The Carpenter-Final

This is the final edited version of out introductory thriller sequence, which we called "The Carpenter". We decided to call it this because since the main tool used as a prop in our thriller is the tool of a carpenter, we made the profession of the psycho killer to be a carpenter.

Questionnaire

This is our questionnaire. We asked twenty people in total to answer the questions, and the following are the results:

Question 1:

• Ten subjects (50%) were male



• Ten subjects (50%) were female

Question 2:

• All twenty subjects were 15-19 years of age

Question 3:

• Eleven (55%) responded "Saw"



• Five (25%) responded "The Matrix"



• Three (15%) responded "Jaws"



• One (5%) responded "Psycho"

Question 4:

• Two (10%) chose suspense



• Three (15%) chose violence



• Three (15%) chose death/murder



• Two (10%) chose crime



• Five (25%) chose action



• No one chose soundtrack



• Three (15%) chose danger



• One (5%) chose mystery



• One (5%) chose cliffhanger



• No one chose any other aspect

Question 5:

• One (5%) said he/she has seen "House of Wax"



• Four (20%) said they have seen "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"



• One (5%) said he/she has seen "Psycho"



• Twelve (60%) said they have seen Saw I/I/III



• Two (10%) said they have seen "Sixth Sense"

Question 6:

• Sixteen (80%) said they would be more likely to watch a thriller with a male lead



• The other four (20%) said they would be more likely to watch a thriller with a female lead

Question 7:

• No one answered "0"



• Four (20%) answered "1-3"



• Thirteen (65%) answered "4-6"



• Three (15%) answered "7-9"



• No one answered "10-13"



• No one answered "14+"

Question 8:

• Eight (40%) chose setting



• Six (30%) chose characters



• Three (15%) chose music



• One (5%) chose titles



• Two (10%) chose dialogue

Question 9:

• No one chose "psychological thriller"



• Six (30%) chose "horror thriller"



• Four (20%) chose "mystery thriller"



• Five (25%) chose "action thriller"



• Four (20%) chose "science-fiction thriller



• One (5%) chose "spy thriller"

Question 10:

• One (5%) answered "yes" and elaborated: "I like the kind of film opening sequence that does not tell me much about the film and who is in it, for example, if the film started with the scenery of the set or even with just colours or special effects. It would make me more curious as to what will happen".



• The other 19 (95%) answered "no".

Survey

This is our survey. We gave it out to the people that turned up for the public viewing of our thriller sequence. We showed it to them a first time, and then a second time so they can have time to fill out the entire survey.

Altogether, around twenty people came, including Matthew Perry Frener, the student who played the victim in our thriller. It was done opposite our Media Studies classroom in the Sixth Form block of our school, and therefore, only sixth formers came from our year group. Most of the students filled out the entire form with their honest opinions and preferences as answers.

Risk Assessment

Above is our risk assessment. The purpose of a risk assessment is to write down the risks of different negative occurrences that could happen, along with how likely it is to happen and the actions that can be taken to lessen the probability or completely prevent it from happening. Examples of the types of such negative occurrences are shown on the risk assessment, ie. hazards, people who may be harmed, property that may be damaged. The good thing about risk assessments is that they put all these important aspects of making a film into perspective for the producers, director(s), camera men and the rest of the crew, and it remains written out on an organised table so they can have it to hand whenever they need it. It is also important that the crew do not forget the risks involved in making their movie. This is yet another purpose for the risk assessment.

Storyboard

This is the group storyboard. It is supposed to depict in drawing as many of the shots in the thriller as possible, or at least the most significant ones. Below the drawing of each shot (mise-en-scene section) is the details of what there needs to be in that shot (handwriting below pictures), ie. dialogue, diegetic sound and special effects, non-diegetic sound and music, lighting, props and actors.

A storyboard is normally used for those that are going to be producing the footage so that they can have an idea of what their film is going to look like, and what they want it to look like. They can also use it as a way of remembering their ideas for the day of filming as far as the dialogue, diegetic/non-diegetic sound, lighting, props and actors are concerned, in addition with having the benefit of being able to visualise it by way of their own sketches. This is what we used our storyboard for.

