Logo

The image below is our final logo. I designed it using Photoshop making a few different copies in order to see what looks best and most effective by changing a few aspects. I incorporated a film reel, film and a contrasted Sirius star with text, altering the overlays and contrasts. We all then decided which one out of them was most effective and asked 6 people which one they thought was the most successful and everyone of them but one said the one below.

We then had to decide what words we want to include within our logo as we need it to be very simple yet effective.

We still need to decide for definite which one works the best, whether we should include 'we are' or not in the text included in our logo.

I believe Rubie has done an excellent job with the production and design of our logo's as it is exactly we are looking for. We decided as a group that we want our logo to be subtle yet effective as that is what both we and our audience want to see. These logo's are perfect as they are simple yet also symbolic and effective which works really well for us and will help our group out a great deal when it comes to the presentation of our thriller opening.

Logo And Production Company Name Ideas

Following on from Rubies post about research into a potential logo for our group I decided to choose one of the designs we came up with give my personal opinion on it as well as my personal views about any potential company names. 

As previously mentioned we want our logo to stand our from all the rest out there already and in order to do this we need to create an effective logo and company name which will hopefully set a distinctive message and make our company stand out amongst all the rest. As for potential names there are a few I personally have in mind, these are:

WE ARE SIRIUS PRODUCTIONS 

SIRIUS PRODUCTIONS

WE ARE SIRIUS FILMS

SIRIUS FILMS

As for our logo there were a list of factors we decided as a group that we wanted to incorporate, these included eye catching, appealing, effective, simple, unique and interesting. 

So far we have had created a couple of designs and my personel favourite would have to be, 

This particular design is my favorite as I believe it is everything we want it to be. Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky and we wanted to incorporate some aspect of this within our logo if at all possible, so with this in mind and everything else we wanted our logo to incorporate i believe this design is the best for us. 

Production Company Logo/Research

As a company we want to be recognisable from others and to do this we need to create an effective logo and name which hopefully sets our company apart from the rest. We all decided quite early on that We Are Sirius  Productions would be our company name throughout, in a logo we may need to shorted it to Sirius Productions or Sirius Films just to make it more effective and easy to remember and recognise. All film companies have distinct logos so we decided to do some research into existing ones first by looking at some of the following images.

We decided to write a list of things we wanted our logo to achieve, these include factors such as eye catching, practical, pleasing to the eye, simple, effective, interesting..

As Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky we wanted to incorporate some aspect of this within the logo if possible while still relating to being a film company. So after collecting images of the Sirius star, and looking at fonts, we set about including the two together. The two images below are example of this.

Movie Title Ideas

"FACING FEAR" - Has some reference to the events in the storyline with the character later on in the storyline going to find out who has been stalking her at the deserted train tracks, as well as having that unique working with both the words beginning with the letter 'F' and implying a thriller.

"HOW" - Again reference to being taken back in time to see the events take place in the opening scene and also having that one word effect on the audience and implying a thriller movie.

Film Title Ideas

We have come up with a number of ideas for our thriller film title, now we just need to have a group discussion on what we think is best suited to our story line and what we want to portray.


The Unknown / Murder / The Fear Of The Unknown /  The Stranger /  The Victim /  The Letter / The Cry /  Missing / No Way Out

Thriller Storyboard

This is our initial storyboard for our opening of a thriller.

