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Tuesday 12 January 2010

Group meeting 3

After watching our filming back we have made some decisions about the changes we want to make to our opening.
-We have decided that we need to make the scene where our antagonist is packing away his suitcase shorter.
-We have also decided to include a scene in between the antagonist leaving work and him arriving home. This scene will
show him stalking the protagonist and it will also improve the continuity.
-We also decided that we wanted to include more dialogue.
-We also want to use more of a variety of angles.

We also need to continue working on our soundtrack and credits.

By Chloe Barnham, Charlotte Hallisey and Sadaq Mohammed.

Monday 11 January 2010

Our thriller movie soundtrack

After watching many thrillers between us, we tried to pick out a type of sound we thought would suit our thriller. We listened to the soundtracks on various thrillers such as 'North by North West', 'Vertigo', 'Seven', 'The Birds', 'Psycho', 'Jaws', 'Hostage' and many more, to get an idea of the type of sounds associated with thrillers. Many were creepy, fast tempo, high-low pitched, frantic sounds. We decided we wanted a more discreet sound track to suit the personality of our main character (the stalker) but with hints of creepiness/horror in the soundtrack to make it more thrilling. We learnt about the two different types of sound used for soundtracks: digetic and non digetic and decided we wanted a mixture in ours.
We had previously experiemented with garage band as it was a new programme to us, which we spent time getting used to a learning how to use it. We had already decided on a base sound to suit our thriller deciding on a classical sound called emotional 1. This is suited to the OCD stalker in our thriller, we also added a pulsing sweep sound to accompany the classical, which added a sense of unormality and sounded quite eerie. We also got this from garage band. Towards the end of the track, we had sudden, loud heartbeat sounds to add a bit of panic and fear to the track. We got this sound free from sounddogs.
We are still developing our soundtrack, and would like to experiment with different pitches and tempos and maybe add a bit more digetic sound to our soundtrack to make it more creepy and effective as a thriller soundtrack. In away we would also like it to tell the story as we don't have any dialogue in our thriller. This will make it more effective.

Wednesday 6 January 2010

Thriller conventions

Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp, and Claude Levi-Strauss are theorists who have different ideas about the conventions that make up thriller films. We have used these theories to help us develop the ideas for our own opening.

Roland Barthes believes that if you look at films from lots of different perspectives you are able to gain a greater understanding of a film. He also believes that most thriller movies have narrative codes, which are used to help analysis and define a film’s meaning. These codes include; action and enigma codes, symbols and signs, simple description and points of cultural reference. This theory defiantly applies to certain areas of our own opening because we have tried to create an enigma code, when the antagonist is watching the protagonist. The audience does not know why he is watching her, therefore creating and enigma code. Our opening also finishes with an enigma code because we focus on a date and the audience does not yet know why the date is circled.

Tzvetan Todorov is a theorist who pay’s particular focus to thrillers. He believes that thrillers generally follow a distinctive pattern, where they begin with a state of equilibrium. As the film progresses the equilibrium is then disrupted, followed by the acceptance that the equilibrium has changed. The protagonist then tries to re-establish the stability that has been lost, which is what eventually happens. This theory applies to our own opening because although towards the end of our opening, something suspicious is happening, nothing has actually happened to our victim yet and she is carrying on with her everyday life.

Vladimir Propp’s theory focuses on character roles. His theory states that there are eight main character roles:
The villain.
The hero
The false hero (take praise for the work done by the hero)
The dispatcher (sends the hero on his way)
The donor (someone who provides the hero with a magical object)
The helper (helps the hero)
The princess (the one who is the hero’s reward and the object of the villains schemes)
Her farther.

Although out opening does include a princess and a villain our opening does not posses all of the characters who are included in Propp’s theory, its is left open meaning there is still the potential for the rest of the characters to follow in the rest of the film. A theory like this has given us guidance on the sort of characters we would include in the movie to help make our opening convincing as a thriller.

The final theorist we have looked at is Claude Levi-Strauss. Strauss focuses on narrative structures by looking at the binary opposites, such as love and hate and good and evil, which constantly cause conflict within the film. We can apply this theory to our opening because there is a clear contrast between the two characters we meet in the opening.

By Chloe Barnham

Tuesday 5 January 2010

Pitch

Pitch


Posted by Chloe and Charlotte

Health and Safety.

A crucial factor that we had to take into consideration before we could begin shooting was health and safety. It was important that we were aware of any health and safety issues that we may face before we went out to film. One of the main factors that we had to take into consideration was the fact that part of our opening sequence is filmed near a busy road, meaning we had to aware of the passing traffic. To overcome this issue we decided that we would film at a time when the roads were quite, meaning we limited the risk that was involved with filming this scene, also by filming at a quieter time we were able to reduce any background noise. In general most of our pieces are filmed inside and generally in areas which do not pose a real health a safety risk, however we still took basic health and safety steps, when filming, to keep as safe as possible.

By Chloe Barnham