Making fake blood demonstration

This is a video we made both to demonstrate how we made the fake blood that features in our piece, and also as a practical experiment to see how well the recipe worked in reality. As you can see from the video we used honey instead of corn syrup, but it seemed to work in the same way, concluding with a thick liquid that had a convincing blood-red tone. 

To drop create a splatter effect we simply poured the fake blood into an empty water bottle take had several holes in the top and then squirted that directly onto the picture frame from above, though his process is not featured in the video below.

FIlming Day 2

For our second day of filming we decided we needed to get the remaining shots completely filmed so we could concentrate our time on editing. Before filming, we assembled our props (including the picture and police ID) and printed off a checklist of the shots we required so that we could film in the most efficient manner.

During this filming session we were incredibly successful, managing to film every shot that we needed, several times over, which gives us an advantage when editing as it increases our choice of shots. Before filming, we had to watch our older footage and assemble the kitchen area accordingly so as to avoid discontinuity issues. This also went well and we were able to recreate the set-up from our first day offilming accurately.

Making fake blood

For the final shot of our opening sequence, some fake blood needed to be dropped onto a picture frame, symbolising the death of one of our male characters. To do this I had to research making fake blood and I uncovered a recipe on Youtube that seems simple and quick to do.

To do this all I need is some flour, some red food colouring and some corn syrup. Firstly I am to put a teaspoon of flour, half a teaspoon of food colouring and a tablespoon of corn syrup into a bowl. Then I simply mix it all together to create a thick liquid that seems to resemble blood quite accurately.

Below is the video I found on Youtube that taught me how to do this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmrTNqkhk8U

The representation of sexuality in our opening sequnence

In our opening sequence, a gay couple is featured heavily and make up two of the three roles in our piece. Generally speaking, most thriller films do not feature homosexual couples as there is a preconception that gay men men have no place in a film based greatly on action and thrill. Whist neither males in our film undertake a particularly action-based, we decided to include them so as to defy convention in several other ways. Firstly, as previously stated, gay men are under represented in such films so we wanted to include them in order to make our piece seem more unique. Similarly, whilst we admit we are following a cliche in featuring an affair that leads to a murder, neither of us have yet seen a film that contains a homosexual affair that concludes with the wife killing her husband, so thus we were excited to include this in our opening sequence as we believe it will separate our plot from the cliche and make our piece ultimately more unique .

The representation of gender in our opening sequence.

In our opening sequence we wish to present women in a way that is usually reserved for men in conventional thriller movies, so as to defy convention and make our piece more unique. Firstly, the main character is a female is a member of the police force, where in most traditional thriller films (Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, etc) this role is usually fulfilled by a man. This makes our opening sequence sand out as, though we are following convention by having a police officer, we are defying general thriller codes by having a woman undertake this role. Similarly, our protagonist uses violence and threats to advance her needs, a trait that generally found within male characters in thriller films. Again we are both conforming to and defying common thriller film conventions here by reversing the cliche gender roles by making the woman have more 'masculine' personality features.

Our reason for trying to defy these conventions of gender in our thriller opening is to separate our piece from the rest whilst also maintaining a thriller film status by following the general codes of a thriller film, but reversing common gender roles whilst doing so. We also aim to make a social comment on women and their comparable abilities to men.

Floor plan of set

BBFC Age Classification Task

Editing my opening sequence (stage 1)

We began to edit our shots on Adobe Premier and place them in the order they will be shown. This was especially challenging as we had filmed over an hour of footage, most of which was unusable due to several reasons; some of it was out of focus, lots of the shots were shaky and in some background noise could be heard. We set about filtering out the the unusable shots by finding our the best take of our establishing shot and then excluding the takes of the second shot that either did not flow fluently from the first one or were of too low a quality to use.

 

Due to the fact that we haven't yet filmed all the required content of our film, we had to speculate on where the new content would go once it had been filmed. This lead to us editing the piece with gaps where the new shots will go. This made editing even more difficult as it meant we could not edit chronologically, rather we had to edit in an unconventional sequence, jumping back and forth and deleting certain clips there were found to be useless when considering the placement of the new shots.

