Emily Grasby (2016) AS Foundation Portfolio

Welcome back everyone! How would a student create an opening to a thriller film without analysing other thriller openings? Well, during a theory lesson we were recommended to look into the film opening of 'Se7en' as Sir believed there were lots to talk about - so that's what I did! I went back to the basics and created a powerpoint, for you all to view, including as much detail as possible. 

Since our final task is to create a thriller film opening, it would only make sense to ask myself - what really is a thriller? A thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, gaming and TV. It also involves numerous, overlapping sub genres. The whole point of a thriller is to create anticipation and suspense, keeping the audience alert and on the edge of their seats. Usually, the protagonist is set against a 'mystery' and and no matter what the sub genre is, it will emphasise the danger that the protagonist may face during their mission.  Some sub genres of a thriller and an example of them are: Action thrillers - Die Hard & The Bourne Identity Sci Fi thrillers - Inception & District 9 Spy thrillers - James Bond  Religious thrillers - The Da Vinci Code & The Ninth Gate  Supernatural thrillers - The Conjuring & The Sixth Sense Crime thrillers - Jagged Edge & The Usual Suspects  What should we expect to see in a thriller? Main con...

When it comes to filming, lighting is very important as it creates the atmosphere for the specific genre (ours being thriller of course) and always plays a key role in the mise en scene. Without the correct lighting, our thriller task will lack verisimilitude - how realistic the piece of film looks. So, as part of the planning stage, I will be looking into how to create different types of lighting with examples that me and my group have taken! Natural Lighting Natural lighting is what it says - from a natural source such as the sun or fire etc.  As the sun wasn't out (typical British weather), our source for this photo was simply the very blinded white sky! High Key Lighting High Key photography uses unnaturally bright lighting to blow out most of all harsh shadows in an image. High key methods were originally developed as a solution to screens that couldn't properly display high contrast ratios, but has developed into more of a stylistic choice.  ...

Back to our theory lessons, for section A of the exam we have to explore the ways in which different topics are represented. I previously created a Prezi on how age is represented, but this time I will be discussing sexual identity. I chose Emily Fields from the show Pretty Little Liars to discover how her lesbian role is represented. 

Here we have a very short clip taken of me and Holly walking, which has been edited on After Effects to add the text to it. We created this as a group to give ourselves an introduction to the programme itself, ready for when we'll use it for our final thriller task.  

Even though I created my preliminary evaluation via Sway, as a trio we decided to film ourselves having a real discussion about our task. We chose to chat about what we liked, disliked about our film and how we managed to work so well together. I'm really glad we filmed this as it's another way to show you our opinions towards the preliminary task! (Hopefully you appreciate the palm trees behind us too)  

Once again, I've stepped outside my zone. This time though, created using Prezi! Anyway, as part of our theory lessons we've been looking into the way age is represented through specific extracts.This specific extract being episode 2 in the first season of 'Misfits'. How are the elderly connoted? Are the youngsters shown to be scary and intimidating?  Find out below! 

Hello everyone!  This time I'm back with my preliminary evaluation, but with a twist...  I decided to give Sway a try for a little bit of variety to my blog. At first I was clueless on how to use it, but eventually I caught on and managed to create this presentation style post for you all!

Two weeks of filming and editing later... WE DID IT! I thoroughly enjoyed making it, so I hope you feel the same way watching it! 

It's time for locations everyone! We chose four perfect locations, for four different reasons-all based in the school grounds as well.      THE SCHOOL CAR PARK Many cars yet no people... Where could everyone be?  This sets the perfect, chilling imagery of isolation which is needed to start off our thriller. Otherwise, where's the thrill?!  AN EMPTY CORRIDOR Squeaky clean floors, high key lighting, no one insight. A pretty easy setting to run in, or to run away from someone... ENTERING THE HALL Straight from the corridor into the pitch black, clear-spaced, easy access hall. A great place to seek a hiding spot, or is it? THE CLASSROOM A completely normal studying class room, where a completely unusual conversation could take place without anyone knowing. 

Hey guys, would you believe it's October already?  Anyway, in my previous post I included all the shots we have to include in our preliminary task, which allowed us to start planning our thriller! After a good debate on what our story should be, we began planning it out by sketches (bad sketches) for each shot with it's labelled camera angle.  WARNING: We didn't take art as a subject for a reason! SHOTS  1-6 SHOTS 7-12 SHOTS 13-18 SHOTS 19-24 There you go! After seeing it planned out on paper, I have a good feeling about how it'll turn out (fingers crossed) and now look forward to finding possible settings/locations.  Hopefully my next post will give you sneak peaks of where we plan to film. Until then though, goodbye! 

As part of our preliminary brief, we have to demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule in our filming task. Due to this, I've decided to give definitions and examples of all 3 shots to give you an idea of what kind of shots will be happening in the preliminary task, enjoy! MATCH ON ACTION  Matching on action  refers to film editing and video editing techniques where the editor cuts from one shot to another view that matches  the first shot's action . This is an example of match on action from a scene in Friends! Match on action is very useful for adding a sense of realism to the scene as well as showing the audience that it has all been filmed in one take (continuity shot).  SHOT/REVERSE SHOT  Shot reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. This is most often used for con...

Below is a 20 second, mini thriller opening we created as a group. Enjoy!

Welcome back everyone!  This post is going to feature all the different shots we took as a group for our preliminary task, hopefully this'll introduce a variety of camera angels to you. SHOT ONE   The first shot taken is called an establishing shot as it captures the setting but still shows me walking up the stairs. This works very nicely as I am represented to be vulnerable, due to my tall surroundings (trees, lamp posts etc.).  SHOT TWO The close up. My walk up the stairs took me to a tree full of berries, which I then ate! I like this because even though it captions my facial expression/emotions, both the berries and background landscape are still focused on.  SHOT THREE After eating the poisonous berries, I begin to hallucinate in this long shot. This is effective because all of my body is in the picture but a lot of the location is too.  SHOT FOUR AND FIVE... The ne...

Hello everyone, welcome to my first ever blog post! After studying Media Studies at GCSE, I took a further interest into it which led me to this blog! One of my unhealthy hobbies is watching TV shows and films but I would love to understand how much work is put into filming them.  My first task is to create a 2 minute thriller film opening, which as a thriller film lover, I'm rather excited for. I'm looking forward to creating the narrative for it as there's so much tension and excitement in thrillers which makes a more interesting story line.  Hopefully this has lured you into keeping an eye out for my future posts and also for my final 2 minute film opening.  Bye for now!