People who have confirmed they can audition

Confirmation for cast email

Bruise Wheel

If we cannot have access to a make-up artist, we will have to use our own resources and buy ourselves a bruise wheel. Making bruises with make-up is a easy, yet complex task to do because you don't want it to be too obvious that it's makeup but it needs to be effective.

Method:

1. Apply yellow colour as base

2. Add green

3. Dab on red

4. Blend in purple

Location Confirmation

Today my group and I spoke to Katie our teacher and she confirmed that we are allowed to use the shipping container as our set. In preparation for this we must empty it out and make it look grimy for our thriller. We have chosen this container because it is on school site and easy to access.

Props

We won't really need many props for our thriller.

Things Ollie, Sasha and I need to bring:

1. Dirty pillows
2. Dirty blankets
3. Empty bottles of water
4. Snack Bar wrappers
5. Gun

All of this will go inside the shipping container.

 

 

 

 

Our group photo

Franeck has left our group and now it is just Ollie, Sasha and myself in our group.

Script

Thriller Script by Sasha

FADE IN:

SHIPPING CONTAINER - DAY

ETX. Shipping dock in Russia, inside a shipping container. 

RUSSIAN 1

We have about 20 minutes to get them from here to here. These bitches better behave. (RUS)

RUSSIAN 2

If not we can give them a smack. Do you want a cigarette? (RUS)

VIKTOR

 Shut up, lets get these girls out. (RUS)

VIKTOR goes and opens the shipping container doors 

Bright light shines through lighting up the girls in container.

 VIKTOR

Right (RUS)

VIKTOR walks towards the girls, the girls slide further away looking scared and worried. VIKTOR grabs a girl by the arms putting them behind her back. She is screaming, crying  and kicking. He drags her out of the container and mumbling abuse into her ear. VIKTOR closes the doors. We hear more screams and some slaps. 

DISSOLVE TO:

 

INT. SHIPPING CONTAINER. 

VIKTOR walks back into container grabs another screaming girl and drags her out.

VIKTOR comes back grabs the third girl and she tries to stand up for herself by slapping/hitting him. He puts her in an arm lock and pushes her about spitting and hitting her.  VIKTOR closes the doors.

Last girl left inside looking shocked and scared.

END.

Contacting a make-up artist

Today we emailed a student in our school we know is a good make-up artist. She may not be available on the day, so our back-up plan is that we will do it ourselves and buy the bruise wheel.

Opening sequences style, information, fonts and names

The Departed's opening sequence consists of an opening title of 'Boston, some years ago' and then the scene turns into old footage of fighting from the news. This is thrilling because it makes you wonder what happens next, it intrigues you to watch more.

Se7en's opening sequence consists of close ups of books, cutting out film and drawing. You do not see any specific characters, only their hands and pictures of people. In between these shots there are black scenes with credits on them in a hand written font which twitch to suggest eeriness. It has short, jump cuts to portray some horror.

Heat's opening sequence consists of titles on a black background with the font ''. Then there is a slow train coming towards the camera, also with credits of the actors in the film.

Costumes

Women

- Fish net tights
- Mini skirts
- Crop tops
- Sexualised outfits

-
Men

- Big overcoats
- Hat?
- Jeans
- Bomber jackets

Characters (looks)

The women in this sequence should have a caked face of makeup but smudged, to suggest they have been in the container for a few days. A few bruises on their bodies/face, because the men who are supposedly 'looking after them' beat them occasionally. Their hair should be very messed up and knotty. The basis of the girls looks should be pretty and always have an expression of fear on their faces.

The men in the sequence should look and act aggressive, have a big build and maybe some facial hair to suggest maturity. As we are at a sixth form most of the boys here look premature and not angry enough to pull off a role like this, therefore we will most likely get a teacher to do the role.

Location

Location wise we will be shooting in a shipping container on school property, which makes it easy for us to access and there is no need for travelling to go to our shoot location. We will empty the container and fill it up with our own props, making sure there's not a lot in the container as it is a human trade, not a normal shipping.

Audition Email

Today myself, Sasha and Ollie sent the email regarding roles for our Thriller to be shot in 2017. We are anticipating for the replies.

Character List

- 4 girls

- 1 big man

- 2 men having dialogue outside

Storyboard

Today we created our storyboard collectively but I drew it.

Feedback from Matt

Today we talked to Matt about our thriller idea and he gave us some feedback on it. Overall he enjoyed the idea but gave us some pointers on how to improve the sequence.
His suggestions went two ways:


1. We establish the environment we are in, creating the world inside the shipping container. One by one the girls get taken out by big angry men, relying heavily on dialogue and mise-en-scene. The girls will be screaming, crying and trying to stand up for themselves which will involve close ups and hand held camera action, to exaggerate the movement. Matt told us in this idea to remove the undercover, confident girl in this idea because we will find out about her later in the film.