Thriller Opening Summary

It starts with an opening shot of a man walking his dog, (close to train tracks/in the forest.. walking away from the camera). He then walks past a newspaper which is now the focus of the shot, and all the pages are credits containing still images taken from the upcoming shots, and the titles are credit sub headings. Another page another credit.. Tension is built up with music then falls on a newspaper page with a heading saying 'Missing?' with a still images which then fades into the opening by the camera zooming in on it. The image it zooms in on is a picture of location (train tracks), this is then the establishing shot of the setting. Then we see the man who is walking his dog come into the shot, walking towards the camera from around the corner. He then stops in his tracks after the dog brings his attention to something he notices something on the floor. It's a lifeless hand containing a scrunched up note wearing a ring (which is of significance). The man cautiously bends down and picks up the note, he unravels it but the audience will never know what is written on it. He then drops it and through a point of view shot we see him dial 999, as he is doing this the man is hit on the head, he drops his phone and falls to the floor. The camera then goes back onto the lifeless hand... then a flashback is used! The hand fades onto a new scene where it begins on the same girls hand who is now typing on the computer wearing the ring so it is clear that it is the same girl, as she is obliviously typing away on her computer, there is a knock at the door and a letter is left on the mat outside the front door. The girl opens the door picks up the note and reads it, again we do not see what it says as we only see her reaction to it. The shot of her opening the letter then fades into the shot of a man walking on the train tracks. The opening ends on a pair of hands in black gloves, the same ones that hit the man over  the head, moving cuts of newspaper letters around on a table, which we will speed up  and then it will spell out the title of the film.

Film Pitch

In less than 25 words..

'Mysterious notes appearing through her door, an unwanted admirer and an unfortunate bystander which results in one death, but who, what, when, where and how?' - Rubie

'A normal girl in a normal world, until one day everything changes! But why?' -Harry

'A passing local uncovers the body of a young female or what it seems, we are taken back to see what the causes were..' -Will

Thriller Plot Idea Summary

We have discussed many different ideas and have agreed on a few main ideas we like the sound of. We have definitely decided on a young girl/women as the main character who is being stalked/harassed or even tormented. She is also just a normal, average person, with a good life and no obvious problems apart from the fact that she is being followed but thinks it's just in her head but then she is sent letters. She finally feels like she can't escape.

Our final thriller plot is... 

Beginning
The girl wakes up to the sound her alarm clock for the fifth time and rolls over and presses snooze. She's late for college and has to walk as she has missed the bus. Little does she know she is being followed throughout her journey. Just a normal day at school, with her friends consisting of two geography lessons and a dance class. As she opens up her geography book loads of letters and notes fall out and she is really concerned, all her friends question why, a stalker? love interest? etc. Basically an average day at college besides being late and followed. The man who followed her to school also followed her home but she starts to get a feeling that she is being watched.

Middle
The next day the situation increases, then the next and the next until three weeks later things start to get serious and the man approaches her on many occasions. Then we see the man at home cutting out loads of letters from newspapers, gluing down letters in order to make notes to her. He his sat at home in a room full of pictures of her. The torment increases, she is sitting at home on the computer and there is a knock on the door. She gets up, and goes to answer the door and there is no one there only a letter on the door step. She opens the letter and the audience doesn't see what it says but her reaction says it all.

End
The letter guides her to a place and a time which all will be revealed. She follows the instructions given and ends up making her way not only to a deserted train track but also to her death. There is an investigation into how she has died but no one ever finds out the truth.

Meeting 5 - 12/12/11

Today we had another group meeting in which we discussed some more of our plans regarding work in the build up to and during the Christmas holidays. As a group we decided that we needed to look more into possible production company names and possible logo's for our group. We came up with Sirius Productions as a possible company name. We have recently posted about our initial ideas for our opening including possible credit ideas, and setting options. We are now in the process of creating another post in which we plan to discuss yet more potential ideas for our opening including props and actors. We will post our progress once complete.

Alternative Storyline (First Story Idea)

Opening - Same.

Beginning - The audience gets to know the main female character a little bit more as well as linking events that have happened and might happen later on perhaps? At this current time and place she is in school having some of her usual lessons, in some parts you can see some small key references that play in her mind which makes her concerned and maybe nervous which is shown in her.

Middle - Some of the signs are now more aware able as before to he audience know more clearly that the character is being stalked which brings tension into the mix of the storyline, the stalker starts to message her on a number of her devices and communication applications there's no escape from this mysterious character. This slowly builds up where the stalker starts to learn more about her this gets to the point where she is too afraid to go out in public.

