What went well and what did not go well in the process of making my thriller

What do we feel went well?

I feel our entire thriller went really well, and we are all very pleased with the end result. In particular, we felt pleased with our character casting; this is because I think our actor Leon, set the scene with the dead body and the car really well. He looks mysterious and mean. As he is in a leather jacket and there could be perceived as looking bad. I also think that our character Patrick Callaghan at the desk is a particularly good find. As he looks like he is the boss, and he is dressed for the part well. Our locations were pleasing because they were shot in the evening. So especially the road looks sinister and dangerous, and there is no one nearby and it is in a very quiet area. The building shot connotes an importance because the low angle shots show the stature and height of the building. I am pleased with our music choice, because someone had said our music is very thought evoking. I think it is quite edgy, and creates tension in our film. I am very pleased with the lighting aspects of our film as it has a lot of chiaroscuro lighting, and slated blinds with a bright light shining through them. I like this use of lighting as it is a good thriller signifier. I like the use of our shots, an example of this would be a close up on the man at the desks eyes, this makes the audience feel like uncomfortable, as if he is staring at you. Another shot we are really pleased with, is where the men reappear from dumping the body, it looks good because of the chiaroscuro lighting which makes the road look really bright. As the men are taking the body out of the boot, I particularly like the lighting from the lights on the back of the car in that shot. Regarding editing, we are pleased with the effect of flashing transitions in time with the music to create a stylistic effect. It also swaps between, the building and the road, and then the man in the road. I also like how the shots contrasts have been changed to make the shot look darker in places and lighter in others to help create the chiaroscuro lighting effect The film leaves you wondering whether the man behind the desk is linked with what is going on with the dead body. With our props, we are pleased with the choice of car. As it is not obvious and does not attract attention to itself, which is what we were hoping for. We also liked out body-bag, as although it could be more realistic, we think it was a good as it good be. The use of a cigarette was effective as it connotes that the man is unappealing and could be seen as bad. We think the use of the word Vendetta in our title is good because it gives you an idea of what is going on in the film (a war/feud and revenge between people/families/gangs) but you don’t know what kind of vendetta is taking place, or why so it also leaves an element of mystery. I also like the way our titles are placed, with our names appearing on the road, and the final title “Bloody Vendetta” in capitals, and white writing a black background so it show ups, and looks bold and maybe threatening. The directing in the film was good in our opinion because we think that where everything in set in the shot looks good and fits the style we are aiming for. The last aspect I was pleased with was the synopsis. I think our film leaves you wondering many things, such as “who murdered the person”, “who is the dead person” and “why are they dead” etc. It makes you want to watch on in to the rest of the film. The use of a cliff hanger and mystery in this way is a common thriller signifier.

What difficulties/problems did we encounter?

The biggest problem that we had whilst planning our thriller film was finding our cast. This is because of two members in our original cast having to pull out because of school regulations. We then only had a short amount of time to find new actors to play the parts. Therefore the actors did not fit the preferred age group we would have liked them to be in. Although this was a problem we do not think it affected our film too much, and it still turned out as well as we wanted it to. Another problem with planning our thriller was naming it. We originally came up with a list of names we liked, and settled with “Bad Blood”, but at a later date in the editing process we decided it did not fit as well as it could do with our film and that it could be better; therefore we decided to change it. Trying to think of a new name proved to be a difficult task, but in the end we came up with “Bloody Vendetta” and preferred it to “Bad Blood” because it fit in with the family feuds/war in our synopsis and when you are watching the film it gives to an idea that a war/revenge is taking place, but you do not know why, or who is taking revenge. To make sure the title was good for our film we asked some class mates whether they thought it fit in and sounded right. All of which agreed which finally decided that we would use it. Whilst trying to find props and costumes for our actors to use an wear, we had difficulty trying to create a dead-body look-a-like, and although we know in the film that a dead body would be a lot heavier and more flimsy, we tried our best and used a punch bag and some sleeping bag to make it look as realistic as possible. A problem we encountered whilst filming out thriller was lighting. When we originally went to film our building shots we found that it was too dark and it was not clear what we were filming, we then had to go back a redo this at a later date. This problem also occurred when we tried to film our dead body being dropped into a ditch. We solved this problem by showing a different part of our filming to make it look like they had dumped the body by re-appearing from the woods without the body in their hands. We also had problems with keeping our camera steady while trying to film the road sequences, as we knew we had to do this by hand it took several attempts to make it look like it was panning smoothly (or as smooth as we could make it) rather than unsteady. Problems that occurred during the editing process was a soundtrack that we all liked, we thought went well with the film and was not copyright (as our original piece was copyright). After much searching for the right track we finally agreed on a song we all liked and that we got positive feedback with. Flashing shot transitions and keeping our film in time with the music proved to be challenging as we had to edit the film so the climatic music came in at the right point in the film. This was very time consuming. The last and probably most difficult to resolve problem we encountered whilst trying to edit our film and fitting it into less than two minutes long. We had a lot of footage that we wanted to add in our film, but this ended up being at about 2 minutes 30 seconds. We then had to go back, and cut out everything we thought did not need to be there, or did not need to be held for as long as it was being. We spent a lot of time trying to work out exactly what was relevant and what had to stay, and what was not necessarily as important.