Analysis of the Film

I believe after watching our final video that there is some room from some alterations and maybe somthings we could of done better....

The first shot of dan covering the screen you can hear sams voice which makes the shot look less effective :( Also Dans hat does not help the shots as it shows that we did not follow any comstum through the film. Although it could be said that it is good as michelle is also wearing it in the flashbacks and shows that they used to be together.

We tried hard to try and find a sound effect that worked well with the flashbacks but we failed to do so as every thing we tried didnt sound soo good so we ended up leaving it black and left it with just the crying.

We could of added more titles instead of just having our names once as there is very little titles.



Even though there are some things that could have been done better i am still very pleased with the video and think that we did a good job in making a opening to a thriller.


Good times :) xx

vampyr

Pete Fraser recommended that we watch a Danish film called "Vampyr" from 1932...this was because it included a burial that reminded him of our shot of dan covering the screen with dirt.



Watch, if you dare!!!!!?

Why Dead Cat?????? UGetMe boss

One question we were asked by the other group, why Dead Cat productions??

Well the story goes way back to the day of our groups filming, after a hard day of filming, me and Dan were going to catch the bus from Linton to Cambridge city centre, when we suddenly heard a painful moan from the middle of the road, we looked over and saw it was a cute little ginger cat who's neck was bent the wrong way and it was coughing up blood, Dan stodd in the road to divert traffic while i ran to the nearest house to ask for help.

Some old lady gave me a number for the vet i called them up and the woman was such a b**ch, i said to her the cats neck is in a bent place so picking it up could break its neck, and she told her colleague it was "a young lad who doesnt want to touch it" - what a pr**k! so then when i finally convinced the idiot to send the vet it came and like a split second before the cat had a little fit and died - typical!!

It was put in a bag picked up from a pool of its own coughed up blood..

THIS IS WHY WE DEDICATED OUR THRILLER TO THE DEAD CAT

BRAPPP

Feedback from Final Video

In class we watched our final videos on the big screen :)

The main feedbak we got was that dans hat was not welcomed int the video and many people thought that it made the video look less professional and that costum for the sequence was not very well thought out.

People also liked the shots of car being at begining anf the end like a circle

Music was better than the rough cuts music

Good flashbacks (colours help to understand) many people thought they didnt work though. in the way of the ploe :(

Feedback from our class

People felt that starting with the car and ending with the car was an effective way of beginning and ending our thriller opening sequence.
The music was also thought to be very effective, and that it was better than our rough cut music.

A common criticism was of Dan's hat and that it did not suit a killer.

more to come in this post lesson ended lol

YouTube Video of our thriller

Feedback from other groups on our thriller

We asked:
Do you understand the plot?

Feedback:
"Yes, it is very clear and a good idea. The betrayal of the couple."

Question:
What did you like or dislike about he titles?

Feedback:
"All the titles were very well positioned but the title that said betrayal was maybe a bit too big for a thriller"

Question:
Do you think we can improve any elements of the video?

Feedback:
"No, you don't need to, its perfect"

Question:
Did the sound fit well with the sequence? Explain?

Feedback:
The sound was helpful in luring in he audience and making it thrilling!!!

Were very happy with our feedback

Feedback

How does the film use genre conventions?
"the gaze", flashbacks, setting contrast-dark + light

Can you catogorise the film opening in to sub-genre?
thriller/horror/scary?

Could the film pass for professional work? if not why?
this actual piece couldn't although we are sure the idea has been/ could be used in a professional film. Most of the shots are very good but not a professional quality

What do you think will happen in the rest of the film? (narrative)
explaining what leads to her being killed, consequences of the death, if the killer goes on to kill more people

How does music create atmosphere? does it do it effectively? if not why?
the music accurately creates a tense and eerie atmosphere. The inclusion of a sound almost like a choir as the body is buried involves the feeling of a funeral service.

Our final video

Overall, we are all very pleased with our final thriller, we all paticularly like the shot which creates a contrast where Michelle is smiling in a flashback but her crying is heard in the background. Another shot we paticularly liked is the one of dan shovelling mud onto michelle from her point of view.

