GROUP PLANNING - Miss Georgiou

GROUP PLANNING

Our group consists of three people; myself, hannah and ollie. Group planning is vital and helps when making decisions. Group meetings mean me and my group and discuss and contribute new ideas for our opening sequence, meaning our ideas will be to a high standard. Group planning is  essential as it helps us develop ideas, produces structured guidance, helps us gather inspirations and finally discuss the four main points of a thriller; shock, tension, surprise and suspense.

Our first group meeting consisted of discussing our first narrative ideas. Each of us contributed ideas, writing them down one-by-one so we could see all the ideas put together. We looked at ideas about taking an idea from each of ours but finally came to a conclusion of using Ollie's idea as we found it had a good narrative. Although when fully writing down our first narrative idea, we made small changes to improve certain areas, for e.g. changing the scene to be a forest and adding a new background character. All of these helped contribute to it being a better opening sequence.

Furthermore, we also discussed our inspirations. Our inspirations discussion consisted of what each of us felt inspired by and why. We came up with ideas from our previous posts and research which we had already done.

Another group meeting consisted on talking about mise-en-scene. Two of our ideas were the setting and characters. Within our opening thriller sequence the setting we will use of a forest is conventional to the thriller genre. This use of mise-en-scene will be used when the girls enter the forest, to find a boy tied up looking possessed, and are unsure of the reason why. The entire scene will be mostly filmed within the dark forest. This is conventional as it is will be dark and confided place so it's easy to see the main point on the screen as well as being hard to escape from the antagonist. Also another reason why the use of a forest is conventional to the thriller genre is because at the time we will use the forest it will be dark and gloomy. We wanted to use the forest at this time as it creates a sense of fear as it is unknown what lies within the forest, and creates a sense of foreboding as it is unknown what will happen next.

When creating ideas we wrote them all down on an A3 sheet of paper. Our first discussion which we wrote down was, the name of our film and the 8 different things we need to include in our opening sequence, these were; miss-en-scene, cinematography, soundtrack, editing, target audience/age certificates, codes and conventions, research into thriller films and finally representation of characters. For each one of these 8 things we wrote down ideas which would be included in our opening sequence, a few examples of these are;
1.Mise-en-scene: forest setting, 2 main characters.
2.Cinematogrpahy: panning and close up.
3.Soundtrack: footsteps and diabetic leaves rustling.
4.Editing: high angled shot, jump cut
5.Target audience: 15 age certificate
6:Codes&Conventions: low key lighting&death
7:Research: Looking at the film halloween
8:Representations: Young male victim who is defenceless

The A3 sheet we composed was about planning cinematography. On this A3 sheet we chose 6 cinematography shots we are going to use and wrote about them, two examples of these are; panning shot and zooming in and out. For these two we wrote about where they would be used in the film and why they would be used here, this helped to conclude further into our opening sequence. Planning cinematography has helped us contribute ideas about what uses of cinematography we will use and why; we have decided to use shallow focus as it intensifies the scene and brings certain characters attention to the audience.

Another A3 sheet we composed and came up with ideas is soundtrack. We divided our page into four and wrote about diegetic and non-diegetic sounds that could possibly feature within our opening thriller sequence to intensify the scene and help to create as much suspense and tension as possible. We have decided to use non-diagetic heart beat sound, footsteps, diagetic leaves rustling and whistle ( subtle ) whenever the antagonist is around. Another sound we will use is the non-diegetic sound of an exaggerated heart beat. The heart beat helps to intensify the scene as it shows how scared the character is. The audience will then sympathize for the characters as they are a similar age and can not help but imagine themselves in the same situation and how scared they must be. We will use this when the two characters first spot the dark figure in the series of montage clips. Not only does this give the audience a sense of uncertainty but it also builds suspense and tension as the audience think something will happen or jump out at the characters at the end of the sound. Soundtrack planning as a group has let us elaborate on new ideas and individual ideas. One of the soundtrack ideas is Diagetic leaves rustling. This is a diagetic sound as the leaves will be shown on the screen on a low angle shot.

The third main point of our thriller opening sequence is editing. From discussion we have chosen 4 editing skills to be used; high-angled shot, low-angled shot, reaction shot and montage. All of these will help to bring shock, suspense, suprise and tension, which are vital for creating a thriller film. All of these will help to show different angles of the charachters aswell as the scene.

In our last group meeting we discussed which editing techniques we were going to use. Firstly we will use is making the scene faster, this is when the pace of the editing is increased. This would most likely be used alongside the montage editing and when the hand held camera is being used to show that the pace of the unidentified killers walking has also increased as he follows them. In addition to this I think it would be effective to have a non-diegetic heart beat over the top of this scene as it shows how frightened and scared the two girls are. 

Overall, although are group meetings are yet to continue to discuss new ideas and plan further into our thriller opening sequence. The planning we have done so far I feel has been done well with a good structure to what has been said. Each topic we have discussed we have made detailed notes and wrote down what we will use for each, I found this good as when we came to writing about them, we all knew what we was talking about; aswell as when filming, we will all be knowledgeable about which parts of the film we will be filming and what will be included. 

-add more group planning discussions in future.

Date	Meeting	What We Discussed and Achieved	By Who	Discussions

17/10/2014	1	Ideas & Plan our intial Group Narrative	All	Discussed ideas for narrative on a group mindmap.

24/10/2014	2	Ideas and Planning for Cinematography	All	Mindmapped & finalized Cinematography on A3 paper.

06/11/2014	3	Ideas and Planning for Sound	All	Mindmapped & finalized Sound on A3 paper.

07/11/2014	4	Ideas and Planning for Editing Styles	All	Mindmapped & finalized Editing Styles on A3 paper.

07/11/2014	5	Ideas and Planning for Opening Credits	Individual	Planned Individually our Opening Credits

13/11/2014	6	Ideas and Planning for Characters	All	Mindmapped & finalized Characters on A3 paper.

14/11/2014	7	Planning and Finalising Group Storyboard	All	Mindmapped & finalized Storyborard on 5xA4 paper.

17/11/2014	8	Planning and Finalising Filming Schedule	All	Planned our Schedule on Edexcel to follow.

23/11/2014	9	Planning Risk Assessment	All	Planned our Risks to avoid them during filming.

01/12/2014 10   Filming our Opening Thriller Sequence. All Took into account all of our planning & filmed sequence.

Our group planning meant we could discuss as a group and come up with the best ideas. I found this worked really well andAltogether I think that group meeting have helped to keep my group organised and has helped us to understand what needs to be done next. In addition to this it has helped to expand and broaden our ideas to develop them further helping to create a better opening thriller sequence as this is all of our ideas combined.