Shooting Schedule at Mary Green Manor- 14th March

For good organisation and a clear focus on what we needed to do for the day of filming at Mary Green Manor, we created a table allocating props we need to bring for the filming so we were responsible for our own things. Also by taking two cameras and chargers this meant that we had a backup option for filming our piece in case anything went wrong with the main camera.

Names	Props
Olivia	Vicky's costume	Champagne	Glasses	Wedding ring	Jewllery box
Tom	Knife	DLR camera	Laptop	Charger
Mat	Camera	Charger	Jack's blazer(costume)
Oli	Camera	Charger
Jack	Suit
Vicky	shoes (costume)

Friday 30th March Shooting

On Friday the 30th March we shot the scenes we needed in an office area. We thought of using the a large computer block in our school named the I-block, but there were too many computer monitors that made it look really unprofessional. We then thought of using the top of the I-block in the office. This would be good because there is only a few computers which we could sit our group in to make it look good. There were papers scattered around the desk which made it look like a working office, meaning it look realistic.We started filming in the morning but was only able to get half done because we ran out of time. When we sat down to evaluate this we then thought that we wont be able to get back in the office until after the half term. We couldn't do this because we wouldn't have time to film the rest of the scene. We came to the idea of using our teachers office as it was a single desk meaning that we would not have an distraction. This office looks professional and fits with our character because of his schizophrenia.

Change in location

After visiting Severall’s Mental Hospital we soon realised that the accessibility was limited. We did not fully contemplate the level of health and safety hazards involved with Severall’s so we felt we should change to a more suitable location that would have easy access, and a location that would allow us to return when we needed. When we arrived at Severall’s we discovered that it was private property and that if we were to film without permission we could face possible prosecution.  When we asked the owners if we could enter the building they rejected our request due to health and safety risks being too high.

We are now looking at using Mary Green Manour for a new location. The manor is a hotel that looks like a tudor house and we feel we could use a part of their dramatic grounds at dusk as it is a good setting for a complex pyschological thriller. We have emailed the manger and are currently waitng for conformation dates. Although this is not our own image, if we decided to film at Marygreen Manor we will take our own photo's of the hotel. 

Our interest in Marygreen Manor started with Olivia Grafton emailing the manager David Lee. Here are a few screenshots.

Influences of Music

Music is a very important part of our film, because we have gone down a schizophrenia route. We can control how our film goes through music and easily manipulate our audience to believe the film. Music can change the tension and the overall feel of our movie. Music is also a huge contributor to making a movie scary. If you try and watch a scary film without music you won’t find it scary at all. If you try and watch the movie with sound but no video it’s still very scary.  

A good example of music being used to manipulate the audience is the film Insidious. Insidious used violins to jump the audience and make them scared. When the camera is panning around the house at the start, if their was no music it wouldn't be scary at all. They added in sharp violins as a sound sting to make us jump when there is something hiding on screen.

Below is a video which shows that music can change the whole atmoshpere of a film. This is a crime thriller with a laugh track over the top. When watching this you dont really pay attention and get the feel of the thriller.

 

Our production needs to have a successful piece of music that really portrays the mood and feeling we want. The piece can’t make the film look cheap and tacky. Tom Williams in our group has asked us if he can make the music himself so we have Tom making our music piece. This will take long but it can resolve copyright issues.

Once we find the perfect piece of music, there are many techniques we can use to further enhance the tension of our film, for example if we were to have some kind of jumpy scene we could slowly increase in volume over time leading up to the scene. We could try muting the volume right before an important scene and then bring the music at a louder volume to make the audience scared. Our group has come up with a lot of ideas that we can implement into our music piece.

Marketing Idea

This was the original shot of Marygreen Manor that I used for our marketing poster, using our social networking sties. 

I wanted it to fit within the conventions of a thriller, so I decided to take a copyright free image of a stormy sky and stamp tooled it into this image, and then darkened the original photo layer to correspond with the sky giving me this...

                           

I then had to find a perfect place to put all of the website links without ruining the bulk of the photo. I decided that the top right hand corner would be the most suited place for this, as there is a lot of clear space and can be easily seen in the chaos of the background. After doing that it gave me the finished product...

