Pre Planning/Planning Production:

The act of planning the production steps and determining responsibilities, the content before creating the actual production. Pre-planning is generally said to save our group time as we have already noted what we plan to do.

As our first planning lesson began, we were assigned the groups we will be working in.  To produce our thriller opening we would have to work as a group sharing the roles and responsibilities in order to have a 2 minutes final piece. Though sharing the roles as a group is vital, separately we decided between us who were in charge of the specific aspects in the making of the film. There are 4 people in my group including myself.

Director/ Producer:  Michael Akuoko

Our director and producer is the final decision maker within our group. Even though we are responsible for our own roles it must be ran through the director before the idea is inputted in our opening sequence. Michael is in charge of creating our story board and making sure everyone is fulfilling their role correctly. In general, the producer is responsible for turning creative ideas into practical ones and essentially supervisor what goes on.

Camera / Sound: Lyden Smith
Lyden’s role as the camera and sound person consists of a lot of technical handling and creating. This being a technical role means he must learn how to manage the equipment, such as the cameras and tripods as well as being able to use the MAC computer to create the audio that will accompany our opening thriller. It is his responsibility to set up all the shot correctly and film accordingly to the storyboard alongside the rest of the production crew. When creating the audio to make his own one and not use previously made ones. He is also in charge of hiring and looking after the equipment for the week we will be using them.

 


Location/ Lighting : Cansu Simsek
To make a potential thriller opening in regards to location and lighting, Cansu is the one who must establish the venues or locations we will use, based on our groups storyboard find the suitable paces she feel will work best. In regards to lighting must insure the scene has the right amount of lighting required, casting away any unwanted shadows. If more or less light is required it is her job to produce this.

Makeup/ Hair /Costume and Props  :  Karina Rhoden
Being in charge of this part of our opening sequence requires me to create our characters through how they dress and the make up and hair I put on them. Creating characters through what they wear can give an image or perception of the type of character they are without needing dialogue.
The props I use will set the scene and make it as realistic as possible.

Preliminary Task

Before filming my 2 minute Thriller opening, myself along with my group were asked to complete a preliminary task in preparation of filming, conducting a small 1 minute clip of a made up narrative, focusing on our cinematography, characters etc.

Though I believe my preliminary task was not a success visually, in a way  was a success in practicing with the equipment and  getting an idea of what I thought would work well.

Initially, I had never really operated a video camera and was unaware of how I should use the camera to make our film look as professional as possible. Since we did not have a variety of scenes, I had to add another scene in order to make up to 2 minutes . The editing process, for myself,  was more difficult than anticipated because of this. From this experience I took away  the importance of shooting scenes more than once so there is a diversity  in case one is not exactly how I wish for it to be. This helped towards my final thriller opening as I learnt from many of the  problems and difficulties with the task.
Sound and lighting were also factors that needed to be re asset. Lighting was not as clear as it could have been and it was very hard to listen to dialogue within the footage.  My cinematography was very limited and I felt it was too basic. I needed to explore into conventions of good film opening and  the use of editing more as from this task I realised I needed to leave myself enough time to edit and plan.