One page pitch

Behind The Mask

Working title: Behind The Mask

Length: 120 minutes

Deathly wish productions

Thriller type: Psychological thriller

Target audience:15-40 year olds and unisex

- Even though we have a specific age category for our film, it is oblivious to know that people in society wont follow it, meaning that some people below and the majority of the above will more than likely watch it. We know that people from a range of different background, cultures, lifestyles, incomes and levels of education. Potentially our audience is mainly going to be fro a higher education as we understand that the higher educated people are mainly mature and will process the meaning of our film and the seriousness of it. Personally we don't think that our film is for a serious film goer who goes to film festivals and occasionally the are-house theatre as its a really serious matter that occurs frequently in society life today.

Our tag line will be: Will she ever return...?

-We have chosen this tagline purely to put the audience in suspense and leave them with a rhetorical question, this creates a red herring and a narrative enigma, and this could build up more tension for the film itself let alone the topic.

A What If?

What if a murderer escaped prison and ran in Pilsley from Tupton and becomes quite manipulative and can persuade people to follow and do things for him, then suddenly a survivor or an escape has reported his crimes and caution had been taken.

The Story Synopsis

Receiving nasty threats, all on oovoo talking about the stranger messenger. I meet a random male and then out of nowhere mark drives up to me in his van and the male pushes me into the van and I'm kidnapped.

Visual Realisation

We know of many different films that have explored the territory of psychological thriller, for example, the film 'lovely bones'  is where we got our ideas from as it involves a kidnapping. However ours wont be situated around a school, as we will be situating ours in many different places such as Pilsley, the five pits trail, a van etc.

The reason chose this specific topic for our film is for reasons one of them that it is incredibly important important that we get across to civilians in society that messaging/ meeting people is very dangerous in real life today. We chose to do this as a film rather that a TV series because i feel like there are many TV dramas in this period and some previous, illustrating  the point we are trying to tell everyone but attempting to mix it up a little. Even though this particular matter is reiterated by many different film production companies and TV dramas, but we feel that by young children creating and thinking of this serious matter shows that potentially even though the younger generation don't show any interest in the subject, it doesn't mean they don't take into account the seriousness of the situation.

Storyboard for our AS Thriller

Storyboard for our final AS thriller

Please click on the link above to view the storyboard for our final AS thriller.

Screenplay

Screenplay

Screenplay includes dialogue an pictures and it is normally the early stages of what you want the play to look like, It is the script of the film/play including screen directions and instructions.
The screenplay comes first before the storyboard as the script then therefore helps create the storyboard an follow it in a simpler way.

Writing a screenplay/script

-include location, setting and time of time.
-introduce key characters and include a short description of who/what they look like.
-Include key dialogue between characters and details of their actions and expressions.
-Include details of where the camera is in each scene.

Jaws screenplay

In the opening scene of Jaws the screenplay is a little bit different to the scene itself as in the scene it is a lot more detailed but as you are reading the script it misses certain tings and shots out, this is done because as it is being filmed the producers decide that it either doesn't look right or they pace int he scene is too fast for it and they cant fit it in. Below i have annotated and labelled the screenplay/script of the opening screen to jaws and I have annotated notes and details on it and also annotated what changed from the script and to the filming itself,

I have also added a link to the video of the opening scene to follow with my notes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrEvK-tv5O

Lighting Practice

Types of lighting

3 point fill lighting

Three lights which create a normal looking scene with soft shadows and average colours. Using a 3 light setup to provide normal lighting across an entire object, the exact opposite of chiaroscuro. This is used in most 'normal' scenes with any object in focus.

Chiaroscuro

It is characterised by harsh lighting which creates an extreme contrast between different areas of the shot can be used with colour but also can be used in black and white for a different feel, It is often used in horrors or dramas and any other film where the atmosphere of the scene plays a vital role.
   

High Key Lighting

Uses harsh bright lights to reduce contrast in  scene giving the skin a white washed, clean look, that does not have any shadows.

Back lighting

When the lights is from directly behind, usually from natural light such as the sun, it creates a silhouette, often used in romantic scenes.

Natural Lighting

Comes from natural daylight such as the sun, uses a white/yellow hue. Estate agents often use natural lighting with their pictures to make the image look more appealing and fresh.

Artificial Lighting

This comes from things which are man made sources such as light bulbs and florescent lights.

Thriller conventions

Different types of Thrillers

• Action thriller
• Conspiracy thriller
• Crime thriller
• Disaster thriller
• Forensic thriller
• Medical thriller
• Physiological thriller
• Political thriller
• Romantic thriller
• Super-natural thriller
• Spy thriller
• Mystery thriller

There are many different conventions of a thriller for example the main conventions are:

• Low key lighting
• Quick cuts
• Shadows
• Tension in music
• Changes in different angles
• Dietetic sound of breathing/footsteps
• Montage of shots
• Black and white shots
• Protagonist and antagonist

In every thriller there is always an equilibrium (Todrov's Theory) which means that everything will start happy then a problem will occur and disrupt the equilibrium then there is recognition of the disruption then there is a resolution of the disruption then normally its goes back to the start again, however this is usually when there is only one series/episode of the thriller, otherwise it will carry out throughout them all. 

In most thrillers there are red herrings, enigmas and cliff hangers, these are all used to entice the audience into watching the thriller and hook them in. It leaves the audience in suspense and builds tension towards the rest of the film. The low key lighting is often used to create a eerie, scary, tense atmosphere and to allow the audience to interact with the film. The dietetic sound again does the same thing with allowing the audience to interact with the film. The red herrings and enigmas create a false lead to the film and send the viewers in a different direction, therefor they believe something else, however when it changes it allows the viewers to be interested and talk about the film, which will then create a wider audience with loads of different types of viewers ( 4CS's theory) by Bulmer and Katz. 

