Equipment list

Most of the equipment listed below will be provided by the Hurtwood House media department and also their Drama deprtment :

1x Roll of LX Tape
2x Redhead video lights + tripods
1x Sony PD170 Mini DV camcorder
1x Fluid Head Tripod
2x 500 min Camera batteries
1x Sennheiser directional Microphones
1x Extendable Microphone Boom Pole
1x Rycote Softie
1x XLR Lead
3x Media (Mini DV cam tapes)
1x Spare AA Battery for Microphone
1x Haze Machine

Our Costume requirments

We have decided that we are going to try and match our character of Elizabeth Carter as much to the young girl from the ring.

In order to do this we have looked at lots of images of her throughout the film and and seen the various different costumes she is in.

She is usually always bear foot, wearing a white loose dress and and her hear dreaping down with a shine.

We decided that we wanted our character to look exactly like this except for wearing a white dress, and to create the shining look to her hair, we will straighten it down and put some wet look jel in her hair. We will then wet it slightly with water. We will also rub a small amount of mud into her feet to make them look dirty.

The account of our shoot day

On the 28th of January me and my group set out to film the opening sequence of our thriller, 'Elizabeth’s Diary'. The day began with the last minute planning of our group. The first thing we did was do gather together all of the props that would be needed and also our actress (Elizabeth). As a group we then went to the film studio where we had a look at the basic outline of the set, and decided what we thought would be the best way to set it up, to look as we had all imagined it. For the rest of the morning we were busy preparing everything to start shooting. This included doing all of the makeup, preparing all of the props, painting the set with blood and then setting up all of the props on the set. Once we had done this we then needed to visualize how we wanted the scene to look, and based on this, set up our tracks. I feel that although we hadn’t planned to spend any of the morning doing these things, this was incredibly useful, as the majority of our piece is fully dependent on the set to create the tension. However there was one area which was unorganized. We had only gone to get the props the day before, which left us only one night to prepare the props to suit the piece. If we had done this a week in advance, we may have even been able to set up some of the set the night before the shoot, allowing us more time on the day.

I feel that the strongest point of the day was the type of shot we used. The whole two minutes of our scene was one track, from one side of the room to the other side, where the hanging took place. This was a major risk that our group decided to take, which either could have been incredibly effective, or in a different circumstance, look a bit daft. This is the reason for why we had to spend the whole morning setting us the set, as every single specific detail had to be perfect in order to pull it off. Unfortunately though, I feel that there was one major disadvantage to this that was if the film didn’t look good in the editing sweet, then we didn’t have any back up shots to use.

We used the Film Studio as we thought that we would be able to set it up to look as much alike what we imagined Elizabeth’s den (where she hangs herself) to look like. The biggest advantage of using the film studio was that we could easily go and pick something up from around the school, if we thought that what we had was either ineffective or just not enough.
The most important things in our scene were the props we used. We decided to but loads of dolls and teddy bears etc and then make them look distraught. This was because we wanted to create an image of Elizabeth being a distressed, crazy and mentally sick child, who is obsessed with torture.

Originally we decided to choose Petrie as our actress. The reason for this is because she had a strong resemblance to the girl character out of the ring. However for the scene that we shot this ended up being quiet irrelevant as we rarely see the character of Elizabeth and when we do see her, it is either her reflection or her feet. If we were to continue filming the film further thought, we would need to use Petrie to act the character.

We decided to use a very simple style of lighting, to make the scene as naturalistic as possible. we used one white light above the set and then had a bulb lowered into the room, to creating the feeling of a room in her house. This was because the room used was later in the film discovered to be Elizabeth’s den. Fortunately this turned out to be very successful, and left our set feeling very much like we wanted it to. We had to use a strong light which shined through the door when Elizabeth opened it, to create her shadow and show the audience she had entered the room.

The final stage of our shooting day was to do the sounds. This took a very short amount of time as we just had to pick up the sound of footsteps, the noose, the door and her choking. This didn’t work very well though as it was incredibly hard to find an atmosphere that was completely silent. However this didn’t matter much as in the post production process of editing, we can look through all the sounds on the Mac and find the suitable ones from there.

On the day I was given the role of general helping. For example I was made to control the fans, help organize everything, help set up the set, give ques etc. The reason for this is because I am the producer, so in the pre production and post production process I am kept very busy. As a team on the day, and over the whole period we worked very effectively together, being one of the most organized groups and constantly developing new ideas, some of which worked and some of which didn’t. On the day we didn’t have one moment where we argued and we didn’t have one moment where we disagreed.

