Qiu Ling Lam
Media Studies, Set 4
A Thrilling Read Project
We came together in our group; me, Krisztina, Fouzia and Hamsa and briefly came to a decision on who would be the character in our brief film and we chose Fouzia. The next day we given a short introduction tutorial on how to use the camera and tripod correctly and also given the chance to try out the camera and its effects/settings to familiarise ourselves with it.
Next we had a discussion about the film and we came up with numerous ideas of what and how we could make our film. We all seemed to agree on our ideas and so we combined a little part of everybody’s ideas together, for instance I came up with the idea of just filming the characters feet walking away and Hamsa came up with the idea of making the newspaper drop in slow motion.
Once we had agreed on what we were going to do, we wrote it down on our film story board sheet as a rough guide to what we was going to do, we then explained our story to our teacher who also gave us some suggestions of how to use the camera effectively. Shortly afterwards we were presented with our equipment; the camera and tripod and then went off to film our work in roughly an hour.
We had already decided to do our filming on the sofas in the college hall, but when we got downstairs we saw that it was currently being occupied to make a slight change to our location, it was still in the hall but not on the sofas. We did not decide on who was going to do what apart from Fouzia doing the acting but when we started filming we all seemed to automatically fall into our places. Hamsa was doing the camera work, Krisztina was in control of all the props and showed/told Fouzia what she had to do, I was directing.
When filming we encountered a few problems but we overcame them at times of confusion we all stopped and talked about what individuals wanted to do and incorporated it the best way possible then continued filming. We discovered that the project wasn’t as easy as first thought because we had to film the same scene several times and from different angles in hope that when we had to edit it, it would give us more choices have it exactly how we wanted it. It was a rigorous process of filming but we still managed to enjoy ourselves and get the work done.
We learnt that mise-en-scene was a very important element into creating the right surrounding and atmosphere because unintentionally we were filming in a place where you could see a Christmas tree in the background which gave the wrong atmosphere. That particular mise-en-scene did not help generate or suit our ‘thriller’ theme.
When we were filming we remembered the five second rule but we has seem to of forgotten about the headroom. During playback of our filming we noticed this and it was present throughout the filming however we were happy with all our shots especially our close ups and extreme close ups (Fouzia’s facial expressions). We also noticed that not all of our camera shots turned out how we wanted such as our handheld camera work in attempt to create a spooky, tense atmosphere. Once we completed our filming within the time limit we returned to the classroom where all of the equipment was put away and told what we were going to be doing next lesson which was the editing.
We entered the editing suite next lesson and went through a short tutorial of basic editing and followed instructions on how to connect the camcorder to the computer in order to gain our work. We went through the whole of our film and created little sections/scenes that we would be using in each section/scene we had roughly two or three that we could choose from, we watched it carefully and decided on which was the best to use then we deleted the others till we ended up with separate scenes that when put together created out short film.
Over the holidays I watched numerous films and noticed that the 'thriller' genre can be further sub-divided into smaller more precise categories. I watched action thrillers and horror thrillers such as DOA, Transporter 1,2,3 and Saw, all of them are able to fulfill the viewers feeling of want but they add other key elements by incorporating other genres to produce a more satisfied sensation for the audience. This helped me to broaden my ideas about what my group could do for our thriller project in hope to keep it as original and the best possible.
During our lesson on the 16th we were aware that we were behind on our thrilling read project and decided to split the group into two, one group would complete the editing for the thrilling read project and the other would have a discussion and take notes on the practicality or new project and the ideas that they had come up with. We done this in attempt to catch up on our previous project and not fall behind in our new one. We had successfully completed our project and on Monday was completely revived and fresh for our new challenge.
