The Pitch

during the lesson, we were given the task to create a pitch in order to "sell" our storyline to our teacher as if we were actually in the industry trying to win over potential producers and funders. As a group we generate an initial idead and storyline which we thought was a cross between a traditional revenge thriller and teen horror. this therefor makes our idead quite unique as it crosses over 2 sub-genres of horror but also will relates to our younger audiences.

The Idea: A girl is not invited to a party as she is being bullied at her school. she then goes carzy and decides to seek her revenge on all those who ever bullied her by doing voodoo while the party is happening. One by one people start dying according to the way in which she is playing with the voodoo dolls.

The Location: for the party scene, we decided to use the drama room because it is quite a large space and can become quite dark. Whereas for the voodoo scene, we are using Deemarli's bedroom and livingroom and builiding a fake shrine to give emphasis to the idea of voodoo.

costumes and character allocations are yet to be decided.

Filming and Editing

I was handling the camera and used the zoom for a variety of shots such as the extreme close ups of Shekira’s eyes to create added tension to the short film. The close ups of her eyes and her slamming the newspaper on the table, shows the viewer that she has seen something that she didn’t want to see or something frightening. A Long shot was taken of Shekira walking towards the table where the initial film will take place. This shows her journey towards the table. Also, mid-shots were taken of her sitting down at the table, this simply shows what she’s doing and her body language which at this stage was positive. In terms of editing we took several takes of each shot so we could have a variety to choose from when it came to the initial cutting stage.

Match cut Exercise Overview

Me and Shekira were present in the lesson and were given a handout with a task stating that we had to film a person reading a newspaper in a thrilling way, in some way this seemed slightly difficult as we thought how this could be done but with our ideas combined we figured out a general outline for the silent match cut film exercise.

Shekira was the actor and I was handling the camera and was director. We planned what we were going to do by drawing up a storyboard and sketching each of the shots we were going take. These consisted of long shots, panning/tracking shots, close/extreme close ups, mid shots and over the shoulder shots.

We then went on to book the camera and tripod and went to the downstairs hall/lobby and set up next to the sofas and tables, we then got out props, which was a newspaper and started filming

Thriller practical-Pitch

Yesterdays lesson was beggining to create a pitch for the short title sequence I will be making in class. A pitch is a concise verbal and sometimes visual presentation of an idea for a film, generally made by a screenwriter or director to a producer or studio executive in the hope of attracting development finance to pay for the writing of a screenplay.
I will be pitching the idea for the title sequence to my class with my group these are the type of things we will have to discuss when presenting our ideas:
1.The title of the movie
2.The treatment(brief outline of the film)
3.What type(subgenre)of thriller is it
4.Planned locations and location shots
5.Props, costumes and other mise en scene
6.Full storyboard or animatic including titles
7.Preliminary ideas about sound
8.Production schedule(what are you doing and when)
9.Risk assessment
10.Skills audit to date
11.Institutional detail-which company would produce the film and how would that affect PDE
12.Audience deal-who is the target audience and what would appeal to them
The pitch will be 15minutes and has to include a lot of detail about the title sequence.

Match Cut (Short practice film) Task.

On the 08/02/10 we were given a practical task to create a short practice film worth 15% of our final coursework grade. This short practice film could be any genre revolving any situation as long as it contains two characters and includes one character entering the scene as part of the clip. Before preparing for the task we were given a sheet explaining what specific shots we had to include, we had to include a shot reverse shot, a 180 degree shot and a match cut shot. I personally found the shot reverse shot the most simple to apply as the position of the characters allowed the shot to flow effectively.

To prepare for the practical task efficiently and ensure everything would run smoothly we began by creating a story board showing exactly what happens, when and where. Myself and my group found this stage of the task quite simple as we all had a lot of ideas to include. After this step we had to decide where we was going to include the three various shots during our piece, we attempted to apply these shots in the most appropriate places creating an impact.

I found it quite difficult trying to apply the three shots in a symbolic way because I wasn’t as familiar with the shots as I thought, I only realised this whilst trying to plot the shots appropriately. As part of the completion process for our piece we had to edit our short film, I initially found this stage difficult but as I got the hang of it I learnt how to edit smoothly and understand the editing process thoroughly. There were only some simple problems whilst editing such as selecting where the input and output should be placed on a clip and getting the clips to flow altogether but watching the clip in detail and shorting and lengthening the durations of clips made it less complex.

This task overall was very useful and allowed me to gain a good understanding of different shots, editing, story boards, and camera techniques. This practical task also showed me what to expect when working on our thriller title sequences.

Analysis of a title sequence

In preparation for making my short thriller title sequence i was looking at and analysing different title sequences and font types. 'The Pink Panther' title sequence caught my attention because of the bright pink colours on a black background, the animation and large Ariel writing.

The curve of the little 'H',animation and the font itself suggests a humorous genre, but the solidarity and clarity of the title suggests a more adult/mature humor.If you look closely the word 'The' is a bit small compared to the rest of the font, i thgought it was a clever way to catch the audiences attention with the words 'Pink Panther'.
The title sequence suggests that this film is informal and the colours work well togther making it appear as there is a range of colour when infact there are only three.

Match cut task

In today’s lesson we had a task which was to create a clip which had the following shots within it; one shot reverse shot, one 180 degree shot and one match cut shot. I thought this task was going to be easy but I underestimated it at the beginning, and found out in the end, that it is hard to get all of the shots perfect and for them to all link within one scene. Before we could start shooting me and my partner Shekira had to come up with an idea of what the scene was going to be about. First of all we brain stormed a few ideas that we both had. Then we both put our ideas together and formed a storyline. The concept of the storyline was an angry young male going to meet his girlfriend who had something to tell him. After we decide on the storyline we immediately started to plan the mise en scene for the scene and started planning the type of shots we were going to have and how we were going to incorporate all the shots we had to include into the scene. We did all our planning by story boarding what was going to happen in the scene step by step.

Once we finished all our planning we started to film our shots. In the scene I was the boy actor therefore I didn’t get to do a lot of filming. However I had a lot of input in how the shot should be taken. For example I and my partner would record a one shot from one angel a few times, then we would watch back one the clips, then discuss how it looks. After that I would give my opinion of the shot and we would film exactly the same shot from a different angel or with different lighting. I think that the match shot we did, when the angry boy walked through the door was very smooth and vey professional and was the easiest shot to film out of the film. Then I believe that the shot reverse shot between the two characters arguing worked well. However I believe to make this work better we could have made the shots a lot shorter and quicker therefore it would have made the conversation a lot more realistic. Finally I think the hardest shot to film was the 180 degree shot, this was simply because we did not understand what a 180 degree shot was, we thought that it was more like a panning shot from one character to another. Then when finished editing our shots and putting them together using “Live Type” a video editing programme. We found out that our shot that we thought was a 180 degree shot was incorrect. Then we were told what a real 180 degree shot was, which is a basic guideline in film making that states two characters/other elements in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. This was useful to me so that I knew the true defection of 180 degree shot and to make sure that I don’t make the same mistake in future filming sessions.

I found that our editing process was very easy because we had a variety of shots to choose from that connected the storyline together. One thing that I think we could have improved on was the connections between different cuts to make sure the clip run smoothly. However on a whole I believe that we did quite well for a task we were given only a few hours before having to plan film and edit it all in one day. I was really proud of the clip and it made me aware of my weak and strong points within filming and editing. I also liked the use of our creativity at the end when there is shot of a blank screen and you can only hear the boy’s voice in the background. That shot was such a simple shot but very effective.