Unconventional and Conventional Properties of The Buttefly Effect

Genre - Thriller	Conventional (Typical)	Unconventional (Not Typical)
Mise en scene (what is put in the scene) Lighting         Costumes         Props	Dark, dreary lighting suggests the start of a conventional thriller as the darkness could play a part in the suspense and seriousness. Shadowy, distorted lighting from the window slants show that it is a person but cannot identify full features and therefore makes the audience feel uncomfortable.   Moved the sofa to prevent anybody getting in so he has done something wrong. No personal connection to him yet so no real sympathy.   Wearing a gown like one a hospital patient would wear.   Quite typical clothes that a young boy would wear in fairly modern times.   Authority clothing of woman banging on the window.   Lighting of the Sunnyvale Institution is a bit dark, dreary and creepy. The low-level lighting doesn’t welcome children. Also, the fact that she is taking her child there at night is strange as it is common to take children places during the day.   Dynamite that Tommy is excited about using is shows instability and a messed up mind.	The journal is an unconventional prop during this film due to the fact that the use of children’s journals aren’t seen much in thrillers as they are seen as showing innocence for the child.
Characters	Evan and his mum have a fairly good relationship although his dad has a problem so therefore he cannot do much with him.   Tommy quite an aggressive child, possible family problems or child abuse/stress.   Evan running from people in starting scene and hiding from darkness quite related to the drawing. Shows he may have had problems from the start.   Evan’s father needs to be handcuffed due to his illness and his instability. He also talks to his son in a slightly patronising way.	Strange that 7 year old Kayleigh comes to support Evan at his dad’s funeral alone.
Plot	Go back in time to find out what has happened, a quest that needs to be solved. She had died due to his actions and he wishes he could go back in time to save her. Mother thinks Evan has his fathers’ Illness. She hasn’t explained to him what is going on so he feels scared about everything that is happening.   Dad starts strangling him which is really surprising and comes out of nowhere.   Irritating storyline due to the constant blackouts making you miss parts of the film so you don’t understand particularly what is going on.	Quote at start of film foreshadows the events of the film.
Setting	Sunnyvale Institution shows an irony due to the name of it being a psychiatric institute.	Nice typical American suburb with a lot of colour and greenery, normal realistic start… Quite a modern era.
Sound - Diegetic     Non-diegetic	Gripping, fast music builds tension and you feel quite excited to find out what is going to happen. Slow mysterious music takes over which is a bit possessive and scary due to the creepiness of the drawing.   The non-digetic panicky sound when he’s holding a knife is very sudden and similar for a conventional thriller.   Fast non-diegetic sound that slows down once the panic is gone and the dad dies.
Representations   Of death	Why is Evan holding a knife and behaving the way he is.
Editing	‘Thirteen years earlier’ – quite typical of a thriller, indicates the time in which it is set.   Fast editing shows fade out and going forward in time.	Psychological Thriller possibly to do with his brain due to the skull on the title screen.
Camera shots/angles	Close-up view and camera that follows him around allows a personal movement and makes the film more smooth and less boring. Adds tensions too as quick movement makes you want to watch and find out what is happening.   Low-angle camera shot from behind and just to the right shows focus on Sunnyvale Institute as well as them being important in the big picture.   Constant high-angle shot shows Evan as being vulnerable.	No typical cutting from one thing to the next to make you panic.

 

7 year old does an amazing drawing but quite disturbing due to the fact it is a drawing of a murderer after being asked to draw what he wants to be when he is older. Authority shown by the murderer as he is standing on top of his victims. He seems smaller than the victims too which could show that he feels being smaller may mean he gets picked on by the bigger kids and he just wants to get payback.  Kid couldn’t remember drawing it.

Evan clearly doesn’t understand what he has done but his mum seems worried enough to make the audience think that she’s seen something like it before, possibly with her husband.

