Emily Grasby (2016) AS Foundation Portfolio

After finishing our final, I thought it would be a good idea to look back at how we've progressed with our shot task, preliminary and final thriller! Instead of all 3 full videos, I decided to create my own gifs of some of my favourite scenes in them all. via GIPHY The 2 gifs above are from our first 20 second clip we filmed - oh how time flies! I was the antagonist that murdered the protagonist (Holly) with a wooden stick that's meant to be a knife. via GIPHY via GIPHY The next 2 above were from our preliminary task called The Deed. I'm really proud of the POV shot we took from the protagonist (me), before the antagonist beat me! via GIPHY via GIPHY via GIPHY As you can tell from our final, we didn't edit the entire film into black and white like we did with the others, instead we colour corrected - changing the shadows, saturation etc. via GIPHY This final gif is taken from mine and Holly's video response to Q7 of the evaluation, an...

Finally, 6 questions later, we give you the question 7 of our evaluation! Just like question 4&5, we filmed this answer by a video response in order to give the evaluation a little diversity... Find out below everything that changed since our preliminary task (SPOILER: a lot changed). 

Created using Visme . An easy-to-use Infographic Maker. Q6 #2 by Em Grasby

Its important to note that Media 2.0 means that anyone could distribute a film themselves, but would anyone actually bother paying attention to it? That's why it's important to add on ways that I would   market my film. I would begin by creating social media pages such as Twitter and Facebook, which I would use to post the very first teaser trailer onto. With this teaser trailer would be a hashtag - for example '#Disclosure2017'. The idea of this is to create what's called a 'buzz', which uses viral marketing in order to share the teaser trailer across social media through the hashtag. Hopefully, when a certain twitter user 'retweets' or 'likes' content published by the Whatever Productions account, the followers of that user will also see it - leading them to share the content to their followers etc. As you can probably tell by my explanation, this viral markets the thriller to a wider audience, including a specific range that might not ha...

Our media product uses the conventions of the thriller genre on several occasions - throughout the locations, the themes and genres etc. Starting off with location, the first footage shown after the institution title takes place at a dirty, empty walking path next to a train track. This involves the antagonist sprinting away after just murdering his twin brother, filmed at a canted angle with the darkness increased post production. Not only that, but the scene is shot with a grey sky and the antagonist is dressed in black shoes and a jumper with his hood up. This conforms to the typical atmosphere of the thriller/suspense, which usually consists of a darkened mise-en-scene and low saturation. Introducing the antagonist with his dark clothing allows the audience to realise that he follows Propp's 'villain' character type. The isolating atmosphere with no people nearby nor trains creates an unsettling mood - fitting into ...

At this point in our editing stage, we believe even though our thriller isn't completely finished, we can still show it to our audience and ask them their views on it.  "It would be more professional if a BBFC certificate was shown at the start" "The text on the screen is difficult to read in that colour font" "The clip of the detective walking into the classroom is too long" "Take out the word 'starring' before the actors name" Hopefully this gives you an insight of some of the constructive criticism we received, I wanted to share this with you to keep you on the ball with our editing process and what we'll now be changing.  

Unfortunately, editing hasn't ran smoothly throughout for us. With lots of other students also using the same system on the computers at the same time, Premiere Pro has the tendency to crash...  The worst part about it is how I will load up the thriller and begin working on it for a good 5 minutes and when I'm starting to get into editing mode, it decides to freeze!!! via GIPHY This has left us shorter on time than we planned, as it's happened to us regularly recently. However, this only motivates us to whiz through the editing (when the programme doesn't crash) even faster than usual - there's no point in stressing over the negatives, right?!  via GIPHY

Hey all, turns out that keeping my fingers crossed gave us good luck with our editing plans - yay!  This time round I can safely tell you that we've managed to: Chose background music to suit the genre Create "Whatever Productions presents" and "Disclosure" titles in a typewriter form Adjust the length of the fades and blurs, making them longer and shorter between clips Add text onto the screen - including directors, actors etc.  Mix the sound of the background music with the characters dialogues Add on a typewriter sound over the title tasks to create a realistic typewriter effect for the viewers That's all for now, what will be next?!

Now just the two of us, me and Holly have spent the last week editing our thriller via Premiere Pro. In our first week we have managed to:  - Import all clips to the drive  - Decide on the clips we'll be using  -Cut down the clips -Place the clips in order of the narrative  -Colour correct all the footage, depending on the lighting of the clip -Place transition fades and blurs in between clips Now focusing on next weeks plans, we hope to pick background music, create production titles and add actors, directors etc onto the clips.  Fingers crossed next weeks update will include all of the above!!  via GIPHY

Hello all, I thought it would be important to give you a notice of another group update. Starting on a positive, we've finished filming all our footage for our thriller - woohooo! However, now onto the post production stage, one of our group members has decided he would prefer to edit the footage separately. This leaves me and Holly editing our film as a pair instead of a trio - the footage will still be the same but the clips included, effects, titles, sounds etc will be different.   via GIPHY

Following our change of plan brought a change of storyboard, to display it I used PicMonkey to collage the photos all together! 

Hey everyone, these past few weeks have been very hectic as our group made the decision to change what we were filming for the opening. The narrative behind it still remains the same, but what we have chose to film is now different to what our previous screenplay and story board was. To set this straight into both mine and your minds, we drew a mind map of how our thriller opening will appear as.         Our screenplay and storyboard will be coming up shortly, but for now that's it!

