We have decided our previous idea was not working so we are going to go with PLAN B. the story begins with an open book this book contains news paper articles, pictures, and other extras like pieces of hair, and pieces of jewellery. These pages will be turned by hands belonging to the serial killer. The book will then lead to an empty page a name and picture. A knife will drop on the image and a dark figure will walk off out of the room. We came up with this idea because it overcame most of the set backs we got from plan a.
It’s the last day me and my group will see each other, making it very difficult to work together when I’m on holiday, to France by the way, and the others live on either end of Birmingham. Due to this we have decided to postpone any work until after half term. This is a major set back because kasim told me he had booked the camera for the holiday. So today we went through the footage as a group and some good comments were brought to light. Our work is production is producing many unanswerable questions, so if it comes to the worst we might scrap the whole idea.
The deadline for this is tomorrow so I began working on it earlier and finished it. I completed it early so I can get the opinion of my teacher before handing it in. this also gave me the time to go over the footage and evaluate it. It was pretty good but coming to think about it now there needs to major amendments made. Things such as lighting because some shots were too dark and you couldn’t even see the actors. That brings me to another point the actors were not very good, you could tell they were not enjoying them selves because they never wanted t o act. So I will now be thinking long and hard on how I can fix these setbacks.
We collected the camera and the equipment and went out to film. As director I hoped to get as many shots in as possible then pick the best later. We filmed in the corridors, reception, and on the stairs and in the classroom. I was even lucky enough to find some posh looking people and a good, but intelligent looking women lurking in reception and got them in the shot too. (In every film you need fit looking women). We however got shots such as high and low angles; birds eye shots, zoom, tracking and many more. I will look over the footage in tomorrow’s lesson.
Today we booked the camera, dolly, and tripod for tomorrow lesson, shoibs mother had helped him sew a stab proof vest and kasim got his hands on a real American police badge. These props along with casual non functional costumes I hope to show the audience that both characters are police officers without actually telling them that, like in the opening of Hannibal 2001 when the man was wearing a FBI cap. We have also come up with the plan of what we are going to. The main obstacle is getting our free periods all in sync.
Done some research on how to film i.e. using the camera effectively etc. the BBC provides a training and development course http://www.bbctraining.com/searchResults.asp?cat=2781&subcat=2789 which has helped me learn lots off stuff through the online videos.
The teacher told me the more textual analysis I do the easier it will be for me to talk about my sequence and will also broaden my knowledge.
Mise en scene: it was set in one scene all that was shown was the book and what was within it. It was dark around the book but a lot lighter on the book, putting emphasis and telling the audience what to look at.
Sound: digetic sound that was used was the sound of the instruments e.g. typewriter, pages turning over. The non digetic score was of a high pitched tension creating horror nature. This was extremely useful because it helped build the idea that it was about something horrific.
Sfx: no special effects apart from the black and white transition.
Editing: a lot of cuts were used but only two types cut in and cut out. Cut in were used to move in on something and cut out to move make to the whole picture. This was also used to put the director in the boss position and tells the viewer what to concentrate on. Also shots were placed on another to join relevant information.
Cinematography: many angles were used like high, low medium. The camera always stayed in close up on occasional zoomed in to extreme close up. This was the most excellent use of cinematography because it allowed the audience to see what the film is about, how it starts and how it ends.
comleted the planning sheets and now thinking of were or how we are going to get our hands on the props needed. also went out to check some locations again to go with our story line.
World's worst killers
Chikatilo was Russia's number one serial killer
A Colombian man's admission to the murder and torture of 140 children has again put the spotlight on the gruesome history of mass killers.
Since Jack The Ripper, criminologists say there have been about 100 known cases of serial killers around the world, including one of modern history's worst murderers - Pedro Alonso Lopez, known as Monster of the Andes.
'Terminator' Onoprienko wanted to be the most notorious killer
Lopez is thought to have butchered more than 300 young girls in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador throughout the late 1970s and early 80s.