Inspiration

My inspiration came from the official trailer of Saw VI. I was browsing YouTube for trailers of different Saw movies and I concluded that Saw VI's trailer appealed to me the most as this trailer actually made me want to see the film more than any of the other Saw movie trailers. This trailer aroused my curiosity as to what the storyline of the movie was, in addition to scaring me as well!

Another aspect of this trailer that made it my inspiration was the fact that it was most similar to my group's ideas, there was one clip within it of someone operating a saw with his victims screaming. The only difference in our trailer was that we used a drill instead of a saw.

Shots, Props, Special Effect, Credits and Rating

In this post I am going to outline what each shot type was in our thriller sequence and explain why it was chosen. I will also be stating the uses of special effects and what the titles were for the credits.

• The shots used are as follows:
  1. Outside the garage. Close up shot (CU) of drill in Ian Welka's hand-to establish the first prop of the sequence.
  2. Gradual zooming out to view Ian Welka (not showing his head or legs)-this is an establishing shot so the audience knows where it is taking place. Also builds up curiosity of who the man is, and builds suspense at the same time.
  3. Still camera: Viewing Ian limp away from the camera-to eventually have a view of the rest of his body (from behind).
  4. Medium close up (MCU) of Ian (now turned 90 degrees to the right) limping towards the door of the garage-in order to proceed to the next part of the sequence.
  5. Zooming in to Ian unlocking the garage after putting the end of the drill through the garage's letter box-to focus on what Ian is doing.
  6. Match on action shot of Ian's legs as he enters the garage from the outside, and then from the inside-to create continuity.
  7. Inside the garage. Panning of the camera from the rope to Talia dead on the planks of wood-to verify the severity of the situation which is helped by Matthew's screaming.
  8. Tilting of the camera up Matthew's body-to show his torn clothes and to have a short glimpse of the fear on his face. This shot was also done to show Matthew's hands tied up in ropes.
  9. Medium close up of Matthew (viewing his chest and head through the ring in the rope)-to see the fearful emotions on his face for longer. The ring in rope through which we see him can signify death to some. Therefore the audience may think Ian is about to hang him.
  10. Close up (CU) of Matthew's face (again, through the rope) as he spits in the camera's direction so it is as if he is spitting at Ian-to focus on Matthew's emotions as he displays emotions of anger and hate.
  11. Medium shot (MS) of Ian ripping Matthew's shirt-to illustrate the commencing of physical contact.
  12. Medium shot of Ian repeatedly wrapping tape around Matthew's head-the start of the torture.
  13. Shot of Ian stumbling towards the drill, turning it on and holding it up-to lead up to the catharsis.
  14. Close up of drill as it is about to go into Matthew's head-the catharsis.
  15. Extreme close ups (ECU) of drill with Matthew's brains (wet tissue with ketchup) rotating on it-to increase the graphic content.

• The props used on the day of filming is split up into two catogories: The equipment and diegetic props.

The equipment used were as follows:
1. An XLS Camera
2. A tape (blanked by Talia and myself)
3. A tripod
4. A dolly
5. A camera battery (fully charged)
6. A back light

The diegetic props used were as follows:
1. A drill
2. A hammer
3. A ladder
4. A saw
5. Other tools (from Ian Welka's tool box)
6. Ketchup (for blood)
7. Torn white T-shirt (for Matthew)
8. Talcum powder (Put on Matthew's body for added effect)
9. Half a lemon (painted from the outside with a tissue mixed with ketchup on the inside)