Ending - Some time has past and finally now the call has come from the mysterious stalker, however the main female character picks up the phone due to it being a blocked number we do not hear what the stalker said exactly but this results in her leaving the house into the cold outdoors and travels to the deserted train railway, the female character wonders about for a bit and turns around and screams horrifically which then leads to the end of the film, no one knows what happened which brings to think what happened..

Thriller Plot Ideas

These were some of my own personel quick-fire initial ideas for our thriller plot. It is good to have these to look back on and have as a potential back up if we decide to run with something else.

• Girl is walking home from school and treads on grave. 
• From then on she is haunted by something. 
• Girl receives letters, hears voices.
• As the film goes on the torment increases until the girl is driven to suicide.
• When the girl walks home and treads on the gravestone she triggers a demon? 
• Girl has normal average life before all this but then everything changes.
• Demon is never seen, only heard and talked about. 
• Whenever the demon occurs or is mentioned sinister, tense music plays in the background.

Another Idea I had was, 

• Girl gets hit by a car.
• She wakes up in a hospital.
• She can't remember who she is or what happened.
• As time goes on she starts to remember who she was with and what happened. 
• One night she is home alone and there is a knock at the door.
• The girl is then kid-knapped.
• It becomes apparent someone is out to get her.
• She's on her own and has to find a way of escaping. 

Initial Thriller Settings Ideas

As well as thinking about the plot, we felt like we needed to have some good ideas about where we wanted to film our thriller so our story line would work well.

Some possible places we have thought about include: deserted train tracks, old bridges, old road track, forest, deserted/old house, london underground, church or a graveyard. These are just a few of many possibilities but we all liked the idea of train tracks as if done well with a good story the use of the tracks and its surroundings would be very effective.

Initial Opening Credit Ideas

After researching into a few different opening credits for thrillers I came up with a few initial ideas of my own.

Firstly I liked the use of flash backs a lot, and an opening which isn't very clear, but partly summaries what is going to be shown in the film but not a clear representation until you've watched the whole film then the opening makes sense. I thought about the idea of an newspaper flicking pages in the wind then falls on a certain page and the camera draws attention to certain words on the page such as murder and girl.. so it sets the story line up for the film but doesn't give why it actually happened away. Then the credits would run in a newspaper style with different images on each page, some moving, some photos and then the text in the credits would be in the style of headers and titles in newspapers. I think this would be very effective and could even be related to the story line as it could be about a journalist. This would then fade into an everyday situation leading onto...

I also thought about techniques and fonts we could use.

Initial Thriller Plot Ideas

We sat and thought of an individual idea then shared them between us, and incorporated parts of each with other parts in order to get a range of initial ideas after doing our own.

These were some I came up with...

A girl is walking along the train tracks then loads of flashes of thoughts/scenes are running through her mind. She looks as if she is searching for something or someone but she doesn't actually know what herself but she knows she is looking for something she just can't work out what. After she has been looking for hours through the rain, dark and sunrise she pulls out her phone from her pocket as she receives a text which says something like 'it's time' then looks at the time on the clock and it reads 13:13, then there is loads of flashbacks to situations which show the number 13 everywhere.. and then she screams.
So it then flashbacks to the events before this, so basically her life building up to this situation.. i.e. how and why and when she got there. So it goes to her being a normal girl in an everyday situation.
The end is basically a summary of what happened in the beginning and giving a reason into why it has happened. It turns out that the girl is being stalked and in the end you see the stalkers face and his motive.

Another idea similar to the one above could be about a young women or girl who is receiving creepy/threatening letters made out of newspaper cuttings, these would be put through her post box, in her bag etc. It eventually pushes her to suicide as she jumps of a bridge then there is an investigation following on from her death. So in the end they find out why she did it as no one had any clue about any of the letters and thought she was just a normal happy girl.