FINAL VIDEO

unused footage

some of the footage that we planned to have used included many aspects from our animatics.
we filmed Dans eye up close moving from side to side which we thought would be really good and effective however in the feedback we recieved we found out that a lot of people thought it was erelevant and confusing. this is why we decided to remove it from our sequence.

there is also a huge scene where Dan walks into the house and then washes his hands which was supposed to lead into the rest of the film however we replaced it with him driving away in a car which seems to really stand out more and give the audience a sense of sequence.

Final without music

Adam has now got some footaage that we reccently filmed some cars on the road and shots of cars pulling up intoan area. we may imliment these shots in tou our final footage. I feel these shots could really act to the overeall efect and undesatnding of our opening sequence. We are going to impliment them into the existing roughcut then we will add in the new footage then upload the video back on to the blog.

Editing

Following our rough cut feedback we are editing our thriller, in conjunction with the improvements needed that have been brought to our attention. We are re-shooting our sink shot as we feel the blood looks too unrealistic, and also the shot was shot using a school camera whereas we used Adam's camera to film the majority of our thriller, and Adam's camera shot in wide screen so we need to film the sink shot in wide screen using Adam's camera.

We are in the process of completing our final version, we will film the shots we need outside lesson time.

I, personally am confident that we will be able to produce a good thriller with the footage we have shot and with the editing capabilities of Final Cut.

Rough Cut

Rough Cut Feedback.

People thought that our thriller opening sequence flowed well and that the changing colour between the murder and the flashbacks was very good. Good variety of angles and close-up shots,
The viewers really liked the shot of Michelle in the ditch.

There was some negative feedback, especially concerning the blood in the sink shot as it looked realistic, we had already planned to re-shoot that shot.

People also thought that the murderer walking into the house was strange

sound and work done so far

our group went out and asked a member from another group to make screaming noises and crying noises for our video as the original sound we had for our video was terrible and had to be erased completely.

what we have done so far is rendered our footage and cut some footage out of our video.
we have also done the day for night effect on some of the footage in our video, which looks very good as we really wanted our footage to be dark like the night but were scared it would be too dark to see.

our footage has also been put in the right order as a rough cut.

problems but solutions aswell

what our group is doing now is rendering our video. a problem we encountered during the uploading of our video was that we used another type of camera to the college cameras which caused some problems with the final cut system as it would not allow it.

however we decided to upload it to imovie instead so we could change the format and import it into final cut.

Filming + Problems encountered.

We shot in Linton in Adams village, we got all our shots done in the time slot of 11am to 8pm, we did encounter some problems:

Firstly, Rachel was meant to be the girl in our movie but was unavailable at the time, to overcome this problem Adam called up one of his friends and Michelle played the role instead.

Secondly, The ground we chose was too hard to dig a hole in, to encounter this problem we used a ditch in Adams garden.

Other than these out filming went smoothly and according to plan.

We are very happy with the outcome and are in the process of uploading it onto final cut right now.

Some Ideas We May Use For Our Titles

We found some good Final cut tutorials that we may use for our titles.

This is one that may help us with some effects (When the eye appears from the R)

Editing Test Footage

we have uploaded our test footage and are now going to be trying out vaiouse filters and effects which we feel will make our final projects better.

Some ideas for filters and effects include a day to night filter.. we are also going to brows throught the final cut effects to see if there are anyothers that we feel can aid the effectiveness and atmosphere of or thriller.

love dan xx

Test footage

Our group went out and filmed some test footage in the forest at the edge of the long road field, we are going to try some effects on the clip to see what sort of final cut effects we would like to use in our thriller.

The second part of the test footage is to show us what the camera shot of the leaves falling on the camera will look like, using day for night and adjusing using colour corrector by making more blacks than middle colours, and by turning the saturation down to 0.

FINAL ANIMATIC

This is our final ideas without the music being prefected.




This is the basic layout and stucture of our sequence and we hope to keep the same order when we eventually film. The Titles at the beging want be like that as I only put them in to practice using the program and to gain a better knowledge.

