Speechless FINAL CUT

SPEECHLESS FINAL CUT

Please watch the final cut of my thriller opening! :)

EVALUATION FINISHED

EVALUATION

Here is a video evaluating my project!

RECOVERING FILES FROM CHARLIE'S ACCOUNT

Thankfully, today Bruno and I were able to recover the Saturday Night Fever opening remake from Charlie's account. It was seemingly hidden quite well amongst the files, but we were able to catch it. I have placed it in chronological order in my blog, and is near the beginning (around the time we finished editing it) in November.

Filming Evaluation

Today I filmed my evaluation for my coursework. I used a 4K Panasonic camera on a tripod, pointing at me. I pretty much did the whole thing in one take, but I will just edit out any mistakes, awkward stutters or pauses, to give my evaluation a flow.

 Evaluation:

Today I started writing up the answers to my evaluation. Since I am now on my own, I presume it will be slightly short, but I hope it to be concise and flowing. Once I have finished writing up the answers I will begin filming (which I hope will be in a week) 

Changes from Animatic to Final Product

It turns out that from our original animatic, we actually ended up making the final product quite a lot different. When writing the shot-list and when filming, we were so into our idea that we progressively changed it - coming up with more new and new shots, and excluded some shots we originally thought would be perfect for the opening. Also, we originally thought that the shots would be in chronological order, but now our opening is made up of parallel editing with the shots we produced.

I think this was for the best as what we originally planned maybe lacked a bit of mojo, and could have been fairly dull and boring.

  Finishing off Thriller Opening

Today I completed my thriller opening fairly easily; just tweaking the final bits and pieces. Now that it is finished, I will upload the opening to youtube and to this blog. I believe it is to the best of my ability. 

OSCARS 2017

There was a lot of competition at this year's Oscar awards ceremony, with a handful of great movies; all of which had great attributes. For example, the nominated movies for best picture included Moonlight, La La Land, Hacksaw Ridge and Manchester by the Sea - all of which have been critically acclaimed.

Best Picture Winner...  Moonlight (although there was a mix up and we all thought La La Land won)  70% AGREED

Best Actress Winner...  Emma Stone    50% AGREED

Best Actor Winner...  Casey Affleck     50% AGREED

All in all I think I can say that the awards were fair.

Charlie's Departure

This week, my partner for making my thriller opening, Charlie, sadly left, leaving me to finish making the opening on my own. I believe that I am capable though of completing the task as there is only editing left, and no more filming. Obviously I will involve him in the credits as the executive producer, as that was the role he agreed to, but this will go as a bit of a blow to me.

EDITING THRILLER

Today, I began editing my thriller opening. Although there were issues with downloading footage from my SD card (and now I will remember to always back my footage up on my computer immediately), I was able to put all the footage on final cut pro, and begin editing. So far, I have put the scenes together in the order I think is best for my opening, but not edited or cut any of them yet.

SONG FOR THRILLER OPENING

Out of the options we had in terms of music for our opening, we have now come to a final conclusion. Our choice will be one which instead of matching the atmosphere of a thriller, will rather go against it - as it is an upbeat jazzy folk song. We hope this comes to good effect in terms of originality.

Soundtrack

When starting off my thriller opening, I was not aware of the issue of copyright, and thought I could use any song I wanted for my opening sequence. When our project came to a halt because of this, we opted for other music that is eligible to use, and is without copyright. We looked websites like incompetech, and searched through many atmosphere-related songs (created for moods of films) that were free of copyright, but we found none that really clicked with our ideas. Thankfully though, Charlie's dad, Stephen (who also stars in the opening) was aware of several new upcoming artists who's music was without copyright. We are now in deciding which song we should use, out of the options we have.

Filming - Day 2

Today, Charlie and I finished off the last bit of filming that was needed for our thriller opening. We filmed at my house, Charlie's house and Jessie's house, in a process that lasted pretty much the whole of the day. We did not face any issues, and everything went ideally smoothly.

SPLIT

SPLIT is a horror-thriller directed by M. Night Shamylan. James McAvoy stars as a suffering personalities patient, who abducts a group of young girls. A few of his 23 personalities begin to take over of his conscience, in order to bring out another dark hidden personality that has never come in to play.

