Deciding on the location

This is a photo from the planning stages of our thriller opening during which time we had to decide what location would be most effective convenient and appropriate for our piece. As you can see, we noted down a range of potential locations noting down both the positives and negatives of each before discussing the options. After a group discussion a decision was made to film our piece in Darley Dale due to it being the most fitting for what we had in mind for our thriller opening.

Sounds used within our thriller opening (post-production)

During the planning of our thriller, we did not plan to add diegetic sounds in as we thought that our camera would pick up such sounds. However, when filming it proved difficult to pick up sounds such as the car door closing which were almost crucial as these sounds helped make our piece look natural and flow better. We therefore used the website http://www.sounddogs.com/ to get the sound of the creaking of the gate.

Due to the tight atmosphere we wanted to create due to the nature of our opening (thriller genre), we thought it would be effective if we used a wind sound effect. This helped to create a chilling and rather spooky tone to our opening and helped in the foreshadowing of the more negative events yet to come. We therefore created this sound using a software called Mixcraft. Once we had added this sound it was important that we got it at the right volume so that it was still able to be heard but did not overpower the voiceover. Its important that the voiceover be more loud that sound effects as the voice over is crucial in telling the audience the story of the Marshlands.

Filming

Bellow shows two photos from one day of filming. as you can see, we all had direct involvement in the important decisions such as deciding which camera angle was most suitable and whether it looked effective on film. Setting up the equipment was also important in doing it right not only for the safety of the equipment itself but for establishing the best angle/shot using things such as the tripod.

Music Practice

http://laurajaynebacom.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/music-practise.html
The link will lead you to the music that we created on the music software of mixcraft. This piece of group work enabled us to experiment with sound in order to find appropriate background music for our thriller opening.

Storyboard for our Preliminary Piece

These are the storyboards that we started to create for our Preliminary Piece. These were useful in creating guidelines for us to follow when filming and helped us in terms of experience with storyboarding when it comes to the planning of our Thriller Opening.

 

As you can see, we did not finish these storyboards. This was because we were rushed for time and so focused more on filming than thoroughly planning the piece. This taught us that when it comes to our Thriller Opening we need to start planning earlier in order to develop a well structured plan for the piece.

Camera Angles for our Preliminary Piece

Bellow show some stills that we took when we began planning for our Preliminary Piece. we chose to take photos instead of drawing storyboards because it enabled us to use the camera to our advantage in the sense that we could experiment and see what camera angle we wanted to use within the piece.

These pictures gave us a baseline that we could refer to when it came to filming the piece and it helped us stick to what we had planned which shows that this method od planning was effective for our Preliminary Piece.

This this photo you can see a low angle shot to show the character running. This closer shot allows the audience to see that the character is in a rush.

This was originally how we had planned this shot to look like however, after filming, the shot changed slightly where we film the character from the other side.

We chose to use this shot because it not only gave a full view of the character but it also helped set the scene as you can see the school in the background.

Practising with green screen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqXc4unVAUs This video shows the work we did with a green screen shortly after our preliminary piece which was created using Adobe Premier Pro (chroma key effect). We did this to evaluate our piece and found it an effect way in using different editing software's. This allowed us to work using methods of which we never have done before and gave us more experience with such media technologies. Although this method of evaluation proved to be too time consuming, it was an effective way in gaining experience and helped in the preparation of our thriller opening.