Location scouting- First ideas

Our group has been thinking about where we want to shoot the opening. We have thought about the characteristics and atmosphere of the areas and see if it will suitable for the footage. 

Location 1- For the opening scene we are looking for a rundown and dull room. This will aim to look look like a basement, which is where our main character is supposed to be in the opening of the sequence. We aim to have less light in the scene, and just an overall dull and gloomy mood. This setting will take up approximately a minute and 30 seconds.

Location 2- The next location is fairly simple and will be in our school. We just need a hallway to film the main character walking down it with all of the other students there as well. He will be walking to our next setting. 

Location 3- Our last setting will take place inside a classroom, in our school. It will have our main character in it along with all of his supposed classmates. Our opening will end in this location too. 

Credits list for our project

These are our preliminary credits for our thriller opening. These are subject to change depending on whether we think the person is carrying out their role well enough, but we don't think will be a problem. 

• Director- Benoit Ganesan. 
• Story by- Aayush Joshi
• Screenplay- Benoit Ganesan and Jamie Gerrish
• Production Manager- Ashley Banger
• Edited by- Benoit Ganesan, Ashley Banger and Jamie Gerrish
• Starring- Aayush Joshi
• Costume Designer- Aayush Joshi and Ashley Banger
• Director of Photography- Jamie Gerrish

Benoit Ganesan is the director because he has a passion for filmmaking and he has more past experience on directing films. He has directed some short films in the past, which is why we thought he should direct the project out of the 3 of us. He also regularly uses Adobe Premiere so he knows how to edit and compose our opening with all the technical detail, regarding to conventions of the thriller genre such as darker colour correction, fast paced cuts, suspenseful music etc. 

Aayush Joshi is the main character who plays the antagonist. He loves to act and wants to pursue an acting career. He is playing this character as he can portray him truthfully and suits the stereotype of this character. Aayush also created the story of our opening sequence. He created it utilising the feedback he got from the survey he made. People said they wanted to see characters who reflect society, therefore terrorism is the subject we chose. This will make the audience feel insecure about how they could be oblivious to the truth concerning our society and morals. Aayush and Ashley will be designing the costumes because they understand which clothes would suit this character, based on real experiences and culture. 

Jamie Gerrish wrote the screenplay along with Benoit for the opening because he understands how to portray this story on the screen. He has included all of our required themes and ideas into the film which we think work well. He also has a good understanding of editing in Premiere which is why he is editing alongside Benoit and Ashley. Furthermore, he is the director of photography because he can portray our story using the camera and will help out the director Benoit.

 Lastly, Ashley is co-editing because he has past experience with software similar to Premiere, this being Adobe After Effects. He has also been assigned as the production manager because he wants to make sure everything that needs to be done for the project is being done, such as all the right filming, the right editing, and the right portrayal of characters. 

Overall, us four have previously worked together using these roles so we feel confident to move forward and get the project done to the best of our ability. 

Binary Opposition

Binary opposition describes 2 pieces of material or terms that are the exact opposite in meaning. It is the system in which 2 things are presented as direct opposites, through the use of language or context.

Binary opposition examples:


-Hot/cold
-Dark/light
-Good/evil
-Hero/villain
-Happy/angry

Binary opposition can be used particularly effectively in films and media. Such as in a film, a great story can be told using two characters that are binary opposites, such as they both come from completely different backgrounds, share different views on things and have differing personalities. This is just an idea but helps to explain the term  and its meaning.

Continuity Edit- Final cut

This is our final video for our Continuity edit. Once we filmed all of the video, we processed our footage and imported it into Adobe Premiere. We, as a a group, then put the video together in such a way that we thought meaning was shown clearly throughout the video, and there weren't any problems with the continuity. By this we had to assess the shot types, duration's, placements of the clips, and angles. If we edited the video so that some certain features as such didn't look fully correct, the continuity wouldn't look as clean and meaning may be slightly more tricky to comprehend. Such as, if we filmed the person walking in two completely different angles, it may look strange and the simple walking action might look disjointed. So we had to take this into consideration when editing and shooting the video. We also followed the 180 degree rule throughout the video, as required in our task guidelines.



We then thought about the sound of the video. The guidelines of our task said that we need to use an example of non-diegetic sound. So we found a sample of music from a film trailer, and we put it over our video. We thought this helped to set the tone of our video and add a more realistic approach. getting the viewers more drawn in. After lots of editing and mixing around clips, we felt that this cut was good and suitable for the continuity editing task. This was because there wasn't any major problems we could see with the cut, and we felt that continuity has been shown finely. We had also played around with the duration of clips quite a lot to ensure a consistent, flowing series of clips.



Our group now has a better understanding on how to edit clips and sequencing. We now have a greater understanding on how to edit clips without any breaks or irregularities, and now we have gained more teamwork when it comes to producing video.

The 180 Degree Rule

The 180 degree rule is a rule used in film that is showing where the camera can be placed within a shot, specifically within 180 degrees on an invisible line between the characters in the shot. The rule allows for the spacial relationship between the 2 characters in the shot to be consistent, the characters will remain in their respectful positions or perspectives. This avoids the audience getting confused as to what they're seeing on screen, and helps give them perspective on what is happening off screen. To put it in more simple terms, the two characters will only be shot from one side of theirs. This is agreeing with the 180 degree rule, however if in one shot they are shot from one side, then in the next shot their other side, this is breaking the 180 degree rule, also known as 'Breaking the line', as shown in the two images from The Shining below.


 


These 2 images are from the psychological horror classic The Shining. Director Stanley Kubrick has shot a scene of dialogue between the 2 characters. As we can see here, the camera swaps from the arcs in these back to back shots. However this is breaking the 180 degree rule, this is called 'Breaking the line'. The director may have used this to keep the audience jarred from the viewing of the film and try to break any sense of realism, especially in a film like this. This is effective and it does its job.

Continuity Editing task

In Media recently we have been established a task that is to test us on how well we can follow the 180 degree rule, and how well we can edit to try and make for as much continuity as possible.

The 180 degree rule is a standard guideline for the on-screen spacial relationship between the two characters or objects inside the frame. The rule allows for the spacial relationship between the characters to be consistent; when the camera changes from the 2 arcs, the characters will remain in their rightful positions or perspectives. They won't seem to be on the incorrect left or right side; just the direction they were originally in. Continuity editing is basically shooting and editing in a way that looks like from one shot, the next shot is a direct continuation from the previous shot. Such as, if you shoot an over the shoulder of a person walking up to a door and they are about to open it, and then the next shot is in front of the door watching them open it, this is continuity editing.

For the task, it's fairly simple. We need to shoot a 1 minute clip which doesn't specifically matter what we shoot; as long as when we edit we follow the rules of continuity. We have chosen to shoot a short video of 2 boys who have an argument within our school.

Here is the sheet we were given with all of the guidelines and requirements for the task.

The first thing we had to do was create our storyboard. This took us approximately 1 lesson, here it is below:

I will blog our final continuity edit once it is completed.