Evaluation Activity 1

The title of the film:
The title of our film is displayed in the first frame. We used the font Orator STD to give the spaced out deranged look. The title of our film is ‘The Watching’. Our font is also just one colour, white, to make it stand out more and make it more eye-catching. This style of font is very common among the thriller genre. Such as the cape fear title
We used this title to influence our decision on the design of our title as cape fear also has the same spaced out typography and the bold one coloured scheme.

We came up with the title of the film based on the setting of our thriller as it was about a girl being stalked we finally decided on the name 'The Watching'.

Special FX:
We did not use any special FX in our film apart from fading to black and our special FX on the poster. We made the colours sharper and brighter to make it give a disorientated feel.

How characters are introduced:
Our characters are introduced one by one the first character to be introduced is Georgia who plays the girl this shot is seen in frame 3. You straight away see her dead with blood running down her face. This automatically gives the audience the impression they are watching a thriller. Roberta is the second character to be introduced she comes in from off shot and an over the shoulder shot this is because you never see her face as she is the murderer and we want to create an air of suspense.

Story and how the opening sets it up:
The story line of our thriller is a girl being followed then killed by her stalker. The opening to our thriller sets this up by first introducing the girl with a close up of her dead. There is then a shot of her killer looking at pictures he has collected of her showing his obsession with the girl.

Genre and how the opening suggests it:
Our genre for our thriller is psychological thriller as we never know who the murderer is and this is shown in our opening as the murderer comes into shot from behind we do not see the killers face. It is also suggested from the shot of the girl dead we do not know how she died which starts to get the audience thinking.

Settings and Location:

We decided to base our thriller in the forest outside shenfield high school. As a comon stereotypical trait of thrillers is that it is based in a deserted area. As the girl is getting ready the setting in her room is colour coded pink to make her seem more innocent and childlike.

Costumes and Props:

The only prop used was the knife to kill the girl with. We used a knife as our choosen weapon as it is seen widely in most thrillers. Our costume for the girl chosen was a purple shirt to make the character seem more girly and also the top button was done up to make her seem insecure and scared. The murderer was dressed all in black and with a hood to make him seem more mysterious.

Georgia Day

Editing our Thriller

Once we had finished filming our thriller, we decided to start the editing straight , so there wasn’t a big rush at the end to finish and edit an opening thriller sequence. The main problem we had was how to create the scream affect at the beggining of our thriller we wanted a black screen and a sound of Georgia screaming over the top however after being told we could not do this on the editing programme pinnacle we decided to scrap the idea. We all decided to edit at one time to put our ideas together to get the best out of the thriller. Georgia was especially the best at editing, knew a lot about it and did most of it. The other problems that we confronted was that the editing suite was sometimes busy so we couldn’t always edit when it was suitable for us, so we would go at allocated times or book the omputer for our use. To start editing we put the camera on the dock, which was connected to the computer and uploaded the footage to the editing software. The software we used was Pinnacle. We filmed each scene a few times so we could choose the best shot for this, these either had to be ‘cut’ because they where too long or if it didnt fit to flow into the next shot. The ambient sound in the background as we were filming such as birds singing we didnt want so we had to edit that noise so you could hear our music. Before we even started to film we didn’t want to have any dialogue, only screaming was involved. We finally had to add the usic in we wanted as we could not use the choosen theme song we wanted from the film 13 as that would be copyright. In stead we had to find another pice of music to use. In the end we decided on pice that was creepy and bulided suspence until the end. Georgia then had to edit the music to make it louder towards the end when the suspence was building and quiter when our character was talking.

Georgia Day

Posters that have influenced our own planning

We were heavily influenced by this poster. We all liked the way the woods are in the background and the mist makes the poster look eerie. The way that the iconography is printed coming through the mist is creepy and extremely effective. The poster just introduces the film name and the date it will being coming out in cinemas. It is simple and effective. We all agreed that this set out with the location in the background, the outline of the victim and the stalker in the background.

Georgia Day

Thriller poster ideas

For our thriller we decided to create a poster to advertise our thriller we based our idea on our thriller posters. The cape fear poster has a picture of where the action takes place we decided to interpret this idea into our poster so we will have a picture of the woods in our poster. We also based our idea on a new moon poster we saw the poster and liked the effect they had used. They made the woods appear misty and more scary. We want to do this with our poster to make it appear scarier.

By Roberta Leary

Our Poster

By Georgia Day, Roberta Leary and Maria Rostkowska

Filming our footage

Once we had all of our storyboards and everything sorted, we shot our footage. Considering we only needed 2minutes worth of filming we filmed at least 5 minutes worth. But we also had to take into consideration that we wanted a varied amount of shots from different angles so when putting the final piece together we had a choice of what clips to use.
We felt we had very good continuity editing there is one scene where Georgia Day comes out of Roberta’s house in (..) and then we film her walking out of another house pathway round the back of the school near our main setting. We also used our own sound affects. Like when Georgia is walking down a footpath and the camera is being handheld, as if it is seeing though the eyes of the killer, the camera moves and we purposely snap a twig so it looks as if the killer is creeping. It adds to the misé-en-scene.
We encountered some problems when filming though. We had the problem of the weather, one day we would film and it would be a dull day with lots of clouds, this was very good for the ominous setting, but the next day of recording brought us bright sunshine and this was very noticeable when we tried to get some footage. To work our way round the problem we decided to use the time to take still camera shots in the woods for the end of the clip, where the trees blocked out most of the sunshine which helped a lot.
We also had to make sure when we were filming the scenes using the sharp meat knife, that there was nobody around as to not cause any panic from anybody misunderstanding that we’re in fact only pretending.
We used a lot of props to add detail to the clip. We used twigs to make sound affects; we used a real sharp kitchen knife to make it more believable. We also used a school bag to add to the ‘student’ image we was trying to create for Georgia.
The costumes we felt were in brilliant sync and fitted well with the characters. We used black clothing for the killer; this had the connotation of the dark, horrific nature of the character. We used a blazer and leggings for Georgia’s character, the ‘victim’. This was just a typical, day to day outfit that a student would wear. This made Georgia’s character more obvious to the audience.
When we discussed what types of shots to use, we decided on using the zoom but only for distinct shots where we are adding emphasis to a certain object or person. We decided to pan the camera around for most of the shots instead of hand holding the camera all the way throughout, this is because when we do have shots where the camera is handheld it is more effective and the audience will notice it. Also if we handheld the camera all the movement may make the audience dizzy.

By Maria Rostkowska

Typography/ credits

We had to think about the way in which our typography/ credits would move into the screen. Our thriller starts with a blank screen and the shot opens with a sound bridge of a girl screaming, we thought that we could fade in the credits slowly throughout the filming. The film ends with a scream and the shot fades to black. This would be a prime opportunity to show the title of our film. The typography will fade into the screen. We have chosen a creepy and disturbing font and it will suit our thriller perfectly.

By Roberta Leary