• The uses of special effects are as follows (these will be listed in the order it was used):
  1. Dimming of the picture on screen by 22.5%-for visual effect.
  2. Dip to Black-for a credit.
  3. Dip to Black-for a credit.
  4. Dip to Black-for a credit.
  5. Cross Dissolve-to transfer from Ian unlocking the pad-locked garage door to him actually entering it.
  6. Dip to Black-for a credit.
  7. Dip to Black-for a credit.
  8. Dip to Black-for a credit.
  9. Cross Dissolve-from Matthew screaming to him spitting at the camera.
  10. Dip to Black-for a credit.
  11. Dip to Black-for a credit.
  12. Dip to Black-for a credit.
  13. Cross Dissolve-from Ian holding up the drill to the drill next to Matthew's head.
  14. Dip to Black-for a credit.
  15. Dip to Black-for a credit.
  16. Dip to Black-in between the two shots of the drill with Matthew's brains rotating on it.
  17. Distorting of picture-to blur and thereby limit what the audience sees so they can imagine for themselves what the brains look like.
  18. A final Dip to Black.

• The titles for the credits are as follows:
  1. "SONY PICTURES"-(Sponsoring company)
  2. "FILM FOUR"-(Sponsoring company)
  3. "AN A.T.Y PRODUCTION"-(Company that produced the thriller sequence)
  4. "THE CARPENTER"-(Title of thriller sequence)
  5. "IAN WELKA"-(Psycho killer)
  6. "MATTHEW PERRY FRENER"-(Victim)
  7. "TALIA WELKA"-(Dead girl)
  8. "MUSIC: ABIGAIL IPALE"-(The music was downloaded from the Internet)
  9. "SET DESIGN: YAAKOV TAMIR"-(Setting up the rope in the right place so it can be seen in the camera and tied around Matthew's hands, laying out tools around the garage, laying out the wooden platform for the dead girl (Talia Welka) to lie down on it during the filming)
  10. "PRODUCER: STEPHEN SHPIELSTEIN"
  11. "DIRECTOR: PHOENIX WILLIAMS"-(Helped out with camerawork and suggested very good ideas)

• We decided to rate this introductory thriller sequence as a "18" movie because there was disturbing, gory content of a drill going through a teenage boy's head. In the rest of the movie there would probably be similar scenes. However, there would not be any nudity or uncensored sexual content.
  
  
  
  
  

The Evaluation Questions:

1. What have you learnt from your preliminary task?

The main things I learnt from my preliminary task was how to use the camera, the reason why we should wait five seconds before and after every shot (to make editing easier) and how to film an effective match-on-action shot.

2. What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Most of technology involved within the entire process of the construction of this product is in the editing. We used a program called "Adobe Premiere" which was nearly entirely based on technology. I learnt to do many things on that program, for example, to cut out small clips that were not needed in the thriller, to move other clips that needed to be moved, to add different special effects like dip to black or cross dissolve. During the process of editing I also decided to eperiment with CGI (computer generated images) just for fun, so I also learned how to upload some of those.

3.How did you attract your audience?

We attracted our audience through advertisments. We printed around fifty leaflets and displayed them all over the sixth form block of our school. We used a good picture that would catch the eye of anyone who walked passed it since it was bright red. A copy of this poster is shown below:

4. How does your media product represent a particular social group?

In a way, our media product represents teenagers. This is also evident since the age group that answered the quesitionnaire were all 15-19 years of age, even though there were oportunities for people of other age groups to fill it out. The victim in our thriller was a teenager, and the antagonist is a middle aged man. Even though this case is extreme as it involves murder, it can also reflect the problems and arguments that teenagers can have nowerdays with their parents.

5. What movie production company(ies) would be a suitable company to use for your media product?

I believe that Film Four would be a suitable comany to use for our media product because they have had a long history in the movie trade and have also had a lot of experience with thriller movies.

