Final Task Costumes

Katrina and Ed were both dressed in fairly trendy clothes that make them look older than their age to fit in with the late teens/early 20's character we cast them as. There is no further meaning or purpose to these costumes as we want them to seem as normal/stereotypical as possible.

Final Task Plot

We brainstormed all of our ideas on an A3 sheet.

We had a variety of ideas for our plot:
   - Bullying
   - Arguments with family
   - Arguments with boyfriend/girlfriend
   - Family loss

In the end we went with the idea of an argument with a boyfriend/girlfriend and suicide. Although suicide may be interpreted as a quite dark and troubled matter, we thought it would give a slight edge to our thriller, this also allows us to stray away from the common stalker scenario that the exam board see every year. This allows us to use both genders and show the representation of them in different perspectives. 


Screenplay


Scene 1

A girl is on the computer while talking to her boyfriend in a different room. She gets a text which says "you'd be better off dead" , she grabs her work keys, runs out of the room, opens the front door and leaves, not shutting the front door behind her.

Her boyfriend hears this and sees the front door open, he realises something has happened and that her keys are gone so he grabs his coat and goes after her. Cuts to scene of her on the train and departing it.

TRANSITION SCENE - GIRL CRYING INFRONT OF TRAFFIC


Scene 2

She’s walking along the street, crosses a road and enters her work building. She then swipes her work keys and walks towards the lift.

She waits for the lift, inside the lift she is slumped in the corner crying. She then gets up and leaves the lift and turns the corner towards the balcony.

She then goes to the edge of the balcony  followed by her moving closer to the edge and looking over. Looks over the edge once again.

Audience hears her boyfriend shout her name. Brief dialogue (TBC at a later date) - outcome is he can't talk her out of it

Scene 3

Screen goes black

Face/body in mangled shape on floor, in blood. Boyfriend runs to her side and rings 999, brief call with emergency services. He then picks up her phone and reads the text (new one) that says "...knew she'd do what I told her". Boyfriend has vengeful look on his face as if he is going to go after the person harassing his girlfriend.

Final Task Setting

Blue Fin Building

(Location Works)

'The Blue Fin Building boasts a huge central atrium, very large 10th floor roof garden, winter garden coffee bar and a restaurant with views over the Thames. The building houses the headquarters of IPC Media, a leading UK consumer magazine publisher. The open-plan office floors have floor-to-ceiling windows with impressive views over central London and the City; facilities include state-of-the-art board-rooms, meeting rooms, theatre, wine-tasting suite, photographic studios, and test kitchens.'
(Location Works)

We chose the Blue Fin building for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it is my dad's workplace and I was familiar with the layout etc, therefore it helped when we created the idea and plot of our final task because I could visualize where we would film and what shots we could take. Secondly it is a particularly large building with 11 floors which fitted in perfectly with our plot, even better there is a roof top garden and a balcony, with the latter being an essential in our thriller.


As well as our school media equipment we also will have access to a green screen and possibly even a recording studio. We are considering using the green screen for a very short segment of our thriller and if we are able to use the studio we would record the girl's voiceover to give the most professional audio possible to compliment the video.


The Blue Fin building has been used for professional filming in films such as:
• You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010) - Woody Allen's new project
• Salmon Fishing in Yemen (2012) - a film starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt


TV Shows such as:
• Hustle - BBC Drama (2004-Present)

and even adverts such as Norwich Union (now known as AVIVA):
 

Below is a video that is shown to anyone interested in renting the Blue Fin Building for filming:

London
We have decided to film our thriller in and around London (except for the opening scene), In my opinion this was because London is an iconic setting that is often used throughout films and therefore we felt that filming in London would give us the best effect, suspense, tension and drama for our thriller.


Method Statement
To film at the Blue Fin Building we had to create a method statement to give to the Facilities Director Jenny. This basically just tells her how we plan to go about our filming, because there are no real risks to be taken, a risk assessment is not needed

Above: Method Statement

Preliminary Task Feedback

Having put our preliminary task on YouTube we received fairly good feedback, complimenting our variety of camera angles, use of sound and continuity. There was also some good constructive criticism in each of these users comments which you can see below:

Preliminary Task Outtakes

Purpose
We filmed our preliminary task in one afternoon and as with any filming process there were blunders, people forgetting their lines and people acting stupid, not realising the camera was still on! (Yes, Ellen)
So we put them together into a little outtakes video for your amusement.

Construction
We just chose the clips which we thought were worthy of an outtakes video first of all. We tried not to use too many transitions so any clips with the same background setting we cut straight onto the next one as it ran quite smoothly. There were some swear words used in the outtakes when our actors voiced their frustration at forgetting their lines (Yes, Ed) so we just simply detached and deleted the sound of that part of the clip and overlaid a bottle cork popping sound to replace the word.

Preliminary Task

Brief
We were asked to make a short film (approx. 1 minute) which included someone walking down a corridor, entering a room, crossing the room and engaging in a conversation. We did not use a corridor as this did not fit our opening so instead we used the river bank. We were also asked to use 'Match on Action', 'Shot Reverse Shot' and the '180° rule' which we included.

Construction
After digging out the outtakes and bloopers from our footage we set about creating our preliminary task. Our filming was fairly fluent which helped when constructing our 1 minute task because it meant there was less editing to do when we brought all the clips together. Our main problem was that we had people in our group talking over the filming without realising. To solve this, we detached the audio from the clip and then trimmed it to so we just had the background noise we wanted and placed it back on the video. We then used this audio over and over again in the opening sequence as it was a continuous sound of water gushing.

We then added non-diegetic background music while Ellen is walking along the riverbank to increase the tension and suspense in this part of the sequence as it seems she is being followed.

We added a video effect called 'Old World' to the clip of the newspaper being tossed across the table which darkened it making it seem dramatic and important and to finish off we added a 'fade to black' transition in the closing sequence as Ed stands up. This makes the viewer wonder what is going to happen next after he says "I think it's time this case was closed" as it is not stated although it insinuates that he is going to do something to close the case.

Location Shots for Our Preliminary Task

Here are just a few shots of us filming and working on-location for our preliminary task: