Production Company Analysis

Below is our subsidiary production company logo that we have made up for our production.  We chose the name ‘Red Herring’ because in thrillers there are red herrings to make the plot more exciting, leading you to believe one thing when in fact not everything is at it seems.  We thought this would be suitable for the sort of thriller we wanted to produce.

MEDIA Red Herring Productions Logo from Emma Bailey on Vimeo.

Coffee Films is a British independent film company that was established in 1996.  In 2004 it was recognised as one of Europe’s leading young production companies.  We decided that our film would be made by a small production company because it isn’t in the same style as other Hollywood films.  The company has produced thrillers such as ‘Lucid’: a psychological thriller feature set in the Scottish Highlands.  They have also produced several online films, including ‘A Plaster, A Paper and a Cheese & Pickle Sandwich’: a black comedy thriller short film.  While the company isn’t very well known, we think that this production would be more suited to producing our film.

Soundtrack Analysis

Above, you can see a video of the main piece of background soundtrack non-diegetic music we used in our production: a free piece of music we found off the internet called ‘Bent and Broken’, which we thought sounded fitting for the thriller genre. The song by Kevin MacLeod fits the Horror film genre; but we thought that the piece had thriller connotations within it. The piece had to be cut down for our production, as it was too long and it wasn’t appropriate for all parts of the film, however it does run from the very beginning of our production, through the production company logos, as we thought the music sounded quite dramatic and good for the logo title music.

The second piece of music we use in our production is called All This. This piece of music plays when Karen sees Joe on the floor of the warehouse near the van. Again, we thought this sounded fitting for the thriller genre, but as you will hear, the first minute of music isn't used, because we didn't think that that part of the music was appropriate for our piece. Again, this was a free piece of music made by Kevin MacLeod.

Film Shoot Analysis

The First Shoot:
   We got off to an unsteady start, as we weren't quite as organised as we should have been.  Both of our original actors told us on the day that they couldn’t do it anymore, but we decided to carry on regardless because Alex and Emma both had a little amount of acting experience.
    Also, we had to get used to using the equipment, which took us a little while to get the hang of.  We had some trouble with our microphone, so the footage that we got out of the shoot didn’t have a good enough quality for what we wanted.  Originally we only planned to have one shooting day, as everything was to be shot in the same location, however in the end we didn’t have time to finish all of it, and we had trouble with the lighting in the warehouse.

The Second Shoot:
    On the second shoot, we were a lot more efficient and quick with the filming.  We had to redo a couple of shots from the first shoot because of the quality or the change in natural lighting.  Everything ran a lot more smoothly and we got all of the shots that we needed to, because we had got used to the equipment and we got the correct microphone working, and we were all working together a team more than the first shoot, because with two thirds of our team acting, it would have been difficult to dedicate different people to specific tasks.

General Planning

On the day of our filming, we had to take a bus to get to our location to film. We used rosso.com to organise the time that we should get the bus and helped us to figure out where the nearest bus stop would be to the location we were filming in.

We also used Facebook messenger to communicate with each other about media outside of school. To give the whole group access to our work to put on their blogs, we put finished work on a group Google Drive which we could all access.

Titles and Fonts

Because our production is a serious thriller, we wanted the titles to connote the dark tone of the plot.  We also wanted to target our audience through our titles, so therefore the titles should look sophisticated and easy to read.  Therefore, we could not use fonts such as Comic Sans or Curlz, or any other sans serif, unprofessional fonts.  Instead, we think that using a serif font, to broadcast the seriousness and connote thriller conventions, for example Book Antiqua or Imprint MT Shadow.  In the end, we have decided to use Rockwell in bold and in CAPITALS.

For example:

ALEX HETHERINGTON

SAM DUXBURY

EMMA BAILEY

Prop and Location List

Location

Warehouse

 A warehouse will provide an ominous atmosphere, due to the possibility of an echo, as well as the low key lighting made possible by turning the warehouse lights off. This could be used for chiaroscuro lighting, conventional of a thriller. Alex is providing this location.

Props

Van

Van is part of warehouse set, and is used by the woman to hide in. This is stored at the location that Alex is providing.

Van Keys

Allows the woman to enter the van, and, through the male characters dialogue, tells the audience that the van is owned by the company working in the warehouse.

Desk, Computer, Chair

These are typical of an office, and establish a normal, everyday setting and a Todorovian equilibrium to be disrupted. Again, these props are stored at the location, so Alex is providing them.

Cast and Characters

The actress playing Karen will be Emma Bailey. We decided on using Emma due to her having some past experience of being behind the camera, so Emma was confident enough to play the role of the woman. We decided to use someone inside our crew because it was much more convenient for filming and Emma fits the role of the blonde, fulfilling the feminine stereotype we were looking to broadcast with this character.

The actor playing Joe will be Alex Hetherington.  We have chosen this because he is in the group and has some experience in front of the camera.  Also, he fits the stereotype of the male character we wanted to portray to juxtapose the ‘damsel in distress’ stereotype; the woman should be killed first, not the man.  We decided to choose Alex for this because we didn’t have a confident enough friend who could play the part who we could get to the filming easily to act in our production, and it was a good opportunity for Alex to be in a film.

We won’t see the villain character, except for in shadow and silhouette form, so there is no actor for this part.  This is because we think that the ambiguity of the character will make them more threatening.