2. In this sequence it will be based upon an action-thriller genre, where there is an undercover girl and as in the original sequence, stands up for herself, knocks out the guy who try's to lunge towards her and gets the gun off him. She then leaves the container and shoots the unsuspecting people outside, involving hand held camera movement to also exaggerate the movement. She gets all of the other girls out and they try to get to safety.


We will most likely do the 1st idea because it will be more thrilling for the audience as they do not know what the film will be about, making them intrigued to watch more.

Step outline to our sequence

1. We will first do an establishing shot of the inside of the cargo container, with all the girls sitting on the ground in spaced places.

2. There will be many close up of the girls distress, tears and worried looks on their faces.

3. They hear Russian dialogue outside, which makes them panicked, including close ups of their faces and uncomfortable mid shot of their bodies swirming.

4. The container doors will then open with a silhouette of a big man, who comes strolling in to get a girl.The light blinds the girls as they have been travelling for days.

5. The big man grabs a girl viciously by tugging her by the hair to pull her out of the container while she is screaming and crying for help. They then leave and theres a pleonastic sound of the doors slamming shut.

6. It then goes back to the girl's faces of distress.

7. The man comes back in and all the girls stand up, two back away and one stands there dead still.

8. Here could be a pan going up the confident girl, to show her body language.

9. The man looks at her like she's very cocky and smiles sarcastically.

10. He goes to grab her but she acts quickly, grabbing the knife out of her sock and bending his arm backwards. She then puts the knife to his neck.

11. She leads him out of the container in the position of her behind him and him looking shocked as he is lead out into the daylight.

12. A final long shot of them exiting the container, and that is the end of the sequence.

Contact Sheet

Myself:
Email: Kate.Shillitoe@hurtwood.net
Telephone: 07557331


Sasha Gerry:
Email: Sasha.Gerry@hurtwood.net
Telephone: 07427609


Ollie Wills:
Email: Oliver.Wills@hurtwood.net
Telephone: 07837224

Mood Board

 

 

 

 

Feedback from Mike

Today Mike, one of our teachers reviewed our idea and gave us some pointers on it. He said that we have to be more realistic with our idea because in human trafficking the deal with money usually happens before the trade, making our test shoot unrealistic and glamourised. Therefore we have to create more tension in this sequence by making it based in a cargo container, where 4 girls will be, waiting for their fate.
There will be Russian dialogue from outside the container, which will not make sense to the girls or the audience, creating suspense. A girl is taken out of the container by a big man, screaming and crying. There is intense suspense to what happens next here, with heavy breathing and sobbing. Then a big, Russian man comes in to get another girl, and 2 girls cower and go to the back of the container, meanwhile the main character stays put and in front of the other girls. She lunges towards the man and pulls out a pocket knife. The sequence ends with her leading him out and into the light of outside the container.

The test shoot

We tried to do a test shoot on the cyberbullying sequence but we soon realised that it will rely heavily on miss-en-scene. This would be a very difficult to do and making props seem suspenseful without dialogue is a hard task to achieve. We thought of another back up idea which consists of two business men having intense dialogue about a human trafficking trade. In the sequence it will consist of 4 Chinese businessmen, one girl and 2 Russian businessmen.

Preparing for the test shoot

I will be using my Canon G7X, which is a camera which is specified to make HD videos to film the test shoot and then we will edit it with the programme iMovie. We will be needing a couple of used cans; tampons and lipstick to suggest femininity; a laptop and a phone. We will scatter these props around and the laptop and phone will be used continually used throughout the sequence to manipulate the victims. We are expecting to create a series of different camera angles, such as a pan into the scene; extreme close ups of the eyes, mouth and phone; mid shot of behind the femme fatale and a establishing shot of the room she is in, a dark, decaying place. It is important to have a test shoot because then we can figure out if the idea is worth shooting seriously, and if we got to the proper shoot day and realised the idea is not as good as we imagined, it would cause chaos.

Our initial ideas

At first we all put our ideas onto the table, then Sasha and Franeck came up with the idea of a having a 'femme fatale' as the main character, based on the idea of cyberbullying. We would have a female leading character because this is counter typical to the average criminal who is stereotypically a man. We chose cyberbullying because it could be quite thrilling for the suspense of seeing the other side of the camera, from the bully's point of view. The mise-en-scene would be quite messy, in a dark room because the main character is a nerdy, psychopath that wants to be anonymous to people and tell them to do dark and sick things to themselves. The feedback we've had back so far is good, we are now almost ready to shoot a test shoot to see how it may be, before we commit to filming an actual opening sequence based on this idea.

