Influences on our Work: Lost (Season 3 Episode 20 'The Man Behind The Curtain')

Title: The Man Behind The Curtain
Director: Bobby Roth
Year Released: 2007
Lost is arguably one of the ultimate thrillers, with mystery's that have suspended since 2004 and will stretch for 6 years, it's therefore not surprising that it will have some influences on our piece. This comes from a certain section where a mystery force is unleashed in a haunted cabin. With rapid editing used, we see the chaos of the scone without gathering a clear picture of it's precipitant. Pictures of eyes are used, we directly used this as the eye has been described as the window to the soul and is impactive way of showing antagonists and protagonists and hinting they are linked...

Tim McNiven

Storyboards

Here we have a guideline as to how our story/ narrative will progress.

The storyboard bellow is the opening to our psychological thriller.

Peter McLaughlin

Marking previous students work

We were set the task of reviewing the work of previous students and to give them a mark based upon the grade boundaries that we had been shown. At the beginning of the task this proved difficult as it was hard to estimate the grade to give with everything that had to be taken into account. Eventually after watching a good number of previous videos I was able to estimate each grade approximately (which will prove useful as I will be able to assess my own work). I noticed that following the cliches are a good way to stick to the codes and conventions of a thriller as everything will follow suit, but it would then lack diversity and depth as the audience are able to assume the story's course easily. Another thing i noticed was that there are lots of videos that are "stalker" based and lack creativity and motive. 

Peter McLaughlin

Costumes and Props

We have begun to consider different costume ideas for characters within our thriller. One idea was to have some characters dress in a uniformed style of suits and a mask. Here are some photgraphs of different masks that I have found:







We are also considering using a gun as a prop. This depends on where we will be filming, as using a prop gun in a public place will result in unwanted attention from the public. If however we decide to film in a private location, then the use of a gun will add a sense of danger to the characters, increasing their presence within the film.


-Joe Lawrence

Preparation for Story Boarding

One of our media lessons was spent analysing ‘1 hour Photo’ a thriller from 2002. We only analysed 31 seconds of the film but had to take into account all the shots that made up the time. This made us realise just how long and how much detail storyboards consist of and the time they consume to complete. Our thriller would be 2-3 minutes long meaning that it would take hours to come up with a good storyline and then complete the storyboard. There would be many shots in the thriller to make it seem more realistic.

Each story board consisted of:
•Shot no.
•Length of shot
•Editing from one shot to the other (Cut/Fade/Dissolve)
•Shot Size
•Camera Angle
•Lighting
•Colours in the frame
•Setting
•Props
•Costume
•Sound
•The picture
•Brief Description of action

Taking this all into to account we realised how much planning would have to be completed in order to start filming our thriller.


We all meet up during the half term on Monday and Thursday and started planning our thriller. We came up with our storyline and started our storyboard. We also discussed locations, Camera Shots, Camera Angles and Editing etc.

Oliver Fitch

Preparation for Editing

In our media lessons we were basically shown how to edit, film set up the camera on the tripod etc. We were put into groups to film our preliminary task which was just mainly learning how to film and edit. The filming and editing was spread over two lessons. The first lesson was spent filming the prelim which for 30 seconds of filming in total took longer than expected. The second lesson we had a year 13 student showing us how to use the editing software. We learnt how to do all the basic editing like cutting and transitions etc. But our thriller required more advanced software. One member of our group Peter thought it would be easier to access editing software at home because some many people will be using the editing suite at once that you won’t get a sufficient amount of time to edit. So Peter decided to obtain software that we could use out of school. Both I and Peter then installed the software on to both his home computer and my laptop and we both spent a couple of hours learning how to use the software. But this time was not efficient for the complexity of the software. Installing the software on my laptop made it easy to transport it to school and discuss the editing with the other members of our group and show them what we had achieved so far.

This is just an example of what our software can do.




Oliver Fitch

Influences on our Work: Borderline

Title: Borderline
Director: Alex Chandon
Year Released: 2006
Chandon's digitally imposes different shots within the same frame. Whilst as a group we are resolutely determined to avoid effects the video achieved a lot of visual themes which we wish to aspire to. Firstly by having movement around the frame it creates claustrophobia in open spaces. Ultimately a feeling of claustrophobia is a lot scarier than open spaces, as it links to primal fears of being trapped. If we were to shoot in London than this would have to be bared in mind. There is also this underlying feeling that the people of London are walking around unaware of the chaos around them, this could further be incorporated into our narrative with the people of London being unaware of the danger of antagonists, making our protagonist all the more helpless. Whilst not being an Art Film it’s aim, of contrasting the typical with the surreal, fits into the codes and conventions of Thrillers and Chandon’s style may be referenced to in the piece.

Tim McNiven