We created a Twitter and Facebook page for our film as a method to market the product. Both are social networking sites that allow viewers to track the progress, view the finished product and also give feedback on the film.  They are both good marketing strategies as both networking sites are used by our target audience, therefor we can write post directed to our target audience in order to advertise the thriller. It also means we can get in contact with viewers in order to try and promote the film.  We also created a YouTube channel so that all the videos in the creation process can be viewed by the public, as well as our opening for our film.  Again, it allows YouTube users to leave comments about the film allowing us to gather feedback for any improvements that may need to be made. All three websites are widely used and attract a wide audience, therefore we felt they were the best ways to advertise and market our film digitally.

Influences for our film

Health and Safety

Anamnesis Brief

This is our Anamnesis Brief, In this video Mat Bland Olivia Grafton and Oli Page describe the film 'Anamnesis' We talk characters to camera angles, Plot's to props, we completely blow Anamnesis up and talk about everything you would want to know.

Anamnesis Storyboard

This is the storyboard for Anamnesis. I go over scene by scene what happens and what the finishing product will look like. 

British Board Of Film Classification

History on Possible Location.

Severall’s Mental Hospital was closed in 1997 and since then has started to slowly decay into only a few hallways with a dismantled ceiling.  Severall’s was built in 1913, which housed 2000 patients at its main point. The main use of Severll’s was that Doctors were free to ‘experiment’ with treatments on patients that were willing. These ‘experiments’ were stopped during the 1950’s. Severall’s changed management during the 1960’s which saw changes including the creation of art and music programs and the use of drugs and medication. Since 1997 the 300 acre site has been left alone and has been vandalised and a group of people set fire to one of the buildings. Severall’s is one of the only hospitals that is still standing similar to Cane Hill and Hellingly Hospital.  Severall’s has been commonly used by urban explorers which have explored and taken pictures to make a report.  A small part of Severall’s hospital remained open to care for the elderly but was then shut in 1997.

Severall’s has many rooms consisting of a ballroom, kitchen and a chapel. These are all connected by very long corridors these main rooms are surrounded by a lot of bedrooms and bathrooms. The main building is the water tower. Recently it was busted open and gives an amazing view of Severalls.

Below are a few pictures that really capture the feel and look of Severall’s. These aren’t my pictures and were found on a website that is based on exploring abandoned places. As you can see the walls and the floor clearly show that the hospital has not been used in a long while. The walls look like they have actually disintegrated into nothing. The top right picture is the kitchen and this is clear because of the massive furnaces. The bottom right picture is my favourite because it shows the eeriness and the darkness of the rooms. You can see the evidence of urban explorers because the door is broken and the other door is left open.  

Questionnaire results

The following graphs show the results of our questionnaire. The questionnaire was answered by 1000 people. This will mean that the results show what 1000 thriller enthusiasts want. The results will help us make a good thriller.

 

Most of the people who answered were male. This shows that most thriller fans are male and therefore we have to make our film for a more male dominated market.

 15 to 17 is the most prominent age group therefore we have to make the film cater for them.

 The most prominent group is E (unemployed , student or part time) this ties in with the age group therefore we should cater for late teens ect.

 As predicted the largest group is mainstreamers with aspirers , succeeders and explorers following. Therefore we should make a film catering for mainstreamers and including the three but mainly the mainstreamers.

The above graph shows that the public wants a thriller which has aspects of the sub-genres; Conspiracy, Horror, Psychological and Super natural thrillers. Obviously we don't need to do all those sub-genres but using them on the film would be good as it's what the public wants.

The top 3 results all had a similar score. With the top being a successful city closely followed by a beach and hotel. We could by all means include all these locations in film.

The public wants the hero not want to be a hero. They also want him to be in a position with little power and alone and they also want him not to want to be the hero.

The public want the villain to be smart, tall , he wants to be the villain, is in a position of power, alone and is part of the problem and trying to keep it happening.

Questionnaire

To help choose what kind of thriller to make we created a questionnaire. This questionnaire would help us choose what kind of hero, location, villain and sub-genre to make. It would also help us make something that would appeal to the public. The questionnaire will be online for 10 days and will be advertised via facebook and twitter. This is to try and get as many responses as possible which will get the most accurate results.

http://freeonlinesurveys.com/s.asp?sid=hy8anei03mfshh08081

Demographic/Psychographic Profiling

Demographs are a great way of classing the general public. Classing the public is paramount to making a film which people want to go to. This is because people that are classed together generally have the same interests. Demographic sorting is sorting by income.


