Props

Now its down to sourcing our props, which i was incharge of in the group.

In the shot where the President walks down the corridor with his Administrator she needs to hand him a top secret folder, if this doesnt look the part it will bring down the whole thriller. I have found a realistic looking Top Secret stamp from Amazon (see photo below) which i have ordered.

Now we have the proper looking stamp next I need to find the right colour and sized Manila file.

The final prop we need to get hold of are desk flags to inform the audience who is which country.

It is key to think over all situations so you can be prepare with props for all scenes.

We have now be set out filming date, so now we need to double check our actors can do a time on that date and start organising our set and that we have all the props for that day

This is a photo of me and team mate Will Barlow working on our script and creating a time line in our spare time. We get set at least a couple of lessons a week to work on our thrillers in our groups but it is also important to put in the extra time which will raise the standard of quality and the chances of it all working out smoothly and well.

This is the email sent to my teacher to recruit him as the main president role in our thriller. It is very important that we cast the adults that will look the part and be comfortable enough to be filmed. Casting the right actors is crucial that they can play the role prissily so the sequence is believable, and we also had to chose fairly quickly so we could confirm the teachers as our actors and as they won't be getting paid we need to persuade them to spare us some of their time. We got sent pictures of all the staff at Hurtwood House and came up with a long list of who we could ask to get involved. From that we spoke to our teacher in charge about who would most likely get involved.

After confirming with Roy we asked Alison to be our administrator as she has an official look and is a professional actor and as the administrator has the most dialogue the whole thriller working out depends on who we cast for this role. And luckily for us she was happy to join.

Now we knew how to get the actors we wanted to sign up we completed our cast. Our French and Russian leaders (two on left) took a while to decide who we would ask but we are happy with who we finalised on. Our Prime Minister we had to do a lot of thinking and work on but we finished with Ted Jackson (far right) and as he now wears his hair shorted then when the photo was taken we even had to ask if there was a chance he could grow it longer over the holidays before we film because even those little details are very important for the mise-en-scene.

location

We struggled a lot a the beginning with where our location would be. Our initial idea was to have an office looking set like this image or a plain grey office wall, but as we began to look into these kinds of locations we realised the difficulties with it. Firstly would be finding the right location that looked how we wanted, but within an hour from Hurtwood. Secondly was having actors that we could have at this location as we wouldn't be able to use our teachers at an off site like that.

So we took another look at possible sets at Hurtwood and decided on a corridor underground which works perfectly with the idea that the President is walking to a top secret conference in a hidden location.

We would obviously be able to remove the bin and would only show the side with the blue pipes. the corridor is thin so we will use different shot types to get around that.

These are the steps leading down to the corridor. They obviously don't like very top secret official President location but by only using one or two steps at the bottom we will be able to use them to show that he is going under ground emphasising the secret location.

This is an example of the type of shot we would use.

This location is at my house and we would use it as the door to the bunker, conference room. Its a real safe door so is perfect for a secret conference call.

The type of conference room we want is a cross between the US bunker and his meeting room

Different types of title sequences

The title sequence to any film is key as it is what the audience first see so you need to be able to hook your audience with the opening 2 minutes.
The normal order for the tiles is :

1. the Logo of The Production Company
2. the Logo of the Distribution Company
3. then The Title sequence
4. (the Directors name usually comes last)

There are FIVE different types of layouts for an opening titles sequence.

• Bog Standard ---> begins with a black screen and the text (working title/directors name) then the film begins. This technique emphasises the sound being played with the titles.
• Film Starts ---> this is when the film begins straight away and the titles fit in around it or over the top. For example like in The Stepfather

• Discreet Sequence ---> is when the titles are completely separate from the film, so they will have been edited differently.

• Stylised Editing ---> is when the film starts and the titles are edited in a flashy way amongst the action of the beginning of the movie, it draws attention to the type of editng and can give clues to the genre. An example is The Taking Of Pelhim 123

• Animated Editing ---> is when animation is used to begin the film, the animations may not relate directly to the story. An example is the opening to Casino Royal