Reviewed Props and Equipment List

Our original props and equipment lists have had to be reviewed because our initial ideas differ from what we ended up doing and using. Our first props list told of how we were going to use the materials from Branch Brothers and create our very own train tracks to use for the filming of our production. This is not the way we did it in the end as we found a much better solution in using an actual inactive track in Rippingale instead of going through the painful experience of trying to build our own tracks even if it would show more imagination. Because of this, we ended up using completely different props to that which was mentioned in our previous post for the props.

Props:

Gravestone - For the mourner to put the flowers at that would give the indication of death which is a conventional theme for thriller films.

Flowers - To indicate that the mourner actually cares for the person who has died, allowing the audience to fell at least some sympathy for the person that had died and channel more hate towards the killer.

Balaclava - To hide the identity of the killer and make it even more effective when he pulls his mask off and reveals his true identity.

Torn piece on beclloth - To act as a makeshift gag to use to prevent our victim from screaming or causing any loud noises that could give away what is happening.

Handbag - For our victim to be holding to give a sense of realism and to be thrown away dramatically by our victim to show that she really is fighting for her life and that is all she cares about at that moment in time.

Planks and Chalk - Used to create our credits and titles using clever filming and inspired ideas to create good titles to flash in  and out throughout the film.

 

Equipment:

2 Tripods
2 Cameras
1 Video Camera Dolly
2 Umbrella's
1 Clipboard

Final Edition of Shot List

1. Production ident
2. Gravestone with "presents" on it. Mid close-up.
3. "Kate's Revenge" written on plank on side of train, shot zooms out, close-up to long-shot
4. Cut away shot of the train, extreme close-up
5. "Connor Marshall" written on plank
6. Shot of Connor walking through graveyard
7. Close-up of gravestone with Connor walking towards it
8. ECU of flowers being laid
9. Cut away shot of train moving, close-up
10. Fade to white - "Annbelle Potts" written on plank
11. Shot of Annabelle standing on platform, mid-shot
12. Pan shot moving on dolly towards Annabelle
13. "James Craig" written on plank
14. Front shot of Annabelle standing on platform, James comes up behind, gags her, pulls her on to ground and puts her over his shoulder
15. Long shot of James/Annabelle walking down the platform
16. "Directed by Matthew Bostock" written on plank
17. Cut away shot of train, close up
18. Low shot of James throwing Annabelle on to track, mid-shot
19. "Edited by James Parronchi" written on plank
20. Cut away shot of train, extreme close up
21. Shot of James tying Annabelle down to track, long shot
22. Shot of James tying Annabelle down to track, mid shot
23. Cut away shot of train moving, extreme close up
24. High angle shot of James getting up and running after Annabelle
25. Mid shot of James picking up Annabelle and carrying her over to train track
26. Match on action shot of James/Annabelle walking over to train track
27. Match on action shot of James/Annabelle walking over to train track
28. Mid shot of James putting Annabelle down onto train track
29. "Narrated by Henry Saunston" written onto plank
30. Over shoulder shot of James pulling off balaclava
31. Shot-reverse-shot of Annabelle looking shocked
32. Mid shot of the rock
33. Close up of James's hand moving towards Annabelle's face
34. Mid shot of James tying Annabelle to train track
35. Cut away of train, long shot
36. Low angle shot showing Annabelle's face with James jumping up onto platform and walking away
37. High angle shot of Annabelle laying on train track
38. Close up of Annabelle screaming, fade to black.

Reviewed Shot List Changes

We thought we had a fairly good final edition of our shot list on our blogs but we decided that it wasn't precise enough compared to our new edition of our thriller production. Our final shot list, as seen earlier on my blog, is 13 posts long whereas our new shot list is 38 amount of shots which shows that we misjudged how many shots we were going to have to take during our thriller production. Our new, reviewed shot list has added a lot more to our film as there are loads of new angles added in which allows the audience to see the reaction and emotions protrayed on  the faces of the actors. It has also allowed us to use over the shoulder shots and concentrate more on background through mise en scene too. For example, in shot 11, there is a lot of focus on the shadow that is creeping along the back wall that shows the audience that a key event is about to occur and builds the tension up towards it.