Overall I feel the shooting day went incredibly well. I feel the main reason for this was because we were all determined to make the day work and to work as a team to achieve our maximum potential. Unfortunately our footage didn’t resemble our storyboards in any way, but we did stick to our original idea and came out with some footage which has worked just as we wanted it too. Overall it was a great success.

Our Working Storyboard

This is our most recently done storyboard. Unlike the other storyboard, this is a one shot sequence that has a duration of around two minutes, which is a massive change to the first storyboard, yet with the same concept. The main reason why we decided to do this using one shot was to create an element of tension in the build up to the climax of the scene. In the actual scene we are going to lay toys and pictures, covered in fake blood to give a more intresting look to the mise-en-scene. This will also capture the stereotyipical view of a horror scene.

Our Origional Storyboard

This is the first storyboard that we produced after our first idea.

Floor plan

Seeing as one of our versions is a one shot version and we are filming in the film studio, we need to make as much space as possibe to fill out the time. To do this, we have decided that we are going to shoote the sequence in diagonals, to squeeze out as much room as possible, however this does make the filming space smaller due to the 180 degrees rule. We have also measured out half a meter and one meter in the corner, again to squeeze in as much shooting space as possible.

Lighting plan

For our lighting plan we decided that we wanted to create a feeling of earlie morning. One of the things that we have not shown in this diagram of the lighting requirements is the fact that we want to use a haze maching. This will give the earlie morning fog and mist effect. We are also using low key lighting from above, to enhanse and support this effect.

We have also put the Camera tracks in, as in the first sequence, we track the girl walking towards the noose and then hanging herself, so there will be lots of movement.

Treatment for our thriller

Treatment: Our idea started off with a girl who had the power to be able to kill people through what she writes in her folder. It involved a character called Elizabeth who was bullied at school and ended up killing the people who bullied her through this mysterious power she has.

Our Opening sequence involves Elizabeth (acted by Petrie) in the build up to her death. At the end of the sequence, we see her commit suicide by hanging herself. The sequence will be filmed in the film studio but is set in a barn / warehouse.

The reason that we decided to shoot in the film studio is because we could set it up to be however we desired, and if we were not happy with the set, we could either change it on the morning of the shoot, or edit it to look different in the post production stage. We decided that we wanted to make it look like a barn because we wanted a location where in real life, someone would be unlikely to be disturbed. The barn also has some significance in the film later on.

Our sequence generates tension through the build up to the climax where she kills herself. The tension is created through the audience not knowing what is going to happen, until it happens. The sound used of the footsteps, and voice, and the suffering is also used to create tension.

We have tried to make the sequence as simple, but effective as possible, so we only need one actress, who is Petrie Kimber playing then role of Elizabeth. We also only need to have four main props. The most important one is the diary, as the whole sequence and movie is centered around this. Then we need the noose and stall as we are shooting a hanging scene and we are also going to need hay, to create the set. We are going to need to use Genie gr12 mechanical crane to be able to achieve all of the high angle shots.

Our roles as a group.

Davina = Director and helping with folder (Floor plan, lighting plan, location, production logo), helping with organization in post production


Ross Gordon = Producer, helping with folder and compiling the folder, Equipment list, Group roles, Cast list, Treatment, Prop list, helping with organization in post production


Alex Hall = Helping with the folder ,costumes, storyboard 2 and some of 1, shooting schedule, helping with organization in post production


TK = Storyboard drawing and artistic elements to the sequence, Editing,Content page.


We have tried to share out all of the jobs as fairly as we can so everyone has something to do!

Our cast for the Opening sequence

Luckily for us, we have only had to choose one person for our cast. This is the character of Elizabeth Carter. Seeing as we decided to base the character of Elizabeth Carter on the girl out of the ring we decided to select someone who with the right makeup on, could possibly look like her. We decided that the perfect person for this, especially because she is a great actress as well would be Petrie Kimber. Another reason we decided to choose Petrie as our actress is because she appeals to the target audience, which are males aged between 16-25. The majority of boys aged in this age bracket will find her attractive, and some may go and see the film to watch her in it.

Our new Production Logo

Thanks to Davina's hard work and knowledge of artistic websites we have now produced our first attempt at our production logo.

Our essential props list!