All in all our first stage of editing was very productive; we were able to filter out unnecessary shots and put the useful ones in an order that resembles greatly the basis of our final idea.

Creating Cinamatic Suspense

Shot list for filming day 2

This is a list of shots we will need to film on our second day of filming. This was made so that we know exactly what needs to be filmed, so that we can shoot with the upmost efficiency and not waste time trying to figure out what else we need. This will allow us more time to take each shot several times, so that we can pick the best looking, and will also spare us more time for editing.

List of Titles

This is a list of the titles that will be displayed (in order) throughout our title sequence. To do this we watched several opening sequences and found out which title sequences appear first, how they are worded and how many should generally appear. This task is sure to help us edit our piece more efficiently as now we know where each title should appear and who should be credited. 

Making Police ID prop

In this task I show step-by-step the process that was required to make the Police identification card that is to be used in our sequence as both a prop and a device for revealing important information about the lead character.

Camera angle experiment

In this task we were attempting to test the practicality of some different shot types and camera angles against what they are meant to represent. We wanted to find out whether or not the shots were effective in reality and whether or not they would be useful in our opening sequence.

Close-up

Extreme close-up

 Mid-shot

 Long-shot

 Side-shot

 Low-angle shot

 High-angle shot

 Over-the-shoulder shot

Division of labour task

Buildingwork for the future by Charlie Armitage

In order to make preparations for the filming of our opening sequence in the most efficient way, our group set about dividing up the various tasks so that each person could focus on their assigned responsibility. We decided that Charlie would be in control of the camerawork and editing, whereas I was put in charge of finding the actors and the required props. We also decided that there would be areas that we would profit from collaborating on, such as the set design and the directing, as both of our creative perspectives would be needed in these areas so as to blend our varying tastes.

Filming Day 1

On our first day of filming we aimed to film all of the parts that the two male characters were required for, as our actors' availability was limited to only one single day. We also realised that the shots that feature the female character would be easier to shoot as they contain no dialogue and because they require less physical coordination, as no interaction between characters would be needed for these shots. We were successful in our aim, managing to film all the parts we set out do apart from the shot of the car wheel and the extreme close-up of the picture as we did not yet have all of the resources to do so.

Before filming we cleared the set in order to stay consistent with the time period our piece is set in (the 1980's). We had to remove all objects that would not have been found during this time, such as various electronic kitchen utensils, a modern landline telephone and several pieces of modern technology including laptops and mobile phones.

Music in thriller films

For our opening sequence we wish to compose a piece of music that will accompany the visuals throughout. The aim of this is to increase dramatic tension by using various musical techniques that will correspond with what is happening on screen, which will also help make our shots more compelling and make their meanings more emphasized by appealing more to the audiences' sense of emotion. We want our piece of music centred mainly around long, sustained chords, from which we manipulate certain notes so that they fall in and out of major and minor scales, creating a sense of emotion more hat is more responsive to what is happening in the sequence as the notes music plays. We also want some sort of pulsating rhythm that will increase in pace with the shots, so as to establish a further greater degree of suspense and tension.

One piece of film music that has been influential to our idea is the piece found in the opening sequence to 'Scarface', which uses a mix between major and minor chords to have a strong emotional impact, but also drops into a catchier and more melodic section that quadruples in speed from the previous section which makes the piece more memorable and also helps to fit the fast pace tone of the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgVRdNt3UkE

Another piece of music that has been influential to the one that we plan to make for our opening sequence is the one used in the intro to '28 Days Later'. We like it because it increases in depth as it progresses, with new instruments being introduced slowly, before reaching a crescendo, and also because its sequence of intense, drawn out chords mirror the general atmosphere of the film and help to define that film as a thriller early on. However, it becomes far too intense for the kind of film we are making, but the general structure of the piece is one that we wish to translate into our own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbwlGv9SWfY

Thriller protagonist deconstruction

Lady in a Cage opening sequence analyis