Location Photos and Vlog

Matt and I thought carefully about our location, and we needed a wooded area. We figured that the woods behind our school would be perfect, and as they are public property we wouldn't need permission to film there which made the filming process easy. We also made this decision based on the fact that it is a very eerie location, and the lighting will be perfect at around 4 pm in the afternoon. We have taken shots of the woods to show examples of natural lighting, and to present the camera angles that we intend to use. The location offers intense foliage and arch ways created in the trees over head, creating a disconcerting appearance and adding to the tension of our thriller.

Here is our short film of our location footage and an update from Matt and I on our choice of location:

Casting, Costume and Make-up

Casting and Costume on Prezi

Final Task: First Filming Expedition

Vlog update on the first filming expedition:

Final Task: Planning

For our final task we had to take multiple things into account. We wanted to improve on our preliminary ideas and create a sense of suspense, creating tension for the audience.

We decided that our final thriller should be a psychological thriller, and as I had done a lot of research into mental conditions, we felt that schizophrenia and the idea of psychotic episodes would be perfect for our final piece.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosis

Our thriller is to begin with a shot of our teenage actress walking home from college/sixth form. She chooses to take the isolated route home via the woods, and it is obvious that this is not new to her as she knows where she is going. However, things take a turn for the worst when she begins experiencing a severe headache and ends up falling to the floor. We have decided to create a twist in the plot, as the last shot will revert to her crying and looking terrified, showing that all of the things that were happening to her were in her imagination.

Matt and I realised that creating a film like this opens multiple opportunities for successful camera angles and shots, as we can stand with the tripod from a higher and a lower altitude and get excellent high angle, low angle and extreme close up shots to really conform to the thriller genre. We decided that it was appropriate to have our film ending with credits, then the name of the film. We also wanted to create the idea of our own production company (Imperial Productions) and we credited ourselves and our actress during the opening.

Final Task: Inspiration

Matt and I were very much inspired by Skins Series 3 Episode 8, which is Effy's Episode. She is shown to be running through the woods, where everything suddenly turns very sinister and she beings to panic. She is experiencing a bad trip from the drugs she has taken, so we decided to develop on that aspect for our thriller and make it so that Amy was experiencing a schizophrenic episode instead. We didn't want our thriller to be so sinister that we minimised our target audience, so we eliminated the drug aspect. The world around Effy is spinning and causing her to be disorientated and scared as she doesn't understand what's going on around her.

Fast forward to 32.25: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/skins/4od#2918542

I also noticed other psychological thrillers, such as 'Play Misty For Me' and 'Fatal Attraction', as they both portray a really strong aspect of a schizophrenic mind. However, they didn't entirely relate as we didn't want to focus too much on Amy being 'mental', but more the fact thats she was having an out of body experience and didn't understand what was happening to her. We decided that we wanted to flash to and from what was inside her head, creating a confusion and engaging the audience entirely.

Vlog: How We Overcame Any Issues

Quick vlog on what we struggled with and how we learnt from our preliminary exercise:

Preliminary Task: Class and Personal Evaluation

Here is my group's preliminary task finished film:

We showed it to the class to get some feedback and ideas for improvement to take into account when making our final project.

We had a lot of compliments, but obviously some constructed negative feedback as well.

Positive input:
* We had a lot of compliments on our use of shots and camera angles, as we tried to incorporate as many as we could to help distinguish the genre, and gain more filming experience.

* The use of makeup on Amy was noticed, many of my peers mentioned that it looked very realistic and believable, which was reassuring.

* We were told that the use of the transitions at the end of the preliminary were really effective in zooming in then out of the screen, as it drew the audience in more.

* The script was said to be simple but engaging in that it left the audience on a cliff hanger, wondering what was going to happen next.

* We had compliments on the name Captive, as the audience thought it was appropriate for the thriller genre and that it suited our film well.

Negative input:

* We didn't receive a large amount of negative input, although we were told that occassionally the camera jolted in the shot. However, this can easily be rectified for our final film without difficulty.

* Also, another thing mentioned was that there was a slight continuity issue in the first 2 shots, but Matt and I ammended that problem before uploading the preliminary footage to our blogs.