Creating the photo montage

We decided to create a photo montage to include in the beginning of our piece. As a group, we thought that doing this would give the audience a small insight into the relationships between the characters included in the piece. We felt that doing this would allow the audience to gain a better understanding of why the film ends up the way that it does and will give them a small look into what is to be expected from the film. 

We decided to only include images of Jasmine, Josh and myself in the photo montage as we really wanted to focus on the relationships between the three characters that are featured throughout the opening. As we have all been very good friends for a long time, we have lots of photos together so we decided to use these in the montage. We chose to use a range of photos of all three of us but we also used pictures of just two of us from the group at a time. We decided to do this as it would help to greaten the audience's understanding of the previous dynamics of the group and the relationships within the group that little bit more. 

Theorists in our thriller opening

Todorov

Our piece very much supports Todorov's narrative theory. At the beginning of the piece, equilibrium is displayed through the use of the photo montage. We purposely used photos where we were smiling and happy, to help to set up the relationships between the three of us and to display the strong bond that we held at the beginning of the piece. This equilibrium is them destroyed by the dark, pan shots of Jasmine's body in the garage. This shows that something bad has happened to Jasmine, representing the disequilibrium in our piece. Although the equilibrium is not restored in our opening sequence, this would be set to happen at the end of the final film, where all characters in the piece will have the ending that they deserve.


Levi Strauss

We also very much display the theory of binary opposition by Levi Strauss throughout our piece.

Good Vs Evil is very much displayed through the direct comparison between Josh and Jazz's characters. Josh is shown to be strong and powerful, whereas Jazz is left seeming weak and vulnerable under Josh's control. This is very much shown through the shot where we zoom into Jazz's eye and when the camera zooms back out, the character has switched to present Josh's character instead. The use of this shot displays this binary opposition by clearly displaying Jasmine's fragile facial expressions in complete comparison to Josh's harsh, stern expression, reflecting his anger and rage.

Life Vs death is displayed through the juxtaposition of light and dark shots throughout the piece. A main example of this is where we pan across the montage of bright, happy pictures but these are then directly followed by the dark, eerie pan shots of Jasmine's dead body in the garage. Placing these shots directly next to each other helps to highlight these differences very strongly, creating an unnerving atmosphere for the audience.

The first day of filming

We bagan filming on the 6th of January, 2017. After a lot of discussion, we decided to use Josh's house to film. We chose this location for many different reasons. Josh's house is very open and spacious. We felt that using a house like this for our opening sequence would work very well as it provided us with many different locations to film in to make the piece look as interesting as possible. Josh also has quite a large garage at the end of his garden which we thought would be perfect to use for some of the darker scenes in our opening sequence. 

We wanted many of the shots throughout our opening sequence to look quite dark and eerie as these are very common conventions of a thriller. We decided to take some test pictures of our friend Jazz lying on the ground as she would be in the final piece to test the lighting at different times throughout the day. The picture on the left was taken at around 4pm. We decided that it was far too bright for us to achieve the shots that we would like. The picture on the right was taken only an hour later at around 5pm. We decided that this lighting worked far better and would allow us to achieve the look that we would like. It did, however make us realise that we needed to be very careful with the continuity of lighting throughout the filming process. 

Production companies

We decided that making our film accessible through the internet would be the best way to ensure that our film reached its target audience. This is because many young people use popular online sites to stream movies such as Amazon prime and Netflix. I believe that this is due to the convenience of the streaming method and also the low costs, appealing very much to students and young people.

When we began looking into different TV companies, we found that film 4 and BBC three were companies that would very much suit our film genre and our style as a group. We decided that these companies would be very interesting to look into as they are both independent but hold very large audiences. After some research, we discovered that film 4 was well known for producing low budget, British films. This is very fitting to our piece and therefore would be a very suitable company to produce our film. Film 4 is also available online, which would be very appealing to our target audience. We also discovered that many of the films produced by the company are of the thriller genre. 

As a group, we began looking into the idea of hybrid distribution. Hybrid distribution is where the creators keep the rights to their film but you are able to sell them to other distribution companies who will them be able to help to distribute your piece. As a group, we really liked this idea as it would allow our film to be shown on a wider platform, allowing it to reach a wider range of people. 

As a way to distribute our product further, we decided that we would also make our film available on Netflix. This is because it is very suited to our target audience due to its convenience and cost. Netflix is a very well advertised company, and is known for promoting lower budget films in the past. I believe that making our film available on this platform will allow our film to be accessed by a wider audience. 

developing the narrative

In class, we came together as a group to discuss ideas for the narrative of our piece. We decided to create a mind map to display these ideas as we felt that this would be the best way to keep all of our ideas in one place.