Our Filming Day

As stated before, on Sunday 29th of January, my media group and I organised to come into our school alongside our actors in order to finish our planned shots.

We had and kept to a strict schedule for the three hours we were on site, so we could accurately and efficiently finish what was needed to be done. Yes it proved to be quite a challenge, but luckily we managed to complete what was needed to be done.

However, before we could attempt to plan our shots for every hour, my group and I realized we would have to thoroughly plan all the aspects of Mise En Scene, to really depict and make apparent the finer details within each shot. 

We asked Jake (our main actor) to bring in his green jacket, and to wear his school trousers to continue to define our school theme within our Thriller. John (our Hitman) was advised to wear a dark coloured suit, alongside a Black Coat in which Matt (a member of my group) provided. I myself provided a pair of leather black gloves in order to solidify and finish the Hitman look in which we imagined previously. 
Matt, Laura and I decided to arrive at school slightly earlier than planned, in order to go over what we needed to achieve within our time slot, and also to set up all of the equipment. We also needed to re-arrange the English Room, as we established we should take down certain posters and pictures, to clearly direct our audiences that the room is an English. 

Our filming actually began at around 10:00 am:
My group experiences very minor complications with our camera and SD Card. We thought the best way to tackle our scene filming was to complete them in chronological order, as this saves all confusion! 
Thankfully, we had previously already filmed half of our scenes, so we started with the computer scenes, as these were the scenes that needed to be tackles most. Luckily, very minimal re-takes were needed for these scenes, as they were quite straight forward, and everyone cooperated well. 

It was now 11:00am; we were well on our way to accomplishing all of our shots within good time. As we came to our shot on Jake's close ups of his eyes, we encountered a slight problem with the lighting. The shadow from the camera angle continued to show up on Jake's cheek, which therefore was ruining our shot massively.
In conclusion, we were then challenged with the task of finding various spaces which would leave us with a cleaner shot, rather than a dark one due to the strength of light. Luckily, we found two angles and heights that rectified this problem.

Our final hour and a half consisted of clearing away all of our equipment, and then going over the famous 'Hitman Skip Section'. This had proved to be our hardest scene to correct to the highest level. Our first attempt was actually our favourite attempt as we feel all of our angles and positions were perfected to a very high quality. However when we then showed our media teacher, he pointed our several errors. There were countless prop problems, as school ties were within our shots, alongside our bottles of water and many more tiny errors.

On our second attempt, our camera lense was clearly not as clean as we thought, so most of our shots either came our fuzzy or completely unclear. due to sheer frustration, we decided to leave this scene until the Sunday, as then we would have had a lot more time to clearly fix any thoughtless mistakes.

Fortunately, our third and final attempt was very successful, and had no mistakes!





Storyboards

                                                         

Location

In order to initiate our school based thriller, we planned to incorporate various locations in order to solidify this theme. The sheet featured to the right was our establishing ideas sheet for possible locations. As demonstrated, our school setting would be easiest at Aldenham School as this way we have access to all classrooms/ areas, instead of trying to organise convenience with other schools or locations.

One of the first shots used is a birds eye view shot by a drone over a large tree. As said previously, we have chosen this slightly strange opening as we have decided to open our thriller based on one of our influences 'Sunshine on Leith'. The group and I have always loved our very opening, as the disorganised leaves change to a suddenly established and cleaner shot of our main school. 

Before our main actor walks into the main classroom shots where he accesses 'The Dark Web', audiences will see this corridor featured on the left.  

This location solidifies our school theme, as this really represents the stereotypical school vibe that we are aiming for. The bright light and colours etc also accentuates this theme further. 

Our last scene is filmed around a skip found behind our drama department. We originally decided to use this location as it creates tension and mystery, which fits the Hitman's characteristics perfectly. The dirty, unhygienic skip, the flooring and even the occasional leaves creates the ideal setting for our Hitman section. The brickwork on the building and the dated wooden fence directly behind the main feature also highlights the suspense with this location. 

                                  

Alongside our drone footage, we also used a wide shot to continue to construct our theme further. Here are some further images of our school site.

The image to the left is taken from the same place our drone was positioned in order to get as much of the schools features in it as possible. Throughout our filming for our outside locations, we aimed to plan it by day (and therefore the weather) as we wanted a continuous gloomy atmosphere and lighting, in order to keep the theme the same throughout.

Here, the photo was taken from a different angle in order to deceive our audiences into thinking the schools grounds were bigger than they really are, to then make the buildings seem superior, whilst our actor inferior, as he walks across the school field and to 'The Dark Web'.

What Sound Will Be Encorpourated In My Thriller?

Music in thrillers is essential! It is there to create tension and suspense in the audience, which only heightens the drama and paranoia even further. Music within a thriller is a key part to the telling of the plot, as at the build to the climax, the music will change slightly to heavier and eerier instruments and sounds, in order to solidify the anxiety the audience would be feeling at this point. 

Typically, a thriller film's sound will start off at a slow and at a gradual pace, but towards the middle and sudden scares, this pace will increase. Strings are a very popular sound to hear in thriller, as this creates a certain 'screech' which accompanies the mystery and uneasy mood of a thriller.

Alongside strings, the piano is also seen and heard in most thriller films, as its complexities to reacher various octaves is widely used. From high pitched keys, to the deepest ones, the keys of a piano are seriously exaggerated in order to force it's audiences into fits of shivers and goose-bumps, which of course is ideal also for the crowds ho watch thrillers. 

Diegetic and non-diegetic sounds are seen in most common thrillers, as soundtracks are key, and so are backing noises such as dog barks/howls.

Synchronous Sound is also a well favoured method of sound, as (for example) out of tune instruments like pianos create anticipation. 

Asynchronous Sound is another type of sound used, where the music heard has nothing to do with a thriller. This is seen mostly in Tarantino movies, such is using western soundtracks for a murder scene. 

In particular, 'the exorcist' soundtrack is of particular interest to my group and I as we have always said that we plan to incorporate piano into our accompanying music. We deeply studied this piece of music, and really idolised how it was such simple keys used, just repeated over and over. Despite this however, we are worried about this repetitive concept, as we concerned that this will not work with our opening shots and movements.