Overview and Evaluation of the Finished Product

I am now in a position to evaluate the finished product of our opening thriller sequence. This is after creating the concept, securing the concept, pre-production, principal photography and post production. We were told that “the sequence must be generically authentic and generate significant rising tension and atmosphere”. We achieved this in several different ways.
For the pre-production we ensured that the location availability was finalised. We did this by asking the house keeper so giving him the time schedule and warning him on where we would be shooting so that he knew the amount of space we would be taking up. As group we also had to make sure that the props and costumes were prepared and in a reliable place that we could collect them all from on the morning of the shoot. We were shooting on the Monday morning so we had to prepare the props and costumes on the Friday as we would not have time before the shoot on Monday. Each of the group had different props to bring in so we had to rely on each other to bring them in. I was in charge of organising what each member of the group would bring in. I was also in control of the costumes so I organised the costumes picking more then one in case of sizes etc. and made sure they were in a safe place to collect first thing Monday morning.
For the pre-production of the day we also called the cast to finalise the times they had to arrive and leave and also send them the shooting schedule and the storyboard. The time and weather were not an issue we had created a shooting schedule that was sufficient. We did not need to check the weather report as it was all shot inside.
Finally for the pre-production we had to make sure that the equipment was prepared for the shoot. That we had all the lights we needed the camera and the microphones.

Some specific shots, mise-en-scene, editing and sound I feel made our product a success. In editing we were unable to use some of the specific shots which I really thought had great lighting and created a great atmosphere. Such as the shot were Russell (the main character) walked down a dingy corridor which almost looked like a hospital corridor. There was an electrical tube light on the ceiling of this corridor which flickered at random. It was accidental but it created a great atmosphere. However we cut this shot as we had others that we needed to use and also because it gave the impression of the thriller being more modern.
Another shot which stood out because of the lighting was one of the last shot of the ghost in the fire place. We put an unmasked Redhead video light with the barn doors removed and it was fitted with a Tungsten bulb. This light was put in front of the ghost (Gabby one of the actors) in the fire place. The ghost was positioned with her back towards the camera so that it looked as though the light was coming from inside the fireplace. This created a bright glow around the ghost creating a supernatural feel. It also made the ghost look like a silhouette which I really liked the silhouette effect as it created audience proximity as the audience can not see clearly what the silhouette is there for creating tension and anticipation.
A third memorable shot was when we got a shot of smoke coming through a key hole. It was another shot that we got by accident. We wanted to originally just use one of the lights from behind the door shinning through as Russell walked through. However when the light was close to the door it made the metal around the key hole smoke which created an even better effect then the light. It is a close up on the key hole and it looks as though the smoke is seeping through. And as we used the candles smoke in numerous shots it connected to them and so worked really well as a repetitive sequence.
My last memorable shot was when we took the camera off of the tripod and did a hand held shot leading Russell through one of the rooms. We had not used a handheld shot before so it was good for our variety of shots. However it was too dark and did not look right along side to our other shots.

The genre ‘Thriller’ is one of the hardest genres of movie to identify as it is a ‘meta-genre’. So from the beginning as a group we knew it was going to be really difficult to create a successful thriller sequence. We knew that we needed to create suspense, tension and fear for our audience. We did this by creating a solid plot which we had a reaction to. We thought we would generate fear from our audience by not making it modern. We used the method of time because then for the audience it is harder to connect with and not being able to connect with a film can sometimes be disturbing therefore intriguing. We decided not to go with the idea of the elder in the sequence being the one in control but the younger character being in control. Because we found the idea of that unoriginal as we knew other groups were doing that. The idea of the child being in control over the adult we thought would raise more questions. We created tension through a sense of delay and anticipation. We made sure that the little girl (the ghost) was not revealed until the end creating character audience proximity with the old man, making the audience feel a sense of recognition and compassion, as you follow him around his house from the moment he wakes up to the moment he sees the ghost. For the sound we used an eerie high pitch sound which rose and rose in volume and pitch. This creates anticipation for the audience, because as the sound raises the audience our waiting it to peak and the sound rising suggests it is rising up to something.

We had a few key flaws in our product but I believe our main weakness was our lighting continuity. I didn’t think that the lighting looked dark enough as our thriller sequence was set at night and the lighting created more of a day light effect. In one of our shots we used a purple jell where as we had used a blue jell in our others. The purple jell did not look good in the flesh but on the camera it worked really well and I think that we should have used the purple jell through out the entire shoot. Also when editing I don’t think that the lighting continuity through out was strong it looked a lot lighter at some points or a lot darker. Although we did have other flaws I felt that was our major one.

I feel as a finished product we came out with a lot more strengths then weaknesses. I believe that we had a good plot that worked well as a thriller although it suggested that the rest of the film would continue into being also a horror.
One of our main strengths was the flow of our sequence. I think that our cutting turned out to look very proficient. The shots looked right along side each other as a package. I also think that one of our main strengths was our build up; it escalated tension very well with the sound. It escalated well because of the sounds we decided to use and how the volume rises as the old man grows closer to the ghost. Another main strength I believe we had was our titles. This is because originally we didn’t want more then three titles however we had to include more and when we did put more titles in and chose a font and the way they would appear on the screen it in fact added to the thriller. This also includes our title ‘Whisper’, we could not decide on a unique title until we had edited it and watched it finished and when we did straight away we came up with the idea of ‘Whisper’ we all agreed and felt it suited our thriller.
In conclusion I feel all of our strengths overrule our weaknesses because in the end we did not want to change it and as whole were really satisfied with the out come.