Our production

Our production:

Preliminary task – our first task was to come up with a story line, which we found a challenge making it something interesting and thrilling. The brief said we needed 4 lines of dialogue, with someone walking into a room and sitting at a chair. We decided the best way to go about this would be to come up with a thriller story and find how we could put in the dialogue and chair into the scenario we had come up with. We ended up deciding that someone walking into a room, and the turning of a key. When the key is turn blood appears on the door and on the hand, when walking into a room a flashback of a man held hostage is shown, then bought into the current situation of a deal between 2 men – where the dialogue is transferred. We decided that the use of with flashbacks and jump cuts would be best, as we could have the scene we wanted with the hostage, and then add in the necessary components in order to meet the brief.

Filming of our preliminary – For our filming, we found it difficult to choose a location. We decided on the drama studio because we could use the lighting and effects. We left it quite late to film, so the beginning bit of walking into a room and the turning of a key on a door section didn’t look how we planned it, as we couldn’t find a room with a lock, so ended up using a cupboard which, not surprisingly, looked awful, but had run out of time to re-film. We learned from this to allow more time for filming and try and film quickly so the editing could be done to its best. We found that the lighting setting in the drama studio could be used really effectively and so we could make our hostage section look really thrilling. From this we took that the hostage scenes work well and then we could try and incorporate one into our final piece.

Editing of our preliminary – in the editing we found that it is useful to have extra filming either side of the clip, so you can decide exactly when it best to cut it and use short extra bits of footage if they look good, and so in the our final piece we knew to film 3 seconds before and after each clip. We also found that those scenes where we had lots of shots of the same thing to chose from worked better as we could chose which one looked better, or put more than 1 together. We found it difficult to edit quickly, but getting to know final cut express was useful especially for our final piece. We didn’t incorporate much sound into our preliminary task, as so it seemed a little bare, we could then use this in our final piece as we knew it was important that the soundscape and music choices used were important and could change how the whole filming came across. We also established that even only filming for a 30 second clip takes a lot of shots, and timing in a clip – a lot must happen in a short space of time, and so we then know there was a lot we needed to film and storyboard for.

Final piece – just as it came to coming up with a story for our main piece, unfortunately one group member Harry, became very ill, and so had to have time off school. This was a big issue for us as we had no idea when he would be able to come back to school and had to carry on without him. We found making up a storyline difficult, as there was no brief and could be whatever we wanted, and so allowed freedom. Every idea we came up with, we found a flaw in the plan and it was difficult to elaborate into a bigger story that could last a whole film. We changed our minds a few times, but decided on a basic storyline of a character in the morning waking up and getting ready for work. When the post comes, there’s an image of a captured woman with a code written on the back, following this, the main character goes to work and asks his boss. The boss pretends not to know anything, but being the ‘actual helper’ it was him who put the image through his door in the first place. The female been taken hostage is his boss’s mistress, and the capturer is his wife, however he can’t free the hostage, because he can’t admit to his wife he knows she’s taken her, as he just want to end it with the mistress, and so he gets the completely unaware and unrelated ‘guy from work’ who is then thrown into this abnormal situation. The unexpected twist at the end is that the mistress and the wife have been working together the whole time, and are trying to harm the boss. We then storyboarded this, and after finished storyboarding, it came that harry could come back to school, which was quite good timing.

Planning the filming – we were trying to think of where would be the best place to film, and we decided the best place to start would be the morning sequence. We discovered that Harry’s house would be best as there was a clear view of the post box from where the breakfast area was, which key to our filming.  For the actor we needed an older male, and a ‘icy blond’ female. We decided that Laura would be perfect for the female, and jack would be perfect for the male. We had trouble finding a male the right age, but then thought that whilst through our clips we had decided we didn’t want to see his face, as we thought it would build more tension, and so we decided it would be alright to have jack as our main character. We then decided that the rest could be again filmed in the drama studio to get the hostage shots. We also had a list of props we would need, which included :

·         Bowl/cup

·         Bran flakes

·         Envelope

·         Image of hostage

·         Milk

·         Alarm clock

·         Business books/stationary

·         Empty toilet roll

·         Duct tape

Filming – when we were filming, we filmed initially at harry’s. When were all together, we did as much as we needed. We used the tripod for most of the shots, but for a few we needed a steadi-cam look and so had to be hand held. We then left the camera with harry so he could get and last shots needed of at home and then started editing what we had. Next we filmed the hostage shot, but had a limited time because of availability of the drama studio, however we got the shots we needed and then began editing.

Editing – we then came to editing our piece, and Harry and Mitch added in the typing as well, we used final cut express, which allowed us to add in dissolves and transitions and effects such as black and white for the hostage bit. We found that it was difficult to get the timing right with the sounds and the editing took the longest bit. When editing we found that we only had about a minute and a half of clips and it needed to be 2 minutes and we needed to add more. Here we discussed more morning shots we could incorporate and then we started to film again.

Choosing a name for the thriller – this was a difficult decision and through research found that ‘Stockholm syndrome’ is a noun for a hostage closely connected to its capturer, we found that this was really appropriate and it would also make the audience question. While adding this in, we also put in all the writing onto the clips, adding times to show the time shifts throughout the opening sequence.

Sounds – We tried various soundscape and music choices for our thriller and then decided we wanted a radio clip, and this allowed us to have music playing through the background. We researched different radio stations and decided the style we wanted, choosing a local radio station and a 60’s song – as to be copyright free. We then asked Dom to do the voiceover and sorted out the different volumes and tracks, as well as the radio tuning effects we wanted adding in. When we added this to our main production, we then had to change the volume of the backing of all the clips and change some timing to make it fit, but just adding the sound improved the whole piece dramatically.

More filming and editing – we then decided we still needed more clips, and so filmed more clips of the opening sequence to put in. We also decided that the editing wasn’t right and the order of the shots wasn’t right. Adding the backing and adding the more clips made the whole piece a lot better and we got it up to 2 minutes.

Ellie