From the title 'BETRAYAL' the eye will be brought in from the R. The final shot will be of the eye movie around to represent the killer as a mental man with problems. The Shot of the Killer looking through the cupboard and taking some Anti-depresents also shows the same thing as the eye shot, that the killer is having problems with coming to terms that he has lost his ex-girlfriend and now just killed her.





PICTURE IDEAS

Here are some Picture ides for shots that we will have in the sequence.



We can aim for a shot like this when the killer puts his Ex-girlfriend in the pit.





We could use this idea to light up the setting.

Feedback From Animatic

Some guy thought that our title was not symmetrical at the end when the word "BETRAYAL' Dan swanton

Pete said it was fantastic and he couldnt ask for more.

the titles were too small apparently.

Animatic

This is a Short clip of our Animatic.....

Past student example: Surface.

surface was very good and used a variety of shots we belied that he jumping moving shots worked very good to greate a thriller atmosphere.

One aspect i felt was paticularly effective was the noise at the climax of the sequence, which is a very realistic sound of a knife braking flesh

Feedback to our pitch,

The majority of our class felt that our pitch for our thriller idea was too complicated, although we believe that we can pull it off, in light of hearing the feedback we have taken out some of the shots such as the first shot of a wheel driving in, the reason we did this as we felt that it would take extra time and effort, and would not really be beneficial for us, and for our thriller.

Our class belived our flashback idea was goood although we are having doubts to whether we are going to pursue this idea as it may be to complicated to film and fit into our timescale.

FINAL Pitch

The back story is of the killer who used to date this women but since then see left him and is now dating a another man. This drives the killer to go crazy and finally ends up in him killing her.


The beginning of the sequence will start with a car pulling up into a forest (car wheel pulling up on a leafy road). You hear the doors open and close and see a pair of feet dragging a body. (same shot) Hear a thud as the body lands in a pit that the killer has already made.

Next will be a shot POV shot of the person in the pit looking up and by putting some perspex plastic on the camera we will gradually fill shot with dirt (killer dropping dirt onto the body in the pit. (There will be short flash backs of the girl thinking of her new boyfriend)

The next main shot will be of the killer back at his house cleaning his bands (you will see a picture of him and the girl that he just berried.

The Titles will come up after this and we will use many effects for them.

Pitch

We have prepared a rough storyboard for our opening sequence, it will be based on someone who is a killer, For the opening sequence we inted to hav someone laying underneath a sheet of perspex as dirt is thrown on top of them simulationg someone being buried. WE are also intending to have the dirt thrown on in sinc with the baking track emphasising when the dirt is being shoved ontop of the person givinbg a very good effect. We will then fade into the first lot of the titles wich will be ontop of a black screen. We will be using crashes between synths - to create some disturbing atmosphere. We will then go into a shot of the killer washing his hands and the blood washing down the sink mabe with titles flowing wih the water. Then there will be ahsot of the killers eyes.

We still are yet to finalise the ideas and we may include and change ideas if we think of better or improved ones

Final Cut Video.

This is the first video i made, just playing around and getting used to Final Cut.

I am legend opening titles

Here is the video I watched in order to study titles conventiions, a great movie the startinbg section has a very jumpy part when the deers run infront of the car.

They show a small snippit of a news story at the start, which foreshadows the story.

The Start

Before we make our Thirller opening/Title sequence we did some work to get used to the final cut and garageband programs. We made some videos using footage of new york city and we added titles from the the film 'Matchstick men'. After that we added some music that we composed in Garageband.



In Final Cut we learnt how to...

- Layer the videos
- Use fades and trasactions
- Soundtrack and soundwaves
- Get an idea of some of the effects
- Add Titles and Title effects

After final cut we started to look at Garageband and we learnt how to make title soundtracks and also to add as a video track.

We looked at many other openings to thillers and also people brought some films in and talked about them.

Welcome

This is the first post for Dan,Emile,Adam and Sam.

We hope to do much planning and create a good thriller opening sequence.


There will be many other posts..