Conventions of a Thriller

Fast paced; (implied) violence; tension; makes audience ask questions; exiting music; eerie music; (unseen) screams; mist/fog; loud; split personalities; chase; shock; complex storyline; twists; the unexpected; suspense; makes you jump; crime; cliffhanger; dark/nighttime; police; intelligent characters.

Differences between Thrillers and Horrors:

Horror - We see the murder/ act of violence

Thriller - We only see the result of the violence; eg dead body.

Horror - We are scared of what is happening

Thriller - We are constantly scared of what might happen

Horror - Aimed at younger age groups

Thriller - Aimed for the older.

The audiences for thrillers have to work hard to understand what is going on.

Brief

Brief: I learnt what the brief was; 'The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maxinum of 2 minutes'.
All elemtents of our task should be excellent as we want all levels 4s and maximum marks.
Even though it is a group task, we will be marked individually so we shouldn't let other group members do all the work.

My 180° Rule Handout

Our Preliminary Task

WWW and EBI

My WWW was in our editing when I’m drinking the tea. We used match on action for this but we managed to use it 3 times within the same action; and each time the shot is cut it looks flawless where the tea is being held. Our film as a whole seems to be like one long piece of action rather than sections and all the rules were abided by.
My EBI would be that we spoke louder; mainly myself as Emma can be heard clearly; as some shots it is hard to hear what is exactly being said.

Reflection on Editing

Initially our editing went quite well. But during this stage it helped highlight the impurities of our sequence. Our group worked well together with deciding what clips we were going to use and where an appropriate cut would be to make the continuity flawless. One scene that we realised was very awkward was when Emma was leaned forward to place a cup of tea down on the table n then she is standing up right in the next shot. We filmed an extra little shot of a close-up of the cup being placed to disguise this. A big issue we had was with the sound. Eventually we just decided to choose a piece of the film where sound was of a decent level and just copied n pasted it throughout to act as background noise in a cafe. We used the Apple Macs and iMovie HD to do our editing. We followed the rules of continuity editing by carefully placing the cursor at an accurate point in two shots before splitting them and putting the two continual shots next to each other. We only used cuts as any other transition was not appropriate for continuity editing, such as a dissovle.

Reflection on filming

When we started filming we had to constantly think about continuity. If we had forgotten we may have filmed a lot but on the wrong side of the 180 degree rule and would have needed to re-film it all. We tried to film hastily, going from one shot to the next so we still know our whereabouts for the next shot which would then help with continuity. We had an issue with sound in our film as we weren’t talking loud enough compared to the other 6th formers in the common room. To overcome this we just filmed ourselves saying it closer to the camera and dubbed over our voices. We corresponded to all the rules while filming throughout. We wanted our setting to look like a cafe so we used to common room kitchen area for filming. The only prop we used was a cup, we used this so we could include more match on action with me drinking from it. We filmed each shot a couple times and when we had spare time we filmed a few extra retakes of some shots; we had to film some extra shots to help with continuity such as a close up of Emma placing the cup on the table.

Reflection on planning the sequence

To plan the sequence, each individual made their own storyboard; each was around 10 frames each; and then when we came together in a group we shared our ideas and tried to create a storyboard that we all inputted to. With all ideas put together, we had to ensure that each shot would be able to flow onto the next with continuity editing. We discussed how each shot would be filmed so it can be edited to show continuity effectively. The final product of our planning was a list rather that fames. We decided not to follow our story when we started filming as we felt it was too complex for the task that was set. We found it was quite easy to stick to the rules of continuity editing while planning because we could see what shots would work well flowing into other shots. My storyboarding went well when i was making it myself except i could see how much detail it was lacking such as dialogue. When we put our ideas together we decided not to plan it out on a storyboard but to write it out as a list.

The preliminary task

The preliminary task assigned was to film and edit a sequence of; someone walking through a door into a room, sitting on a chair and having a conversation with someone else. We had to include the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot reverse shot, master shot and an eye line match to show we understood and can use continuity editing in a piece of film. We also had to do this to make sure the sequence looked clear to the viewer.

Continuity editing

Continuity editing is the name given to edits between shots which make them smooth and it hides the transitions from the audience to create the sense of realism. These edits allow the storyline to flow quicker and easier and most of the time they are unnoticeable to the common audience. Continuity editing is important when filming because it makes the scene believable and without these edits the difference would be obvious and the whole section would look terrible and unbelievable. Important rules to be used are; master shot, 180 degree rule, match on action, shot reverse shot and eye line match.
-The Master Shot is a shot that shows the setting and where characters are in relation to each other.
-The 180 degree rule is a rule where once you are filming on one side of two characters you cannot cross the 180 degree line.
-Match on Action is when an action; such as picking up a cup; is taking place in one shot and is continued in the next.
-Shot reverse shot is most commonly used during a conversation; it is when a shot is taken and then changes to another shot, and then returns to the same shot that was used originally.
-Eyeline match is when the character is looking at someonething off screen and we can see what general direction they are looking towards. The master shot is useful as we can guess what they are looking at by remembering how the room was set out.