Our Thriller Opening

Hi everyone, this is our finished thriller opening. So please can you leave a comment saying what you like, don't like and why, and what you think could be improve as we really need some audience feedback to our work.

The sound from the first scene of the opening where Ben's foot is in shot seems to have messed up slightly and this means the footstep isn't heard properly but I think this is because I had to change the format of the video in order to upload it to the blog.

I am also going to upload our thriller opening onto YouTube to get some audience feedback from other people who are not necessarily our fellow media students. When I have received some feedback via YouTube I will post in on this blog.

A Summary of Filming

So we finally finished filming about 2 weeks ago and here's just a recap of everything that happened, and any problems that arose, that we tackled.

Well the first time we filmed, we started at mid afternoon, on a Sunday, as we didn't want our location to be busy at all, and it wasn't, which worked out well for us. However we weren't prepared for the weather, as it was incredibly cold so everyone was cold, making filming a lot more difficult, and making everyone involved considerably more irritable. But we filmed for a few hours and got most of our filming done there and then.

The first time we filmed, we used Lewis Parker, as one of our actors, but when he arrived, his costume didn't quite fit with what we had specified, nevertheless we filmed using him as at the time we had no alternative. Once we uploaded our footage, we found we needed to reshoot certain scenes, as the light had changed too much, for the continuity, we also decided at this point, to try and find a different actor to use, which we would make sure was wearing exactly what we wanted him to wear, to compare with the footage we already had, so we could make an informed decision of which shots to use. This did create a few small problems though, as one of our actors was not keen to come back and do more filming, however we managed to bribe them, and they helped us again. Also we couldn't film at the same time, as it was inconvenient, so we had a few worries about the lighting and weather concerning the continuity. But we managed to film this with little trouble.

Finally, after uploading our extra footage, we decided to use our alternative actor; which was Barnaby Mannox, as the mise-en-scene looked much better with that character in a different costume. But our complete opening was still only 1:30 mins and we wanted it to be a little longer, and also, after much consideration we decided that a few close-ups/extreme close-ups of the characters would be beneficial to the opening, as there is no dialogue, so it was hard to determine the atmosphere we were trying to create. This subsequently posed more problems, as we had to make sure the close ups were framed perfectly, as we couldn't get back to the location easily, also we were limited with time to film, as our actors were also busy. But we managed to film exactly what we needed, at convenient times for our actors, so we had created more time within our opening, and were finally finished filming.

A few shots we took whilst filming...

Charlotte and Lewis conferring with the storyboards (we initally used Lewis in our opening, however Barnaby Mannox offered to film it with us, with a costume that fitted better with our mise-en-scene, so we decided to use him instead)

Me and Andy talking about the shot with Ben and Lizzie walking past each other.

When we filmed a few weeks ago, we decided to take some photos of the filming process, just to show how we set up shots and worked with the actors etc. Enjoy!

hey : ) so we were having trouble with which credits we should put where and in what order so we decided to watch the openings of some other thrillers to see what they did with their opening credits. Here are the results:

Leon
Actors, music, written and directed by..,

Fight Club
Actors, casting, costume, make up/special effects, sound designer, music, editor, production editor, director of photography, executive producer, based on novel by..., screenplay, produced by/directed by

Usual Suspects
Production company, title, actors, also starring..., casting, music, costume design, production designed by.., editor, director of photography, co producer, executive producers, written by..

LA Confidential
Production company, title, actors, casting, music, costume designer, co producer, editor, production designer, photo director, executive producer, based on novel, screenplay, produced/directed by..

Casino Royal
Production comapny, actor, title, actors, production team, camera, sound, costume designer, editing team, music, screenplay writers, director.

After looking at these results, here is what we came up for our own production:

Production company, actors, casting, camera, costume designers, editors, sound, directed by...

laterzzzz x