Getting into our groups

Katie (our teacher) put us into thriller groups, and in my group is Ollie, Franeck, Sasha and myself. I would say that Franeck is the brain of the group, Ollie gives us extra thrilling ideas and Sasha is the one with the camera angles locked in her head. I am very happy with my group because we all have our own input and are not afraid to say our own opinions and give a wide range of ideas for the final project.

Thriller ideas inspiration

Idea 1 inspiration:

Idea 2 inspiration:

Idea 3 inspiration:

Thriller Ideas

Idea 1:

A man in a dark clothes is walking down an alley way, he turns round to hear some noise, this would be a close up of his facial expression then he continues to walk. A man turns around the corner and stares at him, he could have a mask on. He then starts to follow him and they both start running and he gets tackled down then the screen turns to black, then theres a fade in of the films title.

After this, he will wake up in the boot of a car, get out a paper clip and unlock the car from the inside and get out, brush himself down, feel his head which is throbbing with pain.

Idea 2:

The location is a shop and a two men walk in, just pretending to browse at food, and they share looks and give a sign to each-other, then they whip out some guns and point them at the woman behind the counter, shocked expression on her face, fast-pace action scene of them fighting.

Idea 3:

A man has a gun to another guys head, close up of his facial expression and there is intense dialogue between the two, the gun harshly pressed on the mans head. The man withdraws the gun and starts getting really angry then puts the gun to his own head. The man shoots himself then the guy trys to escape by getting his pocket knife and cutting the rope which has bound his hands together.

What is a Thriller?

A thriller is a novel, play or film with an exciting plot, typically involving crime or espionage. The aim of a thriller is to keep the audience alert and on the edge of their seats and the leading character in these films is set against a problem. For example an escape, mission or mystery. Sub-genres are involved such as:


Action Thriller


This type of film uses fast pace, stunts and physical action to create suspense. It still has all the action, chases and fights like a normal action film, but has constant danger occupying the main character. For example, Die Hard:

Crime Thriller

This type of film consists of a typical thriller, with crime film plot. This will involve a serial killer, murderer and a man hunt, and the film focuses on the criminal and the main character. They use psychological and action aspects to create suspense. For example, The Usual Suspect:

Film-Noir

This type of film involves black and white style and stark lighting effects and the main character is usually a cynical hero.

Psychological Thriller

This type of film incorporates elements of drama and mystery, the suspense is created in the mind, rather than in physical threat.

Science-Fiction Thriller

This type of film will involve villains, superheroes, fantastical quests and advanced technology. For example, Aliens:

Religious Thriller

This type of film uses religious themes, ceremonies and objects. They normally involve supernatural experiences like exorcisms, demon possessions and church cover-ups. For example, The Devil's Advocate:

Preliminary task

We were told to film a basic, storyboarded scene which had to be shot in at least five different shots. Wide first, then one set of over the shoulder, close ups and then the reverse of these two shots. After we completed the basic shoot, we were then able to film any additional shots that we might want to have in our sequence, to make it more interesting.

On set we used the terms:

Standby

Rolling

Action

Cut

We used a story board to direct the film. I was one of the actors and my friends placed the cameras within the 180 degree rule.

I thought the process went really well, the camera angles were very good, but we needed experienced actors, as in the sequence it was a bit awkward to film inexperienced actors, they were uncomfortable to film in front of a camera. Next time, we should film in a more professional area, so we didn't have bad lighting and no objects in the background to distract the audience.

When completing my thriller sequence, I will go back to this preliminary task and take advice from it as well as what Matt taught us about the 180 degree rule. This will also help me with the variety of shot angles we learned to create, giving new perspectives which will give more effect on the thriller sequence.

I should be prepared for bad shots, out of focus actors and a repetition of the same shots over and over. My group shall counteract that by being professional and organised.

Analysis: We constructed the sequence according to the story board, and added in some of our own skills on top. We used over wide shots, mid shots, over the shoulder, close ups and extreme close ups.

We kept the angles at eye level, to not make any of the actors seem more powerful than the other. We were trying to represent a tense scene between two people and have a cliff hanger at the end. I thought we were quite successful in the fact that we used two inexperienced actors and have only shot one sequence before this one. The skills I have learned from this while filming is to always focus the shot before filming (one of our scenes is out of focus). Using the camera gear was easier than I thought, but it was very heavy to move around. The software was easy to use and edit our sequence, we had no technical problems during the editing process. We achieved the representation by having an extreme close up of Ollie, to show the emotion in his eyes and get the audience to feel sympathy for him.