There are three main essential props involved in our Thriller. The first is the most important. This is the dairy. The reason why this is so important is because the majority of the film to come after the title sequence is based around this, and it is important to esablish this in the opening scene. The second prop is a noose. This is emportant as it is the climax of the scene. It is the prop that creats the tension, and effects the audience in the most significant way. The final prop is a stall, which makes shooting a hanging scene possible, as Elizabeth can kick the stall away to hang herself.

Our Target Audience

For our thriller sequence we have decided to aim our film at the target audience which would earn us the most money. We decided that as young males, aged in their late teens and twentys were spending the most money on films these days, it would be a smart idea to aim our film at them. Our film is aimed at very much male orientated audience. This is because it is a gory thriller, with things constantly happening and a slight twist towards the end. It is for all social classes except i think it will be viewed more by people of the lower social classes, again due to the gore involved.

Research for Thriller Sequence

To research for my thriller title sequence i thought about what i would be able to base the specific scene on. As the scene is about a hanging, i decided to put some research into films which involve a hanging. The problem with this is that there aren’t many. Eventually i found 'The Shawshank Redemption' which involves a suicidal hanging scene, and from this clip we decided how our title sequence could possibly be shot. Unfortunately, despite my continuous efforts, I couldn’t find any other valid research which would help me.

Storybording

As we have now got a title sequence idea, and all of the main narrative elements, key images and main themes decided, it was now time to sort out our story board and camera shots.

Unfortunately this was not as easy as coming up with the ideas. Overall we spent about a week trying to figure out what we were going to do with the camera, and how we were going to shoot the sequence. First we tried tackling the order in which the scene would run. We did this by all putting our ideas forward, until we eventually found one. We then sat down and thought about how we could show this. We went through the scene from start to finish, looking at all of the shot possibilities and seeing what we though would work and what wouldn’t work.

Once we had done all of this we wrote up in order all of the shots that we would have and split the shots up into four sections, from the beginning to the end in order. We would then each take one section and draw up the storyboard for that particular section. The picture above is a blank atoryboard.

Once we had all written up the storyboards, and pieced them all together to make one, we gave it to TK and she drew in the pictures. Once this was done, the storyboards were complete.

First Production Meeting

For our first production meeting we decided to mould our idea for our film together and come up with a title sequence that we all liked. We already knew what the synopsis of the film was going to be and all have fairly similar ideas for what the opening scene was going to be like which made the decision making a lot easier.

We decided that we wanted to do a short clip with the main theme of death. The clip will last about two minutes and is about the protagonist in the film (Elizabeth) killing herself. We decided to do this, as the film is about the investigation into Elizabeth’s death. We also decided that as the diary is such a strong part of the story we would also end the sequence with the close up of the diary closing, ant throughout the title sequence there would be a voice over of her last diary entry.

We wanted to base our character on the girl out of the ring, so during our first production meeting we decided to narrow down possible actors for the part of Elizabeth.

Thriller Synopsis of Elizabeth's Diary

The thriller is based on the character Elizabeth Carter, who is a loner and constantly gets bullied by her peers, Davina Thorne, Alex Hall, Ross Gordon and Tinuke Kola-Abiola. Elizabeth Carter is constantly being bullied at school due to her autistic disability. She is an incredibly keen writer and reverts to her black diary for comfort in expressing her feelings about her peers.

Suddenly two of the four bullies die, in horrific ways. Elizabeth discovers that the deaths match the way she wanted them to die according to the writing in her diary. Once she discovers this, she turns suicidal and delusional.

A few days after the deaths, Elizabeth is announced dead. An investigation is put into her death where they discover she committed suicide.

Just when everyone thinks everything is solved, they find a new picture in the diary, and another bully dies. Once again, an investigation is put into this, with the same investigation team. They eventually link all the evidence back to the forth bully, and then the twist that it was her all along, unfolds.

Davina, the forth bully is then announced missing, and is nowhere to be found.

My Thriller Idea

For my thriller idea, I decided to do a sequence based on the scene in Halloween, where Mike Myers is looking for the girl hiding in the house.

My thriller was supposed to be very much a thriller horror, aimed at a target audience who are probably men, aged from 15 to 40. It is a young testosterone boosted audience as it is quiet a scary and disturbed film.

My idea for my thriller was about a boy who saw a glimpse into the future, and used a clock he saw in the future to try and safe his sister.

