Planning Part Four: Location Scouting

Before my group began filming, we went out to look at our location to start filming our Thriller sequence, we had taken some photos with the camera we were going to film with so that we could look back at the images and decide as a group if this was the best choice to have as a location.

We had taken about 30 photos of the area but only used 13 of them as they were from different angels of the building and areas inside of it that we may want to use when we are filming as they had a thrilling look to them when in the right position.

 On these two pages there are 5 photos of the location using different shot sizes, the top two on the left were outside shots of the building, as it was a cold day when the photos were taken the photos look dark and this will most likely change when we go to film.
The third photo on the left is a shot from the inside of a hanging door and rope, we thought this looked quite scary so we took a photo of this, when the wind blows it door will swing in the wind giving it a creep affect, this would be good to capture in the film. The bottom left photo was something we found left in the building we thought this looked rather creepy so we wanted to try and incorporate this into our film. The top right photo was of a tree just around the corner from the location we wanted, we took a picture of this because we could use this as our location if the other one was inaccessible.

The top left photo was a picture of an electrical box left from the building, when we saw this we thought it looked kinda creepy and thought we could possibly use this for some shots. On the second left photo we saw a door with graffiti left on it, as there were quite a few '?' graffiti marks we thought we could possibly use this as a title and working it into the thriller. The two bottom left photos were shots of the field that surrounded it, with the frost on the ground we thought this looked good but knew we wouldn't be able to have this for our filming but from the fourth picture we thought we could use this as the opening scene where the title would appear and have this as something that would be done as a point of view type shot. On the two top right photos they were some pictures of some of the old pieces left over from the building, the top right photo of the wire hanging down could possibly be a health and safety risk so we would have to put that into consideration when we begin to film. The bottom two photos were some shots of two of the doors that had graffiti on it, from these pictures we thought we could possibly use one of the doors in our thriller for example having one of our actors look through the door.

Planning Part Three: Filming Schedule

My group had written up a filming schedule with the dates that we would have liked to have filmed on, however these dates did not happen due to different reasons including the battery dying on the camera which we will make sure next time to bring a spare battery with us and missing members of the group.

We had decided who we were going to have as our actors in the thriller as we had asked some college friends if they would be happy to do the filming for us on these dates, we had Paige Richmond, James Cox, Boston O'Grady and Georgia Gray as our actors however if these people were not available we would have back up people to do feature in the thriller for us.

For the costumes we decided that we wanted our actors in their everyday clothing that they would usually wear to college as we wanted it to look as natural as possible as their characters are college students so having the actors in there normal clothes will save time in costume changes but also gives us the problem if we need to re-shoot a scene they will not be wearing the same outfit.

For location we already had a location we wanted to use that was an abandoned building close to the college which gave off a creepy vibe, we thought this would be a good location to film because of the thriller aspect it has but we also wanted to go to take some pictures of the area to evaluate later.

We had minimal props to use in our filming and were only used for the sounds for example a stick snapping and a brick falling, we did not have any props in the scenes we were filming as they were not needed.

Our time management included making sure we had everything planned before we go out to film so that we know what we are going to do when we go so we don't waste time.

Planning Part Two: Storyboard

My group had made a storyboard so that we could document our original idea of what we are going to do when we go to film. The storyboard consists of 8 scenes, the first scene is a group of teenagers walking through a field where the are talking until they come across a abandoned building ahead of them, this is shown in the next scene where they are standing in front of the building intrigued as to what is is, wanting to explore the area. We then cut to the scene where we see the front of the building where the actors will exchange dialogue about the building before entering it which will then be the next scene where the go inside the building and splitting as a group each one of them going in different directions which will show in the next few scenes until they go missing one at a time leaving just one person left after the blank screen where the last person will be seen running away from the site.

Planning Part One: Mind Map

The group that I am in (Heather and Alex) made a mind map where we had four different categories, these were 'Titles', 'Sound', 'Future Intentions' and 'Evaluation'. In the titles category we came up with six different possible titles for us to use in our opening scene for a thriller, in this process we wanted the titles to have a thriller type of titles. From the titles we thought the best one to use was abandoned as it fits the storyline we want to use. In the sound category we thought of five different sounds that we will need to think about and possibly use when we begin filming our thriller, we thought about the dialogue and when will our actors use dialogue in scenes and whether we will have to record the dialogue separately to make sure you can hear them. We also thought about amplifying the sounds of footsteps and items breaking so that you can actually hear it when we have the final edit. In the future intentions category it included us making sure we are prepared before we go to film making sure we know what we are doing and what we will include as well as having the correct equipment with us and sticking to a schedule, this was also mentioned in our section for evaluation.