Coursework

Today in media studies we have been discussing what we wanted to do for our coursework. We have decided to shoot the first 2 minutes of a suspense / thriller film.

Our original idea consisted of two girls driving through a forest when their car breaks down. As the evening progresses and the light starts to fade girls start to hear noises coming from the forest.
Feeling anxious one of the girls decide to look under the bonnet to see if she can fix the car while the other sits in the car and tries to restart the engine.
She calls to her friend who is looking under the bonnet but there is no reply, she has disappeared.
The other girl is left terrified at the thought that someone or something is in the forest and gets into the driver’s seat and anxiously tries to re-start the car, suddenly something hits the window next to her and she screams.
She keeps turning the key in the ignition becoming more and more agitated when finally the car starts up and the headlights turn on to reveal her friend standing 50metres or so from the car with a blank expression. A series of quick cuts and drum beats shows the girl jolting closer to the car when finally with a BANG she is right next to the driver’s window looking blankly at her friend.

This was our original idea. However we realised that this would be incredibly difficult to film and produce in the set time for 2 different reasons:
Lighting – we would need to film quite quickly as the light will fade quickly and it will be difficult to film complete darkness.
We can’t drive.

Our next idea is very different. We have decided to stick with the suspense / thriller theme but we have decided to base it on a single girl who is babysitting.

The clip will start with a black, blank screen with an underpinning of a phone ringing. There will then be a close-up shot of a telephone.
The girl who is babysitting will answer the phone and say:"Hello? ......Yes he’s fine….. Ok……Bye” and she puts the receiver down.
The camera will then shows the girl reading a magazine.
The phone rings again. Close-up of the girl’s face *silent for 3 seconds*
“Is everything alright?” “Yeah…. Who is this?”
*phone hangs up* BEEEEEEEEEEEEP
The girl is slightly freaked out but goes to check on the boy, he is sleeping in his bed and she walk over to the window and looks out before closing the blinds.
She walks back downstairs and sits down to watch the TV. After a couple of minutes the girl gets up and closes the blinds. Suddenly the TV turns off and the phone rings. *silent for 3 seconds*
“Are you sure everything is alright?” “Who is this?!?!” “You need to check again”
*Phone hangs up* BEEEEEEEEEEEEP
The girl quickly goes upstairs and checks on the boy. He is fine sleeping in bed.
She walks back downstairs and the phone rings again.
*silent for 3 seconds*
“If everything is alright then why are your hands shaking?” “WHO IS THIS!!!?”
*deep breathing*360 degree turn, camera goes one way, girl turns the other way *camera slightly down, sense of power from the "intruder"*180 degree turn then the girl looks past the camera, with “PURE FEAR” right across her face.

OR [slightly different ending]

After the 360 degree turn, her phone rings again, and the camera just focuses on "Unknown" on the mobile... then it fades out into blackness again...with the phone ringing.

Recent Media Studies

I haven’t updated my Blog in AGES and Mr. V’s Friday “study period” didn’t really appeal to me so I thought I should start now.

A couple of weeks ago with Mr. V we were assigned our ‘preliminary task’. This involved making a 30 second piece of film of somebody walking into a room, having a short conversation and then walking out of the room again. This task enabled us to become familiar with the equipment and also ‘Final cut Express’ which we will be using to edit our main pieces of footage in the future.
We were also asked to produce a short storyboard of this footage to show the various shots and angles of the edited footage.
Recently with Mr. V we have been planning the start to a film which we will be filming and editing in groups. The footage can’t be any longer than 2 minutes and we have decided to create a suspense scene using various different shots and angles to help portray this.