The sequence would start with a high angle crane shot of the boy, sweating and moving around in bed. Whilst zooming in there would be snippets of what the boy was seeing, which involved vital information, such as the clock. The boy then wakes up and looks at the clock. This is when he notices that what he has just seen is about to happen. What he saw was his sister being abused, and raped by her father. The boy then goes to try and find his sister, and gets there just before the father. They can hear the father approaching the room so they decide to hide. They jump into a walk in wardrobe where they are silent and all you can see is the shadow of the father in the room. The children wait until they think the father has gone and then the boy slowly and quietly opens the door. Suddenly the screen turns black and you hear the girl scream.

This is so the audience is left not knowing what has happened, and the rest of the movie is finding out what happened and what else the boy saw in the future and whether he can learn to use these powers to his benefit. The unfortunate thing is, he only seems to be able to see disturbed, unwanted visions.

Lesson on what is a Thriller

It is hard to describe what a thriller is, due to the amount of emotions that most people feel during a thriller movie. This is why is it known as a meta genre. There are many different types of thrillers. The most common types of thrillers are thriller horrors, psychological thrillers and action thrillers. The most successful thrillers are those which play with our most basic worries. It does this by drawing horrible, sick and repressive thoughts in our minds. These thoughts are usually violent, sexual orvoyeristic thoughts. These are the thoughts that create the feeling of tension and fear, and make our hearts beet faster and the adrenalin to feel bigger. This raises what’s called questions or enigma codes in the mind of the viewer like "what happens next?" and "will he get away?".

Most thrillers have what is called a universal theme. This is usually how the characters within the movie are struggling with things such as love, death and money. It is all of these struggles which usually enthral the spectator. The directors also enthral the spectator by making them feel tension through the sense of delay. This is effective as the spectator feel relieve when something does happen, as the tension has snapped.

The thriller genre can also be viewed as sadomasochistic. This is where we as a viewer receive, enjoy watching things like others suffering. This is usually the reason why directors put sick, un-humorous scenes in films.

A thriller must evoke visceral, gut-level feelings rather than more sensitive, delicate emotions.

Introduction to Final Cut Pro

In this lesson we were introduced to a unique editing program called 'Final Cut Pro'. Luckily enough at Hurtwood House, the school have invested in buying a selection of top quality Apple Macs, which is vital to final cut pro, as the program only runs on the apple software.

We began by finding our tape of shots and making a new folder called the 'log bin'. From here we looked through the whole tape and selected out all of the shots we wanted. We would then cut each shot, re-name it and drop it into the log bin.

Once we had sorted out each shot, we could then start to play around with what order we wanted each shot to come in the scene. To do this we would select a shot, cut it down to the small part of there shot you wanted in the scene and then drag it down onto the time line. We would do this until we were happy with the scene and it played the whole way through nice and smoothly.

The last thing that we would look at would be the volume. We would look at each separate shot on the time line and adjust the volume so it sounded exactly the same as the last shot. Once this was done we would be finished. We were then told to go and apply all these techniques to our preliminary tasks.

Shooting the Prelim Task

Last week on Friday, me and a group of three other people filmed a prelim task which was story boarded and organized and set up before hand. The piece was filmed in the film studio and took the good part of an hour to film. The film studio was the perfect location for this as there was a set built in with a door for the actor to enter from and then a window for the protagonist to sit by. I was given the role of director, so I had to organize all of the actors, instruct the camera man on what I wanted him to do and also help out anyone with anything they needed. Some of the things that I had to monitor were:

1) 180 degrees rule
2) Camera shot angles
3) Camera positions
4) light and sound

When to begin filming and when to cut the film With the lighting, I wanted to create a darkish look in the room, with one light on from overhead, keeping the actors lit but then also a blue light coming through the window creating an effect of daytime outside. The reason why this worked is because it enabled us to have continuity of lighting and create a feeling of realism and believability. Overall the day was a great success for the group!

Introduction to video cameras

This lesson was focusing on the specifics on how to use a video camera. To shoot our practical work, our school uses a Sony pd170.

We learnt about how to adjust the specific technical aspects that allow you to shoot good quality consistent audio visual material.
First we learnt the basics of the video camera, such as how to focus the camera and how to zoom in and out. We learnt that there are two different areas of zoom on the camera. We then went on to learn about the more vital and specific details on what a video camera can do. These are things such as how to change the shutter speed. We learnt that shutter speed needs to be adjusted to the action in the scene, for example, a faster more action packed scene would probably have a faster shutter speed to emphasise the pace of the scene. We also learnt about white balance, and how you need to change the white balance depending on whether you are using false light (light bulbs or stage lights) or natural external light (daylight). You can also use the gain on the camera, which enables you to borrow light and enhance / exaggerate the existing light the camera can see. However, gain should be kept on 0 at all times if possible to create a naturalistic feeling in the shot. It is also possible to control the exposure, which is the amount of light enabled to enter the cameras lens.

