19/11/13, Planning: Bruise Experimentation

Today in my group, we decided to research how to make fake bruises as we are going to have to try and put them on the girl who gets kidnapped. We thought looking at YouTube videos of tutorials would help us make the bruises as realistic as possible.

We decided that between us we would split the money and buy a yellow, green and black face paint that we can use on the face. We found out that the yellower the bruise the older it looked so we wanted to make them as brown/black as possible but still have a bit of yellow in them.

15/11/13, Research: Thriller Movie Trailers

Today my group decided to watch a handful of trailers from the genre of our film (thriller). We thought this would be helpful because although we aren't making a trailer, the editing and filming techniques could help us in our final film.

The films we watched trailers for included these films:

- Taken

- Taken 2

- Colombiana

- Batman

- The silence of the lambs

- The Departed

- Devil

- Shutter Island

- Unknown

- Non-Stop

- Hanna

- Wrecked

- Safe House

- Gone

11/11/13, Construction: Devising our film title

-       -    Today we worked on the exact wording for our film title. We wanted the title to establish our film’s genre. (Modern thriller)

-        -   Convey the key ideas (Revenge)

-         -  Intriguing the audience through enigma (because we cross cut between two narrative strands involving a surgeon and a vengeful patient)

-         -  Tap into the intertextuality through shared knowledge of cultural codes (through the terms or images that the audience is familiar with)

7/11/13, Planning: Final Film.

My group for my final film opening consists of Me, Emma Walker and Nicole Shakhnazarova. We did an 8 step diagram of the first ideas that we would want our film opening to have. We decided that we wanted it to have a 'thriller/suspense' genre/theme.

Our Ideas:
- There is a girl in a bath and she has just been kidnapped but she escaped and she ran back home and she is still emotionally damaged
- She doesn't want anyone to know what happened to her
- She keeps getting flashbacks of when she was taken and what the man that kidnapped her was going to do to her.
- The fact that she doesnt want anyone to know that she was taken creates enigma becasue the audience are confused as normally, someone would go to the police if this happened.
- She goes to her house and gets in the bath to wash away all the blood.
- She then looks down at her wrist and sees a rope burn of where the man tied her up very tightly and she keeps getting flashbacks.
- When she gets out of the shower, she covers the bruises with foundation, as she doesn't want anybody to know.
- Straight after, she throws away the clothes that she was wearing before as they are covered in blood.
- Straight after she throws the clothes away it cuts to the title sequence and the name of the film (undecided yet) comes up.

29/10/13, Research: Film Opening Analysis

Today we decided to look at the opening of a television thriller Zen (BBC 1). We noticed the ways in which genre was presented:
- Shots of guns to signal the world of crime
- Images of keys to refer to prisons
- The protagonist in a dark, format suit with sunglasses, looking formal and authoritative.
- Building relating to Italian police headquarters 'The Quesura' clearly inscribed in stone.

This detective series featuring Aurelio zen is set Rome and is based on the novels of Michael Dibdin. I noticed. how the opening had many visual clues that signaled the italianicity of the drama, such as:
- The red, white and green vertical bands with connotations of the Italian flag
- Silhouetted images of St Peter's Dome as well as bird's eye shots of St Peter's Square which are ironic emblems of Rome, renowned the world over
- Repeated images of Fiat cinquecento cars

15/10/13, Research: Thriller Codes and Conventions (Scoop It)

Today we looked at how to sign up to scoop it so that we could scoop important news reports, web pages or just anything relating to thriller codes and conventions. Since our plan or our final film is a thriller/suspense genre opening, this will come in handy!

I also scooped some stories about kidnappings as our plan involves one and we wanted to find out more about it. I think this is going to be very useful so we can made the flashback (the kidnapping scene) as realistic as possible.

The reason scoop it is so useful is because you can see all webpages on one screen, and only the important sections. Scoop it also gives you suggestions on what they recommend you scoop for your research pages.

The link to my scoop it: http://www.scoop.it/share/theme/linkedin/2342113

8/10/13, Research: Made in Dagenham, The English Patient.

Today we looked at two different film openings (two different genres) as an inspiration for our final film;

The English Patient: it opened with a close up shot of a hand painting on a canvas or a cave wall. They seem to be painting some sort of mountains or hills, and then after this shot they have a cross dissolve to an aerial shot of the sand dunes of Egypt, relating to what the person was painting.

Brainstorming: I think we could use the CU shots that they use in The English Patient in our final film as we have a lot of shots of the bath running and her mascara running down her face. We could also do close-up shots of the rope burn that the girl has which in turn triggers the flashbacks with the man who kidnaps her.

Made in Dagenham:  opens with an establishing shot of a factory, creates a sense of space and how big the setting is, then immediately the music changes and there is a close-up shot of women working hard sowing and making fabrics. 

Brainstorming: As there is an establishing shot, we talked about how we could use shots like this in films with a lot of nature/environment in the beginning in the film. As our film doesn't consist of any of these shots, we don't think these would be helpful or necessary.

After watching these two openings, we had a class discussion about establishing shots and wide-angle shots. These shots might help up for our final film, even though my final film isn't going to contain many establishing shots as there will be more close up and extreme close up shots.