before getting caught. The other objects we plan to use is a shovel so Michael can bury his target after his revenge deed has been fulfilled and a bed sheet which will be acting as a body bag so Michael can wrap up his target and carry them to the burial site.

Camera Angles

The camera Angles we plan on using are mainly close up and low angle shots. we decided to do this because it gives a lot of detail on the person or object you are focusing on, it is also useful with objects such as my ring because with a close up the audience can really notice the ring and connect Michael in the different scenes. We also planned to use low angle shots because this makes people and objects look bigger and more powerful than they actually are so we can use the low angle shots to emphasise Michaels power over the other character and show his dominance due to his jealously.  

How Tarantino uses generic conventions in “Jackie Brown” 1997

 In the title sequence Tarantino establishes the character of Jackie Brown  through camera shots such as the long tracking shot that follows her through the airport, during this part of the scene the camera is low down looking up at Jackie which makes her look more powerful and dominant than she actually is, this challenges the "typical" stereotypes of women in thrillers because normally women are shown as quite fragile characters that are often used by men because the are shown to be easy to control.
Later in the shot the camera goes to a similar tracking shot but is further away so more of Jackie is shown and the camera is closer to the ground which compensates for the the greater distance between Jackie and the camera but still gives the same effect of making Jackie look more dominant than she actually is, this shot also allows the character to discover more of Jackie's personality through her clothing, This shot also also allows the audience to see how Jackie is walking and this also shows a sense of power because she is walking fairly upright instead of being relaxed about her facial expression and her body language but instead gives the feeling that she is walking as if she was in the army or a similar jobs that demanded quite a strong appearance.
The next part of the shot is a extreme close up on Jackie's face and emphasis the stern look that she has and the look that she is not going to take any rubbish from anyone and the sense of power. This shot allows the audience to see the hidden messages in Jackie's face in case they did not see or realize it before in previous shots, it also allows emphasis or extra detail to those who managed to read the details in previous shot.
The way Tarantino establishes Jackie brown through ethnicity and status is by making her different to the stereotypical women in a thriller film, the status Jackie Brown has in the film is as the lead character which is unusual for a female character because they are normally the support character to the male character just like Melanie is later on in the film, Jackie gives the viewer a feeling that if a male character tries to control or take advantage of her she would not let them and would fight back because she is a lot stronger than the typical fem fatal.
Tarantino continues this theme of breaking the stereo typical image of a female character in Jackie Brown by not making Jackie white with blonde hair and not many clothes which we see quite a lot in more modern thriller films such as Melanie later on in the film where as when we she Jackie in the airport she is fully clothed in her uniform and is not showing much bare skin, also Jackie is a darker skin tone which is not the norm for thriller films and this could be used to market to different audiences because the main character is from a difference ethnicity and because Tarantino is trying to change the stereotype for thriller films and experiment with different types characters.
In the clip of Beaumont Livingston and Ordell Robbie Tarantino uses generic thriller concepts in such places as lighting, throughout the clip the natural lighting is pitch black because the scene is set at night but the non ambient lighting is positioned in such a way that makes the two characters look frightening and powerful, this is also done through the camera angles with the close ups when they are having the conversation near Beaumont's apartment and the part of the scene when they are talking near the car boot. Another good part of the scene which has generic lighting is when Ordell is first stating to drive away , the light on the road to make it look like it is wet is generic and has been used  in a lot of older thriller films when they used cobble streets such as the third man.
Tarantino also had quite a good use of generic locations throughout the scene such as the block of apartments at the start of the clip has a look that makes it seem really cheap and a rough part of town, as i watched this clip I thought that this area would be a place you would not want to go after dark unless you had a death wish not you most likely would not want to go to even when it was not dark. The second generic location used was the car boot, a small confined area which if you are like Beaumont and have claustrophobia is not a place you want to be because there is no escape routes and as soon as you see the location it instantly makes you know something is going to go horribly wrong. The third location is the part of the scene at the end when the camera pans and zooms out to give you a large and wide shot of the baron industrial wasteland which is very quite, spooky and scary area which looks like no one has visited in a very long time and just looks like it has been abandoned which is very good for a thriller film because if you wanted to commit an evil deed then you are not going to be disturbed by anyone else and no one is going to hear the gunshot because at this time of night there is not going to be anyone around so you can commit the evil deed and get away without worrying that there was any witnesses. The camera angle used in this scene suggests that the character of Ordell Robbie is very manipulative and very cunning because the camera shows that the area is very Barron and deserted which imply's that Ordell has planned this murder out for a long time and is trying his hardest to get away with the murder so he mapped out how he was going to do the murder and how he was going to get away with it.
The third clip shows that Louis is a lot more of a psychopath than Ordell is because when Louis performs his murder he does it in broad daylight in what could be quite a busy location where there could a lot of witnesses where as Ordell's murder seemed  more discrete and less risky because he done his murder in quite deserted location at night instead of broad location. Both murders were committed using a loud fire arm but this is more important for the murder committed by Louis because people could have possible heard the pistol go off and this could have cause suspicion where as with Ordell it does not matter that he was using an un-silenced revolver because there most likely was no one around to hear the shot go off. The final comparison i saw was how they disposed of the body Louis simply  left the corpse in the middle of the car park for anyone to trace and lead back to him which for a murder is not very smart where as Ordell takes the body with him the the boot of his car which he could do numerous things with such as getting the car crushed, if he chose to he could have left the body at the scene of the crime like Louis did but been more likely to get away with  the crime if he chose to because of the isolation and how abandoned the location is.