WHAT I THINK: All in all this was just very fun to watch. James McAvoy may not seem to be the scariest of figures, but his amazing portrayal of the different personalities makes one deeply fear him in the movie. It is also quite unpredictable, M. Night Shamylan does a good job to make an unpredictable twist out of a potentially predictable plot. 

I rate it 8/10

PURCHASING ROGUE FOR OPENING

Charlie and I parted early from school today in order to buy an old, used rogue in camden, for hopefully a cheap price. We ended up paying £19 for it. Even though we wished for even cheaper, the rogue is a necessity for the end of our opening, therefore, we had no other option. 

Filming Thriller - Day 1:

The past Saturday, Charlie and I began filming our thriller's opening sequence. Based around the heath extension, we filmed most of the shots using the car, and now only a few shots remain to finish shooting. We will finish off filming the opening sequence next weekend around Hampstead.

Preparing for Filming

I produced a production call sheet today, for our filming on Saturday. It holds all the important information of how we are going to go about filming this weekend. Now that this is complete, I believe we are ready to film.

WORD ---> BLOGGER

Some of my blogs were originally written on word (for example my montages blog as seen above). It has been a struggle for me sometimes to transfer everything from the word document to blogger. From now on I will not be using word as I find that this wastes a lot of time, when I could just write it on blogger in the first place.

LOCATION FOR THRILLER OPENING

 (TOP RIGHT: HAMP GS. TOP LEFT: MILL HILL. BOTTOM: WOODSIDE PARK)

Since the thriller opening is supposed to be this antiques dealer driving through a nice area fool of greenery, we need somewhere nearby, that appears similar (i.e; a lot of greenery and high end houses) to use for the opening. Out of several options - which included: Hampstead Garden Suburbs, Woodside Park, Mill Hill - we decided to go for Hampstead Garden Suburbs (specifically around the heath extension). We though this would be best suited to the way we want to portray this location in the opening (a mixture of greenery and houses). 

SHOT-LIST

Today I completed the shot-list for our thriller opening. It consists of all the necessary camera angles, settings, and cast for each specific shot of the opening. I believe that this is key to making our thriller opening in an organised, professional manner, which will hopefully better the outcome of our final product. Even though this is set and show us what we have to do, we will still do more shots and cutaways on the spot that we feel are good for the thriller.

PREPARATION FOR THRILLER

Now, with the main idea of our opening developed, Charlie and I now began thinking about props,  an actor, location - all the details we need to make it. Right now, what we plan to do is use Charlie's dad (Stephen Budd) as the main actor (also the only actor we need).

We believe he is the right person to play our classy antiques dealer. Also, Stephen's car is perfect for the movie. A vintage Mercedes (except his is silver). I think this will make our opening more stylish and classy.

Speechless Animatic

SPEECHLESS ANIMATIC

This is an animatic made from our storyboard. It has a time sequence similar to what we hope for the final product, and it should be a good to help us know which shots we need to do.

WORK TODAY

Today Charlie and I produced an animatic for our storyboard. Sadly, neither of us are the most gifted illustrators, but I think our storyboard is good enough to help produce our opening. The animatic will soon be viewable on this blog.

WORK TODAY

Today Charlie and I drew up storyboard for our thriller opening. Although I contributed in terms of creating the idea for each shot, Charlie had to do the difficult task of imagining them and drawing the picture in his mind. This is soon to be made into an animatic, and will be uploaded  to this blog very soon. 

CREATING NAME FOR MY THRILLER

Since writing the treatment to my thriller, I had not come up with a name for it, till now. Recently, I partnered up with Charlie to produce the opening, and we agreed to finally sit down and brainstorm ideas for a title. Now, after a couple of days, we have come up with a name for the thriller;

SPEECHLESS

Completed Moodboard for thriller opening

Designing Mood board

The past two lessons I have been developing a mood board for my thriller's opening title sequence. I originally collected pictures that I found on google images, that I thought were most associated with my idea for the thriller opening, and made a collage of them in a word document. But it didn't look too neat, so I decided to use a template for the mood board on Photoshop, as it put the images together in a very neat way. I am now almost finished with this mood board, even though I found it very difficult to get used to using Photoshop.

