The Lost Project Reviews

I feel that our production turned out much better than I expected. We used many of the conventions of a thriller and molded them to create something unique. I think that the music we used help create an eerie feel throughout the production and some of the shots we used were magnificent. The makeup also gave the production a very professional feel which added to the quality of the production. I enjoyed both filming and editing The Lost Project and am happy with the result.

Upon finishing our production we have recently put it onto YouTube and Facebook, this is to get feedback from our audience. Some feedback that I have already gained comes from asking people to write down what they thought of our production after they had seen it.

Julie Smith - 'After watching the lost project, I thought that overall it was great. I thought the film looked extremely professional and that the use of different camera shots to create tension worked well. The editing must have take forever, I say this because throughout the whole video the music is in sync with the production and the different shots work well next to each other. The overall result was fantastic and I would love to see the complete movie.

Morgan Arnett - 'After watching this thriller production I thought it has a very good start instantly making you want to know more, the shots taken were very precise and creative in terms of the angles and the projection of the story itself. I also think the location and transitions of shots used were very appropriate and added to the suspense and story line. Overall very good, seamless between shots, great build up alongside the dramatic effects and fantastic creativity. Naturally making the viewer wants to continue watching more.'

Kingston Capes - 'I thought the thriller really kept to the typical thriller conventions, using creative shots - especially through the hole in the wall. The mise-en-scene really fits the theme you were going for. The music also gives a very eerie feel to the whole production, building tension in a number of places. Overall a really good thriller production 5/5'

Joseph James - 'I like how you used a panning shot to set the scene when the video first starts to set the scene very well and from different angles, the smooth movement of the camera really enhances the types of shots too. The music suits the video and helps build up to the climax of the thriller. The way in which the video clips have been edited and the colours in the video clips enhance the fact it is set in an old building, almost a vintage effect. Overall a very good thriller, with a modern twist.

The Lost Project



Try Out Shots

When planning the production we thought it would be a good idea to make sure we do a few practise shots.

The first shot was of Jake, walking down the corridor past the 'this is my happy place' graffiti. This is an ironic shot, having Jake walk past this writing in a building where in our production there are no happy memories. We thought this shot was a good idea, but not quite dramatic enough, so we adapted this shot to include some of the window frame. This meant that we also had some of the broken glass in the shot which gave the shot an extra edge and can indicate danger within Nocton Hall.

Our second try out shot was of Kieran, (our mental actor) rocking back and forth. This shot we was testing which would be the best angle to take the shot from. We started low and worked our way up to reveal Kierans face. This shot was used to decide how we would like to reveal Kierans face and as we had been building the tension up to this point we felt it was not quite dramatic enough. This is why we continued working on different shots and feel that we came out with a good shot because of this.

Our third try out shot consisted of Jake walking into Kierans room and switching the record player off. Kieran would then stand up and Jake turn around to see his face. In this shot we felt it did not work, as Jake was so central in the shot we was not able to see Kieran, also Kieran is too far back so when Jake turned around he was not right next to him. This is what we wanted and kept working on this until we got the perfect shot.

Our last try out shot was a point of view shot, this was of Jake turning off the record player which was playing Tiptoe Through The Tulips. This is an effective shot as it helps engage the audience. As you can tell from this clip we realised for this shot to be effective and make sure it was as dramatic as we wanted it to be Kieran would have to be much closer to Jake, so that when he turned off the record player and turned around, it had triggered a reaction from Kieran who was then right being him. This is the shot you see in our production before you hear the scream of Jake dying.

Changes we have made

From our initial idea we have made a few changes to develop our production into a better, more professional production.

I feel that as a group we have made a few changes to improve the quality of our production. We have cut a few things out and added something to try to improve the overall feel of our production. One thing that we have taken out is the typewriter scene at the begging as we felt that it didn’t hold the tension and made our opening too long, we took this out and replaced it with our titles at the begging instead of simply being placed at the end. We spent a lot of time thinking about our titles and realised that they worked too well to just be put at the end, so we decided that we would cut them up and include them in the opening shot.

We have also done a lot of discussion about music, we started with a simple song, but when putting it against out video we realised it again didn’t quite work and didn’t hold the tension the way we wanted it too. When we realised this we cut a section of the song that we thought worked and added other non-diegetic music to help build the tension. We have used breathing and different instruments to help build and hold the tension. We now feel that the sound works much better and matches the quality of the video.

We have also added another of Tiny Tim's tracks. We was happy with the sound of our thriller but thought it needed something else to make sure that the tension was kept high as Jake started walking past the 'this is my happy place' graffiti. This song works well with the other sounds that we also have playing and creates a good sense of mystery. The song being called and about his 'Daddy' also fits extremely well in our production.

Something else that we have changed is the ending of the production. We took another shot of blood dripping onto a photo that we have added in earlier in the production. This has worked well and is used just after Jake has been killed. We have put this shot over the shot of us leaving Nocton Hall, this is very effective and almost shows the end. Us leaving and the blood dripping works very well together. When we was doing this we took a few shots, but had to think about continuity to make sure that it tied in with the rest of the production.

We have also changed the name of our production. It was originally called 'Discarded' this was a good title but is something that we was not 100 percent. When our production was deleted and we had to redo it we thought it would only be fitting if we called it 'The Lost Project' this also tied in well with the fact that the child was lost in the fire and the building has been abandoned.

Another thing that we have changes is the positioning of our titles, production ident and production name. Originally we was going to have the production title at the beginning of the production and the ident and titles at the end of the production. We tried this and felt that it didn't work extremely well. We then tried opening with the production ident, followed with our titles which was edited with a clip of Nocton Hall. This worked extremely well and we was happy with is, so we put the title of the movie at the end of the production, this also worked well, we faded it in and out with fades to black with also made it run a lot smoother.

Title Ideas

  

Below are a few ideas we had to do with a title. There were a few things we could chose from to play on. We could use Nocton in the title as it was shot at Nocton Hall, could include something to do with love and pain, memories and hurt, hatred and revenge, as they all go with our production well. I feel that something simple like Nocton Hall could work but then also think that something such as Discarded would also work.
As a group we have decided that Discarded would work well, because of the meaning of the work and the fact 'scar' is within the word. This is cleaver and will work well as our production title.
DISCARDED 

Storyboards

 

Above are our storyboards. These will help us in giving us the initial base of shots that we want to take. We can then add other shots in to develop the thriller opening.

Production Ident

We feel that it would only right to stick with the name that we created for our prelim, which was ‘#ashtag productions’.  Although since our prelim we have created an ident shown below for our thriller opening. We feel it is a little different and creative with the way we want it to come into the production. We ideally would like the ‘ashtag’ or ‘production’ to come in fist, one after each other. Followed by the four lines of the hash tag ‘#’ with some sound effects. We are going to put our production ident at the beginning of the thriller opening along with the title of the thriller and our credits.