Our misjudgement is shown clearly in the fact that our revised shot list has so many more posts that have added so much more to our production. In contrast to our starting production, our final edition has a much more intense, uncomfortable feel to it because of the extreme close-ups of the trains that we have added in throughout. These also helped to mask any continuity errors that we had in our film, giving us a way of covering up any problems that we had during the filming of our production. We also have added in a backing track that adds mystery and a sense of depression to the film. Our new shot list also shows the new way in which we have re-structured our film. Our previous shot list showed us having all of our credits at the end and Annabelle's death and mourning scenes being at the end whereas in our re-structured production and shot list, we have the mourning happening at the start, followed by a flashback of how the death occured. Also, the credits showing the actor's names are now thrown in just before each actor appears and the other credits are put in, just like the trains, to mask any errors and also because it shows a contrast between the busy and bustling film and the cuts of the silence and words written on boards which I believe makes the audience feel uncomfortable because there is such a huge contrast between peaceful and busy.

Inspirations

 

This Prezi contains our main 4 inspirations that contributed towards our ideas and our final edit of our production.

Preliminary Task

 

 We started by making a story board so we know exactly what we are doing;

 

The preliminary task completed

 These are the 5 different settings that we have been to whilst videoing this task.

This first photo is before we supposed to do a tracking shot of me and Laura walking. Shannon and James have them panned it to show that we have walked pass them .

 

This image is a when me and Laura were just about to open the door, to show how we walk out of the door. We have kept the camera on that side so that we do not have any continuity problems, so we had to stick with the 180 degree rule.

This is an image of James getting ready to film us just as we walk round the corner. This got a nice 2 shot but also a long shot of me and Laura.

This is two shot of me and Laura and it shows that we are walking towards the canteen. This is also a long shot but required the pan movement as we were about to turn.

This is the last setting and the most important one because we play cards in this setting and therefore there is some good used of a variety of shots.

Evaluation

I think that we have learned a lot from this task; for example the good things i thought was some of the shot angles and the way that we thought out the story. We have worked as a team very well and agreed and compromised together to get the final result.

However, there are lots of jump cuts and we do have some problems with continuity. Also whilst editing, we have realised that if we have done things differently, it would of made editing part a lot more easier.

On the actual thriller, i would like to keep working in a great team of people and learn from our mistakes that we have seen straight away after we have done the prelim. task.

Photos from our Second Filming Day

 We decided upon doing our credits this way when we were on set. We planned on laying them accross the tracks as if they were the actual sleepers but the sun became too much of an issue and we couldn't manage to get the still movement along the tracks from handheld or the dolly. Because of this, we improvised and decided that this could work quite well as the sun wouldnt not be an issue and the credits looked good on the front of a real life train.

 

 

 

This shot shows how much of an issue the sun caused because we were constantly having to be aware of our shadows being in the shot. Due to the fact that we did not foresee the sun being such an issue in the middle of winter on such a cold day, we started filming from one side and because of the sun appearing, we were not able to stick to the 180 degree rule beause the shadows of the tripod and the people filming was ending up in every sequence of film.

 

 

 

This image shows a complete view of our set for filming with the platform on the left and the train straight ahead on the tracks which we had to be careful to avoid seeing in our shots as another train cannot hit anyone when there is an inactive train sitting on the tracks that would be in the way of any train coming towards us. We had to use the area to the right of this shot too because the sun was behind us then and also, our film was not long enough without adding something in so we decided that adding Annabelle running away could be a nice touch and help add a little more to our production. Unfortunately, kneeing somebody in the head was hard to perform safely and it did not look too convincing on camera but we used it anyway as our film was simply not long enough without it and we did not have enough shots of other things to make it any longer without adding that scene in.

 

Overall, our second filming day went very well. The location was ideal, and the weather was quite like the first filming day except it was colder and the sun caused some issues for us. We managed to get all of our shots with the actors on site without too much difficulty although we probably didn't do enough filming and we did not have sufficient footage to play around with. Luckily, we finished filming in good time which this gave us the time to explore other techniques to use in our production.