LOGLINE FOR THRILLER

As mentioned previously on this blog, I have been attempting to create a logline for my thriller. Now I have come up with on that I find most appropriate and am ready to reveal it:

A young rookie detective investigates the twisted murders of several teenage drug dealers in Tottenham, London.

LOCKE

LOCKE is about how a man's life unravels after he leaves a construction site at a critical time and drives to London to be present for the birth of a child conceived during a one-night stand. Tom Hardy stars in this "nail-biting thriller"  as supposedly to be one of his best roles. Almost all the shots are shot in a car of him driving (like the one to the left), and there is a great use of camera angles in doing this. I am thinking of doing something similar for my thriller, so I will take inspiration from this.

Work on Thrillers

To produce the opening title sequence of our thrillers, we were put into groups. Me and Charlie decided to use my thriller idea for the opening sequence, and began getting to work at it. In the past couple of lessons, we have come up with ideas for the opening title sequence, and also maid slight adjustments to the treatment of our thriller.

Logline For My Thriller

A log line or logline is a brief (usually one-sentence) summary of a television program, film, or book that states the central conflict of the story, often providing both a synopsis of the story's plot, and an emotional "hook" to stimulate interest. A one-sentence program summary in TV Guide is a log line. 
For example, The Godfather's logline is: The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.

My log line must be catchy enough to get anyone interested in a thriller hooked on the idea, whilst being very short and simple. Over the passed few days I have been trying to make the log line for my thriller, but been unsuccessful, but I believe now after looking at many log lines of different movies of different genres, I will be able to come up with one within a day.

Prisoners

Prisoners, released in 2013, is a mysterious crime-thriller starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. I watched it last night, and I believe it is a very well made thriller, with several tropes of a classy thriller, with yet an unexpected twist. From watching this, I would like to use some of the elements of this movie, in my thriller opening - e.g; gloomy atmosphere, dull colours, but also the feel of tension throughout the movie.

TREATMENT

A teenage boy goes missing a few months after two other teenage boys went missing in Tottenham London. The bodies of the first two teenagers who disappeared have already been found – both a week after their disappearance in different dumpsters, stripped naked, wrapped in rogues, with their tongues removed and with their mouths sewed closed. As a result of a lack of care from higher-ranking police officers for crime in a rougher area, involving poorer people the case of investigating these disappearances is handed to young rookie policeman (Zachary).

After questioning parents, searching rooms and checking phone records and such of these boys, he has reason to believe that they were all dealing drugs (cocaine and marijuana specifically).
But during several stages of the investigation he gets tangled up emotionally with his memories and experiences of his brother and close friends getting involved with drug use and trade (when he was 15 his 18 year old brother got stabbed because of a drug deal disagreement).

A week after Zachary is given the case, the body of the latest missing teenager is recovered in a dumpster, also wrapped in a rogue, stripped naked, with his tongue removed and mouth sewed closed.
So, moving forward with his investigation, looking through CCTV footage over different parts of the area and phone records of the three teenagers, Zachary is able to narrow down suspects to a potential four people for questioning, believing that only one is responsible for all three teenagers deaths – as a result of all bodies being found in the same fashion. From this, he begins questioning suspects one by one knocking on their doors and interrogating them.
After interrogating and doing background research on two of the suspects, Zachary is able not to cancel out, but highly reduce suspicion of them, as they have viable alibies – even though admitting to marijuana use in the past, and testing positive in drug tests for marijuana but not any other drugs.

One of the remaining suspects (an average middle classed Caucasian who was an ex-police officer and partner of the present chief of police, and is now an antiques dealer) demonstrates a lack of empathy towards the teenager’s deaths in questioning. Although at the moment this suspect has only admitted to buying cocaine and marijuana off two of the teenagers for his drug habit, Zachary is very suspicious of him and has a deep underlying feel that he is the murderer, even though there is a lack of evidence to suggest so.
Zachary does some background research on this suspect, to find that he was severely physically abused by his parents, and then questions his old school councillor about his school life, only to find out that he was bullied and had no friends.
After finding CCTV footage and phone records of the other remaining suspect potentially selling drugs to all three of the teenagers and also finding drugs in his estate, Zachary begins to believe he was providing the teenagers with the drugs, and potentially killed them as a result of disagreement. From overwhelming evidence of drug dealing, that suspect is arrested (not for the murders though) along with four other men who are tied up in his small time drug circle.