The last thing we learnt in this lesson is how to set up the tripods, which was fairly straight forward. We learnt that we had to bubble the camera whenever we change the shot type, and make sure the bubble is in the circle before shooting.

My Course so far!!

What I have learnt and achieved so far in Media Studies:

Considering I started Media Studies two weeks later than everyone else, I feel I have made a fantastic recovery. I have nearly caught up with all of the practical work and have finished all of the classroom work that I missed out on.

I started out with a theory lesson where we were really learning the basics on camera techniques and editing techniques. When I say this, I mean things like shot types, and editing cuts and so on. The real basic stuff which a media student really needs to know. This was very useful to know as I now understood the foreground of what I was going to be learning about in media. Since then we have began to look into the same sort of things, but in a lot more detail. For example, we have been looking at much more complex shot types and ways of editing films and scenes.

Recently in class, we have begun to look at sound usage in films as well, for example non-diagetic sounds and diagetic sounds. We have also learnt about more basic things like soundtracks and ambient sounds. To put our knowledge of all of these things (Cinematography, Misen-scene and sound) we were given prep where we had to break down the five first minutes of a film of our choice and then write an 800 word essay on what techniques the director used, why he used these techniques and the effect they had on the viewer. I was very pleased with the results that I got back for this. In the last lesson we then had to do the same thing, except for this time it was in test conditions. We also had to do it on a film which we didn’t know and only had an hour to do so. It was a lot harder but it is what we will have in the real exam (50% of our grade).

On the practical side of things, I am yet to catch up on everything that I have to get done. I have done everything except for a photo shop workshop (why I haven’t got any photos on my blog yet) which I will get done as soon as possible!

My first practical lesson was on how to use a camera. I had this lesson with Matt and I was very interesting, as we were introduced as a class to the pieces of equipment that we would have to use over the next two years. In this lesson we only touched down on the basics like how to change the shutter speed, and how to zoom in and out and so on. We then had a practical session where we had to film a short 5-10 piece of film, which may sound easy, but is actually quiet a challenge for the first ever time using one of the cameras. It was lots of fun though seeing the potential of everyone in the group. We have now been told that we are doing a scripted scene this week in the film studio which I am really looking forward to, and hopefully will learn lots more at.

Practical skills

So far I have had two practical workshops.
Due to me missing out on the first two weeks, i am still on the catch up so i am yet to have a photoshop workshop. Luckly enough i arrived just in time to have a tough yet exciting workshop on how to use the standard filming camera ( the pd170).
This was very interesting for a few reasons. the first was because it is what i will be using for the next couple of years. The second is because this is what the jackass crew used to film jackass.
Just yeaterday i had my first experience of trying to make a clip of film using the pd170. During this time i discovered how much time really goes into making a piece of film, and how much work was going to be requiered of me over the next two years. We only made a simple piece of film which lasted around 20 seconds but even this took us around 30 minuted to get all the shots perfect. The scene included a man entering the room, wiping his forehead and then moving out of the room. In order to get this right we had to have 100% concentration.
Bye Bye

Introduction to me

Hi everybody.
So im going to try and keep this short and snappy so you dont have to listen to me blagging on about myself for to long (not mentoning the fact that there is not much to boast about me anyway)! There are two main resons for my choice of media.
1) I have laods of family who are involved in the film business, including my auntie, uncle, brother and more ( my auntie is a producer and director and did films such as Nannie Mc Fee, Waiting Ned, Shooting fish and a majour film being released next year called Im alright starring Robert De Nero and my uncle who is the head camera man and was involved in the Golden Compass, Fly Boys, Bright young things and Bland girls)
2) I want to do an a level that i have a passion for and think i will enjoy doing.
I am a huge Quintin Tarentino fan, seeing as my top three films ever made are pulp fiction, killbill 1 and killbill 2! Sad some may say but i think he is a living genious! I also have a passion for music and wierdly i like pretty much every type, although my fravroite genre is dubstep (i love rusko)! Anyway, i hope you all enjoy looking at my blog and i hope i can please all of you with some of my work!
Thanks for visiting
Ross Gordon :)