Things To Consider For Our Thriller Opening

Opening
Credits
Film productions (own logo, name etc..)
Name of the movie, needs to have some significance to the story as well as standing out
Cast and crew..
Producers, directors, writers etc
Music, maybe relating to the theme of the story/movie

Introduction
Main characters that are going to have the most impact on the storyline of the movie
The plot/summary of the events that will take place and why perhaps (giving the audience an idea of what's to come/tension towards it)

Camera Shots
Establishing shot (tells the audience where the movie is set)
Capture reference or clues towards things that might have some importance to the storyline of the movie

Editing
Convincing effects so that the audience can relate more towards the storyline/movie or if not don't include
Plays a part on the theme of the movie (dark, images, backgrounds etc..)

Sound
Music that relates to the theme of the storyline or movie itself (thrilling, horror including dark and scary soundtracks playing in particular bits that may bring tension into it)

Storyline Clues From The Opening of The Usual Suspects

What clues do you get about the rest of the storyline from the opening 5 minutes?

In the first five minutes of "The Usual Suspects" there are a number of clues relating to the rest of the film. These include themes of crime or murder. We get this impression from what may occur later on in the film due to the following factors:

• A gun shot is heard without showing who or what was shot and who was behind the trigger. This leads us to believe that a crime/murder has been commited.
• Following on from the gun shot, we see that the boat it was heard from was set a light and in the previous clips before this we see a man pouring petrol around the floor and setting it alight while smoking. This makes us think that the man who was pouring the petrol initially was the one who was behind the gun and therefore set the boat alight. Also makes us think that the boat was set on fire as a coverup to a crime.
• While the boat is on fire we see a close up on some ropes and gun parts which doesn't lead us to believe anything unusual has happened yet although in the following shots we are taken to an interrogation scene in which we see a man being questioned about a boat containing stripped gun parts. This leads us to believe and question if what we have previously seen relates to this.

Taking this into consideration for use in our own opening we obviously don't want to give a lot away but we do want to make the audience question and try and figure out what will happen later on in the film. This effect will be vital to us as a group if we are to produce a successful opening full of mystery for our thriller opening.

Meeting 4 - 7/12/11

Today we had a group meeting about what we wanted to achieve  before we break up for the Christmas holidays. In the next week or two we need to have a good set of credit research done and look into the fonts and openings and analyse all of this. As well as that we need to scan in our preliminary storyboard and film our preliminary and also we need to evaluate it. We have also started to brainstorm ideas for our storyline for our thriller and have already come up with lots and lots of promising ideas. Initial thoughts on setting ideas include deserted train tracks, church graveyard, bridges and the forest. One of our initial storyline ideas include a person who is being harrassed or tormented. We were also discussing how we want to use the fear factor within our thriller, for example how people relate certain objects or things with fears such as black cats, mirrors and the number 13. Overall we had a very successful group meeting today and we are confident that we are on the right track and completing everything, keeping it up to date.

Opening Credits Analysis (Se7en)

I decided in order to have some more inspiration for our thriller openings credits it was essential to watch a variety of integrated/superimposed credits in order to see how successful the effects have been created.

The Opening Credits of Se7en.


We watched the opening of Se7en previously and I really liked the way the opening credits were composed. The music used was incredibly effective in creating an atmosphere that is jumpy and it fitted in well with the images and text used. The music also wasn't too loud and overpowering, it definitely wasn't the focus of the opening just added to the effectiveness. Over all the opening was very jumpy, through the use of jump cuts between the credit title names and the images and clips made the whole opening very distorted and not clear at all. I liked how at the very beginning the book pages are being turned as it reminds me of my own idea about newspaper pages turning in the wind. The way the camera is constantly filming close ups and only shows hands and movement around the hands and things which are being used by them such as book text, pens, photos etc. I especially like how you can't make anything out, things such as the sequence and true meaning of it. It makes you question every little jump cut clip as you keep asking yourself if there are any clues within this opening that will be key later on. It also gives nothing away about the film obviously, creating a sense of mystery to the audience which results in them wanting to watch on to see what all this was about. I also love the way the editing has been done in this opening, the way the clips jump cut and fade onto others is very successfully done, and I think it would be a useful technique to do within our thriller opening.

