Group planning - Miss Georgiou

Group planning

In my group there is Molly Emmerson, Jake Butler and myself. The group meetings that we had were an essential part of the planning of our opening sequence as they gave each of us the chance to voice any of our new ideas and then work together in order to improve our final narrative. It made sure that we each had equal roles and made equal contributions within the planning process, and that we all knew how we wanted our opening sequence to look visually.

In the first group meeting we each explained our individual narrative ideas and then discussed how we would be able to incorporate the best elements from each into the overall group narrative. For example, both Molly and I came up with the idea to start our opening sequence with an enigma. We decided that the suicide of the antagonist would be an effective way to do this. For the outline of our group narrative plot we combined the idea that Molly and I had previously come up with that would be based around a character who has a split personality disorder. We all agreed that an easy way for the audience to identify that our opening sequence is the beginning of a thriller film is by making the victims female and the antagonist male. From the very beginning of the planning process we had decided that there were only going to be three characters in our opening sequence, the antagonist, Cameron, his mother, Grace and finally his girlfriend, Harmony. The female characters have names that represent the fact that they are the victims and therefore their innocence. This made it easy for us when it came to planning the characters in our sequence as we already had an idea of how we wanted them to appear on screen, what their characteristics would be and the background story to the antagonist.

In the next group meeting we began to plan the Mise-en-scene that we hoped to use in our opening sequence. We did this by breaking down our group narrative idea and then discussing the elements of Mise-en-scene that we believed would work best, this included iconography, the setting, lighting and colour, the positioning of the characters and their costumes, hair and makeup. For example, we decided that for the murder of the mother character our antagonist would use a knife as we would be able to use sound effects and make up during the editing stage in order to make the death more emphasised and shocking for the audience to watch. The planning of the cinematography involved discussing five different shots that we hoped to use in our opening sequence. The five techniques that our group wanted to use were a close up, handheld, point of view, low angle and a medium shot. This was easy for us to decide as a group due to them being common techniques that we had used in our individual narrative ideas. They are also often used in the thriller genre, for example, handheld is used to create a sense of panic due to the shaky movement of the camera which therefore creates tension and anticipation. Also, a low angle is used to make one character, usually the victim, appear inferior to another character, the antagonist. As a group, deciding the Mise-en-scene and cinematography that we were going to use was made easier by previous class discussions about which elements are conventional to the thriller genre and through analysising different thriller sequences.

For the next group meeting that we had we were asked to decided three different editing styles that we were going to use in our opening sequence that would be conventional to the thriller genre. Our group decided to use a reaction shot, slow editing and a filter to show the flashback following the suicide at the beginning of the sequence. A reaction shot is typical to the thriller genre as it helps the audience to get a better understand of how the characters are feeling. Slow editing is when the transition from each frame is slowed down which is conventional to the thriller genre as it helps to build suspense due the sequence is prolonged which leaves the audience waiting for longer to see what happens next.

During the sound discussion, we decided which on screen, off screen, parallel, diegetic and non diegetic sounds we were going to use at different times in our opening sequence. To do this we looked back over the most common sounds that are used in the other thrillers films that we had previously analysed. For example, we noticed that in Psycho, Saw and Orphan when the antagonist is killing their victim using a knife, the sound of the knife stabbing the skin and then the sound of the victim screaming are two diegetic sounds that can be heard by the audience. As a group we decided to use both of these sounds in our opening sequence while the antagonists mother is being killed. This will make it easier for our group to tell the audience what is happening without actually showing them the knife or the victim as she is being stabbed. Other sounds that the audience will be able to hear in our opening sequence is the dialouge between the characters and our chosen theme song "tiptoe round the tulips" that will play when our title is on screen.

Before we discussed how we wanted the opening credits of our opening sequence to appear, we were asked to watch the credits to the film Se7en, and then analyse how they were conventional to the thriller genre. For example, we discussed that the messy writing that the title and names were written in could represent the mental instability of the antagonist. Also, the pictures in the sequence could represent the victims within the film as there were occasional splashes of red on the screen which typically connotes the idea of blood, danger and death. We then created individual opening credits, making sure that they were conventional to the thriller genre.  For my own idea, I decided that the title of our film "Disturbia" will fade into the screen at the beginning of the sequence and then out of the screen at the end, which I believe will appear mysterious and chilling. This is conentional to the thriller genre as the antagonist is usually hidden and lurking in the backgroup, which creates an eerie atmosphere and makes the audience feel unerved. The font text that I have used is bold and stands out against the black background. The line of red that runs through the middle of the white text represents that blood and death of the victims. This follows the conventions of a thriller as the death of the victim is typically brutal and bloody. After we had completed our own ideas, we sent them to the other members of our group to look over and discuss the strengths and weaknesses in each. For example, Molly used the colour black for the background to represent the evil side of the antagonist, and then red and white to represent the victims, and how the antagonist has power over them, due to black being the most dominant colour. Even though the three individual ideas that we had designed were all, in their own ways, conventional to the thriller genre, we agreed to use Molly's idea going forward due to hers being the most developed and relevant to our own group narrative, which was easy for our group to decide.

To start with we each had to create an idividual storyboard that was roughly 20 frames long. This would give us an idea of how we expect our sequence to look visually. We then looked over each other's storyboards to see if we had done anything similar or differently. Due to our previous group meetings, we all had similar looking individual storyboards which made it easier to put together a group one. We all knew how we wanted the sequence to look, however for some of the frames we had planned to use a different camera technique.

The filming scedule was a guideline for our group to follow in order for us to complete the filming of our opening sequence in the time given. Most of the filming of our thriller was done by myself and Molly. I acted as the cameraman for the majority of the filming, while Molly was one of the actors within our production. However, we were able to film the sequence will limited problems due to the group storyboard that we had created together in previous lessons. We knew where the camera needed to be postioned in order to achieve a certain shot, for example, for the point of view shot during the dinner scene the camera would need to be placed directly in front of the antagonist, whose point of view we had decided to use.

The risk assessment meeting was to allow our group to identify any possible problems that may occur at any time during the filming of our opening sequence. If we were able to identify the risks before we started to film, it would help us to prevent them from happening at all. We all knew that the use of a knife and rope in our opening sequence were two of the biggest risks that we had. Then, after identifying any risks within our production, we discussed how we could prevent them from happening. There were some problems that we faced during the editing stage and were ones that we had not predicted would be a problem. For example, after looking over the footage we realised that some frames did not fit well with the rest of the sequence, which therefore resulted in us having to film the same frames again.