He was arrested in 1980 but was freed by the government in Ecuador at the end of last year and deported to Colombia. In an interview from his prison cell, he described himself as "the man of the century" and said he was being released for "good behaviour".
Other serial killers to get close to Lopez's horrific tally of victims were the Americans Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, and HH Holmes, who killed more than 200.
Lucas, a one-eyed drifter from Texas and Toole, who had a taste for human flesh, killed anyone who crossed their paths, with a preference for picking up hitchhikers. They are known to have killed more than 200 people between the mid-1970s and mid-80s.
Holmes built a massive mansion, complete with trap doors, acid vats, lime pits and gas chambers, with money he made from a drugstore empire he built in Chicago.
'Torture castle'
During the 1893 World's Fair in the city, he rented rooms to visitors, then killed them to try to collect on their insurance policies.
Fred West is one of Britain's most notorious mass murderers
He also lured women to his "torture castle" with promises of marriage but would kill them after they signed over their life savings to him. He was hanged in 1896.
Sisters Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzales, owners of a Mexican brothel, killed prostitutes they recruited and an unknown number of clients.
They were arrested and later sentenced to 40 years in 1964, after police found the bodies of 91 people following a raided on the bordello.
True vampire
Another notorious female mass murderer was Hungarian Erzebet Bathory who carried out a reign of terror in the 16th century. Known as the blood countess, she tortured and murdered more than 600 victims from her family estate in Transylvania.
One method of killing victims was to strip them and lie them down in the snow in winter and then pour water over them until they froze.
She is considered to be a true vampire because she bathed in the blood of some of her victims, believing it would keep her skin looking youthful.
Russia's premier serial killer this century was Andrei Chikatilo, who killed 53 women and children in a prolonged campaign of serial murder which began in 1978.
Gruesome evidence
Chikatilo, who grew up believing his older brother been kidnapped and cannibalised, during the great Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s, mutilated some of his victims by gnawing at them.
Just failing to match this tally was Ukranian Anatoly Onoprienko, who was nicknamed the terminator by the police. He confessed to 52 murders.
One hundred volumes of gruesome evidence were presented at the trial last November.
He issued a press release from his prison cell saying he had wanted to hold the world record for killing.
Lethal injection
German Bruno Ludke, who killed at least 80 people, mainly women, began his 15-year killing spree in 1928.
Declared insane, he was sent to a Vienna hospital, where experiments were carried out on him until he died by lethal injection in 1944.
During World War II, Frenchman Marcel Petiot built a sound-proof home in which he killed up to 63 people.
He claimed he was a member of the French Resistance and told his victims, who were mainly Jews and others escaping from the Nazis, that he could arrange for a safe passage out of the country for a fee.
But after receiving the money, he gave them a lethal injection pretending to given them a "vaccination against foreign diseases".
In 1944 police investigated Petiot's home due to the stench of burnt corpses. He was found guilty and died by the guillotine in 1946.
Fred and Rose West are two of Britain's most notorious serial killers. Fred, who hanged himself in Birmingham's Winson Green prison on New Year's Day 1995, killed 13 women and girls - including his first wife and two of his daughters - in Gloucester and nearby Much Marcle between 1968 and 1987.
His wife, who is serving a life sentence in London's Holloway prison, was convicted of 10 of the murders.
Australia's two most prolific convicted serial killers are James Miller, who raped and murdered seven women in the 1970s, and Ivan Milat, the notorious "backpack" murderer, who killed seven tourists and buried their bodies in the bush outside Sydney.
But in May this year, Australian police charged three people with murder after finding human remains in a disused bank vault.
Another two were found buried in the garden of an Adelaide house. Police say they suspect the motive for the murders was a welfare fraud.
Hannibal link
Pietro Pacciani, the Monster of Florence, was convicted in 1994 of murdering eight couples in lovers' lanes near Florence, between 1968 and 1985.