Se7en Textual Analysis

Se7en Textual Analysis Please click on this link to read my textual analysis of Se7en as part of researching the conventions of a thriller opening, as this is a physiological thriller, this will help me and my group, as we are deciding what type of thriller to do.

Please click here to watch the opening scene of se7en, and above it is my textual analysis.

Preliminary Evaluation

Below this post I have posted a short video answering some of the following questions as part of our preliminary evaluation. However I will answer question six below.

Q1- What have you learned during the making of your preliminary task?

Q2- Areas of success

Q3- Areas for development

Q4-  How well did you meet the brief?

Q5- Feedback from others


Q6- Evaluate your contribution to the groups work.

In our preliminary task I did contribute, My main contribution was starring in the filming as one of the character, i projected my voice well and made my self clear to the audience. I also contributed with the editing as i clipped mistakes out and trimmed the video, i also contributed with the editing by adding music at the end with the rolling credits which myself and Maddie made. I also contributed with helping Georgia with the filming and using the camera and tripod.

We all decided the story line of our preliminary task, therefore that is another contribution I had within the task as we thought of our own dialogue and what to say for it to  follow on and make sense. We also all contributed with helping to export the video onto premiere pro and using the editing software and took it in turns to edit certain bits. I also contributed with the preliminary task as I created the storyboard which enabled us to follow the story line and plot of our video.

I have gained new skills from the making of our preliminary task as I have gained team working skills and being able to work in a team and also independently. I have learned loads of new ict skills with using new software and transporting files and editing etc. I have also gained some technology skills with using new equipment such as the cameras and tripods.

I think we all contributed equally in the making of our preliminary task as we all worked together and made it come together, however unfortunately one of our team members left and was unable to participate in the rest of the making of the preliminary task, however the rest of the group came together and completed it.

Our Preliminary Evaluation

The Fall Gender Analysis

The Fall - Gender analysis

Although I completed this as part of my study of the representation of gender for my AS exam, it is relevant to my coursework as, in planning for this, I will need to consider how the representation of gender is constructed through the use of camera shots, mise-en-scene, editing and sound. This will hopefully enable me to represent characters in a variety of different ways in my film opening.

Final Preliminary Task

My storyboard

As part of our preliminary task we had to create a storyboard, My storyboard clearly shows what each shot will look like and the camera angle and sound with it which is either digetic sound or non digetic sound. My storyboard shows the plot of a group of teenagers discussing a party at the weekend.

Utopia

Utopia is a British Tv drama, it was screened in 2014 and its a conspiracy drama. Its about a shadowy network working above national government. There are plans to control the world population by making people infertile through flu vaccinations.

In one of the episodes of Utopia (almost suicide scene) diegetic sound is used at the start and throughout as when the man is screwing into the computer and when blood is squirting everywhere its diegetic, this is used because it makes it sound more realistic, therefore people will get hooked into the thriller.

 Utopia got the comic book look by using technicolor pallet of 1950s Hollywood. They use grading software Nucoda film master to colour correct each of the shots. Munden is still trying to find the aesthetic for series 2. I found this research  from 'wired' magazine.

In Utopia, the producer uses loads of different camera angles and shots to create a tense atmosphere and to show the emotion throughout the episodes and characters, they clearly show the perspective from/to each character. In utopia there is a clear sign of continuity in one of the episodes that I've watched, which shows that the filming was very accurate which makes the television drama more realistic to the public.

The child in the shot below, had to have a serious deathly look on his face, and the producer/ camera man had to get him practically looking straight at the camera in an evil face so they did  this by simply putting peppa pig on a phone directly next to the camera to zone him out.

Our preliminary task

Preliminary task

In our preliminary task we had to video and edit a scene of some of our characters/actors walking through a door and sitting on a chair and transferring some lines of dialogue.

In our group, we had continuity as we kept our clothes/hair the same and we also managed to keep all the objects and props the same and just all the mise en scene the same to create the continuity through our video. We used many different camera angles to show the different perspectives of each character which you could then see the clear emotion from each character. We used reverse shot to show the clear conversation between all of us and it creates more of a scene and atmosphere to the video. We used 180 degree rule as all the characters have the same left/right relationship throughout. We also used match on action as we cut different videos and edited them together so its a continuous video. 

Media

Definitions

180 degree rule- The basic guideline that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. When the camera passes the imaginary line its called 'crossing the line'. New shot from opposite side is called reverse angle.

Match on action- Refers to film editing and video editing techniques where the editor cuts from one shot to another view that matches the first hots action. Although the two shots may have been filmed hours apart, Cutting on action gives the impression of continuous time when watching the edited film. Its a form of continuity editing.

Reverse shot- Shows both sides. Conversation seen from perspective. Shows facial expression and emotion from each character.

My action video starter

Shot Types

As part of our research for our As exam, we have had to discover different camera shots and angles. I produced a small series of different shots representing a drug scene, as the camera shots used portray how the audience will feel when seeing the images.

My blogsite

Welcome to my blogsite!

I have studied Media at GCSE and I really enjoyed it and got really good grades. I have always been very artistic and I enjoy to create things. Media interests me because of its creativity, I want to find out loads of new techniques and what more there is to it.

 I am looking forward to the editing and creating.

I am looking forward to producing the task of 2 and a half minute film opening. I hope you enjoy it when it is uploaded!