Opening Credits Analysis (Psycho)

Another set of opening credits I decided to analyse was that of Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho.

The opening starts with what appears to be a distorted image of the Paramount Pictures graphic. This then fades into black and a very sharp and fast paced credit enters the picture in which a set of black lines stream across the screen revealing Alfred Hitchcock's name, this straight away introduces the audience to the the producer of the film. This is then followed by the same graphic in which black lines can be seen shooting across the screen as the music becomes even more sinister causing great tension as the name of the film "Psycho" is revealed in a bold white text on a black background which makes it stand out and really grab the audiences attention. This is then distorted and more credits are revealed such as actors and other companies involved with the production of the film again with the black lines shooting across the screen and the tempo of the music increasing all the time. Having said this, some credits are bigger than others this could be because some people may be more significant than others and Hitchcocks want his audience to know this. At the end of the credits there is another bold white text graphic of Hitchocks name this time confirming him as the director with the words "directed by" clearly seen on screen. This then fades out as the credits are complete.

Again this will be very usual for our group when it comes deciding our credits when it comes to our opening. This is very different to the credits of "Panic Room" so it gives us another option or path to consider.

Opening Credits Analysis (Panic Room)

In order to create the most effective thriller opening possible we will have to have a very unique set of opening credits as they are a key factor within any thriller, so in order to do this I decided to look at a variety of  different opening credits to gain some ideas and a better insight into what makes a good and effective set of opening credits. 

In order to carry out this research I used http://www.artofthetitle.com/ to view the opening credits for the film "Panic Room" this was a very useful website as it enabled me to have a real look and analyse why these credits are so effective and the impact they have on the audience. 

The opening credits start with a trademark Columbia pictures graphic however the music and sound have been changed, the normal gentle and warm sound has been replaced with much darker sounds such as the crashing of thunder and lighting. This is effective as straight away gives the audience the impression that this film is that of a dark nature. This then fades into black and you can then hear a set of sirens in the background what appears to be an establishing shot of New York, with the first set of text appearing on screen, the text is bold and clear and is also 3D, this is an effective way of drawing the audiences attention towards the credit rather than whats happening in the background shot of the city.  this is then accompanied by some very sinister music again giving the audience the impression this film is quite dark and very serious. Following on from this the credits then take the audience on a journey around the city and different buildings within it, each building is accompanied by a jump cut and a different set of credits, whether it be actors within the film or big companies involved in the production. Whilst all this is taking place the sinister music and background noise from the city remains, this is an effective way of building up tension which is something usually associated within Thrillers. Eventually there is a panned shot in which the title of the film is revealed, the text is a lot bigger and stands out a lot more in this shot, not only this but the music becomes much sharper and the tension increases to give the audience a real sense of authority and power. The is a very effective way of titling as it draws the audience into the film straight away. The tour of the city then continues with yet more buildings and credits of companies and people involved with the film however the music is now slightly more upbeat and cheerful accompanied by can only be described as a 'ticking' sound. 

Personally I believe as a group we can take a lot from this, we can analyse what Panic Room did well and how effective it was in drawing it's audience in making them feel apart of the action from the start. 

Red Road Credit Research

Red Road could be seen as an example of a low budget film. I decided to look at one which wasn't seen as a typical hollywood thriller film and would be slightly more similar to the one we would be making as we don't have a bugdet for our film and I came across this one. Initially I thought it was a low bugdet film but after some more research it became obvious to me that depite winning an award for being low bugdet it actialy cost 1.3 milion to make and produce so I don't think I personally can class this as a low bugdet thriller. I do however especially like the opening titles in this as it is very realistic so we could come back and look at this films titles when we need inspiration for our opening titles.