Pacciani was given 16 life sentences but was freed on appeal in 1996 and died of a heart attack in February 1998 while awaiting a retrial.
Thomas Harris, author of blockbusters The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal attended the trial of Pacciani, where he sat and studiously made notes.
The fruits of his research appear in Hannibal, with references to "Il Mostro".
Brief has been uploaded and in lesson we were given some planning sheets, to keep us organised to minimise potential miss haps. Also got together with my group and discussed issues involving, location, cast, props etc. we have agreed on everything. Our location will be based in college. We will be in the film and so will a couple of mates be involved when we are occupied. For our film we need cling film, water, a chair, stab proof vests, police badges, and black piece of material, a lamp and a dolly track. Some of these will be specific props made by us and others will be found props which we will go out and buy.
After watching a student example I decided to do a textual analysis on it to help me.
Mise en scene- it was set in a bedroom, with only a computer and a house phone. Keeping in the same location kept it simple so the audience wouldn’t get confused. this made it pretty effective.
Sound- the score which was non digetic was of an opera like nature, this is sometimes associated with thrillers and horrors. the audience know what it is about. There was some digetic dialogue used to put across the position and slight identity of that character.
Sfx- blood was probably the only sfx used, it splattered over the camera lense, but this was probably computer generated. editing-the cuts and merging of two clips, i.e. newspaper article and titles, was also to highlight and put emphasis on what the director wants you to see and believe. This gave the audience a sense of unease and suspense. Cinematography-many different shots were used, some of which are, high angle, mid shots, close ups, zooms, and panning. These were used but had no purpose, they were not used effectively.
my brief has been completed, storyboard as well. my blog is up to date. I've finished everything. for the rest of this week i will concentrate on organising my planning folder and then on the production itself. we also watched an opening sequence done by a fellow student, and it was very creative in aspects like editing, sound and cinematography.
went over final ideas, everyone agreed with it. finished brief tonight. going out tomorrow to buy the props needed, and to film a preliminary opening in order for us to unearth the pros and cons of it, and to amend them for the original sequence.
our group got together and finalised our ideas, and as leader assigned each member their roles for the next two weeks. today i also watched Sweeney Todd, which i found to be a excellent movie. it also gave me a idea of how cinematography is used to make the opening effective.
started to draw up storyboard, but not very good at drawing. once completed they will be scanned and uploaded on to my blog.
Today sam handed out some storyboard templates for us to fill in. it will describe the camera movements, actions and dialogue. later on today i will post on my calender which will be my guide for the next few weeks.
Definition: Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the wide-ranging thriller genre. However, this genre often incorporates elements from the mystery genre in addition to the typical traits of the thriller genre.
Generally, thrillers focus on plot over fictional characters, and thus emphasize intense, physical action over the character's psyche. Psychological thrillers tend to reverse this formula to a certain degree, emphasizing the characters just as much, if not more so, than the plot.
The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying upon one another's minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the other's mental state.
Sometimes the suspense comes from within one solitary character where characters must resolve conflicts with their own minds. Usually, this conflict is an effort to understand something that has happened to them.
Example of director: Alfred Hitchcock – The master of suspense, Hitchcock often applied Freudian concepts to his thrillers, as in Rebecca, Spellbound, Vertigo, Psycho, and Marnie.
Example of a writer: A excellent example of a psychological thriller is the writings of Robert Banfelder who has written a series of ten novels on serial killings.
Our opening in going to be a psychological thriller, the above examples have lots of similar techniques we will be using. Alfred Hitchcock has probably had the most influence over my ideas.
Me and my group have decided to do a combined credit and video opening. we have chosen to do this because it is the best way to show off our knowledge on both types of openings, and also to broaden our knowledge on what we possibly could learn on this exciting journey.
Went out today in the local area and took some pictures of some locations and random ideas for the sequence .