Editing

There are two main types of editing: "Continuity editing" and "Parallel editing". Continuity editing is used by most film makers today. This type of editing makes all the footage flow in a natural way that makes sense, to make it more realistic and engaging for the target audience. This is extremely important especially when the pure footage of a scene, or even an entire film would not make much sense without the use of editing. The reason it is called continuity editing is because of its job to make all the footage flow in a continuous way. This type of editing can be achieved using a number of techniques.
For example, diegetic sound is sound that comes from within the narrative world if a film. Continuous diegetic sound helps to smooth temporally questionable cuts by overlapping the shots. The Match on action technique can preserve temporal continuity where there is a uniform, unrepeated physical motion or change within a passage. A match on action is when some action occurring before the temporally questionable cut is picked up where the cut left it by the shot immediately following. For example, a shot of someone throwing a ball can be edited to show two different views, while at the same time maintaining continuity by being sire that the second shot shows the arm of the subject in the same stage of its motion as it was left when cutting from the first shot.
"Parallel editing" is the type of editing that alternates shots of two or more areas of action occurring in two different places, usually simultaneously, that often run together later in the narrative, but does not have to in order for it to be considered as parallel editing. This can be achieved by simply filming the two events and editing it so they are one after the other. Other techniques, like a sound bridge can help connect these two scenes.

After filming the footage needed for our main task (which we called "The Carpenter"), we started to edit, which can be considered to be the most important step of producing our introductory thriller sequence. As the entire sequence was only one scene long, we had to use continuity editing as there was no other scene to connect this to if we were to use parallel editing.
Firstly, we had to upload the footage onto Adobe Premiere, the name of the software used, and then we had to name all the clips that we filmed on site. After that, we had to delete all the big chunks of footage that we did not want. These parts of the editing, in my opinion, were the easiest parts of the editing process because the margin of proximity was not small, and we were just able to take out much larger bits of footage compared to much smaller parts that we would realise should be taken out later. During the filming we made a five second gap between each clip so it would be easier for us to edit and so that we would not accidentally delete any important or useful bits that we wanted to keep.
In order to do this, we had to learn to use the software properly. We learned how to use it with the help of Mr. Yadgar as well as our own experimenting and improvisation.
After deleting the big parts we did not want, we concentrated on adding special effects. Adobe Premiere allowed us to use a wide range of different special effects for our thriller sequence, but the ones we used most were as follows:
1. Fading of the screen-to make the picture on screen more dull for an added scary effect.
2. Cross dissolve-to make the picture on screen "dissolve" or disintegrate into the next clip.
3. Dip to black-to temporally fade out so we would be able to put up our titles.

Location

My group did not have to look for a location for long because the father of Talia Welka (a girl in our group), who played the psycho killer, owns garages in Stamford Hill called "Spring Hill Garages". We saw this as the perfect location to film the thriller. Below are some pictures of the site and its surroundings:

Main Task-Filming

The three people of my group for the main task are Talia Welka, Abigail Ipalé and myself (Yaakov Tamir).

We started filming on a dull, cloudy, windy and cold Sunday afternoon-the weather was perfect for the work we were going to do. We filmed at "Spring Hill Garages", a part of which Talia's dad owns. The garage which we filmed in was very good because it was small, old, dirty and was especially scary because a man committed suicide in it eight months earlier...

The whole filming process took about two hours. We started by setting up the camera on the dolly and testing that the microphone was working well which was done by Raheem with our help. We then filmed a test shot of the first scene which was of Ian Welka (the psycho killer) limping up the path leading to the garage with a drill in his hand, ready to do some damage. After checking that the focus of the camera was okay, amongst other technical things, we rewinded the tape and filmed it again. We started filming Ian with a close up shot (CU) of the lower half of his body, and as he was limping up the path and operating the drill, we slowly tilted the camera up his body. This was the first footage in the filming process. It is also worth noting that we had a five second gap before and after each bit of footage recorded so when it comes to editing, we would not end up cutting parts that we wanted.

The last part of this scene was when Ian turned around to face the garage and broke the window before opening the pad lock and going into the garage. Inside the garage we laid out a bucket of tools on the table at the end of the garage that Ian brought with him for the filming. We also took a rope with us so we could tie Matthew Frener (victim) to the bars that came out of the wall. The next scene was filmed inside the garage. In this scene, we see Ian come into the garage. We film Ian coming in from the inside as we attempt a match-on-action shot after filming him just before coming into it from the outside, thereby fulfilling the purpose of the match-on-action (to see the results of the previous shot). After he stumbles in, we have a medium long shot (MLS) filming Talia playing dead on the ground, followed by a panning of the camera to Matt tied to the bars coming out of the walls in the garage screaming and begging Ian to leave him alone. For this, we used a close up shot (CU) so his desperate emotions are apparent to the audience. This shot also included part of the thick white rope in the foreground for added effect.

