Final Edit - class reviews

We got our class to sit down together and watch each others final edits and gave each other positives of our end product and some stuff that we could change to make it better if we could go back and re-edit.
+ The positives that we got were that they liked the inserts such as the window and the slanted hallway shot:












+ They also thought that our music worked well with our piece as it fit what kind of atmosphere that we are trying to create and a lot of our shots mimicked the beats of the music.
+ They also thought that we created a good enigma as they could tell what was going on but couldn't imagine what was going to happen and wanted to know more.
+ They liked the hardest part of our final edit which was the ambient sound, this was hard as we constantly had criticism about it and we tried really hard to make it work and sort out these problems.
+ The titles on the piece were positively spoke about as they told us that they were well placed so that you could read all of them clearly and they had nice font that didn't look ridiculous and very professional.
+ Our class also said that they liked the variation of our getting ready shots as they weren't the usual and boring getting ready scenes, they said that they were unique and kept the suspense of the thriller the same as it was in the shots before.

However there were some improvements that they touched upon which we took into consideration and we realised these faults that we didn't notice when editing, if we had more time to go back and edit then we would definitely change these as we think that they would make our final piece perfect. The negatives were that:

- The title where it says 'Directed by David and Guy' is very informal compared to our other titles, therefore it probably should have read as 'Directed by David Thomas and Guy Nicholson'.
- They also spotted that there was a slight wobble at the end of the shot where Matt is being watched whilst walking across the playground, we tried to combat this problem before however we didn't cut enough off to enable people not to see anything.

Thriller opening scene - Final Edit

Thriller opening scene - bird noises

For our window insert we wanted some sound that would fit with the insert so we thought of putting in some bird sounds as through the window it was an over grown garden, we thought the Blackbird sound in the first few seconds of this clip would fit just right, the bird noise finishes at 20 seconds:

Thriller opening scene - Third draft review

The overall opinion from the people that we asked is that we need to include more original ambient sound, we have looked through some of our original footage where ambient sound would fit perfectly. We found two scenes where it would fit and the audio was of great quality, these are when Matt is taking off his coat jacket and when he is walking down  the long corridor. Here is two screenshots of the scenes that we are going to include ambient sound in:

Thriller opening scene - Third draft opinions

We asked Chris and Molly what they thought of our third draft and whether we had improved on their criticisms and what they thought we could do better, they both said that it was good that we added in ambient sound however it sounded very plain in many areas and that we should get more of our original sound into the piece. As all we had used was the breaking of glass sound under feet which wasn't our original sound it was one that we found off of YouTube:

Thriller opening scene - third draft

Thriller opening scene - sound effects for the hallway

We needed some more sounds for our piece that wasn't our soundtrack and we felt that due to the poor conditions of the ground in the hallway that we shot David's character in, this was because our original ambient sound that was recorded whilst shooting this was not good as it had voices and other noises that were not good enough for our piece.

Thriller opening scene - second draft review

In our second draft opinions post we were told of a flaw that we have in our second draft which we know we need to change, both people said that we need to build our soundscape more and to do this we need to go through our shots and collect all of the ambient sound that is present and insert it into our piece where appropriate, hopefully it will be in our third draft if not then we will create a fourth to showcase it.

Thriller opening scene - first draft review

After getting feedback from our peers on our first draft of our thriller opening we decided to take some of their advice and change our thriller to combat these flaws. One of our comments was that our soundtrack was too repetitive, this was due to our soundtrack being 20 seconds long therefore we had to cut and paste it over and over again to last the full length of time. We have changed our soundtrack to a lengthier piece which lasts the full amount of time that we need it to, therefore it is not repetitive and we feel that is fits our piece well.

We were also told that we needed to add more titles throughout the film, so we went from three titles to six not including the production company name and the title of the thriller. Here are a few examples of the ones we added in: 

Thriller opening scene - second draft opinions

Thriller opening scene - first draft opinions

Thriller opening scene - opinions of our production company titles

To see if our production company opening is good enough for our project we wanted to get the opinions of some of our classmates and others around the college, this means that we can change anything that the people don't like or redesign it to make it better. These are their opinions of this production title:

Emily Brookes: 'I am very impressed with it and it looks very professional, the music also fits well with the title and makes each word and the name in general stand out more.'

Finley O'Neill: 'I like the concept of the title and thought it was done to a very professional standard, the sound effects work well and the transitions flow very nicely.'

Thriller opening scene - Production company sounds 2

For our production company logo which shows up at the start of our thriller project we used this sound for when 'Legend' comes up onto the screen this makes the word 'legend' stand out more as it appears on screen, this is similar to the sound effect that we put onto the word 'entertainment'. The sound that we used is at 4:47 in this clip and is labelled Horror Loop 2. This will help it to have more of a professional feel to it and similar to how an actual production company would do it.

Thriller opening scene - Production company sounds

We used the sound effect that starts at 0:11 of this YouTube video, we put it at the start when 'Entertainment' on our production company video flashes up at the start of our thriller piece to make our production company stand out and be like the actual professional ones you see like Paramount and Dreamworks. This allows us to create a more professional feel to our piece.

Thriller opening scene - The Hunt second draft

Thriller Opening Scene - Actor update

We still have Matt as our main actor but we added in a new actor as a stalker to our main character.
The person we chose was David as he is 6"2 which can fit the description of a stereotypical pursuer and he is already an established actor inside the school/college and goes to a drama school. This is a picture of David and he is the person on the left hand side of the picture:

Thriller opening scene- reshoot date

We are going back to our location to reshoot some scenes as the originals were not what we had aspired to create, therefore the date we are going back to reshoot is the 3rd of January and we are meeting in Old market Square at 10:30

Equipment:

-camera

-tripod

-GoPro

-GoPro accessories

People present:

-Myself

-David 

-Matt

Thriller opening scene - production company title

We wanted to create a production company title that moved and looked similar to the ones you see before any movie like 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Dreamworks. Therefore we are going onto Adobe After Effects to try and create one by following a detailed tutorial off of YouTube, although we are trying to achieve this sort of creation to show our production company name we know that ours will not be as good as the proper companies employ designers to do this sort of thing but we think we can do an adequate job.

The theme that seems to occur throughout the production companies openings is that the name needs to be in bold to stand out to the audience when it comes up on screen, this is something we are going to does want the audience to remember the name when the openings sequence stops. They all also have a catchy theme tune which people know and remember and they can identify the production company just by the tune, we can try to create this effect with our but we might not be able to find a tune that fits our name and style therefore will try to put in either sound effects or a plain tune that sets the tone of the opening sequence.

Thriller opening scene - update on the review

We have switched around the sleeves scene around so it matches the actions that the protagonist has just done. We have also added on a few more titles such as ' A Thomas Nicholson film' and 'Amanda Henvey' but we still need to add a few more actors onto the casting list, the reason we haven't put any on is because they are going to go on some inserts so once we have filmed them then we can start adding the rest on.
However we haven't fixed the insert problem as we are going to go and film some more on Friday as we don't have time after school due to lighting problems and we don't have time during school as we can't get time off.

Thriller opening scene - sounds update

We needed a boom sound for the ending when the film title 'The Hunt.' comes up as it can create lots of feelings for the audience as the sound can make the scene more tense as it really makes the title stand out, it can also make the audience intrigued as they can infer that the protagonist has shot someone or has been shot as in the scene before he reaches around his body, this motion can be interpreted as grabbing for a weapon.