animatic

Research - Location and Setting

For the first scene of our thriller opening, we will need to shoot in a park, which will require a bench, ideally a path, and the ability to create a sense of naturalism. The location will also ideally need to be quite open, so that there is a decent amount of natural light.

Location 1 - Hanworth Park

This location could be ideal for shooting our first scene. There is a selection of benches that could be used, and the area is quite open, allowing there to be a lot of natural light.

This bench would be ideal for our first scene, as it is  an open area, has a path in front of it (ideal for the character walk past the bench), and looks out onto a flat, grassy, open area, which is ideal for the over the shoulder shot of the main character, as it will look quite simplistic and will not make the background of the shot too distracting or crowded. 

Location 2 - Max's House

This location belongs to the actor that we are going to use in our thriller opening, making it an ideal place to film as we know that we can use it, and it is easily accessible. The location has everything needed that we story boarded, such as the ability to block out all natural light due to blinds, a door to film our silhouette scene, and a desk for the character to sit at in the corner of the room, as we had story boarded. This makes this location ideal to film our thriller opening at.

Door needed for our silhouette shot

Desk needed in the corner of the room needed
for the interior scene

Research - Costume Ideas

Protagonist costume ideas

Runner Costume

From the runners costume, we've gone for an urban look which seem casual yet practical. The audience can easily establish that the person plays the role of the runner.

Technical - Green Screen

We decided to learn how to use the green screen in order to expand our knowledge on different editing types and effects, incase we wanted to use a green screen in our thriller opening.           


We first filmed David in front of the green screen with a DSLR camera, then uploaded that footage to the Mac and imported it into Final Cut Pro. We found an image on google images that could serve as the background image, save it, and imported it into final cut pro. We placed the video into the timeline, and placed the image underneath the video layer, then used the keyer tool to remove the green background of the video. There was still small amounts of the background left, so we used the Sample Colour tool to remove the rest of the colour, by selecting a region that had the remaining colour in it.

Keyer tool in video effects section

Sample colour tool

The green screen video layer above the image
we wanted to used as a background

Technical - 3 Point Lighting

We studied 3 point lighting in order to gain a better understanding of how we could use lighting when filming our thriller opening, to enhance the image, create realism, and create an atmosphere. We most likely use artificial lighting if we are filming in areas that lack natural light so that characters can be visible. However, we do not feel that this lighting looks very natural, and may deduct the element of realism in certain shots.

We decided to use a filter to experiment with different lighting possibilities. We feel that this creates a more natural look to shots, and this could be be used in interior shots in our thriller opening.

Example of 3 point lighting set up

Research - Shot Type List

This is a list of shot types that we are planning to use in our opening. 

• close up 
• establishing shot/long shot 
• mid shot
• over the shoulder shot 
• low angle 
• high angle 
• POV 
• pan 
• tracking shot 

Example of an establishing shot

Example of an high angle shot

Example of an close up shot.

Research - Storyboard

Group Pitch of Initial Idea

Group Pitch- Audience Feedback

Individual Initial ideas Podcast

Film Institution Logo Analysis

Film Institution Logo Analysis

Paramounts logo comes across as tranquil with the use of the mountain above the clouds. Its simplistic and is very professional looking with an interesting use of font. The title of the Institution is linked to the logo of the mountain so it can easily be established that company is associated with the logo.

 DreamWorks Logo is simplistic but from my own experiences can be shown to the audience in a variety of ways. In most films, the boy on the moon is shown to be animated in him fishing in an environment that is associated with the film, this already gives the audience a taster on what the film will be like with the way he's presented along with the soundtrack to come with it. A primary example of this is the way the logo is shown in the film 'Kung Fu Panda' (Osborne, 2008).

The 20th Century Fox logo is well known for their theme tune along side their logo and colour scheme; one cannot function without the other. Their theme is very retro and easy on the eyes with a simplistic colour scheme of different shades of yellow with the blue sky. its one of the simplistic ones of all the logos and is universal to every genre of film. Especially thriller.

The Universal Studios logo is one of the most well known logos around the would alongside with its theme tune. Over the years the logo has undergone more depth and more detail with the recent add of the 100th anniversary edition. Similarly to 20th Century Fox its simplistic and suits any genre of film it produces, especially thriller.



    Columbia Pictures is a less known logo as its more associated with classic films with an acceptance of the recent Spiderman films. This logo is more in depth than any of the other logos above and has kept this image since the very start. The artwork is soft on the eyes with dark shaded water colours. Its less suited to the modern films of the zeitgeist and we can learn from this by keeping our  logo simple yet in depth at the same time.                                                                                
                                                                                     

Group Pitch- Audience feedback

From the group pitch we presented to the rest of the class, we received  good feedback in which we can take onboard into improving our opening idea. It was mentioned to us that our thriller opening came off as a bit confusing to the audience in terms of the concept of the plot. By hearing this we can improve by generating a storyboard of our intended plot so that it may be clearer to the audience and to ourselves on whats going to happen in the opening because by making a storyboard we can discuss various camera shots to use that would best portray the situation and a way so that its clear to the audience whats happening. Another concern that was pointed out to us was the concept of the monster that we were going to use and how we were going to represent it. After discussing it with the group we've decided that instead of trying to use ways of showing the monster, we were thinking of portraying the monster through the use of sounds and generate our own monster noise to use in the opening  where we feel that the protagonist would come across it. We were complimented on our idea of the soundtrack being simplistic and tension making. We're going to keep the soundtrack because we feel that it would do a great job at creating suspense for the audience, its simplistic and in a tribal rhythm which mimics the main characters sense of alert and panic.

Group Pitch - Audience Feedback

Response

After our group pitch we received feedback on how we can improve out idea. The feedback told us that the audience thought that our film opening sounded too confusing and the idea of having flashbacks in the 2 minute opening was too much and would confuse those watching it. Another comment was that they were unsure what would be chasing the main character, not sure if it was human or some monster type of thing saying that the idea was now even more confusing and that it would be difficult to film without confusing the audience.

Improvements

Since the group pitch we have decided as a group to change our plot idea to a psychological thriller that makes more sense and is less confusing than the idea before, we simplified the plot so that it was easier to film and easier for the audience to understand. we removed the idea of having something stalk the main character