For our 'thriller' project, we were given the task of taking a standard newspaper and using it to create a short thriller movie based on it. We first constructed our storyline of exact what was going to happen in the short clip, and my our group came up with the idea that one person ( a fan) would be sitting and reading a newspaper in a public area, and would then spot the famous face on the newspaper in real life.
The objective of the task was to create a clip that could build intense suspense, and we had to try and achieve this through the use of a range of diffrent camera angles, 'mise-en-scene', sound and other effects. To begin, we had 'subject a' walk into the set building that the scene was to take place in. Throughout the whole thing, he does not say anything, and simple walks around. The lack of speech was used to create a form of suspense and make the person seem a lot more mysterious since we do not know nything about him.
We used diffrent camera skills that we had learned in pervious lessons, such as a 'long shot' of him walking across a hall inside. The long shot was used to show the large size of the setting and to show that he was the only person there. We then used a medium shot when (Eni) was buying a cup of tea in the hall to show in a little bit of detail exact what he was doing. He then goes to sit down at a table and starts reading the newspaper. At this point, we switched it to an 'over the shoulder' shot which gave the effect that the viewer was sitting next to him reading it aswell.
Suspense
Straight away, we switch to a 'first person view' of what Eni is reading to show in detail the image of the famous person that he is looking at, so that when the person does appear in real life later on, the viewer can make out the resemblence and connection between the newsppaer and the scene. Not to long after, the star (Derek) is about to walk into the same hall that Eni is in, and we switch to an 'over the shoulder shot' and follow Derek into the hall. Once he was in the hall, we then used a 'low angle' shot from Eni's side against Derek. This was done to emphasis the difference in status between the two; Derek being a famous star, and Eni being a standard individual. We also did the opposite from Dereks point of view, and did a 'high angle' shot against Eni to make him appear more timid, smaller and less powerful than Derek.
Those were the major shots that we used in our clip.
Editing
Editing was reasonably easy to do as we had done it in pervious lessons, so it wasn't very hard to get used to again. The software we used on the Macs was called 'Final Cut Pro'; a proffessional editing tool. In editing, we had to connect the video camera and basically run the entire clip onto the hard drive so it was one big file. We then began to 'cut' the file into diffrent parts; about 18 of them. After that, we took them one by one, ran them and cut out the irrelevant parts with errors or overlappings. It was pretty straightfoward as there weren't many parts that were unuseable or done incorrectly.
Our editing was successful because it came out relatively smooth and the viewer could make sense of exactly what was going in each scene. Obviously it was not perfect and there were a few minor mistakes, but nothing significant. we also added a soundtrack to give it a more cinematic feel to it, and to increase the effect of the clip. The was no digetic sound apart from Eni shouting Derek's name at the very end of the clip when he spots him and recognises who he is. The clip wasn't exactly the typical thriller but it made sense.
There were no conventions used is our thriller as were trying to make it as orignal as we possibly could.
Mise-en-scene
We used mise-en-scene to show the viewer various aspects of the clip. For instance, the building that it was set in was a very modern design (City And Islington College) which showed the viewer that the timer setting of it is modern. Inside also showed that it was possibly a formal environment. The way in which Eni was dressed was casual cothing which identified the time setting as well as his social class as an individual. Props used such as the newspaper and drank gave an impression of what the clip was about and also what type of chaarcter Eni was in the scene. The outcome of the clip proved that mise-en-secne has a huge impact on how the viewer first approaches the film mentally. If it was dark and gloomy, the viewer would take it more seriously than if it was bright, loud 'fun'-looking.
Conclusion
Things that could have been improved are:
1) We could have left a 5 second gap for each scene as we only did this for a couple. this might have made editing easier and less 'tight' when putting scenes together.
2) We could have also added more camera angles for more important scenes to capture its affect from every angle.
3) Better camera handling - There were some scenes in which the camera was either too focused or wobbling.
However, on a whole, I believe the project was successful and I am pleased with the outcome. It was easy to work with the members of my group and we didnt waste the time we had. I was able to see understand how exactly the video camera worked and how the footage is transfered to computer for editing. This experience wil be very useful in the future for larger filming tasks in which we can apply our gained skills.
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