After creating a storyboard of our thriller opening, we had an idea as a group of what we wanted our location to look like. We took our idea and turned it into reality by finding a woods nearby, luckily the gloomy, dull weather/sky set the thriller scene perfectly! It turned out that the woods had a train track behind it, which even though it wasn't what we'd originally planned for, came into good use for our mise-en-scene. Another reason why this was a good location was due to the isolated atmosphere - even though this is a public location, no one was to be seen throughout the hour we spent here. What we liked about the setting is that between the train track and the woods is a wide path, which was perfect for us to walk and set our equipment up on. Both photo collages created using PicMonkey.

Hey guys! Although I've already created a 'Canva' poster on a different theory used to target audiences (Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs), I decided to use a designing site called 'PicMonkey' to display what I know about Blumler and Katz for you all. This is something we've briefly covered in a theory lesson before, but I wanted understand it better and creating this has helped me. Hopefully it can help you too! 

Welcome back, everyone! As sir once told us, it's important to view previous thriller openings by ex-students before making our own. So after viewing some, it's time for me to become the examiner in this blog post - instead of being the pupil.   The first one was shown to us by sir during a theory lesson... I'll begin with what I love about it - the voiceover of the antagonist. It really gives an eerie atmosphere to the thriller, and definitely, leaves the audience feeling uncomfortable (which we want). I also really like the camera flare effects, as well as the colour correction and the shaky transitions added post production throughout, which all scream out conventions of a thriller. However, my negative about this opening is that I don't believe the narrative had been made as clear as it could've been. I would still rate this a level 4 though, giving it 50 marks out of 60 (real examiner gave it 48).   The next one I'm going to 'examine' i...

Hey everyone, here's our storyboard that we created via the very helpful website StoryboardThat - I recommend you give them a try sometime. With the help of the storyboard, we now have a clearly idea of what our thriller will look like. 

When filming for our thriller, it's important we consider safety. Risk Assessment forms are vital to fill in before the production stage begins, fingers crossed nobody gets themselves injured!

Like I stated in the previous post, marketing strategies were in the making... Follow our twitter page! -  https://twitter.com/WhateverProd_?lang=en-gb Subscribe to our YouTube channel! -  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0kTAXfupvi6GKa27bwy5mw

DISCLOSURE by Em Grasby

After multiple discussions and group meetings, we finally agreed on our film narrative and thought it would only be right to share it with you all. Although we will only be filming the thriller opening, it's still just as important to include the WHOLE narrative - so you as the audience can understand our opening easier. Not only have we included the plot, but the main protagonists and antagonists, our target audience and some extra features too! After creating the PowerPoint, we then presented our pitch to a possible funding company and answered their questions about our film. This is the footage of both us presenting and their reactions...

After previously writing a post on what a screenplay is, it was finally time to create one as a group. With our One Page Pitch created, we could now add dialogue, locations and characters together to make our own.  

Whilst looking into different thrillers, it's important to note that each film has to be given an official certificated age rating before being released. The BBFC are in charge of this and I decided to make a Sharepost on how they age rate each film. Even though this isn't something we looked into during a theory lesson, I believe it's important to consider age ratings for our flim! 

What exactly is a screenplay? Sir warned us recently in lesson that storyboard time was quickly approaching, but would be much harder without a screenplay... Without a screenplay, both preparing and shooting the thriller film will be a lot harder as the screenplay provides  the script of a film, including acting instructions and scene directions. Screenplays are usually transformed into a storyboard, but it's important to remember that the director and producer may adjust the script and remove certain sections when it comes to filming.  There are several things to consider when writing a screenplay: time and day action dialogue setting location transitions camera angles description of characters After spending a lesson looking at examples of screenplays, one we paid special attention to the Jaws screenplay...   The screenplay provides all the essentials straight away in the opening - the location, the time of day, camera shots and the mise-en...

As much as films may be considered to be more of a visual experience, it's important to note how much impact sound has in films.  A meaningful soundtrack is often as complicated as the  image on the screen. The entire soundtrack is comprised of three essential ingredients:  the human voice sound effects music    These three tracks  must be mixed and balanced so as to produce the necessary emphases which in turn create desired effects.  THE HUMAN VOICE Dialogue authenticates the speaker  as an individual or a real person rather than the imaginary creation of a story teller. As is the case with stage drama, dialogue serves to tell the story and  expresses feelings and motivations of characters as well. Often with film characterisation,  the audience perceives little or no difference between the character and the actor.  SOUND EFFECTS Synchronous sounds are those sounds which are synchronized or matched with what is vie...

For our thriller, it's vital that we look into our target audience and research different theories surrounding it. I chose to look into Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs theory and to present it, I used 'Canva' for the first time!  Maslow's Hierarchy by Em Grasby

Analysing thriller openings is important, but what about researching the people that directed them?  Today's blog post is based upon Christopher Nolan - a director! Christopher Nolan is an American English director,  screenwriter, editor and producer that is best known for his thrillers; such as The Dark Knight Rises trilogy and Inception. Over the course of 15 years of film-making, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the biggest blockbusters ever made. After The Dark Knight's success, Warner Bros. signed Nolan to direct Inception, he also wrote and co-produced the film as well.  Starring a large ensemble cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio, the film was released on 16 July 2010, and was a critical and commercial success ; receiving multiple 5 star ratings from other large institutions, such as the Chicago Sun Times.The film ended up grossing over $820 million worldwide and was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture; it w...