lesson by lesson diary progress.

 28th february - Group worked on blogging and film analysing.
2nd march - Charlotte worked on editing our footage. The rest of the group worked together on analysing films, creating blog posts and discussing ideas for our music.
3rd march - Victoria worked on editing some of our blog posts. Charlotte carried on editing our final footage. Naomi and Emma did research into world cinema thrillers and analysed these. Daisy was absent. 
7th march - gathered class feedback and posted on the blog. started to work towards the changes we could make within our blog posts. Vic and Daisy posted the feedback from the class. Emma, Charlotte and Naomi posted how we are going to use the feedback.
9th march - Naomi was working on our storyboards. Daisy was working on world cinema blog posts and Victoria was producing music. Charlotte and Emma were absent. 
10th march - naomi and emma were working on storyboards and vic and daisy were working on credits. Charlotte absent. We uploaded our rough cut opening sequence  
14th march - Naomi and Victoria worked on the blog and gathered feedback from Amar and Tanya. Emma and Daisy were absent. 
16th march - Vic, Daisy, Emma and Naomi filmed some more footage and continued to edit the film. Charlotte was absent.
17th march - finished off editing the film - charlotte took control but victoria made the credits and Daisy worked on the blog.
21st march - finished off the editing. Daisy was absent. 

scripts.

 - discussion between the girl who gets kidnapped (girl two) and her friend (girl one).

girl one - so what are you going to do then?
girl two - oh i've just got to wait here for tony.
girl one -alright then ill see you later.
girl two -bye.

Changes to our work.

Due to a number of different reasons we have changed our ideas and the way the thriller will look. At the beginning of this topic we had various different ideas which all seemed very good however, we encountered some problems and had to re think our ideas and how we were going to go about producing the thriller. We originally though of some ideas which evolved around the idea of a kidnapping. We felt that our ideas were good but could be better so, we set about changing the thriller so it would not only have more impact on the audience but put across our ideas in a stronger way to the audience. We also changed the location of our filming because we felt that due to a number of reasons, it would have a better impact on the audience. We originally thought that we would film the thriller in the town centre but after thinking over a number of different issues such as how we would make it look realistic without getting too much attention of the public as this would ruin the look we wanted to create. Some other of our reasons for changing the location were that we felt it would look too unrealistic for what we wanted. For example, by filming in the centre of town we would have had to take into account the shops which surrounded the area we wanted to film in and the lighting in the location (filming during the day could look even more unrealistic).
However are re-grouping and thinking about our ideas we managed to come up with some new ideas and found two new locations to film in. We are happier with the footage that we have now and feel that we have been able to include some new ideas by changing the location.
We do understand that because of us changing certain aspects of our thriller, this now means that the work on the blog is now incorrect to what were working on but we will relate all of our new blog posts to our new idea and we will work towards changing all of our wall posts.

Volver (2006)

A woman sees Riamunda's mother(who has come to comfort her family) has begun reappearing in ghostly form -- a fact questioned by Raimunda and Sole. After a murder and an unexpected family tragedy, and Sole must decide how to respond to the long-dead mother's strange, enchanting presence.The plot is very thriller-like in that it is very complex and mysterious.

Analysis of Caché (Hidden) [Michael Haneke 2005]

How does the opening sequence of this film use thriller conventions?

   it poses a sense of mystery and investigation, through watching an empty street for a prolonged period of time, the audience is forced to watch and listen intently for anything that moves the plot forward. haneke has made use of voyeurism, a power over people that you secretly watch, a theme that is common in thrillers, where the antagonist controls the protagonist by watching and controlling them into a complex situation. and finally haneke gives a sense of something extraordinary about to happen in what seems an ordinary street.

What questions does it pose?

   what are we looking for?

   which of the people that we see are important?

   how closely are the the two characters linked to the tape?

are they the victims or just bystanders?

How does the sequence make the audience feel?

   deliberately disoriented and confused, a common technique in thrillers, and allows the audience to feel consumed by the plot and want to watch and know more about what they're looking for.

Poster Analysis - Black Swan

You can tell the film is performance orientated due to the use of make up and the raised arm of the actor. Black Swan is written in simple serif capitals and the letters are spreading apart. They stand out against the pale skin and leaves the title as the one of the most eye catching things on the picture. You can also tell a little about the story, in that the main character or plot has some kind of breakdown shown by the resounding crack that parts the darker side of her face from the light.

Poster Idea

We changes the title of the film from 'Witness' to 'X' because we dramatically changed the nature of our thriller plot. We did this because we realised we didn't have the time to film someone filming and film in a public place such as Cambridge high street, and so the witness idea went out the window. 'X' has many connotations; being that maybe an ex is the kidnapper; the film is extraordinary or 'X' rated or the kidnapped girl could be named as a subject 'X' and the thriller could take a turn towards kidnapping in the name of some psychotic mad scientist.

Even though we binned the idea of filming through a hand held camera, we kept the lens idea for the poster because we used a developing dark room, in which cameras are associated and we could reveal that cameras become a key theme introduced later in the film.

We changed the venue to being the back end of the college and inside the photography departments' dark room, and decided to keep the idea of parallel editing, between the kidnapping and the main character being held captive in a deep dark red and sinister room.