Our last scene was fairly short, and perhaps the scariest too. Ian takes some duck-tape and wraps it around Matt's head, before pulling his hair so he will look up, followed by the subsequent "drilling" of his head. This was all done with close up shots to show detail and the horrific, fearful emotions on Matt's face. In order to make this Thriller movie trailer as real as possible, we used half a lemon painted in the colour closest to his skin colour as possible and stuffed it with wet tissues and ketchup to represent Matt's brains and blood. The filming of a couple of seconds of the drill next to Matt's actual head followed by the drilling into that half a lemon was the last bit of footage we recorded on our tape.

Main Task-The Actors

Ian Welka-the psycho killer:



Ian Welka was a pleasure to meet. One reason we believed he would be the best character to play the part of the psycho killer because of his big build. A build like his is the kind of build a gangster would have, or perhaps a thug. This is the stereotype we needed for the part of the psycho killer. It was also convenient for us to cast him as he is Talia Welka's dad. Although he is not an actor in real life he was very convincing, in my opinion. The excellent limp that he demonstrates at the beginning of the thriller leads the audience to the assumption that he has a bad character who often gets into trouble, and that he is the antagonist of the sequence.



Matthew Perry Frener-the victim:



Matthew Perry Frener has brilliant acting skills. I remember that his first scream gave me a shock-i thought it was someone else screaming who really needed help! My group and I decided that he would fit the part of the victim well since he has had a history of acting, and we believed it was quite difficult to act scared so we would need someone who has acted before. He was also convincing as his screams were very realistic. If he could convince me that the screaming was real even though I knew that I was going to hear screaming in a few minutes (on the day of the filming), he can certainly convince the audience.



Talia Welka-the dead girl:



Talia Welka had a very easy task. All she needed to do was to lie on a wooden platform and pretend she was dead. Therefore, she evidently did not need to say anything, or even move! Although her role was seemingly superfluous, it creates an effect that was actually quite vital. Without her, there would not be much build up of tension, and this keeps the audience's interest in the scene, as well as pumping up their adrenaline and increasing their curiosity.

Preliminary Task

The purpose of this preliminary task is to give us experience with using the cameras and filming in general. The preliminary task has to include:

• A character opening a door with his hand being filmed on the door-(match on action), crossing a room, and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom he or she then exchanges various lines of dialogue.


• Match-on-action shot: A shot that immediately follows another shot to explain the first of the two shots, eg. a shot of a man opening a door, with another shot of the man coming through the door from the other side of it.


• Shot-reverse-shot: Mostly appears during dialogue. For example, a person is being filmed talking to someone, then the other man is filmed talking to the first person with a final shot of the first man in the course of the dialogue.


• Observance of the 180-degree rule: The rule that the camera must not exceed beyond the 180-degree boundary, because if the camera did this, it would confuse the viewer as the characters would change position. However, the camera can exceed the 180-degree boundary only if it is shown by the camera.
  
  For this task, I worked with Talia Welka, Abigail Ipalé and Zack Bellman. Zack was the subject that walked to the door and entered it, and I was the subject he was taking to. Talia and Abigail were filming. After Zack walked in to the room, he sat down in a chair and talked to me about "problems with the Media Studies project". Talia and Abigail filmed one line of dialogue each and made sure there was a five second gap between each line, to make editing easier.
  
  After the filming, we started the editing process. This involved uploading the footage onto Adobe Premiere, cutting out the parts that we felt were not needed, as well as adding special effects and so on. We deleted the five second gaps, and added in different kinds of transitions, eg. fading. By this time I had already learned a thing or two about editing, and we added more effects like different colour contrasts.
  

Match-on-action (Shot 1) Match-on-action (Shot 2)




Shot-reverse-shot




180-degree rule: The camera can be in the red area or the green area, but not in both areas at the same time, unless it is shown by the camera.

Preliminary Task Video: