Mood Boards

We decided that our genre is murder mystery/ thriller. This first mood board is inspiration for us on the murder mystery side, we hope that our film opening replicates the images and has some effectiveness.

The settings in this mood board for where the crime took place are quite secluded as that is the sort of area a murder would typically take place and makes it seem like the victim was vulnerable and alone so the audience would sympathise with them.

The type of characters in it are smartly dressed detectives to show their status and that they are serious with their job. There aren't many shots of the victim as they are typically murdered at the start and even though the story revolves around them they are not in the film as much as other charters, however when they are in it there are normally some close ups of their face to their show fear or pain.

The colour yellow appears in a lot of the images, whether that is the lighting or the colour of the walls in the background. This colour appears a lot in this type of genre as can represent mystery.

This mood board has helped us to think of picking an eerie setting as well as thinking about all the different shots we could do to make the film opening more effective and really indicate the genre from the off set.

This second mood board is showing us more of the thriller genre as we are thinking of doing a hybrid of murder mystery and thriller.

In some of the images there are reds in them which connotes danger and blood, and reinforces the action going on in the film. There are also lots of dull yellow tones in the lighting and background to represent caution and add to the tension. Quite neutral colours are used in a lot of the images to make it seem realistic as more the real it seems the more the audience get into it and believe the story more.

The characters facial expressions don't show any positive emotions, they are either fear, sadness or pain. This shows the action and suspense that you would get in a thriller.

Preliminary Evaluation

In our preliminary work we wanted to use a lot more match on action however it didn’t plan out that way. We managed to only get one match on action shot while Jodie was walking through the door. To make the film opening more effective we are planning on adding more match on action.

Also whilst filming the shot reverse shot during the dialogue scene, we decided it would be more convenient to use both cameras at the same time so we could get the same footage and dialogue to edit. However due to that we couldn’t film a proper over the shoulder shot otherwise the other camera would be in the shot as the classroom wasn’t long enough. Next time we will make sure there is enough space for a proper over the shoulder shot in advance. This will result in a more effective shot reverse shot, over the shoulder shot. We had some issues with matching up some of the shirt reverse shots as the conversation was too fast at points so we will need to consider this if we use shot reverse shot for a conversation in our final piece and make sure there is a bit of a pause between each bit of dialogue to help us when editing. Also, at points the sound wasn't that great and it was quite hard to hear Jodie speaking, so for when we film our final piece we need to make sure that if there is speech that the actors speak loud enough to be heard and clearly. When we watched our preliminary back after filming we noticed that our camera work was a little bit shaky, to avoid this when we are filming out film opening we can try using the steady cam so our shots are more smooth and controlled, which will then make the camera work look more professional.

We decided to use two cameras for the shot reverse shot conversation as it meant we could insure all of the dialogue and actions were in time so ran smoothly. The problem is with using two cameras is that there wasn’t two of the same cameras available therefore the picture quality of the cameras is different. the second camera wasn’t used very often yet the difference between the two stands out, for example one camera was quite grey/ greenish toned whereas the other camera was brighter and clearer. For next time we know we need to use the same quality camera so it looks the same and is unnoticeable.

Our storyboard is slightly different to our preliminary task as we used different classrooms and didn’t film a lot of the walking shots that we predicted on the storyboard. This is because the room we used was in a different place as the room we wanted to use was busy and it wouldn’t make any sense if we filmed the scenes on our storyboard. We also changed what was happening in the scene as originally we were still having it in school but with someone getting called out of their lesson to see the head master. We changed from this idea to having a detention as we felt it made it easier to film with less people and didn't over complicate it.

In our opinion we thought that our piece was really good, we made sure the editing flowed between each scenes also the match on action fits well together and makes the preliminary task more effective. We also used the 180-degree rule to make it more realistic.

Preliminary Storyboard

Here is the storyboard for our original idea for our preliminary:

After we started filming this is what we changed our idea to:

Preliminary Task

Our task was to film someone walking, walking through the door, sitting down and dialogue between two people. Doing all of this while using the 180-degree rule, shot reverse shot and match on action.

We decided to make the story line school themed and within the school environment as we thought it would be effective for match on action shots. We observed the 180-degree rule throughout the dialogue scene.

We hope to gain new skills, and develop current ones, in filming and editing from making the preliminary task to prepare us for making our film opening.

Introduction

Our names are Rebecca Ball & Ella Wright we both are in year 12 and study media A level at the FitzWimarc Sixth Form.

For our main task we need to create a two minute film opening including the main conventions which are:

• The production company name and logo
• Film title
• Title sequence
• Set scene
• Indicate genre
• Introduction of protagonist
• Music

The genre we have chosen is murder mystery/ thriller. We chose this because we think it will be more effective and we have more ideas for what we could film as an opening for this genre. It will be good to film as we will be able to include a variety of camera shots and edits. We like this type of genre as it can be intense and gets the audience thinking wanting to watch till the end to find out who the murderer was and how they did it. Examples of murder mystery/ thriller films that we like for this reason are; Se7en, Silence of the Lambs, and some murder mystery TV dramas such as; Death in Paradise and Sherlock. Murder mystery TV dramas are different to films as solving the murder is spread out more in a film and has different stories about the protagonists along with them solving the murder, but they both still end with the murderer being found and with a restored equilibrium.

From making a film opening we hope to gain a more developed understanding of how to film different camera shots and edit a high quality piece of media. We want to get a good experience from this, learn how to deal with problems that could be faced while producing a film and have the chance to get creative with how we decide to produce our film opening.