Filming schedule

LOCATION	DATE	TIME	PROPS NEEDED	HOW IT WENT
Beaconsfield	21st October	10.00 – 5.00	Van, ketchup, rope, balaclava / scarf, Pj’s	I felt we were quite disorganised, we were missing key storyboards in which to develop our film and the time became an issue due to work constraints.
Beaconsfield	27th October	10.00 -2.00	Van, ketchup, rope, balaclava / scarf, Pj’s	The following week worked much better, we had planned out exactly what we wanted to film and filmed within the sequences needed. I enjoyed working with the team.
Berkhamsted / Nettledon	6th November	2.05 – 4.00	Van, Protagonist and Antagonist clothing	This final shoot was done after school which I felt worked well, we filmed the opening sequence. As this shot is of two different location we needed to film it well and I felt we did. Netteledon also provided the scenic establishing shots which were so necessary for the conventions of action thriller genre.

Critical Analysis

If I were to do my A2 Coursework again, there would be many things that I would have done differently:

TIME MANAGEMENT: Even though this was slightly out of our control as to how much time we had to complete the piece, I believe that if I did this again I would have organised and planned the use of my time better. This may have not been helped by our main lesson being the last on a friday afternoon, and myself having work late on a friday night and a Sunday, perhaps having a job hampered my ability to contribute to weekend meetings.

GROUP SIZE: Even though I have thoroughly enjoyed who I have worked with this year, I feel that things may have been more efficient if we were in a smaller group, and perhaps we would have been able to do things better, not to mention less arguments.

OFF SHOTS: Having learnt from last year, we still did not take enough shots. If I were to do this again I would film twice as many shots as we did this year, because if I have learnt anything, it is that you can not have enough shots in the editing stage.

SOFTWARE: I would choose software that I was more familiar with so that less time was used on learning how to use the software, and more time on actually using it

LOCATION: Location was mainly an issue because of where we all lived, but if I were to do it again I would have spent more time researching locations that are closer to everyone so that people spend less time travelling and can have more time to film, let alone the cost of petrol or transport to get to these locations.

StoryBoard

Open publication - Free publishing - More a2

we created the story board to give a full sequence of events that occur in our film so that we had a hard copy of our imagination.

Research of Short Film 2

Once again this is a short film which only lasts 5 mintues and so can be compared to ours. The link between "Connected" and Vengeance is the narrative of betrayal. In both storylines everyone could be alive at the end of it. However, it is greed that has killed people.

Similarly it has again no speech in the story. From this we got that dialogue was most certainly not necessary in a short film, as long as you get your sequence of events correct.

Again however, where "Connected" differs from Vengeance is that it has a linear 3 part narrative, with the equilibrium being the two men walking, the disequilibrium being the fight for oxygen, and the new equilibrium being that everyone is dead.

Research of Short Film

Strangers is a short film that is similar to ours because it also has a length of only 5 minutes. in addition the film itself actually contains no speech at all, exactly the same as ours. We found from watching Strangers that as long as enough establishing takes place then speach is not necessary, it actually makes the audience think more themselves because they have to explain the film to themselves.

Strangers is also a very simple film with not too many complicated factors, if our group wanted to go and re-enact that film we would be able to do so very easily, with a camcorder and some friends. it also uses both diegetic and non diegetic sounding, like vengeance.

Unlike Vengeance however Strangers Follows strictly to Todorov's three part narrative. There is the equilibrium when both the men are sat down recognising each other, the disequilibrium when the group of Nazis sit down, and the new Equilibrium when the men have escaped from the train and are celebrating.

I enjoyed the film strangers very much, and it gave us as a group some great pointers as to how to make a short film, but in regards of actually inspiring us, the film is based on racism, and that is a very touchy subject, that we decided as a group was best to stay away from.

History of Thriller Genre

The history of the thriller genre can be traced back to audiences quickly tiring of the technical marvels of the new-fangled medium, forcing directors to find more inventive ways to thrill their viewers. Borrowing a trick from the hugely popular serial literature of the time, producers began to churn out weekly installments of long-running franchises, each ending with a cliff hanger that sees the hero in mortal danger. The most famous of these was the 1914 series ‘Perils of Pauline’, notorious (and much parodied) for featuring a villainous cad who bound our heroine to rail tracks as a locomotive approached.

