Over the past seven weeks, as a group, we have been working on planning, writing, shooting and editing the opening sequence to a thriller. We initially had issues forming an idea to base the film around as it was challenging to stay clear of clichés and predictable narratives. After this period though, Naomi and myself had two different ideas which were combinable. My suggestion was the use of a mysteriously empty house to create an eerie atmosphere, and Naomi’s was the ideas relating to the alley/doorway scene. Through combining these ideas, we were able to produce a solid film opening. The storyline is one aspect of the film I think is a strong point as it is not overly revealing and leaves many unanswered questions. This is similar to a conventional thriller opener, but not to an extent it becomes a cliché.
As a group, we shared roles in the storyboarding process as we all had a vey clear understanding of what our film was to include. The advantage of storyboarding therefore meant that, as a collaborative group, our idea could be shown visually and a firm plan for what the sequence would include was made. From here we were able to begin planning our shoot schedule and equipment list. There were some issues regarding the use of location and actors for filming. Ideally, we would have had actors to film on the first shoot but had to do a second one specially for scenes including actors due to their unavailability, as mentioned in my shoot evaluation. Even due to these drawbacks, I was very pleased with all the footage we shot. We used a Sony Z1 and left many of the settings on automatic (which include as aspects such as shutter speed and exposure) since it was our first shoot. There are more details regarding this part of the project in my ‘Evaluation of Both Shoots’.
After shooting, we encountered many problems in the ‘log and capture’ process. Our footage failed to appear on screen and therefore problems then occurred when trying to mark in and out points to load. This was since it was impossible to mark any areas of the footage since none was available. Sadly, a lot of time was wasted trying to rectify this issue. To overcome the problem we tried connecting the camera directly to the computer via a Firewire cable instead of using the original tape machine method. This proved an effective way of fixing the issue. From here we were able to sort through and load all useful footage.
From this point we were able to begin the editing process. As a group, we rotated between who was editing. Due to having previous experience on the software (Final Cut Pro), I was capable of editing immediately and offering guidance and help if other members of the group encountered issues. On our first rough cut we stayed completely true to our storyboard. Yet, after considering other options we moved some footage around to create a higher quality, climatic, and thriller genre based film. An example of this was having footage of the girl at the foot of the doorway to initiate the film instead of including it in the ending sequence to the opener. I thought this worked much more effectively, and this order was kept. In terms of our footage, we were criticized for repeating many shots. Although this may have given an impression we were low on footage, it was completely planned and intentional as seen in our storyboard. As we tidied up our edit, we included various cross dissolves, but also left many jump cuts. The significance of intentionally leaving in these jump cuts was to make the audience aware of the editing in an attempt to give a more edgy, fast and uneasy feeling. These transitions generally worked effectively in relation to the different parts of the scene. With more time, it would have been beneficial to experiment with more of these.
Another issue we aimed to fix in editing was the unfortunate brightness of the outside house footage caused by uncontrollable weather conditions that day. We did try and edit these shots to make it darker by altering brightness, contrast, saturation and colour correcting. We found that it was difficult to make the shots darker and threatening without the image becoming grainy or washed out. Through this, we decided that we would use the brightness in those shots as a way to create a defining contrast between them and the fight scenes which we effectively colour corrected to remove the yellow and altered the brightness on. This made it darker as well as using a Gaussian blur to make the shots less clear and set more of an enigma.
As we came to finishing our editing, we then used a piece of software called ‘Soundtrack Pro’. From here, we were able to import our edit and create a perfectly fitting soundtrack. We did this using the various available soundtracks to fit the tone of the various parts of the sequence. We also made use of different sound effects such as crashes, breathing, phones, alarms etc. As well as using these pre-made sound, we did include some diegetic sounds from filming. I thought the soundtrack was a very successful part of the film and linked all the parts of it together well. One criticism of this which I agree with is the length of the breathing effect near the beginning. This may have caused an audience to lose interest. To work on this issue if I had the chance, I would have added some
As we finished our film, we were ready to export our film. There are various different formats of exporting, such as self contained, QuickTime conversion, compressor etc. We exported using QuickTime conversion on this occasion. Before we could do this we had to do two things. One was adding the ‘deinterlace’ effect. This ensures that no lines appear on the film during playback. The other was to check audio peaks. We found several areas of the audio which contained peaks. These have to be altered to prevent distortion when played on a large sound system. In response to this, we lowered many of the audio levels to get rid of all peaks. We were then able to export our final film.
As a thriller, I think our film fit the style very well. Suspense is immediately created within the initial scenes which creates an enigma and leaves many questions unanswered. The part of the film which creates a tense build up to then suddenly cutting is also very conventional of a thriller. To improve on what we have, I would have included a greater variety of shots during the fast buildup part of the film and additionally cut down on the breathing, replacing it with something more varied and interesting. In terms of using the technology and equipment to its full potential, I think we made good use of all available resources but could have explored Soundtrack Pro further to actually compose our music down to the individual sounds and instruments. Also, with more time, it would have been beneficial to have created some more adventurous titles using software such as Photoshop.
