For the last six weeks I have been working in a group of three to create a convincing thriller opening consisting of various camera angles, shots and a mixture of editing techniques. We first started researching and watching famous thriller openings such as ‘Psycho’ to analyze and take note of the typical codes and conventions that makes a successful thriller opening.
Using ‘Sony Z1’ we captured a range of shots, which we edited into a final sequence to create our thriller opening. We started planning our thriller by brainstorming ideas and trying to fuse together a continual sequence that made sense but, left our audience on the edge of their seats without giving away the storyline. We had a very wide spread of ideas, despite our different thoughts we came to a comprise and managed to narrow it down to a storyline we all agreed and felt would serve its purpose as well as not giving too much away.
We had the opportunity of filming twice, because we filmed our first shots rather early as opposed to other groups, which left us with the advantage of being able to re-shoot any shots that weren’t of a good standard. This turned out to be extremely beneficial as we were able to shoot comfortably and include all our shots from the storyboard. This meant that we stuck to the storyboard as much as possible. Although, because we shot our footage on two different days, both of which were sunny, so we had to work with sunny shots that clashed with the idea of our thriller being rather dark and conventional. This would have created tension and suspense, having said that the sunny shots worked to our advantage when we progressed and went on to edit.
We all worked collectively and took turns to film, as we thought it would be beneficial to distribute responsibilities to ensure we all got the chance to film and edit. We all included our ideas and inputted our own opinions to produce the final product. We found ourselves stuck at one point when we realised we had a lot of shots however many of them were similar and lacked variation. This left us with no other option but to repeat shots that we had and increasing the pace of them each time, by doing this we were able to ‘buy’ more time so that our opening fitted the specification of being at least 2 minutes. This turned to be very effective within out thriller and also creating a sense of tension for our audience. Doing this allowed us to make out thriller just over 2 minutes.
We had one actress, and due to other reasons our male actor was unavailable to feature in our opening. So we decided as a group to use Jonathan from our group to play the male attacker. This affected how we showed the fighting scenes in our opening. So therefore we decided to use short glimpses of the fighting scenes with this ‘washed out’ looked to it which gave a contrast between the normal day and serial events of the evening before. We found this however to be more effective because it created enigma. The audience were confused yet wanting to know more, this leaves them in a position where they have to continue watching. Once we had shot all of our footage we were ready to start editing.
Using Final Cut Pro industry standard software we began editing by trying to piece together all the shots and deleting the ones that where either too bright from where we hadn’t adjusted the white balance or simply weren’t good enough. We then started to notice continuity within our thriller opening and knew then that all we had left to do was to edit the sequence using a series of cuts and special effects to give it that thrilling mood.
We used a number of cross dissolves to start the opening to allow the audience to try and understand what has happened to this girl from various angles. We put the first shots of the victim lying on the staircase as well as the fighting scenes out of focus to highlight the time difference. By doing this the audience would be able to acknowledge that the opening is trying to re-tell the story so therefore the story may well have a narrator which is more than likely to be the victim. We noticed that out sequence was slightly under the two minute time limit, so to make up time we multiplied our shots each time getting shorter to create a montage of shots of the house to leave our audience in suspense and wanting to continue watching. We received a lot of positive feedback about our editing from the class as it seemed very complex and time consuming which they thought was what made it ‘a greatly edited sequence’.
From this we got a great idea to create a mixture of diegietic alarm clocks, telephone rings and other domestic sounds and fuse them together while playing over the shots of the house. We thought this to leave our audience puzzled, however curious to know what happens next. By creating a series of different sounds all going off at once this causes a sense of confusion, this adds greatly to the sense of tension and worked really well with the shots that we had and once again gives clues of what the story is about but does not giveaway the storyline.
The soft non diegetic music playing over the scene creates this daunting atmosphere which we used to engage the audience’s attention. We made and got all our sound tracks and sound effects from Soundtrack Pro. We imported all of our soundtracks from soundtrack Pro as we found it more convenient. When we were selecting our sound we came across a female ‘breathing’ sound effect which seemed very disturbing, and appropriate to use as we didn’t yet have a definitive concept to the film. By using this sound effect constantly playing non diegieticly over the whole opening the audience is made to believe that the breathing sound they hear is significant to the film. This is where we got the name of the film ‘Catch A Breath’. It’s short and to the point without giving too much away.
As a class we all watched each others thriller opening and received feedback. We received a lot of positive feedback majority of the class commented on how well the use of repetitive shots caused confusion and therefore made them want to continue watching. Despite this we also received some critical feedback, which was it was kind of obvious that we didn’t have a range of different footage and that certain bits of our thriller went on for a bit too long which could have made the opening tedious had it not bee for the fact that the thriller picked up its pace later on. Our thriller was compared to the channel 4 TV programme ‘Misfits’ which we saw as a great achievement as a lot of work and effort went into the production of the opening.
We had finally put our sequence together and put the soundtrack and sound effects. Lastly we had to check our audio peaks. If we hadn’t done this when we played it back it would have distorted and cause discomforting sounds to people ears. By checking the audio peaks we were able to pin point exactly where our audios were peaking and able to adjust the sound so that it wasn’t too loud but we could still hear it. Once this had all been done all that was left was to deinterlace our sequence. This had to be done to ensure that when we played it back on a normal TV these ‘fuzzy’ lines didn’t appear on the screen.
On a whole I feel that our thriller opening was extremely successful. Taking into consideration all the obstacles we had to avoid in order to make it what it was at the end, we had to a work extra hard in order to achieve what we did. I think if we were given another opportunity to do it again I would ensure that we filmed a variety of shots so that when it comes to the editing we had a lot more shots to work with as this does limit you, luckily for us we found a way to work around this.
