Group Planning - Miss Georgiou

My group consists of three girls; myself , Ella and Rishika. Each week we have a lesson where we have a group meeting and discuss the individual ideas we have created and gathered for our final thriller outcome. Group meetings are essential as they allow us to all communicate face to face and share our ideas on improvements for our planning. Also it allows us as a group to evaluate what we have done well and we could do better to make our thriller opening successful.The planning lays all the flaws and mistakes within our narrative, so this will make us prepared before carrying out the actual film because we will adjust to it which will allow to make our opening scene flow smoothly.

On the 17th October in my media lesson, me and my group sat down and discussed the different types of narratives we have all came up with and decided which narrative we wanted to do. The importance of the individual narrative is that it allows each member to create their own ideas on what they believe will be a good thriller. If we weren't to create individual narratives, each member will not explore their ideas and when creating the group narrative some may disagree with the others. When we finished making our own narratives we came as group and reviewed each narrative, deciding which one we will follow. This was helpful as it allowed us to listen to each others ideas and also make up more ideas to improve the final group narrative. Once me and my group finished discussing each individual narrative, we finally decided that we will follow my narrative. This is because we thought that my narrative conveyed many conventions in a thriller which will make the thriller opening a successful one as it provokes suspense, surprise and tension. 


Our meeting that commenced on the 4th November we discussed the Mise-en-scene that we will include in our thriller. On a piece of A3 paper we divided it into the 5 elements of Mise-en-scene( setting & iconography, costumes & hair and makeup, colour and lighting, body language & facial expressions and positioning. This was to show clearly what was each in their sub headings, once we did this we started filling out the aspects of the each box of what Mise-en-scene we were going to include in our opening thriller. This allowed us to discuss together as a group all the different ideas we all had that we all came to agree with that we thought that would make our thriller successful. For example in our plan we wrote under the subheading lighting, that we would use low-key lighting due to the setting being in the evening and explained what effect it had on the film and audience e.g creates suspense and tension because its dark and it makes it hard to see the antagonist. The planning helped clearly as we gathered the important parts of Mise-en-scene within our thriller which made us organised and at ease. 

On the Friday 7th November, me and my group in the lesson sat down and made a plan of the all the cinematography we were going to include in our thriller. This involved camera angles, movements and positions that we believed would help make the narrative more interesting and shocking. Planning the cinematography helped us portray the different perspectives from both our types of characters protagonist and antagonist i.e and also show which one was more dominant and vulnerable from the two. The planning of these shots were very important because it prepared us on what to include when filming our actual thriller and also helped us establish the different shots that we thought helped tell our narrative clearly. As we planned the cinematography when actually filming it wouldn't be chaotic and we will know what we have to include within our film as we followed the guideline of the plan. 

As sound is very crucial to thrillers we had to make sure we understood why and how we were going to include the sounds that we planned to occur in the scene. We all sat down and made four boxes and explained the four types of sounds we will include within our thriller sequence. We came up with at least a minimum of two sounds for each box because of the importance of sounds within in thriller we made sure we had enough that we believed will have an impact on our audience. The sounds we gathered helped us communicate with each other and evaluate which sounds we thought would have an effect on the audience and get a reaction from them emotionally which will hopefully want them want to carry on watching. An example of sound we decided to use was a non-diegetic sound which will occur on the chase scene where the girl is running in the forest. The scene will mirror her running away but also how the antagonist is getting closer which will create suspense and tension in the audience. 

In our lesson on the 10th November, we made another A3 plan for editing of all the editing styles that we would include in our thriller. Firstly we all looked back on our inspirations post that we made earlier and looked at the editing that we were inspired to use. One of our inspirations was to use a reaction shot, we decided to include this on our plan as we wanted to show a reaction shot within our thriller so that the audience can relate to the character and build a closer relationship with them. This was because the reaction occurred when the girl finds her friend dead on the floor on the road which was part of our narrative, the reaction shot establish her facial expressions and how she was feeling. Planning editing was important because when we actually were going to edit our thriller it will be less time consuming because we knew what we were going to include that'll help our opening more interesting and effective to watch. 

In this lesson on the 12th November we wrote down on a piece of A4 paper the characters we were going to include in our thriller that represented the two roles antagonist and protagonist. Due to our narrative we followed that to gain ideas of what our antagonist would be and how he would look. We came up as it is a thriller, he would be wearing dark clothing as dark colours create enigma due to the colourfulness. Also we discussed how our protagonist will look like what their backgrounds were, we decided to make our two protagonists as girls as this was conventional to a thriller and the audience will sympathise to them as their innocent girls. The planning of our characters allowed us all of us to communicate our ideas and merge them together to make sure our characters included were conventional to a thriller as much as possible. Finally because we have a flashback that includes a young boy we evaluated how this character would look like, but after discussing we came to an agreement to have the boys face hidden just like the antagonist. All of this created enigma and that was our aim for the audience was to feel suspense and tension whilst watching. The planning was good and we would refer back to it when we tell our actors what they will need to do to show their characters in our film and make them look more realistic. 



After this, we all individually made our own storyboards that we thought our narrative should follow. This was helpful as it all gave us a chance to express what we all thought the narrative should run in. The storyboard consisted of drawing and a brief explanation of each frame in our narrative of what we wanted to include. I found this very interesting because when we actually came together and discussed our individual storyboards mine and Rishikas were slightly the same. However Ella's instead of starting with the antagonist laying on the road, she decided to start our narrative with the flashback of the little boy on the swings. Me and Rishika were amazed with this idea and very much liked it. So in our group storyboard we decided to follow Ella's as it was more interesting to watch and it flowed easier so that the audience could understand what they're watching. If we were not to plan our own storyboards and firstly done it as a group we would of missed out everyones ideas that they initially had in mind at first, so I am happy we did the individual storyboards. 

Finally, our last planning session was on the planning of our opening credits we all went off individually and went on the macs to go on the software Final Cut Pro x where we were going to create our opening credits. We done it individually again so that it allowed us to each express our different ideas on what we thought would be good for our opening scene. Once we all had finished our own opening credits we showed each others one by one and explained what the effect it had on the viewers and the film itself. After this we all discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each opening credit so that we all understood where each an every member was feeling towards our creations. Lastly we all came to an agreement that Rishika's Opening credit was the best due to its interesting effects and colours the helped convey the different character representations within our scene. This was helpful because it made us all understand how our final opening credit was conventional to a thriller and how it was applicable to our narrative. 

Through all this group planning, I think it has helped me and my group understand everyones opinions and ideas on what they believed was best to include in our opening thriller to make it successful. It was interesting to see everyones own individual view of every element of our thriller. Without planning we would not know what to do when actually filming the thriller and it'll be chaotic making us stressed and not able to perform at our best.