The serial format continued into the sound era, but the talkies also allowed the thriller to develop into along more sophisticated lines. The 1930s was the period of the gentleman detective, where a witty one-liner was more likely to get you out of a sticky moment than a deftly landed punch. Films like ‘The Thin Man’ or ‘Bulldog Drummond’ featured suave, debonair heroes, invariably sporting fine suits and pencil-thin moustaches, who were caught up in exotic mysteries and tended to face down all manner of mortal danger with courtly sangfroid.

The best of these was Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 ‘The 39 Steps’. Based on the novel by John Buchan (who is widely credited for inventing the literary thriller), this starred a dashing Robert Donat as an upper-class colonial type unwittingly targeted by a sinister spy-ring and made to flee to the Highlands. Abounding with double-crosses, set-piece chase sequences, and innuendo-laced dialogue between Donat and his leading lady, the film set the template for exotic action-adventure thrillers, which the Bond movies would emulate so spectacularly.

Unfurling at a breakneck pace and never giving you time to reflect on its many unlikely developments, the film also enshrines one of the principles of good thrillers: an exciting, fast-moving plot is usually more important than matters of plausibility or psychological depth. Look at Paul Greengrass’ 2004 ‘The Bourne Supremacy’, a fine example of the modern Hollywood thriller. Matt Damon’s character remains a cipher throughout; but the emphasis is on the superbly executed action scenes, the car chases, the acrobatic fight sequences and the set-piece pursuits in foreign locations. If it’s a rounded character study you want, then look elsewhere. Which is why the best thriller filmmakers tend to be master storytellers who eschew showy displays of acting; Hitchcock, John Frankenheimer and Michael Mann being prominent examples.

Not that the thriller must necessarily depend for its excitement on extravagant action scenes. In the late 1940s, the genre toughened up and dressed down, with a string of gloriously bleak urban crime stories that French critics would later label film noirs. In movies like ‘The Big Sleep’, ‘Out of the Past’ and ‘Double Indemnity', fedora-wearing, trench-coated figures would stalk city streets at night, solving mysteries that were as impenetrable as their shadowy surroundings. The plots were dense and convoluted, and the mood was cynical and hard-bitten, perfectly attuned to the weary post-war mood.

The film noir sensibility resurfaces intermittently, most notably in ‘70s gritty crime thrillers like ‘The French Connection’, ‘Chinatown’ and ‘The Long Goodbye’, and survives in the work of independent-minded directors like the Coen brothers (whose latest movie ‘No Country for Old Men’ is that rare hybrid: a thriller Western).

But it’s in its glossy, high-concept form that the thriller dominates today. The genre today is the vehicle for filmmakers’ fascination with explosive action sequences, cool new technology and dazzlingly twisty plotting (especially after the popularity of bewilderingly layered espionage TV shows like '24'). The epitome of these tendencies is probably the latest ‘Mission Impossible’ installment and the fact that this bloated, insanely expensive Tom Cruise movie didn’t live up to expectations may suggest the thriller must get back to basics if it’s to prosper.

Filming

In total we have done about 8 hours of filming across 3 days. The first of these was in the half term when we had the most time to film. Our location was in Beaconsfield where i live, because the nearby streets had the road front houses that we needed for our kidnapping scene, and the long corridors in my house meant we could make more affective use of the interior scenes of the film. After this primary day of filming we knew that we still had much to film and this became apparent in the first stage of editing. Many shots were missing, and as a result it made us re-think our film as a whole, and so when we filmed the second time many of the basic principles of the film had changed. It was important to us to do something different this year, as many of the films last year took similar storylines.

Difficulties


With re-takes and jobs, it was very difficult to manage to get everyone together for filming purposes. in addition to this, we had to film on 3 separate occasions and with the winter light being inconsistent it meant that a lot of shots which we were previously happy with had to be continuity re-shot every time we re-filmed to have continuity in the film. In addition to this the staple subject of the film had changed after our first day of filming and so some time was wasted editing the original content, but as a group we decided that it wasn’t good enough. In addition to this, Beaconsfield (where we filmed) is quite far not only from school but from Oliver and Emma’s houses (around an hours drive) so a lot of commitment was required for the numerous filming days.