Video Inspiration 3 How to make a fake bruise.

This video I found when researching on Youtube, it shows you step by step how to make a fake bruise. In our 2 minute film opening our main character has been attacked and her face and chest are bruised. We have researched how to make a fake bruise look real. So we can use this technique in our film opening.

Video Inspiration 2 How to make fake blood.

I have researched this video and decided to use it for inspiration. In our film opening there is a scene in which our main character cuts her hand on a piece of broken mirror. So to make the blood look realistic,we have researched ways to make fake blood. This video shows how to make the fake blood well , so we will use this video to guide us when making our fake blood recipe.

Video Inspiration 1 Drug Scene

This video is called "Glorious Drug Use', it is a famous scene from the film Pulp Fiction. We have embedded this video from 'Youtube'. Because we have decided that our protagonist is going to take drugs in our 2 minute film opening, we have researched videos that show drug use. This scene however is quite graphic and has made us realise that we want our drug scene to be less visually graphic but more emotional and sincere.

Research of the Thriller Genre

We have decided that we want the genre of our film to be a 'Thriller". So I have researched the definition of Thriller Films.

Thriller is a broad genre of literature film and television programming that uses suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements. So we will attempt to use this feature in our two minute film opening. Thrillers heavily stimulate the viewers moods giving them a high level of anticipation, uncertainty and suspense. A thriller is a villan driven plot, whereby he presents obstacles that the hero must overcome.
The aim of thrillers is to keep the audience engaged in the film and keep them on the edge of their seats. The protagonist in a thriller film has to be likeable and create empathy in some way for the viewer, in order for the audience to pity them.


However there are common sub-genres of thriller, for example psychological thrillers, crime thrillers and mystery thrillers. Even through there are these new inciting sub genres, soon enough the horror and action genres will overwhelm and overtake the original thriller genre.


I want our 2 minute film opening to be engaging and inciting. I want it to portray our protagonist as vulnerable, but just like in the original thriller genre our protagonist will overcome some kind of obstacle that she will face.

Possible Name Ideas for our Film Opening

Now we that we know what we want our Film Opening to be about, and what kind of issues we want to portray through our footage, we began brainstorming possible names for our Opening as you can see below:

As you can see we came to the conclusion of choosing the name: 'The Lady In Red'. We thought that this title was the best from the ones that we had came up with. We need to discuss font styles and positioning to create maximum impact when the text is displayed.

Film Opening (FIRST IDEA)

For media we have been asked to create a two minute film opening. I have decided to work with Max Winnall and Jodie Nicholls. We had a discussion on what we wanted our two minute film opening to be about. We came up with the idea of young girl who overcomes obstacles in her life as she is forced to work as a prostitute. We knew that we wanted our opening to contain a flashback of some sort that would reveal a back story to our main character.

We decided that our beginning shot would be an establishing shot of a basic room with a young girl sitting in front of a mirror. We would then pan round to look at her to prevent seeing the camera in the mirror. We then thought that we could use an extreme close up of her face to reveal that she has severe facial bruising. We did some research into how to create fake bruises via 'Youtube'. After the extreme close up, the camera will then track back on itself  to create a creepy effect and to show that the young girl has a bruise on her shoulder. She will then cover the bruise and then close her eyes. At this moment we decided to include a flashback. We will edit this footage in order to emphasise that it is a flashback, we could increase the brightness or change the saturation of the clip to black and white, in order to show the change in time. 

The flashback will consist of the main character getting ready to go out, again in the mirror like the previous shot. She will putting red lipstick on and will then kiss the mirror. The camera will then cut to her leaving the room and we will see the door close. We will then cut the footage to show a man taking her into a room.  We will use a mid close up shot of the door closing, whilst this is happening we will hear digetic sounds of bangs and screams. The next scene will show, the young girl re-entering her room, here she will holding money (fake money). She will also be carrying her clothes and shoes whilst wearing a black coat. There will then be a shot of her going through her bag to show the contents, this will include a drug kit, a bag of small powder and underwear. We researched into drug scenes and how they are or-castrated, we decided to use a similar idea to that of the film Pulp Fiction.

The next scene which will be in normal time, which will then show the young girl lying on the floor, she will get up and look at herself in the mirror and hit it off the dressing table which will result in it breaking. She will then fall to the floor and pick up a piece of glass and look once again at her own reflection. The piece of glass will cut her hand, we researched into how to make fake blood in order to make the cut look realistic. This will then be the end of our opening.

Preliminary Task Video

This video above is our Preliminary Task. It involved me, Georgina and Jess. I have evaluated it previously. We uploaded it to Youtube, and then copied and pasted the URL in order to embed it into our blogs.

Preliminary Task

For our Preliminary Task we were given a script and as a group of three we decided to make changes. My group consisted of me, Georgina , and Jess. There were four charcaters involved in the script so Jess therfore played 2 parts. Jess played the roles of Dani and Sam, I played a character called Toni and Georgina played the remaining character called Sonia.We were given freedom to change the narrative storyline of the script, so we therefore planned our film on a simple storyboard. We decided that the storyline should revolve around a conversation between the characters Toni and Sam, they would talk about their friend Sonia who hadn't returned home from last night.Toni decides to call Sonia to discover where she is and what has happened to her. Sonia replies that she is at the hospital and is therefore in a lot of trouble.


The opening scene begins with a shot of my feet in which we were trying to highlight the fact that I was in a rush. Georgina and Jess used a hand held camera to track my movement. We also experimented with 'a match on action' shot in which my other group members filmed me opening a door and the next shot was me walking out from the door. We also used an over the shoulder shot whilst me and Jess were sitting on the bench, to add a conversational effect and to really get the audience involved. Whilst filming outside we used a close up shot of my phone to show that I was actually calling Sonia, we also used an aerial shot indoors whilst Sonia and Dani were talking. To create an omniscient feel to the video. We then jumped to a shot of Sonia answering her phone, the next close up shot then shows the Toni after hearing the conversation, all of these shots show continuity editing. Finally we used a tracking shot to show Sam walking towards Toni, but to end our Preliminary task we used a medium close up shot to reveal Sam dropping her personal items as she hears the news.


To edit our footage we used a Macbook , we inserted several transitions and also added non- diegetic sound to add flow to our film and make it smother overall. Also we faded two shots together which in the long run was very effective and creative. I think that some of our editing could have been done better and therefore improved the overall quality of our film. As some of the editing made the shots seem jumpy and disconnected. We also should have considered that filming outside allows the weather to negatively impact our footage.However we each experienced filming,acting and directing our Preliminary Task.