Four our location, we needed somewhere edgy and a bit rugged looking. For our first idea of 'Greasy chops' we looked at Beatrice Webb boarding house for our meal, and the old kitchen at school to act as the sterile hospital. We then had a brain wave - and decided to use the old run down kitchen as our location. As well as being idealic looking, it wasn't a nightmare in terms of transporting lighting equipment etc. We did not even need props so setting up would take us no time at all.
Our cast was not hard to decide as we had such a limited time to decide on our final idea, due to the loss of our other two group members. Therefore Jason Gilford (our media teacher) offered to be the boss, as he had the right clothing (an expensive suite) and fancied becoming a ' gay bully' for the day! We got other teachers and older looking students to appear in our thriller too. We decided to put the older looking students as the victims, and the teachers i.e. Adam Grant the Scouser as the Boss's brutes.
Prop list:
Blood
meat cleaver
nail file
shot gun
fur coat
table
comfy chair
buckets
Lock stock and smoking barrels - inspired us ( shot gun and gangster boss)
Costumes and makeup:
Boss: Suite, combed hair.
victims: normal clothes i.e. jeans and shirt, latex (on burn victim)
Bullies: fur coat, shaved heads, vests, casual looking
Running order:
8.45- meet in edit suite
9.00- have everything set up
9.15- start filming Jason's monolgues
10.00- start filming action shots
11.00- makeup on burn victim
11.30- tracking
12.00- retakes
12.30- lunch
1.30- shooting begins
2.00- Finish with victims
3.00- record sounds of screams etc
3.30- begin packing up
4.00- finnish
On the day:
The shoot day commenced at 8.45am whereby myself, Greg, Luke and Jason met in the editing suite. It didnt go according to plan as Jason was no-where to be seen! So while we were waiting for him to arrive, myself and Greg got the props together from the props cupboard. We then decided to start setting up and carried the cameras and lighting equipment into the old kitchen. We discovered that we didnt need much artifical lighting as the room was bright. However, we did need to block out the gap behind the boss with paper. Jason arrived at the set at 9.40am with his gangster booklet, providing him with his monologue and things to say. He memorised each little part and we filmed it in 4 sections, each lasting about 30 seconds. After filming Jason, we decided to take a tea break at 11.00am and proceed on with the action scenes - we were very behind our schedule however, it was all going well. The actions shots took a while as the shot including the scouser had to be done twice as it was hand held, this shot turned out to be very realistc and extremely disturbing (which was the intention!) The victim in this scene was asked on the day to appear in 'Trigger Happy' as we were short of victims. We had to film the action scenes very quickly as the teachers appearing in it i.e. Al the man torturing Victoria (the only woman in the play) had places to be and things to do! Therefore we did this in 2 takes, and his pouring of the 'acid' in one long take. The burning scene took a bit of time because it was a hard shot to film, I shot this one myself using a handheld device and had to follow the victim Ryan's movement with ease and fluidity. We managed to get the perfect shot after about 4 takes. The burn victims makeup took no time at all, therefore we were right on schedule for supper. However, as we reached the end of the day we realised we did not have enough footage, however the footage we did have was very good and powerful! Therefore in a way we were fortunate there was only 2 members in our group as things turned out perfectly. :)
We rejected our previous ideas as myself and Greg did not think we had enough time to do our previous ideas effectively, as there are now only two of us in the group as one left and the other got expelled. However, we still followed the brief we were given: to construct the opening/title sequence to a thriller for an 18audience that lasted up to three minutes max.
Our aims:
- We considered to organise as independantely as possible the successful construction of our first media text from concept to product.
- To handle the camera, sound and editing technology to produce a standard of work that would match a similar text procued by a genuine industry institution.
- To research and learn about industry production of the thriller genre.
- To study in greater detail the function and conventions of opening sequences and the importance and effect and function of titles.
- To attempt to accurately construct from concept, a sequence in which titles are an intrinsic and pivotal element of the mode of address.
Detail all class,group and individual research that I undertook on the thriller genre:
Get carter, performance, the beach, get rich or die trying, sexybeast, notorious, 8 mile, scarface, the departed, lock stock and two smoking barrels, casino etc.. looking at directors like Martin Scorse and Brian De Palma.
Lock stock and two smoking barrels:
Scarface:
What did we discover about generic conventions? The repetition of the gangster's in each movie as each are powerful, but have a weakness. Therefore we are going to reproduce this in our own thriller!
mode of address: 18years and over
fonts and colours: black and whites
Media text that inspired us:
We used the deception from the film 'The beach' to inspire us to look at the gangster side of thrillers.
