Group Planning

In my group are Jessica Day and Charlie Stewart and we all have to have regular group meetings and updates. This is very good for our group as it allows us to share our ideas about the opening sequence and other tasks. We can discuss together the best way sot make out film conventional to the thriller genre. We also have group discussions whenever someone wants to change something and we decide whether or not it's a good idea. We talk about the best way we can incorporate these ideas into our film and how we can explore different micro elements we can incorporate into our film. 

In our first meeting we discussed the narrative. We had all created our own individual narrative ideas and the we discussed which one we should base our film on. We decided that Charlie's would be too difficult to film and that mine was overly complex and too much to fit into an opening sequence. We then came to the conclusion that if we made some changes to Jess' idea it would be the most conventional as well as being the easiest to film as it was all set in one location. We decided to get rid of the "game" aspect and just make it so the antagonist targeted one victim. We didn't discuss inspirations much in our first meeting but me and Charlie agreed that our favourite thriller was Se7en and we liked the way the antagonist was presented. We also realised that after we changed Jess' narrative it had several similarities with the Scream film series.

We were given several A3 sheets of paper and given the task of planning out each part of our sequence and what techniques we will use. We separated each sheet into four sections and in each section we focused on a different part of our sequence. On the first section we planned mise-en-scene and what mise-en-scene elements we would feature in our film. We decided that for iconography our antagonist would be armed with a knife which is a conventional murder weapon in thriller films. We also decided to use low key lighting and have the victims wearing light clothes and the antagonist wearing black, representing good vs evil. We decided to set out film in a forest as it is a dark, eerie and isolated location which makes the on-screen characters and the audience all feel uneasy.

In the next meeting we discussed cinematography. We looked at what shots and angles we could use and how we could use them to improve the look and feel of our sequence. We all instantly agreed that we should feature shaky handheld camera movements to portray to the audience the fear and panic the victim is feeling. We also decided that we should have a high angle shot of the victim walking alone through the forest to highlight how isolated and vulnerable she is. We decided that when the antagonist is in the frame we should use low angle shots to make him appear more threatening and powerful.

The next meeting was all about the soundtrack. I came up with the idea of having off screen sound of crunching leaves and branches being broken to suggest to the victim and to the audience that the victim may be being followed. We all decided that this was a good idea as it increases tension and creates panic. We will use parallel sound of the victims heavy breathing which shows the audience that she is as scared as they would expect her to be and sympathize.