As a result of higher suspicion of this drug dealer, the chief of police and higher ranking police officers urge Zachary to focus all attention of the investigation on to this drug dealing suspect, and avoid the other suspects entirely (but Zachary believes there is an element of racism and a want to tie up the case as quick as possible to cut costs involved in their opinions, as it would be way more straight forward to build a case against this suspect rather than the other weird one).

Although Zachary still thinks that the drug-dealing suspect may have been responsible for the murders, he secretly focuses more on the background of the stranger suspect, as a result of how the bodies were found in quite a sick way (with the tongues removed). So Zachary reveals to the chief of police that he truly believes that the stranger suspect is the one responsible for the murders (with evidence such as him buying the same bubble wrap used to wrap the children a month before the first teenager was murdered) but is immediately shut down and told to focus only on the drug dealing suspect, or else he will be taken off the case and probably loose his job (as it is his first case).

Despite his boss’ wishes Zachary continues to focus his attention and energy on developing a better case against the stranger suspect, breaking into his flat while he is out shopping. To his rage and disappointment, he finds no evidence to suggest he had anything to do with the murders, but sees a photo, which looks about 10-20 years old, of the suspect with his mother and father in front of an old looking house in a very rural area. Whilst in the apartment, the suspect arrives back from shopping, and Zachary is just able to escape through a window without his face being seen, but the suspect realizes that someone had broken into the flat

Previously Zachary had looked for all other estates in his name or his family’s name, and found none, but after seeing this photo, he searched deep into the roots of his family, and found out that there was still an abandoned estate, in the name of the suspect’s great uncle’s wife (from his mother’s side) under her maiden name, in Hemel Hempstead

The next time that Zachary goes into the police station though, he is brought into the chief’s office, and is taken off the case and fired – as the suspect had a hidden camera in his apartment, and showed the footage of Zachary breaking into his apartment to the chief of police.
Upset and desperate for justice, a now jobless Zachary goes out to Letchmore Heath to inspect this abandoned estate, and breaks into the house to find absolutely nothing, but sees a small shed far behind the backside of the house covered by a lot of greenery, but still in the estate. He then breaks into this shed and searches it, still finding nothing, but steps over a piece of the floor board in the corner of the shed that feels hollow underneath it. Desperately, he breaks of those pieces of floor board to find a bundle of folded clothes (clothes of the victims) and underneath these clothes he finds a chest. He opens the chest to see a bloody sewing kit with three little sphere shaped items wrapped in cloth next to it. Uncovering the cloths of the items, he comes to see that they are the three tongues of the victims. And as he is about to grab the chest and stand up, he hears a gun clicking behind his head about to fire. END

Main Research to help me make my Treatment

Throughout the past summer, my dad was reading a book called ‘Lost Girls.. An Unsolved American Mystery’ by Robert Kolker. This book is about the murders of female prostitutes in Long Island, New York, by a suspected serial killer. Although the book focuses on only five of the murders – as those five corpses were found in the same area, in a similar fashion – there were in fact 17 murders of prostitutes over 15 years, all suspected to be done by the same person. Mysteriously, the serial killer is yet to be found, as even though there were suspects, there just wasn’t enough evidence to make a proper case.

From finding great interest in this story, I decided to use it for my thriller, but instead of following the exact same plot (which would also be difficult as I am based in London) I decided to manipulate the story. So, in a nutshell, my thriller will be about the murders of male teenage drug dealers that come from a middle-class background in London, by a suspected serial killer. It will follow the unfolding investigation of a young rookie policeman in North-West London, and the struggles and mysteries he encounters along the way.

WORK OVER CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY

Throughout the christmas holiday, I was set the task of writing a treatment for a thriller. It took me a week or so of hard thinking to come up with the main plot of the story. The second week, I began writing it out, and also added several different new ideas to it along the way.