A-Higher management, bankers, lawyers, doctors and other professionals.


B-Middle management, teachers, creative and media people eg graphic designers etc.


C1-Office supervisors, junior managers, nurses, specialist clerical staff - white collar


C2-Skilled manual workers, plumbers, builders - blue collar


D-Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers


E-unemployed, students, pensioners, casual workers


Above is the list of the demographic classes. From out groups personal experience of going to the cinema. Most cinema attendees are E classed students so as this is the largest audience it would be logical to make our film for them. However as our thrillers is going to be a intellectual one higher up groups would be interested too.


While psychographic is sorting people by their personality. This would be important to take account of too. As a large class of the psychographic could enjoy something and despise another and if you make the thing they despise you are losing allot of viewers.


Mainstreamers- Tend to be domestic, conformist, sentimental- favour value for money family brands. Nearly always the largest group.


Aspirers- Materialistic, acquisitive, orientated to image and appearance, persona and fashion, Attractive packaging more important than contents. typically younger people, Clerical and sales jobs.


Succeeders- Strong goals, confidence , work ethic and organisation. supports stability. Brand choice based on self reward and quality. Typically higher management and professionals.


Resigned- Rigid and authoritarian values. Interested in the past and tradition. Brand choice stresses safety, familiarity and economy. Typically older people.


Strugglers- Alienated and disorganised. Few resources beyond physical skills. Brand choice involves impact and sensation. Buys alcohol, junk food, lottery tickets. D and E demographic.


Reformers- Freedom of restrictions and personal growth. Social awareness. anti materialistic but aware of good taste. Has attended higher education and selects products for quality.


Explorers- Energy, indvidualism and experience. Values diffrenece and adventure. Brand choice highlights satisfaction, and instant effect. the first to try new brand. Younger demographic - students


As Mainstreamer is the largest group it would  be obvious to make our film target them however as we choose to target the group E which is made of students (the youth) which comes under Aspirers group. This means we must target our film towards the Mainstreamer and Aspirers to make the film go out to the largest audience thus make the most at the box office.

Focus Group

This is our focus group which analysed the poster that Tom Williams made.  They responded quite positive with quite a lot of good points and some bad points which he then changed. A focus group was a very good way of finding out things that needed changing. We should of had a group of boys perform a focus group to give us a fair opinion. The reason we chose girls is because these are our target audience. The main points that Olivia and I felt was the main criticism was that the writing 'Welcome To Marygreen Manor' was too small which we then handed to Tom so he could then change it in order to make the writing easier to read.

Marking Other Students Work

I have marked Lewis Elkins, Robbie Windsor and Isobel O'leary's work. Netherton was there final piece and I have took screen grabs and placed them in the powerpoint.
These are the powerpoints that i have used.

Year 13 Do's and Dont's

Woman In Black Opening Analysis

Cape Fear Analysis

Schizophrenia Research

Our thriller fits into the sub-genre of a pyschological thriller and the theme of the peice is based on the mental illness of schizophrenia.



Mood Boards

To get an idea for our thriller we created a mood board of all the thriller sub genres. This was to remind us of how broad the thriller genre as a whole can be. The thrillers used from the top, left to right are; Red October (Techno-thriller), Reservoir Dogs (Crime-thriller), Taken (Action-thriller) , Shooter (Action/Conspiracy-thriller) and 2012 (Disaster-thriller). Bottom, left to right; Zodiac (Horror-thriller) , Blade Runner (Techno/Action-thriller) ,Silence of the Lambs (Horror-thriller), Robocop (Action/Techno-thriller) and Batman (Action-thriller). Looking at all these sub genre show how diverse the whole genre is and will help us choose the best type of thriller for our own film.
For more information on this see post "initial ideas"

The above mood board reflects the fractured mentality of our films main character. The white half being his "good side" and the black half showing his "bad schizo side". The right shows his enjoyments, his dreams and work while the left side shows a series of confusing images. This reflects how ordered and unordered each of his sides are. 

Codes and Conventions of a Thriller